Keep your summer blockbusters — around here, we’re all in on fall films.
Autumn in Nashville always offers a cornucopia of movie options, from the International Black Film Festival (Oct. 1-5), the Nashville Horror Film Festival (Oct. 4-5) and the Nashville Jewish Film Festival (Oct. 16-Nov. 6) to Vanderbilt University’s ongoing International Lens series at Sarratt Cinema (most Thursdays through November). But the season’s marquee event — taking place Sept. 18 through 24 at Regal Green Hills, Soho House Nashville, the Belcourt and elsewhere — is the 56th annual Nashville Film Festival.
Featuring roughly 150 films, this year’s NaFF kicks off Thursday night at Regal Green Hills Theater 16 with Opening Night Presentation Man on the Run, filmmaker Morgan Neville’s documentary on Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles life. Other big events of the fest will include a Q&A with Nicole Kidman — titled Where Art Meets Home in Nashville — followed by a screening of 2003’s Cold Mountain (5:15 p.m. Sept. 21 at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum), as well as Closing Night Presentation Kiss of the Spider Woman (6 p.m. Sept. 24 at the Belcourt) starring Diego Luna and Jennifer Lopez.
Nashville audiences will have a slew of locally relevant flicks to choose from, including documentaries You Got Gold: A Celebration of John Prine (4:30 p.m. Sept. 21 at Regal Green Hills Theater 16) and Opryland USA: A Circle Unbroken (2 p.m. Sept. 20 at Regal Green Hills Theater 16 and 3 p.m. Sept. 24 at the Belcourt), as well as the trashy, John Waters-indebted romp Fucktoys — written by, directed by and starring Nashville-raised filmmaker Annapurna Sriram. And none of that is to mention the panels, parties and opportunities to rub elbows. Visit nashvillefilmfestival.org to purchase passes and single-screening tickets and to see a full lineup.
Below, find our thoughts on 14 films showing at this year’s Nashville Film Festival.
Mad Bills to Pay
Mad Bills to Pay
Centering on wildly irresponsible 19-year-old Rico and his family, Mad Bills to Pay — subtitled Destiny, Dile Que No Soy Malo — is the debut feature from writer-director Joel Alfonso Vargas. Living with his mom and younger sister in a cramped Bronx apartment and barely contributing by selling homemade booze concoctions called “nutcrackers” on Orchard Beach, Rico soon finds himself on the fast track to adulthood. With shades of Sean Baker, Vargas gives us beautifully shot, slice-of-life slow cinema that will feel deeply relatable to anyone who’s ever found themselves drowning in family drama. Mad Bills to Pay will be preceded by a screening of Home Is Where’s music video “Milk & Diesel: The Motion Picture.” 3:30 p.m. Sept. 19 at Regal Green Hills Theater 3 D. PATRICK RODGERS
Matter of Time
Few musicians are as culturally influential as Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder. In director Matt Finlin’s documentary Matter of Time, Vedder uses that influence for good. The grunge icon and his wife Jill co-founded the EB Research Partnership (EBRP), an organization dedicated to funding research into epidermolysis bullosa, a rare and devastating genetic disease. EB shortens the lifespan of those who have it, meaning most people living with the condition are children. EB patients are often called “butterfly children” because their skin is as fragile as a butterfly’s wing, blistering at the slightest trauma. The documentary braids together stories from families living with EB and information about the disease with footage from a 2023 benefit concert where Vedder performs some of his most moving songs to a rapt audience full of EB patients. Because the organization has set a goal of finding a cure by the end of this decade — and because the scientists interviewed express genuine optimism that a cure is within reach — Matter of Time is the rare documentary that is both devastating and deeply hopeful. 6:30 p.m. Sept. 19 at Regal Green Hills Theater 3 LAURA HUTSON HUNTER
“From Waste to Wages: Tennessee’s Economic Potential in Recycling”
Co-directors Jeffrey Barrie, Ryan Scott and Shelby White set out to bring attention to a potential solution to Tennessee’s ongoing landfill crisis with this seven-minute documentary short produced by the Tennessee Environmental Council. With many of the state’s landfills at or nearing maximum trash capacity, and with Tennessee’s recycling rate consistently ranking near the bottom nationally, “From Waste to Wages”argues that a more efficient state recycling system would provide a regional economic boom in addition to the obvious environmental benefits. Lawmakers will have to follow through with that line of thinking for these potential solutions to be implemented, but the Tennessee Environmental Council — of which Barrie is the CEO — believes a revamped system would create thousands of jobs and reduce the burden on local communities. 11 a.m. Sept. 20 at Regal Green Hills Theater 3 LOGAN BUTTS
Peacock
Anyone who’s excited for auteur Yorgos Lanthimos’ upcoming Bugonia should add Peacock to their Nashville Film Festival schedule. With his debut feature, Austrian filmmaker Bernhard Wenger managed to secure his country’s submission for Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards. Though Peacock lost out to I’m Still Here at this year’s Oscars ceremony, it is nevertheless a dark, compelling and frequently hilarious satire. The film features Albrecht Schuch as Matthias, a sort of loved-one-for-hire who’ll play whatever part you like — accomplished son, impressive dad, hunky boyfriend — via his company MyCompanion. It’s a great business model. Until, that is, Matthias’ many masks begin to slip. 12:30 p.m. Sept. 20 at Regal Green Hills Theater 15 D. PATRICK RODGERS
Come See Me in the Good Light
When Come See Me in the Good Light premiered at Sundance in January, its subject, Colorado Poet Laureate Andrea Gibson, was there to see it. When the documentary screens at the Nashville Film Festival, the world will have been without them for three months. The film follows Gibson and their partner, fellow poet Megan Falley, as they grapple with a terminal cancer diagnosis and what it means to truly live, offering an achingly beautiful retrospective on their life and the pure love they had for it. It’s poignant, funny and completely heartbreaking. See it, and BYOT (tissues, preferably a whole box). 6:30 p.m. Sept. 20 at Regal Green Hills Theater 15 HANNAH CRON
The Baltimorons
Jay Duplass’ The Baltimorons is a good-hearted romp through Christmas chaos, the emotional remodeling that is sobriety, and finding the true heart of improv comedy. Star and co-writer Michael Strassner (who’s behind several indelible short films and a prize-winning commercial featuring a Doritos alien abduction) is charming but also deeply real. Co-star Liz Larsen is an incredible find, bringing heart to dentistry and showing us a woman’s life we’ve never seen at the movies before. Sweet and sincere and very aware of how things are. 7 p.m. Sept. 20 at Soho House Cinema JASON SHAWHAN
Omaha
Omaha
Do not let the Sundance trappings fool you: Omaha — the feature-length debut from Cole Webley — is fucking devastating. Starring indie darling John Magaro as a widowed father who wakes his two kids up one morning for an unexpected trip to Nebraska, Omaha could easily fall into the rhythms of a Little Miss Sunshine-esque dramedy. But Webley and screenwriter Robert Machoian opt for a grittier, more realistic approach, with the full picture not coming into place until the final frame. Omaha may seem manipulative to some viewers, but the shotgun blast to the heart worked on me, thanks in huge part to the performances of Magaro and his young co-stars Molly Belle Wright and Wyatt Solis. 8 p.m. Sept. 20 at Regal Green Hills Theater 14 LOGAN BUTTS
The True Beauty of Being Bitten By a Tick
The word “biodynamic” comes up a lot in The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick, a domestic body-horror film from director Pete Ohs. It’s an eerie sendup of the wellness industry and back-to-the-land movements, with touchstones like Rosemary’s Baby, The Fly and Larry Mitchell’s 1970s queer commune writings. Horror ensues when the struggling Yvonne (Zoë Chao) gets a nasty tick bite while staying with her friend Camille (Callie Hernandez) and can’t seem to make her or surprise visitors A.J. (James Cusati-Moyer) and Isaac (multihyphenate Jeremy O. Harris) take it seriously. With tension deliciously spun by this cast, True Beauty takes vacation horror to new heights, making and then breaking its own rules. 8 p.m. Sept. 20 at Regal Green Hills Theater 4 ANNIE PARNELL
The Other People
When I saw that one of the entries in NaFF’s Tennessee Features category was a horror film, I had to dive in. The Other People, from filmmaking brothers Chad (director, producer, editor, co-writer) and Trey McClarnon (co-writer, executive producer), centers on 8-year-old Abby (Valentina Lucido), who makes friends with a shadow-dwelling boy who lives in her family’s home. Shadow housemates aren’t the only odd things happening in this town — people have also recently gone missing and died suddenly. In post-The Babadook horror fashion, people all over this quiet suburb are dealing with grief AND creepy figures. 8:30 p.m. Sept. 20 at Regal Green Hills Theater 16 LOGAN BUTTS
Sun Ra: Do the Impossible
Jazz polymath Sun Ra kept his human life a secret, preferring to lean into an expansive alien persona that laid the groundwork for the Afrofuturist movement. But in the documentary Sun Ra: Do the Impossible, filmmaker Christine Turner draws constellations between Ra’s childhood in Alabama, his days in “Professor” John T. Whatley’s Birmingham big band and the New York free-jazz scene, and the formation of his own immersive, boundary-pushing Arkestra. Replete with out-there visuals, insightful commentary from artists and historians and a fascinating exploration of Ra’s nonnormative masculinity, it’s a compelling look into the universe of a legend. 1 p.m. Sept. 21 at Regal Green Hills Theater 15 ANNIE PARNELL
Boundary Waters
Boundary Waters
Michael (the immaculately named Etienne Kellici) is a 12-year-old growing up in the Iron Range of Northern Minnesota — a collection of four iron-ore mining communities situated around Lake Superior. He spends his days exploring the Boundary Waters, a nature reserve in the Superior National Forest. When his mother suffers a mysterious injury, Michael sets out on a quest to uncover the truth of what happened, shifting this coming-of-age drama into thriller territory. With supporting players like character actor Bill Heck, Lin-Manuel Miranda favorite Christopher Jackson and the legendary Carol Kane, Boundary Waters’ cast elevates Tessa Blake’s narrative feature-length debut a level. 1:30 p.m. Sept. 21 at Regal Green Hills Theater 16 LOGAN BUTTS
Finding Lucinda
Finding Lucinda
Finding Lucinda finds Avery Hellman wrestling with self-doubt. The California folk musician plays in the Lucinda Williams cover band Lake Charlatans and releases originals as ISMAY, and at the documentary’s start, they’re torn between continuing to make music or focusing on sheep farming. On a Nashville road trip, Hellman seeks answers from Williams fans and collaborators like Mary Gauthier, Los Texmaniacs and Wolf Stephenson on how Williams figured it out, eventually speaking with the renowned alt-country artist herself. The creative crossroads Hellman faces is relatable, though I wish the film had leaned more into the problems with hero worship — especially since Gauthier and Williams both advise Hellman to forge their own path instead of tracing someone else’s. 2 p.m. Sept. 21 at Regal Green Hills Theater 14 ANNIE PARNELL
Idiotka
If “Diet Prada,” “coquette core” or “Yuzuco yuzu juice” mean anything to you, then you are the target audience for Nastasya Popov’s directorial debut. Satirizing Los Angeles’ fashion-influencer culture, Idiotka follows Margarita, the first-generation daughter of Russian immigrants in West Hollywood. Barely keeping her chain-smoking, 80-year-old babushka and ex-con papa afloat by selling designer fakes on Depop, she enters the fashion-centered reality TV contest Slay, Serve, Survive. The producers and judges are played by Charli XCX music video universe members such as Julia Fox, Benito Skinner, Owen Thiele, Gabbriette and Camila Mendes. Despite the hilarious one-liners (“overtly woke art is no for me”), the film finds its real strength in dysfunctional family dynamics. It’s a truly original indie misfit comedy — a dying breed we desperately need more of. 5 p.m. Sept. 21 at Regal Green Hills Theater 14 KATHLEEN HARRINGTON
By Design
No American director does things like Amanda Kramer (who kicked off the Demi Moore Renaissance with Please Baby Please and was also behind the TV special freakout Give Me Pity!). Who else would think to examine the all-consuming dread of The Now by digging deep into our love of things — in this case, an artisanal chair that grows to encompass and redefine the life of our heroine Camille (Juliette Lewis). How better to be loved as a thing than as a person. By Design is a remarkable work, with great supporting turns from Mamoudou Athie and Betty Buckley. 7 p.m. Sept. 21 at Regal Green Hills Theater 15 JASON SHAWHAN
