The 30th annual San Luis Obispo International Film Festival will feature special guests including Dune and No Country for Old Men actor Josh Brolin and Chosen Family director and star Heather Graham.
Josh Brolin and Heather Graham Featured Guests at SLOIFF 2024
Brolin will lead the Narrative Feature Jury at the 2024 festival. Having grown up on a ranch in Paso Robles, he was also the honoree of the festival’s King Vidor Award for Excellence in Filmmaking in 2017. Graham will be the honoree for the King Vidor Award for Excellence in Filmmaking at this year’s festival, which will also be screening her latest directorial effort, Chosen Family.
With more than 125 narrative features, short films, documentary features and shorts, music videos, and festival favorites from the last three decades on the slate, the festival runs from April 25-30, with an encore presentation taking place both in-person in Paso Robles and virtually from May 1–5.
SLOIFF’s 2024 film lineup will start off with the opening night film Ghostlight directed by Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson and conclude with the Sundance comedy breakout Thelma directed by Josh Margolin.
Brolin recently reprised his role as Gurney Halleck in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, following Dune: Part One in 2021. He acted alongside Timothée Chalamet, Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Stellan Skarsgård, Javier Bardem, Austin Butler, Dave Bautista, and David Dastmalchian across both films. His other films include No Country for Old Men, Milk, True Grit, and Villeneuve’s Sicario.
Graham is known for Drugstore Cowboy, The Hangover, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Flowers in the Attic, Bowfinger, Lost in Space, The Other Zoey, On a Wing and a Prayer, and License to Drive. She made her feature writer-directorial debut in 2018 with the rom-com Half Magic starring herself alongside The Office‘s Angela Kinsey and Brooklyn Nine-Nine‘s Stephanie Beatriz. Her new feature, Chosen Family, stars herself alongside Julia Stiles and John Brotherton. The rom-com follows a yoga teacher with a hectic family life who keeps trying to solve everyone else’s problems but her own. Her next upcoming film will be Place of Bones opposite Tom Hopper.
Also Read: Christopher Walken’s Speech in a 2002 Thriller Has a Cool Connection to His Dune: Part 2 Role
Participating in the George Sidney Independent Film Competition are over 57 films in the Narrative Feature, Narrative Short, Documentary Feature, Documentary Short, Student Film, Music Video and Animated Film categories. Central Coast Filmmaker Showcase Films are eligible in the same categories, and George Sidney and Central Coast films will also be eligible for The Audience Awards in five categories.
Narrative feature films in competition include: Good Bad Things, The Italians, Mountain Boy, Riley, and Tokyo Cowboy .
Documentary features in competition include Sugarcane, Jailhouse to Milhouse, Let the Canary Sing, and The Michoacan File.
Other featured guests include Beau Bridges, who will be attending the festival’s West Coast premiere of his film Camera. Other guests include the co-directors of Ghostlight, Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan; director Zainab Shaheen and producer Nancy Paton of Mountain Boy; the director of Riley, Benjamin Howard, and the film’s lead, Jake Holley; All Happy Families director Haroula Rose; writer and director Fawzia Mirza of Queen of My Dreams and its producer Andria Wilson Mirza; and Michelle Danner, the director of The Italians.
In addition to Brolin, the other narrative feature jurors include Netflix Production Finance executive Christopher Tung; Wendy Guerrero, President of the Geena Davis Bentonville Film Festival; and Director Nardeep Khurmi (Land of Gold). Together, they will select the winner of the Festival’s George Sidney Independent Film Competition Narrative Feature Film prize.
The Documentary Feature jury includes Tatiana Faris from IFC Films, and documentary filmmakers Nancy Svendsen (Pasang: In the Shadow of Everest) and Jesse Rudoy (Dusty & Stones). Short Narrative jurors include filmmaker Bernard Badion (The Van), executive producer Lissa Khoshbakhti of Disney Launchpad, and Fanshen Cox, founder of TruJuLo Productions.The Short Documentary jury includes Alejandro Miranda Cruz (Decolonizing Dinner), festival programmer and filmmaker Natalie Gee, and director Lauren Tyler Brimeyer (Until the Rain Comes Back).
Learn more about passes for the festival here.
Main Image: Josh Brolin courtesy of SLOIFF and Heather Graham in 2009 via Shutterstock
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