‘I Play Rocky,’ courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios
After five jam-packed days of screenings from October 21-25, the 39th annual Virginia Film Festival has finally come to a close. Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky was just announced as this year’s Narrative Feature Audience Award winner, while Matthew Syrett and Bowie Alexander’s Admission Possible won the same prize for Documentary Feature.
This year’s VAFF, which saw record-breaking attendance, felt particularly memorable, featuring screenings of festival favorites like The Debut (the Opening Night film) and Oscar hopeful La Bola Negra, plus keynote guests ranging from Paper Tiger director James Gray to actress Jessica Lange, both on hand to accept awards from the festival. Abounding sunshine and autumnal leaves added plenty of atmosphere to the already charming, relaxed event, a program of the University of Virginia that has gained prominence in recent years as one of the East Coast’s premier film festivals.
While much of my VAFF agenda included rewatches from festivals earlier in the year, including Andrew Haigh’s A Long Winter and my favorite film of 2026, Rose, starring Sandra Hüller and directed by Markus Schleinzer, I was lucky enough to finally catch up with a handful of movies that I have been itching to see. Continue reading to check out some of my first reactions to the new titles I screened at this year’s Virginia Film Festival:
‘All of a Sudden’
Directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
After delivering something of a palate cleanser with his last film, the lyrical Evil Does Not Exist, Hamaguchi returns to his usual loquacious form with All of a Sudden, which premiered at Cannes earlier this year and scored Best Actress wins for its leads, Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto. Loosely adapted from You and I – The Illness Suddenly Get Worse by Makiko Miyano and Maho Isono, Hamaguchi’s latest Oscar entry takes place on the outskirts of Paris, where Marie-Lou (Efira) faces burnout from her all-consuming job as director of a memory care nursing home in flux. Marie-Lou’s outlook on life entirely shifts when she unexpectedly meets Mari (Okamoto), a Japanese avant-garde theater director, whose visions of the world and what it could be give the former a revitalized perspective.
All of a Sudden’s nuanced characters and enveloping narrative feel like a major offering from Hamaguchi (working in the French language for the first time) and his co-writer, Léa Le Dimna, who thread the needle of a story both deeply intimate through the connection it captures between its leads and soaring through its philosophical ambitions for the future. Nearly three-and-a-half hours long and filled with rich dialogue that runs the gamut from late-stage Capitalism to humanistic elderly care, the film is a demanding ask for many. Still, it rarely treads the same ground twice or loses track of its deliberate rhythm. Watching All of a Sudden feels like purification by way of cinema, that rare sensation most chase at the movie theater but rarely experience.
‘Behemoth!’
Directed by Tony Gilroy
The latest work from the writer/director behind 2007’s Michael Clayton, Behemoth! feels like a big swing and ultimately an even bigger miss. Pedro Pascal stars as Alex Serian, a famed cellist who returns to his hometown of Los Angeles after tragedy strikes his family, where he resumes a long-forgotten gig recording film scores. In a choppy, underdeveloped structural choice, the film essentially dances through memories that come to Alex as he plays his beloved instrument, jumping between the cities, relationships, and junctures in time that have defined his entire life.
With a star-studded but underutilized supporting cast that includes Olivia Wilde, Eva Victor, and Will Arnett, the movie’s unsteady movement through time never lets audiences fully engage with or fall in love with its characters. While Pascal commands with his handsome physicality, his avoidant onscreen disposition does not make for a hero to root for, and Gilroy’s screenplay never gives much time to understand Alex’s relationships with the figures from his past who haunt him. Behemoth! totally lacks the emotion of the music it platforms, making the movie hard to hold onto or engage with. Clocking in at just over two hours, the movie drags, and I repeatedly checked my watch after its kinetic intro petered out roughly twenty minutes in.
‘Nina Roza’
Directed by Geneviève Dulude-De Celles
Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the Berlinale earlier this year, Nina Roza offers an intimate introspection on the passage of time and a celebration of cultural heritage. Galin Stoev stars as Mihail, a Bulgarian art curator who has lived in Canada for over twenty-five years since leaving his homeland after his wife’s unexpected death. When the abstract paintings of an eight-year-old girl, Nina, played by Sofia Stanina, in a tiny Bulgarian village go viral, Mihail’s employer urges him to return to the Balkans for the first time since immigrating, prompting him to reflect on his roots and the community he left behind.
While such examinations of cultural estrangement and the immigrant experience may seem familiar within the landscape of world cinema, Nina Roza sketches its characters and their experiences with great richness. While Mihail initially sees Bulgaria “as a backward place,” his time with Nina and the villagers who make up her community sends him on an exploration of self that reframes the country’s socio-economic hardship, allowing him to appreciate the authenticity of their lifestyles and the art forms that keep them spiritually afloat. Cinematographer Alexandre Nour Desjardins captures the film’s central characters with an often intense closeness, impressively counterbalanced by sweeping imagery of rural Bulgaria and the people who keep its traditions alive. Nina Roza was recently announced as Canada’s official entry for Best International Feature for the upcoming Academy Awards.
‘Paper Tiger’
Directed by James Gray
Gray’s latest Cannes-premiering movie is another deeply personal work for the born-and-bred New Yorker, set in 1986 Queens with plenty of atmosphere and attention to detail that absolutely immerses audiences in the period. Miles Teller and Scarlett Johansson star as a married couple, Irwin and Hester Pearl, who live a humble middle-class life to support their two teenage boys’ future. When Irwin’s older brother Gary, a hotshot former NYPD head honcho played by Adam Driver, reappears with a lucrative, too-good-to-be-true financial prospect, the Pearls’ life quickly descends into fear and chaos at the hands of the Russian mob.
While the Pearls’ fall feels a little too swift to be feasible, Paper Tiger features two heart-pounding standout scenes that convey the dire situation of its characters, some of the most thrilling sequences from any movie in 2026. Grey’s writing feels perfectly attuned to the time and community his film centers on, while delivering a throwback slice-of-life thriller that feels familiar, though not derivative. While early Cannes buzz marked Paper Tiger as a possible awards contender in the upcoming race to the Oscars, the movie’s lowkey portrait of a family unraveling might be too muted at this point in the season to make the splash it was hoping for.