IndieWire just returned from the Virginia Film Festival in charming Charlottesville, which drew a smattering of starry attendees and showcased awards-season favorites on the big screen. Below, we announce this year’s audience award winners, led by Peter Farrelly’s “I Play Rocky” in the narrative feature category.
Celebrating the festival’s 39th year, executive director Jody Kielbasa and artistic director Ilya Tovbis and their teams drew in more than 26,600 attendees, with 134 features screened Wednesday through Sunday, and more than 120 industry guests.
Matthew Syrett and Bowie Alexander’s nonfiction “Admission Possible” won the documentary feature audience award. The acquisition title follows seven first-generation high-schoolers in New York City as they work to secure a future for their families and themselves.
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Teddy Stern’s narrative short “Getar Hero,” about a cowboy living in Bombay, won that audience prize, while the documentary short “Sarah Ann Kelley: Becoming Visible” also resonated with audiences. It centers on an 85-year-old Charlottesville native who broke racial and gender boundaries.
Amazon MGM’s “I Play Rocky” was the first runner-up for the Toronto International Film Festival People’s Choice Award this year, behind Netflix’s “La Bola Negra.” The Oscar race appears to be a showdown between “La Bola Negra” and Universal’s “The Odyssey” right now, but don’t underestimate “I Play Rocky’s” appeal to crack the Best Picture 10.
Anthony Ippolito gives a star-making performance as Sylvester Stallone, who writes and stars in 1977’s Oscar Best Picture winner, “Rocky,” after eager producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff court him to snap up his first script. Sly, meanwhile, fights to also play the lead, which he eventually does as “I Play Rocky” recreates the film‘s scrappy production. Tracy Letts steals the movie as a dryly observant United Artists studio head who’s eventually disarmed by Sly’s charms. Last week, I sat for an intimate media screening of “I Play Rocky” that played all the way to the back of the room, with even an audience that small audibly cheering for the movie. It opens in select theaters November 6 ahead of a November 20 Thanksgiving-adjacent wide release. The film isn’t universally beloved by critics, though.
Virginia Film Festival‘s lineup included films like opener “The Debut,” international Oscar hopefuls “Rose,” “All of a Sudden,” and “Minotaur,” and deserving indies like Gotham-nominated “Mouse,” all of which played well to local audiences. IndieWire hosted a live “Screen Talk” podcast with “Paper Tiger” director James Gray ahead of his film’s celebrated premiere in Virginia (we’ll debut it next week on podcast platforms). Jessica Lange and Nathan Lange were among the top-tier talent who also gave live talks. David O. Russell, meanwhile, and producer Todd Black showed first-look footage of his NFL biopic “Madden,” starring Nicolas Cage in heavy prosthetics.
Virginia Film Festival Audience Awards are listed below.
Narrative Feature: “I Play Rocky”
Documentary Feature: “Admission Possible”
Narrative Short: “Getar Hero”
Documentary Short: “Sarah Ann Kelley: Becoming Visible”