Mill Valley announces 29th edition

By Susan Gerhard

In a fall packed with more film festivals than ever, Mill Valley revealed just how it plans to stand out yesterday when it announced its 29th lineup, which includes festival tributes to heavyweight actors Helen Mirren and Tim Robbins, as well as a “Spotlight” program featuring Alejandro González Iñárritu and his latest film, “Babel,” plus a special focus on The Netherlands.

The festival opens October 5th with two films: “Breaking and Entering” (UK), an Anthony Minghella drama starring Jude Law and Juliette Binoche, and “The Last King of Scotland (UK), a thriller by Kevin MacDonald (“One Day in September,” “Touching the Void”) about Idi Amin. Its field of local works — 18 Bay Area features and 30 shorts — is impressive, and includes David Munro’s “Full Grown Men,” Rob Nilsson’s “Pan,” Judy Irola’s “Cine Manifest,” Xiao-Yen Wang’s “I’m Seducible,” and Connie Field’s “Have You Heard from Johannesburg?”

Mirren arrives with her recent Stephen Frears film, “The Queen,” in which she plays the current Queen Elizabeth, and Robbins appears in Phillip Noyce’s “Catch a Fire.”

The festival includes live music programming to go with the G.E. Smith (former SNL bandleader) documentary “50 Watt Fuse,” “The Doors Going on 40: An Evening with Ray Manzarek and Ben Fong-Torres,” and a night with poet/musician Linton Kwesi Johnson.

Tickets are available to members starting Sept. 13 and the general public on Sept. 17. For more information, visit the Mill Valley Film Festival web site.

09.13.2006