Tom Hall spends most of the Montclair Film Festival running. Between theaters, through lobbies, into the door with five seconds to spare for a Q&A that gets 10 or 15 minutes.
He starts again October 16, when the festival turns 15 and Hall, Montclair Film’s Artistic Director and Co-Head, begins what he counts as his 12th.
Hall, a repeat Pod guest, spoke with host Farnoosh Torabi as ticket sales opened. What he loves about the job has not changed. “For me it’s really about the excitement that we’re generating around cinema and the community and in the industry, and getting people who have made films excited about Montclair and getting people in Montclair excited about people who made films,” he said. “That’s what I love about what I do, being able to bring people together, artists and audiences. And this is the time when it’s about to happen.”
Two Weekends, a Pandemic and a Move to Fall: How the Montclair Film Festival Got Here
As the festival opens its 15th edition, much has changed from that one that debuted in the spring of 2012. The first change was the calendar. In the festival’s fourth year, Hall said, organizers replaced a Monday-through-Sunday spring event with a 10-day run that opens on a Friday and closes on the Sunday after.
The second came in 2020, when the pandemic emptied theaters. “We moved to the fall because no one could be in theaters, and we built drive-ins that year, 2020, and we did online screenings,” Hall said. “That was a transformational moment for the festival in general, because not only did we learn new skills and sort of pivot and keep the organization alive, but the Clairidge opened up as a cinema for us to take over. And the move to fall put us in a different window for different films than we were in for the spring. So we are now firmly ensconced in awards season, which has really made a difference in terms of the films that are available for festival screenings.”
The Clairidge went dark in March 2020, when the pandemic lockdown shut it under its previous operator, Bow Tie Cinemas. Montclair Film signed a long-term agreement with the building’s owner, renovated the six-screen cinema on Bloomfield Avenue and reopened it in October 2021, in time for the festival’s 10th edition. The Bellevue in Upper Montclair followed in 2025, in time for a festival week that included “The Sound of Music”.
Over the same period, Hall said, Montclair Film built a headquarters at 505 Bloomfield Ave. and developed education programs. Those programs run hands-on classes in filmmaking, screenwriting, editing, improv and podcasting for students in grades 4 through 12 and for adults. They also seat a Junior Jury of high school students who judge festival films. Hall sums up the arc as “growth and adaptability.”
How Does Montclair Film Pick Its Opening and Closing Night Films?
Opening night is Friday, October 16, at 7 p.m. at the Wellmont Theater: Martin McDonagh’s “Wild Horse Nine,” with John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as CIA agents sent to Easter Island shortly before the 1973 coup in Chile. The festival closes Sunday, October 25, at 5 p.m. at Montclair Kimberley Academy’s Upper School with Tony Gilroy’s “Behemoth!,” starring Pedro Pascal. The Pod’s full lineup story covers the rest of the slate.
The opener has to say something about the festival, Hall said. “We’re looking for things that make a statement about our intent, in terms of the films that are of the season and of the moment.”
“Wild Horse Nine,” which premiered at the Venice Film Festival this year, also had a personal hook. “I’m personally a little obsessed with Chile in 1973 and their September 11th coup that took place down there,” Hall said. “This is sort of a prequel to that event taking place and the implications of the CIA participating in it, done as a buddy comedy. I’d never seen anything like that before.”
“Behemoth!” won him over on sound, calling it “a completely different take on movie music.” Pascal plays a cellist who leaves a symphony job and returns to Los Angeles, where his family is from, to record film scores. “The film is made up of music for films that don’t exist,” Hall said. The two films make a good pair because both have a lighter touch. “It just felt like a nice fit. Sort of good bookends for the festival.”
Hall also tries to keep room for a classic every year. The Bellevue will screen “Auntie Mame” from the Warner Bros. film archive, in partnership with the Film Foundation, the nonprofit Martin Scorsese founded to restore classic films; its executive director, Margaret Bodde, lives in Montclair.
He will also bend the festival’s own rules. A couple of films that open in New York on October 16 will screen in Montclair the next day. The Musk documentary is one example. “If there’s something that we think really demands to be seen during the festival in the context of the festival, we’ll beg, borrow and steal to get it into the lineup,” Hall said.
For Local Filmmakers, the Festival Is Not the Only Screen in Town
The festival brings filmmakers to Montclair, but what about the ones who already live here? “Plenty apply,” Hall said. The festival reviews more than 1,200 films a year from town and around the world, and the main lineup is the hard door. Since the move to fall, demand for slots is “incredibly competitive.” Hall was careful about what that means. “I’m not saying local filmmakers don’t meet that standard or that there’s some bar that people have to clear,” he said.
His answer is the calendar. “We do want to celebrate local filmmakers and we do want to give them a platform,” Hall said. Because Montclair Film runs the Clairidge and the Bellevue year-round, screenings can take place at other times during the year, when it does not have to compete with the rest of a festival lineup, though he recognizes that a year-round screening does not carry the laurels filmmakers put on their posters. “I obviously wish we could do more and had more capacity for both the audience and screen space,” he said.
“Referendum,” a documentary about the Montclair school debt crisis, is one example. Its director, Craig Schattner, applied and did not make the lineup; Farnoosh and Mike are among the residents in the film. Instead, Schattner will screen the documentary at Just Jake’s on October 21.
Shorts, films of 40 minutes or less, have more room. The festival runs Montclair shorts and a New Jersey shorts competition, and “Act One,” shot in Montclair, screens this year, though Hall noted it comes from a California filmmaker with a professional cast. His message to local filmmakers is to apply, and to keep in touch after: “You can reach out to us, if you’re a filmmaker and you have a project, year-round.”
MAJOR Stars, Small Town: How Big Should the Montclair Film Festival Get?
For this year’s festival, the guest list is long. Stephen Colbert will moderate conversations with director Ava DuVernay and with the cast of “The Debut,” including Jesse Eisenberg, Paul Giamatti and Julianne Moore. Rachel Maddow will accept the David Carr Award, which honors a film that reflects the commitment to truth of David Carr, the late New York Times reporter and Montclair resident.
Farnoosh put it to him directly. With a lineup this star-studded, is the goal to become Venice or Sundance, with paparazzi and a spectacle?
“We want to build a credible institution that is recognized for its work in a meaningful way in the industry and among film lovers, whether it be locally or globally,” Hall said. “Is that a goal? Absolutely. Long term? Absolutely.”
The difference is what surrounds a festival. Those events run on world premieres, a film’s first public screening, and on cities that hand themselves over, with hotels, convention centers and opera houses. Montclair has none of that, and Hall does not want it to. “One of the things I always say about going to Sundance is you never met anybody from Park City, because they would all rent out their houses and leave town and try to make as much as they could on Airbnb as opposed to staying in town and watching movies,” he said. “We don’t want to do that. We’re here for the community.”
Most of his staff lives in town year-round.
Timing gives Montclair one more freedom. The festival lands at the tail end of awards season, so it does not compete for premieres. “All of those festivals have a lot more institutional history and legacy in the industry than we do, and have a lot of respect for the work that they do, but they’re competing with one another for premieres and premiere status,” Hall said. “We don’t have to worry about any of that, right? So that allows us to see where the chips fall.”
Farnoosh also asked whether Montclair Film has measured what the 10 days do for the town’s economy. Not formally, Hall said, but the effect is strong. He points to “overwhelming demand” for ads in the printed film guide, and to shops that join the pin program, which gives festival-goers wearing a Montclair Film pin discounts. “If we weren’t having any impact or weren’t a positive influence on people attracting business, they wouldn’t advertise with us,” he said. But he recognized there is room to do more and welcomes ideas. “If people have a restaurant and they want to partner with the Clairidge or the Bellevue and do dinner-and-a-movie nights, even off festival throughout the year, anything like that, we’re always open to those ideas,” Hall said.
The festival is also stepping outside town. In June, Montclair Film held its first event in New York, at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, to launch the Evelyn McGee Colbert Visionary Award. The award will honor industry leaders such as studio heads and executives at a spring dinner rather than a public screening. “It wasn’t like rubber chicken,” Hall said. There was a band, and guests sang.
How to Get Montclair Film Festival Tickets
Hall’s advice for Thursday is short. “Get ready to pivot,” he said. “Because we’re already seeing a lot of films, all the high-impact movies that you think are gonna sell out are gonna sell out, right? The celebrity-driven stuff is always a thing.”
This year that includes the Colbert conversations, with DuVernay on Friday, Oct. 23, and with the cast of “The Debut” on Saturday, Oct. 24, both at 7:30 p.m. at MKA Upper School. Maddow accepts the David Carr Award with director Ben Klein on Saturday, Oct. 17, at 8 p.m. at the Wellmont.
Hall knows some people will ask why a marquee name landed in a smaller room. “Do I want 1,600 people at every movie cheering and selling it out? If I could be in the Wellmont for every show and have sellouts, I would totally love it,” he said. “But they have a concert schedule a year in advance and we’re working with them. They’re a really great partner of ours. We understand their booking needs, they understand ours. Montclair Kimberly Academy’s been incredibly generous to us, but it’s a quarter of the size of the Wellmont.”
“I know that can be frustrating because everyone wants to see the celebs and have it be cool,” he said, “but I’ve done everything I can to make it as accessible as possible.”
Go to montclairfilm.org with a first choice and a backup.
Dates: October 16 to 25
Tickets: Members since Monday, Sept. 28. General public Thursday, Oct. 1, at 10 a.m. at montclairfilm.org
Opening night: “Wild Horse Nine,” Friday, Oct. 16, 7 p.m., Wellmont Theater
Closing night: “Behemoth!,” Sunday, Oct. 25, 5 p.m., MKA Upper School
Venues: Wellmont Theater, 5 Seymour St.; Montclair Kimberley Academy Upper School, 6 Lloyd Road; The Clairidge (main box office), 486 Bloomfield Ave.; The Bellevue, 260 Bellevue Ave., Upper Montclair
Image credit: Tom Hall Instagram
