New and first-time filmmakers from around the world came to Middlebury to showcase their work at the 11th annual Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival, which took place Aug. 20–Aug. 24.
Middlebury students received free admission to the entire festival, so I made sure to see as many screenings as I could. The atmosphere was great around town; filmmakers from around the world and big-time city slickers in jackets and dress pants meandered around Main Street. The cafes were bustling and the art galleries were full.
Here are a few short ramblings (and scores) for some of my favorite films from the weekend.
Land with No Rider
Tamar Lando’s “Land with No Rider” blew me away. Lando is a Philosophy professor at Columbia University and a photographer by hobby, and it shows. Her eye for visual beauty and her ear for psychological depth is impressive and sensitive. Seeing as Lando doesn’t speak a word for the entire film, it really is her eyes and ears that are doing the heavy lifting.
“Land with No Rider” follows an eclectic cast of veteran cowboys and ranchers in Southwestern New Mexico. They are the last generation of a rapidly vanishing way of life. They work hard and work alone; their connection to the land is powerful.
One might expect, as I did, men of this sort to be taciturn, but here it is quite the opposite. Whether that comes down to the genius of Lando’s direction and conversational skills or the cowboys themselves being eager to share their long bottled thoughts, it makes for a deeply profound narrative. Birth, death, isolation, time, change, and industry, the arid deserts of New Mexico make for a bleak backdrop to some incredibly haunting soliloquies.
Visually the film is stunning. Lando is comfortable lingering on emptiness and in silence. You are allowed, encouraged even, to enter this desolate world, to feel lonely and to feel the land and the culture slowly decaying away.
Overall Rating: 9/10
Friendship
Andrew DeYoung’s directorial debut “Friendship” features some heavy hitters: Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd and Kate Mara. The film maintains a delicate balance of comedy and gloom. Tim Robinson’s Craig Weatherman is socially inept, creepy and pathetic, yet somehow the unfiltered authenticity of his derangement is a little endearing (Tim Robinson does well to make such a contradiction work on screen). Paul Rudd gives a similarly impressive and contradictory performance. His character, an impossibly charismatic weatherman, slowly reveals himself to be unfulfilled and empty as cracks in his facade creep to the surface.
The film is memorable for its unique performances and great script (the actors seem to bounce off each other in equal parts razor sharp script writing and free flowing improvisation). There does seem to be something genuinely insightful and interesting with what DeYoung has to say about the shortcomings of toxic male expectations in the 21st century, but the ideas never fully form.
Overall Rating: 7/10
How Deep is Your Love
Eleanor Mortimer’s “How Deep is Your Love” follows a crew of marine biologists on a deep-sea exploration mission. The style film is clinical, mimicking the type of cataloging work done by the scientists on board. The film alternates between the human moments aboard the boat and the deep-sea submersible as it sinks to the ocean floor.
The above-water scenes are fact and exposition heavy. We learn, from both the narrator and from the scientists on board, about the work being done onboard and why it’s important. We also learn about the billion dollar industry of deep-sea mining, and the incredibly desirable “nodules” that reside in droves on the seabed.
These moments are fine, if not a little flat, compared to the sometimes overwhelmingly unfiltered beauty and mystery of the deep sea. The extended undersea sequences are gorgeous. Mortimer knows this and lets us float down there for a while as dozens of unknown and uncataloged organisms drift in and out of view. The slow, single-shot descent from topwater to seabed is a particularly moving sequence. It’s enchanting to watch the light dim and the sea life slowly morph into more bizarre forms.
Overall Rating: 7/10 (9/10 for the deep sea sequences)
Mulholland Drive
On a few occasions, the festival departed from its typical “New Filmmaker” format to screen some classics. Among these more established films were Robert Altman’s “The Player,” Jim Jarmusch’s “Dead Man” and David Lynch’s “Mullholland Drive.”
Enough has been said about “Mulholland Drive”, so I'll try to keep it brief.
Lynch’s films detest interpretation; like the more you explain a joke, or a dream, the more magic is lost. About midway through the film, at the late-night, avant garde Club Silencio, the illusionist onstage reveals the mystery, and shows us Lynch’s hand. How do we interpret reality compared to art, compared to dreams, compared to nightmares? What are the levels of reality? How do sound and vision synergize in art to evoke such intense emotion in us? What role does film play in all this?
Anyone who watches this film feels some sort of unique magic in that scene, as Rebekah Del Rio performs a gorgeous rendition of Roy Orbison’s “Crying.” Stuffed between scenes better suited to mystery, comedy, or thriller flicks, Club Silencio stands out as a brief glimpse behind the curtain, an explanation for all the oddities and idiosyncrasies of the reality that Lynch had up until then presented to us.
Overall Rating: 9/10
Hundreds of Beavers
You likely won’t ever see another movie quite like this one. And that’s not just because it’s that good (though it is), but because of the sheer creativity and endless supply of imagination involved in putting together a project like this.
“Hundreds of Beavers” is a faux-silent, black and white, slap-stick, action, dark comedy, period piece, looney-toones inspired, videogame-esque independent feature film. The film follows a once gloriously successful applejack salesman as he finds himself awake for winter in the tundral northwest. The film’s narrative is gamified. The protagonist must collect more and more beaver, wolf, and rabbit pelts in order to marry the merchant's pole-dancing daughter, all while an army of beavers build an industrial superstructure in the background. The animal pelts act as collectibles, driving the plot forward, and pushing the protagonist to build continuously elaborate and brutal traps.
The film is fun, it’s creative and it makes two hours feel like 30 minutes.
Overall Rating: 8/10
Anthony Cinquina '25.5 (he/him) is an Arts and Culture Editor.
Anthony has previously worked as a contributing writer to the Campus. He is majoring in English with a minor in Film and Environmental Studies. Beyond The Campus, Anthony works as a writing tutor at the CTLR and plays guitar for a rotating cast of bands.
