The 2025 Middleburg Film Festival is the latest to bestow Chloe Zhao’s “Hamnet” its Audience Award for Narrative Feature, but this time the Focus Features release shares the honor with Hikari’s “Rental Family, set to be released by Searchlight Pictures.
Though the award still supports the idea that “Hamnet” is the one fall festival premiere most likely to be a Best Picture Oscar frontrunner next year, especially since it also won the coveted People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, it being tied with “Rental Family” helps paint a picture of how there can be plenty of films that excite audiences outside the New York/Los Angeles bubble.
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Keep in mind, the Audience Award process at Middleburg is similar to the one at Toronto, in that any film screening at the festival is eligible. And the harsh thing about Toronto this year was how many well-received premieres, be it “Rental Family” or “Roofman,” had been said to have had their awards campaigns tanked by not winning said People’s Choice Award, as if their worth is tied to their potential to win an Academy Award.
“Rental Family,” which closed the 2025 Middleburg Film Festival, with writer/director Hikari present to receive a standing ovation, was described by IndieWire critic David Ehrlich as “a gentle little movie that recognizes truth and performance as two sides of the same coin.” Pegged as a crowdpleaser before it had publicly screened anywhere, the response the Brendan Fraser response received at Middleburg, from an audience that primarily consists of wealthy film enthusiasts in the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area, quite a few who work in the film industry, proved that initial read to be justified. Worth noting “Frankenstein,” the runner-up for the People’s Choice Award at Toronto, had also screened at Middleburg.
Anyhow, 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 the Top Documentary Prize. Another Telluride world premiere a la “Hamnet,” the film tells the true story of an Indian man cycling 6000 miles cross-continent on bicycle to find his love. Other documentaries that screened at the festival include Netflix’s “Cover-Up” and National Geographic films “Love+War” and “The Tale of Silyan,” yet “The Cycle of Love” has yet to find a distributor. One can imagine the filmmakers hope the Middleburg audience’s reaction can be leveraged in a partner ready to campaign the film as a true Best Documentary Feature contender.
Though it won the Jury Prize after its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” which won the Top International Prize at Middleburg, has yet to find a distributor, even though it is directed by two-time Oscar nominee Kaouther Ben Hania and has already been selected to represent Tunisia for Best International Feature.
Outside of actual prizewinners, this particular regional crowd anecdotally hailed a mix of the expected, like Palme d’Or winner “It Was Just an Accident” from director Jafar Panahi or Scott Cooper’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” and unexpected like A24 romantic comedy “Eternity,” starring Elizabeth Olsen (programmed as the Saturday Spotlight film), and Searchlight Pictures’ “Is This Thing On?”
A portion of the older crowd seemed to still have difficulty 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 on most of Netflix’s slate of films, from Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” which opened the festival, to Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague,” and Rian Johnson’s “Wake Up Dead Man,” the latest installment in the “Knives Out” franchise.
“We’re thrilled to see how our slate of films connected so profoundly with our audiences,” said Middleburg Film Festival Executive Director Susan Koch via statement. “The humanity and emotional depth of these four films clearly struck a chord, reflecting the kind of bold, globally minded storytelling our festival strives to champion.”
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