Generation Z: 36th Mill Valley FF Features 12 Years A Slave, Effie Gray, Walter Mitty & Costa-Gavras Tribute

The 36th edition of the Mill Valley Film Festival (October 3rd-13th) has your usual mix of award season contenders, talent tribute and spotlights, a slew of highly anticipated items from Cannes, Venice, TIFF and a handful of U.S. premieres. The festival opens with Alexander Payne’s Nebraska and Brian Percival’s The Book Thief and closes with a tribute to Ben Stiller along with a showing of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

This year’s tribute will be given to legendary director Costa-Gavras (Z, Missing and The Music Box). Spotlights include filmmaker Steve McQueen and actor Chiwetel Ejiofor for 12 Years A Slave, Jared Leto for Dallas Buyer’s Club and Dakota Fanning for Effie Gray which is making its world premiere showing.
Among the other titles worth mentioning we find J.C. Chandor’s All is Lost, John Wells’ August: Osage County, Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue is the Warmest Color, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Like Father, Like Son, Justin Chadwick’s Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, Ashghar Farhadi’s The Past and Stephen Frear’s Philomena.

There’s several focus sections on local and international films which include a 30th anniversary celebration for Star Wars, Episode VI: Return of the Jedi as well as tributes to legends Thomas Dolby and Mike Bloomfield amongst others.