The film that opened the 15th Montclair Film Festival also won over its audience. Martin McDonagh’s “Wild Horse Nine,” a dark comedy about a 1973 CIA mission in Chile, played at the Wellmont Theater on Oct. 16 and took home the Audience Award for Fiction Feature. It was one of the Montclair Film Festival 2026 winners Montclair Film announced after closing night on Oct. 25.
The juries had their own ideas. South Korean director Lee Chang-dong’s “Possible Love” took the top fiction prize. Two awards carried the names of longtime Montclair residents who spent their careers in film, and two Montclair High School students helped choose a winner as members of the festival’s Junior Jury.
Montclair Film Festival 2026 Winners in the Feature Competitions
“Possible Love” won the Fiction Feature Prize over a field of established international directors: Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s “All of a Sudden,” Paweł Pawlikowski’s “Fatherland,” Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Minotaur” and Markus Schleinzer’s “Rose.” The jury included Zachary Barnes, assistant Arts in Review editor at The Wall Street Journal; Ashley Clark, curatorial director at the Criterion Collection; and producer and artist Mila Matveeva.
Pegah Ahangarani’s “Rehearsals for a Revolution” won the Bruce Sinofsky Award, the festival’s top documentary prize. The award honors filmmaker and longtime Montclair resident Bruce Sinofsky, co-director of the “Paradise Lost” documentaries. The jury also gave a Special Jury Prize, a second honor alongside the top award, to “One in a Million,” directed by Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes.
That jury brought together producer Wendy Ettinger, co-founder of Chicken & Egg Pictures and Gamechanger Films, and filmmaker Nanfu Wang. Christopher Rosen, managing editor of the entertainment industry newsletter The Ankler, rounded out the panel. Their field also included Dawn Porter’s “When a Witness Recants,” Michał Marczak’s “Closure” and “The Great Experiment” from Stephen Maing and Eric Daniel Metzgar.
The Future/Now Competition, which spotlights early-career filmmakers, ended in a tie. Stephanie Ahn’s “Bedford Park” and William D. Caballero’s “Theydream” will split the $5,000 Mark Urman Award for Filmmaking. Montclair Film created the prize in 2019 in memory of Urman, a film distribution executive and longtime Montclair resident. Film critic Monica Castillo of The A.V. Club, Storm City Films co-founder Gabrielle Nadig and George Nicholis, head of publicity at the distributor Magnolia Pictures, made the call.
Festivalgoers handed out awards of their own.
The Films Montclair Film Festival Audiences Loved Most
Audiences gave their documentary prize to “My NDA,” directed by Juliane Dressner and Miriam Shor. Steven Leckart’s “An Unknown Substance” won the Audience Award for Short Film.
Jury and audience split on one film. Hamaguchi’s “All of a Sudden” lost the Fiction Feature Prize to “Possible Love,” then won the Audience Award for World Cinema.
Montclair High Students on the 2026 Junior Jury
Nina Diomedi and Lucas Hubbard of Montclair High School sat on this year’s Junior Jury, a panel of 15 high school students from 14 area schools. They served alongside students from Bloomfield High School, Columbia High School, Livingston High School and the Cicely L. Tyson School of Performing Arts, among others.
Their top prize went to “Mouse,” directed by Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson. They also gave a Special Jury Prize for Excellence in Cinematography to Senzo Ueno, who shot Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Look Back.” In a statement released by Montclair Film, the jurors laid out both decisions.
“The Junior Jury selected a film that we believe embodies many great aspects of filmmaking. The storytelling shown through cinematography, acting, and the screenwriting create a heartful journey demonstrating the complexity of grief. For these reasons, we are proud to present directors Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson’s film MOUSE with the Junior Jury Prize,” the statement read. “We are also proud to present a Special Jury Award for excellence in Cinematography to Senzo Ueno the cinematographer of LOOK BACK – with its stunning wide landscape shots, beautiful close ups, and its creative use of exposure and shadows LOOK BACK uses the camera to tell a story of friendship and grief.”
New Jersey Shorts and the Other Short Film Winners
Jeannette Louie’s “Us Being Epic” won the New Jersey Shorts Competition, open to fiction and nonfiction films from New Jersey. K. Xian Ming Yu’s “I Saw You in the Flood” won the Fiction Short Film Competition, and Mars Verrone’s “Buckskin” took the documentary short prize. Filmmaker Lydia Cornett, Vimeo curator Megan Costello and Variety TV critic Aramide Tinubu judged all three shorts competitions.
“Congratulations to our award winners for their outstanding work,” Montclair Film Artistic Director Tom Hall said in the festival’s announcement. “We are incredibly grateful to all of the artists who shared their films with our audiences at this year’s festival. The connection these films forged with our festival audiences created an incredible atmosphere of conversation, connection, and community. We are so honored to have been given the opportunity to bring these films to our screens, and look forward to continuing our support of these films in our cinemas and in our community throughout the coming year.”
Image credit: Montclair Film
