Hamptons International Film Festival Reveals A Number Of Movies Showing At 2018 Fest

“The Kindergarten Teacher” starring Maggie Gyllenhaal will be the opening night film of the 26th annual Hamptons International Film Festival, which will take place at venues across the South Fork from October 4 to 8.

From writer/director Sara Colangelo, an alumna of the 2013 HIFF Screenwriters Lab, the film also stars Parker Sevak, Rosa Salazar and Gael García Bernal, telling the story of a kindergarten teacher who seeks to cultivate the poetic talents of one of her students with questionable methods. Ms. Gyllenhaal and Ms. Colangelo will both be in attendance when the film screens at Guild Hall in East Hampton.

Two more films from Screenwriter Lab participants will also be featured in October.

“And Breathe Normally” by 2015 participant Ísold Uggadóttir will appear in the Conflict & Resolution section. The film is about the blossoming relationship of two women in Iceland—one an airport worker, the other a detained refugee—and how their paths continue to cross.

Based on true events, “Dead Pigs” by 2016 participant Cathy Yan is about the interwoven lives of five individuals in Shanghai, and it appears in the World Cinema Narrative Section.

HIFF noted that Ms. Yan was also the first recipient of support from the Melissa Mathison Fund, established in 2016 and named for the late, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, which aims to foster the development of female writers in the industry.

Also announced last week were the U.S. premiere of Eva Trobisch’s “All Good,” starring Aenne Schwarz, “a nuanced and powerful look at the destructive instinct to refuse to define yourself as the victim,” in the Narrative Competition section and Rupert Everett’s “The Happy Prince,” starring Mr. Everett, Colin Firth and Emily Watson, a biopic about the final years of Oscar Wilde’s life that will screen in the Spotlight section. Mr. Everett is also set to attend the festival.

In the World Cinema Narrative section, the U.S. premiere of “Capernaum,” a jury prize winner at the Cannes Film Festival directed by Nadine Labaki, is about a 12-year-old boy in Beirut who launches a lawsuit against his negligent parents. Also out of Cannes, Ali Abbasi’s “Border” starring Eva Melander and Eero Milonoff is about a person’s struggle to realize her place in the world.

The Views from Long Island section will feature Michael Dweck’s documentary “The Last Race,” about a Long Island stock car race track trying to maintain the tradition and history of the sport.

The Air, Land and Sea section will feature the U.S. premiere of Sasha Friedlander and Cynthia Wade’s documentary “Grit,” chronicling the work of a young social and environmental activist in Indonesia after her village was buried by a toxic mudflow as a result of oil drilling.