Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival

Schedule

Friday, August 22, 2025

The Players

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

In 1994, young Emily joins an avant-garde theater cast. Drawn to her castmates' bohemian world and feeling like family, she gets entangled in the group's complicated power dynamics.

Doc Distribution Lowdown

9 - 10:30 AM @ Crooked Ladle

Join a panel of documentary distributors, programmers and filmmakers as they discuss the state of documentary distribution today. Who's buying? What's the future of public broadcasting in the current political moment? And has the streaming bubble burst? If you're launching your documentary this coming year, you'll want to be here.

Shorts Program: Doc Spotlight

9 - 10:30 AM @ Dana Auditorium

A program of three documentary shorts, including Expression of Illness , Imaginary Parachute and Big Cat. | When she learns that her treatment isn’t over, documentary filmmaker and thyroid cancer survivor Bryn Silverman embarks on a solo investigation into her healthcare that reveals the importance of community in the healing process. | How does childhood bring us to art and art bring us back to childhood? 

The Prison Show

9 - 10:30 AM @ Twilight Hall

In Houston, Texas, a local radio airs a weekly show catered to prisoners and the families they’ve left behind. For over 40 years, The Prison Show has unveiled the tentacular reach of the American criminal justice system, which goes far beyond prisons.

Life After

11 AM - 1 PM @ Axinn Center at Starr Library

A gripping personal investigation that exposes the tangled web of moral dilemmas and profit motives surrounding assisted dying. Disabled filmmaker Reid Davenport uncovers shocking abuses of power while amplifying the voices of the disability community fighting for justice and dignity in an unfolding matter of life and death.

Crocodile Tears

11 AM - 1 PM @ Dana Auditorium

An overbearing mother who lives with her son in a secluded crocodile farm spirals out of control when her son sees the outside world and falls for a girl for the first time.

Powwow Highway

11 AM - 1 PM @ Middlebury Marquis Theatre

Two Northern Cheyenne men take a road trip from Montana to New Mexico to bail out the sister of one of them who has been framed and arrested in Santa Fe. On the way, they begin to reconnect to their spiritual heritage.

Bad Press

11 AM - 1 PM @ Town Hall Theater - Main

When the Muscogee Nation suddenly begins censoring its free press, a rogue reporter fights to expose her government's corruption in a historic battle that will have ramifications for all of Indian Country.

Journalism, Public Narrative & Myth

11 AM - 12:30 PM @ Town of Middlebury Offices

Join The New York Times Chief Washington Correspondent David Sanger, VT Digger Editor-in-Chief Geeta Anand, The New York Times movie critic Alissa Wilkinson, and the filmmakers behind A Calling and Bad Press in a conversation about the catalyzing power of journalism in the creation of public narratives--both factual and mythical. Moderated by Addison Independent News Editor John McCright.

My Omaha

11 AM - 1 PM @ Twilight Hall

After graduating from journalism school, Nick Beaulieu returns to his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska to document its surging racial justice movement while seeking to reconnect with his staunchly pro-Trump father Randy. The task is made more urgent when Randy is unexpectedly diagnosed with stage-4 cancer.

Shorts Program: Narrative Spotlight

2 - 4 PM @ Axinn Center at Starr Library

A program of six narrative shorts, including Audio Description , Breadwinner , Dark Orange, I Am a German Shepherd, M. L'espérance and Sunflower Shadows. | A lonely visually impaired man begins to hear his life audio-described. | An obsessive baker moves in with her boyfriend just as her sourdough starter develops a blood-thirsty craving.

Love Chaos Kin

2 - 4 PM @ Dana Auditorium

An Indian immigrant mother helps her adopted twin daughters reconnect with their White birth mother and estranged Native American father, exposing raw class divides while transforming their understanding of identity and belonging.

Pistachio Wars

2 - 4 PM @ Middlebury Marquis Theatre

Journalist Yasha Levine follows a lead on a water sale between a farmer and a small desert town-and discovers a hidden side to California’s healthy snack industry. Documenting towns ravaged by drought, farms built on oil fields, mass extinction, and a water heist straight from the plot of Chinatown, Pistachio Wars takes a road trip into the dark heart of the American Dream.

Disability & The Artistic Imagination

2 - 3:30 PM @ Town Hall Theater - Anderson Studio

For decades, disability has been hidden off-screen, effectively censored from mainstream films and television. When disabled characters and protagonists do appear in films and television, they are often inauthentic or highly stereotyped, and in fiction, have been historically portrayed by non-disabled actors. A 2022 Nielsen study revealed that "total share of screen for people with disabilities is 8.8%, while people with apparent disabilities make up only 0.4%."

There Was, There Was Not

2 - 4 PM @ Twilight Hall

The first line of every Armenian fairy tale, There Was, There Was Not tells the collective myth of a homeland lost forever-and four women’s resistance to that loss.

Land With No Rider

5 - 7 PM @ Axinn Center at Starr Library

The last cowboys of New Mexico eke out a fragile survival in a world of isolation, memories and rugged beauty as an epic drought devastates the American West.

The New Cold Wars: In Conversation with David Sanger

5 - 6:30 PM @ Dana Auditorium

The New York Times White House Correspondent David Sanger joins us for an engaging on-stage conversation centering on current trends in international relations and politics, including those at the center of his latest New York Times best-selling book New Cold Wars: Chin's Ruse, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West. 

Friday Happy Hour

5 - 6:30 PM @ Edgewater Gallery

Come and enjoy some light food, beverages and local art at Edgewater Gallery. Pass holders only, please.

Omaha (with Sender Unknown)

5 - 7 PM @ Middlebury Marquis Theatre

Grace’s regimented world upends as mysterious packages arrive on her doorstep, each box containing an item she unknowingly needs in the near future. | After a family tragedy, siblings Ella and Charlie are unexpectedly woken up by their dad and taken on a journey across the country, experiencing a world they’ve never seen before. As their adventure unfolds, Ella begins to understand that things might not be what they seem.

The Gas Station Attendant

5 - 7 PM @ Town Hall Theater - Main

A daughter reflects on her father’s life-weaving the story of his miraculous journey from the streets of India with the realities of life in America. This deeply intimate film is a meditation on family, the immigrant experience, and the dreams we carry with us.

Ada (with Expiration Date)

5 - 7 PM @ Twilight Hall

A son reflects on the waning years of his father's dairy farm, and his decision not to carry on its legacy. | A deeply moving portrait of an architect tested by the impossible choices between career, country and motherhood.

Rebel With a Clause

7:30 - 9:30 PM @ Axinn Center at Starr Library

A grammar guru takes her pop-up grammar advice stand on a road trip across all 50 states to show that comma fights can bring us closer together in a divided time.

Hundreds of Beavers

7:30 - 9:30 PM @ Dana Auditorium

In the 19th century, a drunken applejack salesman must go from zero to hero and become North America's greatest fur trapper by defeating hundreds of beavers.

Eephus

7:30 - 9:30 PM @ Middlebury Marquis Theatre

With an imminent construction project looming over their beloved small-town baseball field, a pair of New England rec-league teams face off for the last time.

Coroner to the Stars (with My Back Pages)

7:30 - 9:30 PM @ Town Hall Theater - Anderson Studio

As Mitch Blank prepares to donate his vast Bob Dylan memorabilia collection, he reflects on the nature of collecting and the emotions around letting it go. | A documentary on the extraordinary life of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the former Los Angeles County Chief Medical Examiner and “coroner to the stars” who pushed forensic science into the spotlight-even as Hollywood elites and political adversaries sought to silence him.

Open (with Cafuné)

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

An exotic dancer in an open marriage comes to realize her fear of losing her desirability while on a romantic getaway with a lover. | Can two people be totally honest with each other? Amid a culture where infidelity is almost expected, Tomas and Diana try to carve out something radically different: a relationship rooted in honesty, equality, and emotional clarity. As their relationship unravels and rebuilds, they begin to examine the emotional inheritance they carry.

The Librarians (with A Calling)

7:45 - 9:45 PM @ Twilight Hall

A tribute to fallen journalists who risked their lives to report their stories. | Librarians unite to combat book banning, defending intellectual freedom on democracy's frontlines amid unprecedented censorship in Texas, Florida, and beyond.

Filmmaker Party

8:30 - 11 PM @ Johnson Memorial Building

Join us at the Johnson Memorial Building to snack, sip and, most importantly, connect with other filmmakers from around the world. Visiting filmmakers only, please.

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