VAFF x Ours Field Trip
Join us for an Ours field trip to the Virginia Film Festival!
We’ll be carpooling down together, grabbing lunch on the Downtown Mall, and catching a double feature: Romería and Rental Family. Spots are limited—RSVP now to save yours! Folks who snag tickets will be added to a WhatsApp group for carpool planning and day of updates.
Ticket cost covers screening entries and associated fees.
Schedule of the Day
1:30 PM → Carpool to Charlottesville
2:45 PM → Meet for lunch on the Downtown Mall
4:15 PM → Romería (Violet Crown 1 & 2)
7:00 PM → Rental Family (The Paramount Theater), followed by a discussion with director Mitsuyo Miyazaki (Hikari)
10:00ish → Drive back to Richmond
Romería
Orphaned at a young age, 18-year-old Marina is at a loss when she finds out her scholarship application needs a signature from a family member. With the help of her late mother’s diary, which details the early days of her parents’ relationship, Marina travels to Galicia to find the extended family she’s never met. As she gets acquainted with her paternal grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, her return stirs up long-buried resentments, challenging her to make sense of the fragmented and contradictory memories of the parents she barely remembers.
Infused with dreamlike naturalism and carried by a compelling debut performance from Llúcia Garcia, Spanish filmmaker Carla Simón’s (Alcarràs) semi-autobiographical tale is both tender and unsparing, capturing the elusive ways family history lingers and shapes the path to self-discovery.
More info here.
Rental Family
Acclaimed TV and shorts filmmaker HIKARI’s (Beef, 37 Seconds) second feature film follows a struggling American actor (Brendan Fraser) living in Tokyo. He scrapes by with bit parts in wacky commercials and TV spots.
That is, until he lands an unexpected gig as the “token white guy” at a Japanese rental family agency, where he is hired to play stand-in roles in strangers’ lives. Despite the oddity of the work, he begins to forge genuine connections with his clients–especially when he is hired to play the father of a young girl named Mia.
Academy Award-winning actor Brendan Fraser (The Whale) delivers a gently funny and deeply human performance in this heartwarming story about identity, empathy, and the unconventional connections that shape our lives.
More info here.
About the Virginia Film Festival
The Virginia Film Festival, now in its 38th year, is a program of the University of Virginia. Widely recognized as one of the leading regional film festivals in America, the VAFF is known for its commitment to taking audiences beyond the screen to explore some of the most important issues of our time. The five-day festival annually delivers more than 100 films from around the world, combining special previews of some of the hottest titles of the festival season with an array of fascinating documentaries, exciting new voices on the independent film scene, the best of the international film scene and more.