Hamptons Film Festival 2023 Highlights & Picks

The defining event of fall on the East End, the Hamptons International Film Festival (HIFF) is back for 2023 with a huge slate of exciting features, shorts and documentaries running October 5 to 12 at theaters in East Hampton, Sag Harbor and Southampton.

Moviegoers will enjoy films throughout the week, with various East Coast, New York and world premieres, along with special events, industry talks, celebrity interviews, awards, parties, an art exhibition and more.

Visit hamptonsfilmfest.org for the full list of films and showtimes, and explore select highlights here, including the big opener, closer, Centerpiece and some standouts shared by HIFF Artistic Director David Nugent.

Directors and HIFF alums Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s Netflix release Nyad will open the festival for its East Coast premiere at East Hampton Middle School on Thursday, October 5 at 7 p.m., but it will be the only film HIFF screens that day. Nyad also screens on Friday, October 6 at 8:45 p.m. in Sag Harbor, if you miss opening night.

A true story of tenacity, friendship and the triumph of the human spirit, Nyad recounts a riveting chapter in the life of world-class athlete Diana Nyad. At the age of 60, three decades after giving up marathon swimming in exchange for a prominent career as a sports journalist, Diana (played by Annette Bening) becomes obsessed with completing an epic swim that always eluded her — the 110-mile trek from Cuba to Florida, often referred to as the “Mount Everest” of swims — without a shark cage.

HIFF’s 2023 Centerpiece Film, In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon, is HIFF alum Alex Gibney’s definitive documentary portrait of the Grammy-winning Montauk resident as he makes his new album Seven Psalms, while also digging back into his six-decade career and his undeniable influence on the history of American music. The screening is at East Hampton Middle School on Friday, October 6 at 5:15 p.m. It is the film’s New York premiere.

Simon will appear in-person for a live stage interview for this year’s installment of HIFF’s popular “A Conversation With…” series at East Hampton Middle School on Saturday, October 7 at 11:30 a.m. “We’re really excited about that,” Nugent says, explaining that Simon primarily lives in Texas now, so the festival was happy to get him back to the Hamptons.

Nugent points to DK and Hugh Welchman’s The Peasants as one of the must-see films at the festival. Marking it’s U.S. premiere, The Peasants screens Sunday and Monday, October 8 and 9, in Sag Harbor (5:15 p.m.) and East Hampton Cinema (5:30 p.m.), respectively.

“It’s a movie entirely comprised of oil paintings, like full-size oil paintings, over 40,000 oil paintings. So it’s animated, but it’s not animated in the way that you’d think,” Nugent explains, noting how awestruck he was seeing its premiere in Toronto. “It’s a regular movie and then they take each frame and they turn it into an oil painting… It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before.”

Nugent also names The Teacher’s Lounge, a German Oscar contender by İlker Çatak, the filmmaker behind last year’s Academy Award winner All Quiet on the Western Front, playing Saturday and Sunday, October 7 and 8 in Sag Harbor (7:45 p.m.) and East Hampton Cinema (8:15 p.m.). “It’s this really tense thriller about what happens when a teacher in a school accuses a student of stealing from another student and then things spiral out of control,” he says, adding, “It’s just a real edge-of-your-seat thriller about social norms that I think is really wonderful.”

Another of Nugent’s picks is the world premiere of Story & Pictures By, a documentary about children’s picture books and how kids get excited to read, screening October 7–8 — at East Hampton Library for the premiere at 1 p.m. on Saturday, and Sag Harbor at 11:45 a.m. on Sunday. “It’s really a look at children’s books and children’s authors, from modern classics to all-time classics like Where the Wild Things Are and things like that,” Nugent says, noting that Newbury and Caldecott Award-winning illustrator Christian Robinson is also coming to discuss the film after the premiere.

“I’m also super excited that one of my all-time favorite filmmakers, Todd Haynes, is coming with his movie May December,” Nugent continues, acknowledging that the film, starring Natalie Portman and Montauk’s Julianne Moore, is loosely based on the Mary Kay Letourneau scandal, when a teacher had sex with her 12-year-old student, had his children and later married him after she went to jail and he was of age. Haynes will be presented with an Achievement in Directing Award and participate in the A Conversation With… series.

May December screens October 8 and 9 at East Hampton Middle School (5 p.m. 10/8) and East Hampton Cinema (8 p.m. 10/9).

This year’s HIFF Breakthrough Artist, Celine Strong, a playwright and filmmaker, will participate in a live Q&A session on Wednesday, October 11 following an 8 p.m. screening of her narrative feature Past Lives at East Hampton Cinema.

In Past Lives, Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), two deeply connected childhood friends, are torn apart after Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea to Canada. Two decades later, with Nora in a long-term relationship with Arthur (John Magaro), they are reunited in New York for one fateful week as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life.

The festival closes on Thursday, October 12 with Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, another Netflix release, at East Hampton Cinema, with showings at 7:45 p.m. and 8:15 p.m. Cooper’s sophomore directorial effort (following A Star Is Born in 2018), Maestro looks at the complicated life of legendary conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, going beyond his music to examine his lifelong relationship with Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein (Carey Mulligan). Martin Scorsese and iconic East Hampton director Steven Spielberg are among the film’s producers.

With a total of 120 films in an array of categories and genres — including Spotlight Films, World Cinema, Competition Films, Views from Long Island and so much more — these picks and highlights are truly just a small fraction of the huge roster of movies playing at this year’s Hamptons International Film Festival.

Visit hamptonsfilmfest.org to explore the complete list of films, including detailed write-ups for each one.