The Montclair Film Festival closing weekend holds three of the festival’s biggest nights, and two of them are already sold out.
Ava DuVernay on Friday. Jesse Eisenberg, Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti on Saturday. Tony Gilroy and his new Pedro Pascal film on Sunday. Stephen Colbert moderates all three.
Getting here took a week of screenings from Bloomfield Avenue to Upper Montclair, and a small crew working long days to keep it all moving.
How Opening Weekend Played Out Across Montclair
The 15th Montclair Film Festival opened Friday, Oct. 16, at the Wellmont Theater with Martin McDonagh’s “Wild Horse Nine,” a dark comedy action thriller about a 1973 CIA operation in Chile. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell star, reuniting Rockwell with the director of “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” Then came the opening night party.
By Saturday morning, the festival had fanned out across town. Screenings ran at the Clairidge, at the Bellevue in Upper Montclair, at Montclair Kimberley Academy’s Upper School and at the Audible Lounge at Montclair Mezzanine, home to the festival’s StorySlam night of local storytellers. Our rundown of the 2026 lineup and our conversation with Tom Hall about 15 years of the festival laid out the plan. Saturday showed it in motion.
We spent that morning at two of those venues. The first was a theater Montclair almost lost.
The Bellevue Theatre Is Back for Its Second Festival
The Bellevue sat empty for nearly eight years. The theater at 260 Bellevue Ave. closed in November 2017 after Bow Tie Cinemas declined to renew its lease. Several revival attempts fell through before Montclair Film, the nonprofit behind the festival, took it on. The three-screen theater, open since 1922 and still wearing its Tudor facade, reopened on Oct. 18, 2025, in the middle of last year’s festival.
This year it came to the festival as a working neighborhood theater, not a ribbon cutting.
Will Kuhn, the Bellevue’s venue manager, was watching the crowd come in when we stopped by the morning after opening night.
“Well, it’s like slowly warming up, right? It’s a little bit chilly outside this morning, so people are coming to the theater, watching movies, warm up and, you know, getting excited for the rest of the week,” Kuhn said.
“I’ve Been Crazy Busy”: Meet the Person Behind the Festival’s Social Feeds
Kareem Wilder runs the festival’s social media channels. During festival week, that means photography, video, the posting schedule and making sure someone captures every event. Pod listeners have seen his work without knowing it: he took the photos of Farnoosh and Mike on The Montclair Pod website.
Mike caught up with him Saturday morning at the Clairidge.
“I’ve been crazy busy… running around, getting out posts, setting up schedules, managing photography, making sure that all the events are covered,” Wilder said.
His direct messages bring their own surprises. Asked for the best random thing to land in the festival’s DMs, Wilder said the oddest requests tend to come in after the schedule is already set. “Yesterday someone’s like, hey, you guys should play this at your festival,” he said. By then, the lineup was locked and screening. “We can’t fit that in.”
Then there are the people looking for a different movie altogether.
“Are you guys playing Street Fighter actually at the festival? Like, no, it’s not gonna be at the festival,” Wilder said. “Yeah, Street Fighter is at your other local theater, but not with us this week.”
The festival saved its biggest names for last.
What to See on Montclair Film Festival Closing Weekend
Ava DuVernay opens the final stretch on Friday, Oct. 23, with “14th,” her documentary on the 14th Amendment and its guarantees of citizenship and equal protection under the law. It arrives a decade after her Oscar-nominated “13th,” which traced a line from the amendment that ended slavery to mass incarceration. The film closed the New York Film Festival this fall and comes to Netflix in December. In Montclair, DuVernay accepts the festival’s Documentary Filmmaker Award in person and sits down with Colbert after the 7:30 p.m. screening at MKA’s Upper School.
Saturday belongs to “The Debut.” Eisenberg writes, directs and stars in the film, a wry comedy set in the world of community theater, with Moore and Giamatti. All three join Colbert onstage after the 7:30 p.m. screening at MKA. At the same hour, Edward Burns presents “Beneath the Blue Suburban Skies,” the story of a suburban wife and mother who longs to break out of her routine, followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker.
Gilroy closes the festival on Sunday, Oct. 25, with “Behemoth!” Pedro Pascal stars as a gifted cellist coming home to Los Angeles after years on the road, alongside Olivia Wilde, Eva Victor, Will Arnett and Hank Azaria. Gilroy, the writer and director behind “Michael Clayton” and the creator of the “Star Wars” series “Andor,” receives the festival’s 2026 Filmmaker Tribute before the 5 p.m. screening at MKA, then joins Colbert for a Q&A.
For the sold-out screenings, though, getting in takes a plan.
If you go
Standby is your best shot at a sold-out screening. Montclair Film runs a standby line, a first-come waiting line for seats that ticket holders leave empty, only for sold-out shows. The line forms 30 minutes before showtime, and the festival releases unclaimed seats five minutes before the film starts. Standby tickets cost the full nonmember price and are cash only. The Wellmont has no standby line.
Every other screening requires an advance ticket through Montclair Film. “14th,” “The Debut” and “Behemoth!” all screen at Montclair Kimberley Academy’s Upper School, 6 Lloyd Road.
Image credit: Montclair Film
