Jeremy Allen White plays the lead in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.
Virginia Film Festival Executive Director Jody Kielbasa and Artistic Director Ilya Tovbis appeared on the Paramount stage on Tuesday evening to announce the 38th Annual Virginia Film Festival. The 2025 VAFF program features more than 120 films from Hollywood giants, Virginia and international filmmakers, plus topical documentaries, and a wide range of special guests across the industry with screenings held at local movie theaters from October 22 to 26.
Kielbasa welcomed the festival as Charlottesville’s “unique way to celebrate the power of cinema,” and Tovbis talked viewers through the highlights.
The festival will open with Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere starring Jeremy Allen White and directed by VAFF Advisory Board member and Virginia native Scott Cooper. The film tells the story behind the making of Bruce Springsteen’s celebrated album Nebraska.
Centerpiece film Train Dreams stars Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, Kerry Condon, and William H. Macy, and closing the fest is Rental Family, the debut feature from director HIKARI starring Academy Award-winner Brendan Fraser. HIKARI will participate in a post-screening discussion.
Actor Ben Foster will be on hand to accept the Achievement in Acting Award and participate in a post-screening discussion following the film Christy.
Tovbis called Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, “a movie with tremendous visual pizzazz and splendour” and said Hamnet, from writer/director Chloé Zhao, is “big award buzzy.”
This year’s schedule will feature more panels—and more ways to connect screenwriters, directors, producers, actors, and viewers—than years past, noted Tovbis.
Tickets go on sale to the public at noon on Friday, October 3, and are available online at virginiafilmfestival.org, in person at the UVA Arts Box Office, and by phone at 924-3376. Donors get early access and can contribute online.
