AFI Fest Opens Its 40th Year With Laika's Wildwood
AFI Fest opens its 40th edition on Wednesday night with the North American premiere of Wildwood, the stop-motion animated feature from Laika. The festival, presented by Canva, takes over the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood for five days, running from October 21 to 25, according to the American Film Institute.
The festival has a longer history than its current name suggests. It began as Filmex, an independently created festival, before the American Film Institute took it over and renamed it AFI Fest in 1986, as Deadline reports in an interview with the festival's chief executive, Bob Gazzale.
This year's programme includes 157 films across its sections. Deadline counts five Red Carpet premieres, 12 special screenings, 13 Luminaries selections, 18 Discovery titles, 16 World Cinema films, 17 documentaries, 45 short films in competition, 24 AFI Conservatory Showcase films, four Guest Artistic Director presentations and three After Dark films.
The festival closes on Sunday with Apple's Being Heumann, a biographical drama directed by Siân Heder. Variety had reported the opening and closing titles in September, alongside the Red Carpet premiere I Play Rocky, Peter Farrelly's origin story of the boxer Rocky.
Netflix brings two films to the festival. Peter Berg's The Mosquito Bowl, set in World War II, has its world premiere on Thursday night. Brad Bird's animated noir Ray Gunn has its North American premiere later in the week.
Guest artistic directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller picked Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey for the IMAX screen at the TCL Chinese Theatre. Quentin Tarantino will take part in a question-and-answer session after a sold-out special screening of his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood on Friday. Netflix plans to release The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, a David Fincher-directed prequel written by Tarantino, later in the month, after the festival.
The lineup also carries films that have been on the awards circuit. Deadline lists Searchlight's Wild Horse Nine and Behemoth!, Mike Leigh's Tender Loving Care, Florian Zeller's Bunker and Elsinore among its Oscar hopefuls. It also includes Josephine, the Sundance title starring Channing Tatum, and Mouse, directed by Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson, which won attention as a Berlin discovery. Ten official country selections for the International Feature Film Oscar race are also on the schedule.
Festivals like this one are where many of these films first meet an audience, and where sales agents and distributors start the conversations that decide which titles reach cinemas and streaming services. For anyone planning a visit, the festival's own listings place Wildwood on the Red Carpet schedule with a 7:30 pm screening on October 21.
