Special guests will include Jonathan Majors, who will be on hand to receive the Festival’s Breakthrough Star Award and to discuss his latest film Devotion. Majors stars as Jesse L. Brown, the first Black pilot in the United States Navy, and the powerful partnership he formed with a fellow elite pilot that made both of them among the Navy’s most celebrated wingmen. Jonathan Majors is poised to become one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, thanks to acclaimed roles in films like The Last Black Man in San Francisco and The Harder They Fall as well as the HBO series Lovecraft Country. Audiences will soon see him co-starring with Michael B. Jordan in Creed III, and he will also soon be launched into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a lead role!
The Virginia Film Festival will also welcome actress Chrissy Metz (This is Us), who will be appearing with her film Stay Awake, a powerful family drama from Charlottesville-based writer and director Jamie Sisley; Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (Milk, J. Edgar, Under the Banner of Heaven) to receive its Changemaker Award, honoring not only his work but his tireless advocacy on behalf of the LGBTQIA+ community; two-time Tony Award-winner Judith Ivey; award-winning actor Raul Castillo, who will receive a tribute for a career that includes roles in HBO’s Looking, Cha Cha Real Smooth and Hustle; and Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Meg LeFauve (Inside Out), who will discuss her latest film My Father’s Dragon.
From highly anticipated features like She Said, which tells the story of one of the New York Times reporters who broke one of the most important stories of our time and Empire of Light, the VAFF’s closing night film that is a love letter to the magic of cinema by Oscar-winning writer and director Sam Mendes, the 35th annual Virginia Film Festival truly has something for everyone.
Learn more, get your tickets, and map out your Virginia Film Festival experience today at virginiafilmfestival.org.