34th Woods Hole Film Festival Gets Underway July 25-August 2

The 34th Woods Hole Film Festival kicks off on Saturday, July 26, and runs for eight exciting days through Saturday, August 2. With feature-length and short films from around the world, engaging Q&As with filmmakers, master classes, panels, workshops, and unforgettable live music parties, this year’s Festival offers something for everyone. Come for the films—stay for the conversation.

As the longest-running film festival on Cape Cod and the Islands—and one of the oldest in New England—the Woods Hole Film Festival has long championed emerging, independent filmmakers, especially those with ties to the region. This year’s lineup was selected from nearly 1,000 submissions; it includes 48 feature-length and 67 short dramas, comedies, documentaries, and animation from 14 countries—with 7 World, 5 North American, 2 US, 48 New England and 12 Massachusetts premieres.

The festival’s hallmark thematic strands include films about music and musicians, science (in conjunction with the Festival’s “Bringing Science to the Screen” program), and New England connections. The festival’s intimate seaside setting allows for meaningful conversations between filmmakers and audiences—whether during post-film Q&As or in the Brickyard VFX Festival Lounge at The Captain Kidd Restaurant on Water Street open daily from noon–4:30 PM.

Pre-Festival Special Screening

Get an early start on getting into festival mode on Friday, July 25, at a special screening of Overcome, Harvard grad Amy Brenneman’s (Judging Amy, The Leftovers) autobiographical documentary—co-created with Sabrina Peck—about becoming a true ally to her daughter, who was born with a rare chromosomal abnormality. A recording of her 2024 live performance at the Cotuit Center for the Arts, the film examines preconceptions of disability, what is “normal,” and the inherent potential and challenges of achieving a truly inclusive society. After the film Ms. Brenneman will be joined by David Kuehn, Executive Director of the Cotuit Center for the Arts, for a conversation about the play and the film.

Special Guest Panels & Master Classes

This year’s Woods Hole Film Festival welcomes an exciting lineup of special guests, including author and musician Elijah Wald, whose acclaimed book Dylan Goes Electric! inspired the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. Wald will be part of a panel discussion on music and film, moderated by Washington Post film critic Ty Burr and music critic Jim Sullivan. Amy Brenneman’s husband, Brad Silberling, a noted film and television director and producer known for Lemony Snicket: A Series of Unfortunate Events and Moonlight Mile, will lead a master class on the evolving roles within the film and TV industry. The couple, who divide their time between Martha’s Vineyard and Los Angeles, bring a unique blend of East Coast insight and Hollywood experience to this year’s events.

Shorts Season

The festival began 34 years ago as a one-hour event with five short films, and to this day shorts are a festival cornerstone. This year features 67 short films—narrative, documentary, and animated—organized into 10 themed programs, plus shorts preceding select feature films. Many filmmakers participate in the Q&As that follow the programs, making for an enriching experience you won’t find at many other festivals. Be sure to buy tickets early, these programs sell out quickly!

Opening Day Films: July 26

It’s only fitting that a summer film festival should open with a film called The Summer Book, an adaptation of Tove Jansson’s (The Moomins) beloved novel that stars Glenn Close and Anders Danielsen Lie (The Worst Person in the World). Directed by Charlie McDowell—son of actors Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen and husband of Emily in Paris star Lily Collins—the film follows a young girl and her grandmother as they spend a transformative summer on a remote island in the Gulf of Finland. Ban Ki Moon, the Korean-born diplomat who was the UN’s eighth Secretary General from 2007-16, is profiled in Charles Lyons’s The Quiet Diplomat. It screens with WBUR film critic and documentary filmmaker Erin Trahan and Jeff Schmidt’s documentary short Dukakis: Recipe for Democracy that profiles former Massachusetts Governor and presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. If shorts is your thing, the festival’s opening day shorts program, “Conversations,” screens at 2:00 PM.

Star turns

Evan Matthews landed an impressive roster of big-name talent for his feature debut Motherland (August 2)—a rare feat for a first-time filmmaker—including Tony Award winner Miriam Silverman (The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, Your Friends and Neighbors), Emmy-winner Holland Taylor (The Practice, Two and a Half Men, The L Word, Legally Blonde, The Truman Show, and the Boston shot Next Stop Wonderland), and Nestor Carbonell (The Morning Show, Lost). His ambitious sci-fi film follows a grieving scientist who risks everything to cross into a parallel world where her son is still alive. The inner turmoil of some of today’s most brilliant comedians—such as Mark Maron and Aparna Nancherla—is mined in Wendy Lobel’s documentary Anxiety Club (August 1). Jad Abumrad—the husband of previous festival winner Karla Murthy and creator of the RadioLab and Dolly Parton’s America podcasts—is featured in Murthy’s latest documentary, The Gas Station Attendant, about a daughter reflecting on her father’s miraculous journey from the streets of India to the realities of life in America.

Three short films are also worth noting. F*ck That Guy, a comedy directed by festival alum and New England native Hanna Gray Organschi, stars Carys Douglas, the daughter of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas. Ruth Mitchell’s drama Shouting at the Sea stars Harry Michell, son of Notting Hill director Roger Michell, and Maddie Rice of Flea Bag. Dagmara Domincyzk, the writer and star of the comedy Goodnight (directed by Isabel Pask) is married to actor Patrick Wilson (The Watchmen, The Conjuring).

New England Connections

Given its central location in the region, the festival regularly screens films that shine a light on New England settings, stories, cast and crew.

The documentary Room For Us? Confronting Nantucket’s Housing Crisis (July 27), directed by Patrick Kennedy and Jasper Craven, explores the question of who gets to live on an island increasingly shaped by extreme wealth. Despite growing efforts to create affordable housing, many longtime residents are being pushed out—raising critical questions about equity, sustainability, and community. In the small-town New England set narrative feature Shattered Ice (July 30), a high school hockey player grapples with grief and isolation following the tragic loss of his best friend. Director Alex Ranarivelo sensitively captures the emotional weight of adolescent mental health and the resilience of tight-knit communities. In The Arborist (August 1), by Cambridge-based filmmaker and festival alum Andrew Mudge, a mother and son uncover dark secrets while cutting down trees at the estate of a mysterious recluse. The film stars Boston actor Will Lyman (Little Children).

“The Spirit of Massachusetts” is an entire program of short films created by Massachusetts filmmakers or shot on location in Massachusetts (July 28). The program includes festival alum John de Graaf’s From Sea to Shining Sea: Katherine Lee Bates and the Story of America the Beautiful, which honors the Falmouth-born lyricist whose timeless words helped define our national identity (producer Karen Olcott was born and lives in Woods Hole). The Boston Pops made it in to a musical performance in June and early July. Frequent festival participant and Boston filmmaker Mark Kiefer’s latest comedy, Rule Number 2, about a Nantucket realtor who makes a potentially catastrophic mistake just minutes before a showing, was shot entirely on Nantucket with a cast from the island. Recent Tufts University grad Abby Sommers screens her award-winning Wilbur, the King, about a washed-up Elvis Presley impersonator who rediscovers his love for music after he loses his job at a kitschy amusement park to become a middle school music teacher. Haulston Mann’s The Cottage, about a woman who struggles with crippling anxiety that was inspired in part by his own anxiety, was shot in Chatham on Cape Cod and features a crew mostly from Cape Cod. Keytar Bear, by Suffolk University student Kely Maloney, offers a creative story based on Boston’s beloved masked street performer whose music and mystery have made him a local legend. Finally, Boston-based video effects editor Kevin Samar directed Peace, Quiet & a Little Dirt, about a chance encounter between a veteran and rookie that leads to an unexpected passing of the torch.

Rounding out the short films with local ties is When I’m in the Water by Kennedy Laylon, a portrait of Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage, a group of older women revitalizing Cape Cod’s ponds—and their own lives—through community, activism, and joy (also part of "Bringing Science to the Screen").

Bringing Science to the Screen

In a town where scientific research and discovery are a regular part of daily life, the Festival attracts a strong slate of films about science. As part of its Film and Science Initiative, created to accelerate collaboration and conversation between filmmakers and scientists, the Festival designates a group of films each year as part of the Bringing Science to the Screen program.

This year’s films offers an especially robust selection that spotlights both urgent environmental challenges and scientific breakthroughs. Several confront the realities of climate change and ecological destruction. In Oceania: Journey to the Center (July 27) director Natalie Zimmerman focuses on a remote coral atoll already facing the existential threat of rising seas. In Unearth (July 29) directors Aube Strickland, John Hunter Nolan, and Dune Strickland follow Indigenous leaders and salmon fishermen in Alaska’s Bristol Bay as they rally against a proposed copper mine that would jeopardize a fragile ecosystem. Daniel Straub and Rosanna Xia’s Out of Plain Sight (July 29) based on Xia’s reporting in the Los Angeles Times, reveals a shocking case of environmental negligence uncovered by a journalistic investigation of hundreds of thousands of barrels of toxic waste dumped into the Pacific Ocean near Los Angeles. The screening, presented by the Yawkey Foundation, includes an interview with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Chris Reddy.

Other films explore science through the lenses of innovation, interconnection, and human stories. Presented in conjunction with the Marine Biological Laboratory, festival alum Bill Haney’s Cracking the Code: Phil Sharp and the Biotech Revolution (July 31) traces Nobel laureate Phil Sharp’s groundbreaking discovery of RNA splicing and the revolution it sparked in biotechnology, transforming healthcare for millions. Thomas Winston’s Lost Wolves of Yellowstone (July 30) revisits the landmark reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park and the pioneering work of Mollie Beattie, the first female director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

On the shorts side, in Fiddler on the Moon: Judaism in Space, co-directors Jeremy Newberger, Daniel A. Miller, and Seth Kramer bring humor and curiosity to questions of spiritual survival in outer space, through discussions with Harvard grad Neil deGrasse Tyson, astronauts Jessica Meir, who is originally from Maine, and MIT professor Jeffrey Hoffman, as well as several rabbis and researchers, including Rabbi Josh Breindel at Congregation Beth El in Sudbury, known as the “sci-fi” rabbi. If you’re curious to see a time-lapsed video of melting glaciers, check out director Sarah Keo’s Chasing Time, which follows photographer James Balog as he brings the 15-year Extreme Ice Survey project to a close. Cambridge residents Sarah Hendren and Brian Funck’s Simple Machine is an essay film about an architect, an adaptive tool shop, postwar prosthetics, and the strange duality of classical physics and quantum mechanics that organizes all our lives. Julia Grossmann’s Mission Microbiome takes viewers aboard a research vessel sailing from Chile to South Africa to study marine microorganisms critical to Earth’s ecosystems, while Leah Clare Michaels’s Moon Crab offers a lyrical reflection on the ancient horseshoe crab’s uncertain future.

Films About Music and Musicians and Music at the Festival

Each year the festival screens a dynamic range of films that explore the lives of musicians and the transformative power of music. In the narrative feature The Easy Kind (July 26), filmmaker Kate Chevigny teams up with Nashville singer Elizabeth Cook—who stars as a version of herself—in a tale of artistic self-discovery. With appearances by Karen Allen and David Letterman, the film follows Cook as she pushes past the conventions of country music and personal expectation to find her own voice in an industry that often resists change. On the documentary side, Bankie Banx: King of the Dune (July 27) profiles the legendary Anguillan singer-songwriter known as the Bob Dylan of Reggae music whose genre-defying career and off-the-grid lifestyle made him a cultural icon in the Caribbean and beyond. Director Nara Garber captures Banx’s journey from obscurity to founding the beloved Moonsplash Music Festival and his reign at the Dune Preserve, where music and resistance mix freely. Viva Verdi! (July 26) offers a look at a very different kind of musical legacy: the opera legends of Milan’s Casa Verdi, a retirement home for aging musicians that continues to buzz with creativity as its residents mentor young international artists. Previously mentioned films about music include the short films From Sea to Shining Sea: Katherine Lee Bates and the Story of America the Beautiful and Wilbur, the King.

The live music at the festival’s legendary parties is also not to be missed. On opening night the Sarah Burrill Band kicks things off at The Captain Kidd. The nationally acclaimed artist has performed throughout the country and has opened for well-known artists, such as Jesse Colin Young, Patty Larkin, Richard Shindell, and Ferron, and she has recorded with the late Ric Ocasek of The Cars. Her amazing lyrics and vocal expertise put her at the forefront of performers in the folk/rock genre. Wednesday’s party at The Captain Kidd features is a singer-songwriter, keyboardist, and synth bassist Vanna Pacella, leader of the Vanna Pacella Power Trio, with the band’s guitarist Tom Davis. At just 20 years old, she will be touring throughout New England at popular festivals and events, both solo and with her band. Friday’s party marks the return of ARLO at Grumpy’s Pub, after their 2023 performance had the whole crowd on their feet and wanting more. Covering everything from the Dead to Taylor Swift, there’s no limit to an ARLO setlist.

Additional Master Classes, Workshops & Panel Discussions

The Woods Hole Film Festival offers a rich program of master classes, workshops, and panel discussions, providing filmmakers and enthusiasts with invaluable opportunities to learn from industry experts, to refine their craft, and to engage in meaningful conversations about the art and business of filmmaking.

In addition to those previously mentioned, music supervisor Jonathan Finegold and entertainment attorney Chris Perez host a master class called The Intersection of Music & Documentary Filmmaking (July 28); participants will also be able to set up a 20-minute meeting with them to discuss their individual projects. Additional panel discussions include Science Filmmaking in Challenging Times (July 31) and Getting Your Film Made, Seen, and Sold: Strategies for Filmmakers (August 1), hosted by Women in Film & Video/New England.

The festival is supported by grants from Martha’s Vineyard Bank Charitable Foundation, Woods Hole Foundation, Arts Foundation of Cape Cod, and the Falmouth Fund of the Cape Cod Foundation. Festival sponsors include Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Marine Biological Laboratory, 88.7 mvyradio, Liam Maguire’s, Cape Cod 5, Cape Clasp, Tree House Lodge, Sands of Time Motel, SeaSalt Cornwall, YouthInk, Iris Hotel, and more.

Individual tickets are $18 in advance, $20 on day-of-show; students and military, $10. Pass and ticket package holders can reserve tickets on June 27, 4 days before they go on sale to the public on July 1. All passes and tickets can be purchased at www.woodsholefilmfestival.org. The box office, located at the Old Woods Hole Fire Station (72 Water Street) opens July 7. Call 508-495-3456 or email info@woodsholefilmfestival.org for more info.