Make your plans now to attend the 29th edition of Cinequest, Silicon Valley’s own major film festival. By some metrics the largest film festival in North America, Cinequest was recently voted the nation’s best by USA Today readers. The 2019 Cinequest is scheduled for March 5 through March 17 and will present almost 100 feature films and dozens of short films and virtual reality experiences from the US and over fifty other countries. And, at Cinequest, it’s easy to meet the filmmakers.
This year’s headline events include:
- New movies with Elle Fanning, Rebecca Hall, Adam Driver, Emile Hirsch, Bruce Dern, Dev Patel, Jesse Eisenberg, Alexander Skarsgård, Stellan Skarsgård, Jeff Daniels, Salma Hayek, Martin Sheen, Jonathan Pryce, Emilio Estevez, Christian Slater, Alec Baldwin, Jena Malone, Jeffrey Wright, Stephen Yeun, Katie Holmes, Elizabeth McGovern Blythe Danner, Levar Burton, Emily Mortimer, M. Emmet Walsh and Richard Kind.
- New movies by directors Mike Leigh, Terry Gilliam, Christian Petzold, Michael Winterbottom and Kim Nguyen.
- See it here FIRST: Sometimes Always Never, Freaks, Hotel Mumbai, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, The Hummingbird Project, Peterloo, The Public, Teen Spirit, The Third Wife, Transit, The Wedding Guest and Woman at War are all slated for theatrical release later this year.
- For the first time at Cinequest – 5 U.S. premieres of Television series.
- The 1928 Buster Keaton silent Steamboat Bill, Jr. projected in a period movie palace, the California Theatre, accompanied by world-renowned Dennis James on the Mighty Wurlitzer organ.
Indeed, the real treasure at Cinequest 2019 is likely to be found among the hitherto less well-known films. In the past four years, the Cinequest gems Eye in the Sky, Wild Tales, Ida, The Hunt, ’71, Corn Island, The Memory of Water, Magallanes, Quality Problems, The Sense of an Ending, For Grace, Lost Solace, Class Enemy, Heavenly Shift and Oh Boy/A Coffee in Berlin all made my Best of the Year lists.
Cinequest revels in its Downtown San Jose vibe, with concurrent screenings at the 1122-seat California, the 550-seat Hammer and the 257-seat 3Below, all within 1600 feet of the VIP lounge at The Continental Bar. There will still be satellite viewing in Redwood City.
At Cinequest, you can get a festival pass for as little as $165, and you can get individual tickets as well. The express pass for an additional tax-deductible $100 is a fantastic deal – you get to skip to the front of the lines! Take a look at the entire program, the schedule and the passes and tickets.
As usual, I’ll be covering Cinequest rigorously with features and movie recommendations. I usually screen (and write about) over thirty films from around the world. Bookmark my Cinequest 2019 page, with links to all my coverage (links on the individual movies will start to go live on Sunday, March 3). Follow me on Twitter for the latest.