Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival

Schedule

Sunday, August 24, 2025

Filmmaker Breakfast

8:30 - 10:30 AM @ Shiretown Marketplace

Come together with fellow filmmakers at Shiretown Marketplace for a cozy breakfast. Visiting filmmakers only, please.

Discovering the Avant-Garde

9 - 10:30 AM @ Axinn Center at Starr Library

MNFF11 Honoree and Hamilton College Professor of Cinema and Media Studies Scott McDonald curates a selection of experimental films from the archive, guiding us through a history of avant-garde work.

Under the Volcano

11 AM - 1 PM @ Dana Auditorium

A blended Ukrainian family spends the last day of their vacation in Tenerife, Spain. When Russia's invasion of Ukraine strands them on the island, they must contend with isolation, duty, fear - and each other.

Dead Man

11 AM - 1:30 PM @ Middlebury Marquis Theatre - Second Floor

William Blake, an accountant turned fugitive, is on the run. During his travels, he meets a Native American man called Nobody, who guides him on a journey to the spiritual world.

The New Yorker Theater: A Talbot Legacy

11 AM - 1 PM @ Town Hall Theater - Anderson Studio

In 1960, Dan and Toby Talbot opened the New Yorker Theater on the then-dangerous Upper West Side of New York. With no money or experience, the Talbots transformed this 900-seat living room into one of America's most influential repertory and arthouse cinemas, launching a remarkable six-decade career in film exhibition and distribution.

Shorts Program: Narrative Shorts

11 AM - 1 PM @ Twilight Hall

A program of four narrative shorts, including Madrina , Free Chair , Chasers and Holy Heaviness. | A young woman stirs up bitter resentment in an attempt to reconnect with her estranged family at Christmas. Realizing she may never “go home” again, she forges a kinship with migrants seeking refuge in her city. | Two suburban families struggle to maintain friendships when they find the perfect free chair left to languish on the side of the road.

Dead Ringer

2 - 4 PM @ Dana Auditorium

Made to promote rocker Meat Loaf’s follow-up to the highly successful 1977 release Bat Out of Hell, Allan Nicholls' Dead Ringer was much-hyped... and then mysteriously disappeared, surfacing only years later. Never commercially released, the film weaves documentary concert footage with a fictional story of two brothers--one a Meat Loaf doppelganger-who are striving to meet their rock-star idol.

Video Essays: Experiments in Sound & Image

2 - 4 PM @ Town Hall Theater - Anderson Studio

In 2015, Christian Keathley and Jason Mittell, both Professors of Film & Media at Middlebury College, received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to launch a summer workshop called Scholarship in Sound & Image. It brought 15 faculty from across North America and Europe to Middlebury for two weeks in June to learn the emerging form of “videographic criticism,” or creating video essays to convey critical insights about film and media to a wide-ranging audience. 

Braiding A New Life (with La Liga)

2 - 4 PM @ Twilight Hall

In rural Vermont, immigrant dairy farmworkers endure hardship and persecution while forging community through soccer. | A Ghanaian asylum seeker navigates life in Southern Vermont with her team of close friends and allies.

Mulholland Drive

2:15 - 5:15 PM @ Middlebury Marquis Theatre

After a car wreck on Mulholland Drive renders a woman amnesiac, she and a Hollywood-hopeful search for clues and answers across Los Angeles in a twisting venture beyond dreams and reality.

Closing Night Awards Ceremony

6 - 7 PM @ Town Hall Theater - Main

Prior to our closing night film, we present our juried awards and prizes. Join us for a celebration of our prize-winning filmmakers and the festival supporters who make these prizes possible.

The Ballad of Wallis Island

7:30 - 9:30 PM @ Town Hall Theater - Main

An eccentric lottery winner who lives alone on a remote island tries to make his fantasies come true by getting his favorite musicians to perform at his home.

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