Filmfest 919 Preview 2022

Through the judicious use of a drive-in theater at Carraway Village, the curators of Filmfest 919 allowed us to “catch the films before they [caught] on” in 2020 and 2021. As theater attendance begins to rise and more films are produced, The Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle will once again be provided with the opportunity to sample festival favorites and award contenders in advance of their theatrical releases.

This year’s festival begins on Wednesday, October 19th, with an advance screening of Devotion, which is not scheduled to hit theaters in wide release until late November. The film figures to take advantage of the colossal success of Top Gun: Maverick, by offering more military airplane battles. Its story of two pilots during the Korean War is based on the best-selling book of the same name.

The festival’s closing film, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, is also slated for a Thanksgiving release, so Filmfest 919 viewers get to see the Rian Johnson/Daniel Craig collaboration a full month early.

In between opening and closing are the usual mix of World Cinema, Awards-contenders, and documentaries seeking to gain momentum going into the prestige season of commercial releases. White Noise, Women Talking, Empire of Light, and Armaggedon Time have already picked up some buzz at Cannes and TIFF. Documentaries that viewers might normally have screened at Full Frame (a Durham-based documentary festival that has been online-only for the last two years) include Laura Poitras’s All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, If These Walls Could Sing, and Goodnight Oppy.

Filmfest 919 has always been careful to curate for diverse audiences, including films helmed by and about women. This year is no exception as viewers get early opportunities to screen She Said, Corsage, The Lost King, and The Quiet Girl.

In only its fifth year, the festival has established itself as the most important film festival in the state. Tickets for Filmfest 919 are available at: https://filmfest919.com/