Middleburg 2025 Film Festival is the latest gift Chloe Zhao’s “The Port” its Audience Award for Narrative Feature, but this time the Focus Features release shares the honor with Hikari’s “Rental familywhich will be released by Searchlight Pictures.
Although the award still supports the idea that “The port” is a fall festival premiere most likely to win next year’s Best Picture Oscar, especially since it also won the coveted People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, that it’s tied to “Rental Family” helps paint a picture of how there can be plenty of movies that excite audiences outside of the New York/Los Angeles bubble.
Keep in mind that the audience award process in Middleburg is similar to that in Toronto, as all film screenings at the festival are eligible. And the tough thing about Toronto this year was how many well-received premieres, whether it was “Rental Family” or “Roofman,” were said to have had their awards campaigns tanked by not winning said People’s Choice Award, as if their value is tied to their potential to win an Oscar.
“Rental Family”, which closed in 2025 Middleburg Film Festivalwith writer/director Hikari in attendance to receive a standing ovation, was described by IndieWire critic David Ehrlich as “a gentle little film that recognizes truth and performance as two sides of the same coin.” The response Brendan Fraser’s response received in Middleburg, from an audience of primarily wealthy film enthusiasts in the DC, Maryland and Virginia area, many who work in the film industry, proved the first reading vindicated. Of note, “Frankenstein,” the People’s Choice Award runner-up in Toronto, had also shown at Middleburg.
Anyway, another film that had arguably been overshadowed at other festivals, but got its turn in the spotlight at Middleburg was “The Cycle of Love,” which took home the Best Documentary award. Another Telluride world premiere a la “Hamnet,” the film tells the true story of an Indian man who travels 6,000 miles across the continent by bicycle to find his love. Other documentaries screened at the festival include Netflix’s “Cover-Up” and the National Geographic films “Love+War” and “The Tale of Silyan,” but “The Cycle of Love” has yet to find a distributor. One can imagine the filmmakers are hoping that Middleburg audience reaction can be leveraged into a partner ready to promote the film as a real contender for Best Documentary Feature.
Although it won the Jury Prize after its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, “Voice of Hind Rajab,” which won the top international award at Middleburg, has yet to find a distributor, although it is directed by two-time Oscar nominee Kaouther Ben Hania and has already been selected to represent Tunisia for Best International Film.
Outside of the actual award winners, this particular regional audience anecdotally celebrated a mix of the expected, like the Palme d’Or winner “It Was Just an Accident” from director Jafar Panahi or Scott Cooper’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” and the unexpected like the A24 romantic comedy “Eternity,” starring Elizabeth Olsen, “I Search Pictures” and Saturday Pictures’ film. On?”
Some of the older crowd still seemed to have a hard time with “After the Hunt” or even “If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You,” which features a visceral performance from Rose Byrne, but were very warm to most of Netflix’s films, from Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” which opened the festival, to Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle De Johnson” and “Nouvelle Vague Johnson’s” latest. part of the “Knives Out” series.
“We are thrilled to see how our films connected so deeply with our audiences,” Middleburg Film Festival Executive Director Susan Koch said via a statement. “The humanity and emotional depth of these four films clearly struck a chord, reflecting the kind of bold, globally minded storytelling that our festival strives to champion.”
