Woodstock Film Festival Announces Official Lineup For Its 21st Edition

The Woodstock Film Festival announced today the official lineup for its 21st outing, taking place September 30th - October 4th, 2020 with in-person screenings at the Greenville Drive-In in Greenville, NY, Overlook Drive-In in Poughkeepsie, NY, and a Pop up drive-in at Andy Lee Field in Woodstock, NY. For the first time ever, the Festival will be hosting an online program of feature length and short films through a virtual event platform, giving patrons the opportunity to participate from the comfort of home.

"In a year mired by a global pandemic, civil unrest and political upheavals, it gives me a special pleasure to welcome the 2020 filmmakers and audiences to the Woodstock Film Festival," stated the festival's Co-Founder & Executive Director Meira Blaustein. "With a nod to the nostalgic past via the use of the drive-ins, and with an embrace of contemporary technology via virtual programming, this year's Woodstock Film Festival is set to steadily straddle both worlds as it brings to audiences some of today's most compelling independent cinema."

Opening Night Film: The Father by award-winning director, novelist playwright Florian Zeller starring Academy Award-winners Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman as a father-daughter duo grappling with the creeping shadow of dementia. The film is an adaptation of one of Zeller's plays of the same name.

Special Presentation: Francis Lee's Ammonite, starring Academy Award-winner Kate Winslet and Academy Award-nominee Saoirse Ronan in a 19th century romantic drama inspired by the life of British paleontologist Mary Anning and her relationship with Charlotte Murchison.

Kicking off the festival is the World Premiere of Los Hermanos/The Brothers by Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider, about Ilmar and Aldo López-Gavilán, two Cuban virtuoso brothers who after years of separation, finally come together to perform in the U.S. for the first time. The screening includes a live musical performance by Ilmar López-Gavilán.

The 2020 WFF lineup is as strong as ever, with more than 100 short and feature-length films that remind us of our shared experiences, as in the North American Premiere of Noah Gilbert's beautifully crafted Horse Latitudes, and films that transport us to a strangely familiar place on the other side of the globe, as in Woodstock Tuvan Style, screening as a World Premiere. From the personal to the political, from a story about the wartime efforts of British women (A Call to Spy) to a zany sci-fi / comedy about city-dwellers moving upstate (Save Yourselves!), WFF 2020 has it all.

Of special note are the World Premieres of What Breaks the Ice, directed by Rebecca Eskries, a story about two teenage girls whose lives take an unexpected turn when they become involved in a fatal crime, and The Drummer, directed by Eric Werthman, in which the interwoven stories of three veterans reveal the traumatic effects of war. Additional World Premieres include Matt Smukler's Wildflower and Hal Rifkin's Behind the Strings.

Of particular importance to WFF's documentary lineup are films that speak to current political affairs, at a time when politics is at the front of everyone's minds. Hannah Rosenzweig & Wendy Sachs's Surge, an East Coast Premiere, examines the rising phenomenon of women candidates running for Congress, while Kevin Ford's The Pushback, appearing as a U.S. Premiere, provides an in-depth look at the political landscape in Texas, a state that plays a crucial role on a national scale.

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