Dispatch from the Middleburg Film Festival
I’m not sure when I first heard about the concept of a film festival, but I definitely understood what they were by the time I was 12 years old. Nineteen ninety-four was the year that “Clerks” and “Four Weddings and a Funeral” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. “The Shawshank Redemption” opened at the Toronto International Film Festival that year, and most notably, “Pulp Fiction” won the Palm d’Or (Best Picture) at Cannes.
I learned all this at the time because they’d always make note of it during the trailers that I’d see on TV, at the theater, and before the main feature on VHS tapes. It was there to give the movies a stamp of approval - these films are prestigious. As I started reading magazines like Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone you’d often see photos from these premieres. They looked extremely fancy, and I desperately wanted to go.
Despite my interest, I spent the next several decades never seriously considering what it would take to actually attend any of these festivals. Cannes is in France. Venice is in Italy. Those are expensive trips, even if you can get tickets. But this year, I decided it was time to seriously look into it.
The impetus for this was the Sundance Film Festival making the decision to leave Park City, Utah after 40+ years and move to Boulder, Colorado. Since 2022 I’ve been taking advantage of Sundance’s virtual fest option, which began in 2021 due to COVID. Every year since I’ve taken a couple days off work in late January to watch a dozen or so movies at home over a long weekend. It’s been a blast, and I thought maybe I’d look into attending the final Park City Sundance in person in 2026.
Then I saw how much it costs to actually attend the festival, and I realized I don’t have many thousands of extra dollars. So, I started doing some research on what the most accessible film festivals are for first timers. That’s where I read more about smaller, regional film festivals, specifically the one in Middleburg, Virginia, just three hours away from me.
Middleburg is in Loudon County, Virginia, which has the distinction of being the richest county in the country, with a median household income of $178,707 as of this year. It’s about an hour west of Washington, DC, in the middle of horse country. Fifteen years ago one of the co-founders of the cable station BET decided to build a gigantic, fancy resort there, and two years later she started the Middleburg Film Festival. When you’re a billionaire, that’s something you can decide to do.
In early September, I decided to look up Airbnb’s in the Middleburg area during the festival. I was shocked to discover that unlike the five-figures it would cost to spend a week in Park City, I could find a very nice place for a long weekend just a few minutes outside of town for well under $1,000. I booked it immediately, before the lineup was even announced.
When I booked my Airbnb, all the festival passes had been sold out for weeks or months. I was counting on the availability of individual tickets, which would go on sale about two weeks before the festival, when the full slate was announced. At just $20/ticket, they were expected to sell out very quickly.
On that day, which turned out to be the Friday two weeks before the festival, I was refreshing the website every five minutes waiting for tickets to go on sale. When they finally did, I realized I had a lot of planning to do very quickly to avoid missing out on popular screenings. The festival takes place over four days and four separate locations across this small town - a fancy resort, a private school auditorium, a community center, and a museum. I had to quickly map out a schedule accounting for movie runtime, travel between venues, and maybe even time to eat something. It was like taking a math test, but within an hour or so I had purchased tickets for nine movies over three days. I was ready.
Then, a week before the festival was to begin, my significant other who I live with and planned on attending with, got COVID. I was convinced I was next, and did everything I could over the next week to not ruin the trip. I slept on the couch. I sequestered Holly in the upstairs bedroom. I took COVID tests every day. Somehow, I didn’t get sick, Holly got better, and it was time to go to the Middleburg Film Festival.
We left Lancaster, PA early Friday morning with our first screening planned for noon at the Hill School venue. We arrived about an hour early and panicked when we found the parking lot was already completely full. With the line for our first film already starting, we drove a few blocks back into town, parked on the street, and power-walked back to the school, still making it with plenty of time. It wasn’t until later that we learned there was plenty of parking on the other side of the school that we completely missed.
Over the next three days we had the absolute time of our lives. As we planned for this, I had an expectation in my mind about what I hoped a film festival would be like. I’d spend time in an idyllic, beautiful location, chatting with fellow movie lovers in line about the movies they’d been seeing and what they’re excited to see next. I’d see great movies weeks or months before they were released to the public. I’d hear actors, writers, directors, and composers talk in detail about the process of making the films, and I’d learn new insights I’d never otherwise have known. I’d see famous people in person. That’s what I’d imagined. It’s exactly what I got.
I won’t go into detail yet on all the movies I saw, but many of them I’ll have reviews for right here when they start to release widely over the next two months. There are some truly great ones in there, as well as a couple stinkers.
When I was planning for the trip I thought the worst case scenario wasn’t that I’d have a bad time, but I’d have a wonderful time and this would become an expensive new hobby. The latter is indeed how it turned out. On the final day of the festival we had planned to finish our last movie at around 6:30 p.m .and leave before the Q&A with the writer and director. The last film, which I’ll be writing about in another week or so, was so good that Holly and I looked at each other and decided to stay for the talk. That would mean tackling our three hour drive even later, but we just wanted to hear more about how the movie was made by the people who made it. If I’m being honest though, I just didn’t want to leave.
On the drive home I started to feel a little tickle in my throat, and on Monday morning I woke up with a full-blown cold. I’d heard this is common at film festivals - going in and out of packed screenings for days on end, waiting in busy lines, talking to lots of strangers. It’s bound to happen, and it was entirely worth it. I already can’t wait for next year.
