The 27th Woodstock Film Festival arrives at a turning point. Cofounder Meira Blaustein, the event’s executive director, head programmer, and driving force since its kitchen-table beginnings in 2000, will step down at the end of the year, leaving behind an internationally recognized showcase that helped make the Hudson Valley a serious destination for independent cinema. Her final festival at the helm offers an apt reminder that WFF’s global reach has always been grounded in the region. This year’s program includes films made by Hudson Valley directors, shot in Saugerties and Stone Ridge, centered on local artists, musicians, landmarks, and animal rescuers, and featuring familiar faces who call the area home. From Catskill Game Farm secrets and Sea-Monkey intrigue to monster tales, family reckonings, courtroom satire, and a Felice Brothers performance, these selections show the regional ecosystem Blaustein helped nurture is still producing strange, ambitious, and deeply rooted work of its own.
Amazing Live Sea Monkeys
Hudson Valley filmmaker Aaron Schock dives into the bizarre history of Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys, the novelty-pet empire created by magician, scientist, and inventor Harold von Braunhut. From her crumbling Potomac estate, his widow, Yolanda Signorelli, battles the corporate interests she claims stole the brand—and guards its secret formula. What begins as an eccentric tale of brine shrimp and intellectual property soon plunges into darker waters, confronting the troubling legacy behind one of America’s most iconic toys.
Lunatic Dreamers
Palenville-born folk-rockers the Felice Brothers get the big-screen treatment in the world premiere of Lunatic Dreamers, an intimate documentary tracing the band’s Catskills beginnings, creative evolution, and rise to “your favorite band’s favorite band.” Ian Felice, James Felice, Jesske Hume, and Will Lawrence will bring the story full circle after the screening, taking the Assembly Kingston stage for a live performance. Part rock documentary, part hometown celebration, this promises to be a rowdy, heartfelt night.
Bolio
A depressed high school shop teacher turns to a charismatic life coach for answers, only to discover that the supposed guru is as lost as he is. Jim Issa’s Bolio turns a crisis of confidence into an offbeat comedy about self-belief and the perils of outsourcing your salvation. Hudson Valley residents Tony Shalhoub and Brooke Adams executive-produce alongside Broken Lizard’s Kevin Heffernan, whose Super Troopers was filmed throughout the region, in its New York premiere.
The Plea
Twelve jurors walk onto a Saugerties soundstage—and proceed to put America itself on trial. Zach LeBeau and Dean Imperial’s satirical noir locks a sharply divided jury inside a hotel to deliberate a controversial case involving personhood. The ensemble includes Millicent Simmonds, Kathryn Erbe, Dennis Boutsikaris, Antoinette Crowe-Legacy, Danny Deferrari, and Gbenga Akinnagbe, with the codirectors also appearing onscreen. Shot entirely in Saugerties, this New York premiere turns civic division into a claustrophobic comic nightmare.
Sydney Cash Makes Too Much Art
For decades, Sydney Cash has made art with restless inventiveness—enough to land his paintings and sculpture on multiple Chronogram covers. In this world-premiere documentary, his son Ivan Cash turns the camera on that prodigious output and asks what a lifetime of compulsive creation has meant for the family living alongside it. Both affectionate portrait and candid reckoning, Sydney Cash Makes Too Much Art explores the rewards, costs, and complicated inheritance of artistic obsession itself.
Mother Wolf
Shot primarily in Stone Ridge, Mother Wolf stars Melissa Leo as a retired schoolteacher forced into an unexpected second act of motherhood when she begins caring for the rambunctious grandchildren of her estranged daughter. Woodstock Film Festival alum Suzi Yoonessi directs this family drama, whose deep regional roots extend beyond its locations: Both Leo, who has lived here for nearly 30 years, and costar Mary Stuart Masterson call the Hudson Valley home as well. World premiere.
Rain Reign
Paul Rudd stars in this Hudson Valley-shot adaptation of Ann M. Martin’s Newbery Honor-winning novel about Rose, a neurodivergent tween whose beloved dog disappears during a superstorm. Determined to find him, Rose ventures beyond the routines that help her navigate the world and discovers reserves of courage she didn’t know she possessed. Written and directed by Erika Burke Rossa, the film receives its Hudson Valley premiere, with Rudd bringing star power decidedly close to home.
Trauma Or, Monsters All
Hudson Valley filmmaker Larry Fessenden returns to Talbot Falls, the fictional New York town at the center of his interconnected monster stories. When visiting writer Cassandra asks “Are There Monsters Outside My Window?” in the local newspaper, she receives an answer with terrifying consequences, setting off a traumatic showdown. Receiving its East Coast premiere, Trauma Or, Monsters All finds the veteran indie-horror filmmaker once again uncovering the nightmares lurking beneath ordinary American small-town life.
The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd
In Tim Blake Nelson’s morally charged drama, a teacher trapped in an abusive marriage takes a job leading creative writing classes inside a maximum-security prison. Her growing attachment to a charismatic inmate sets off consequences that blur the lines between intimacy, manipulation, punishment, and redemption. Hudson Valley resident Amanda Seyfried stars, while Nelson—a longtime friend of the Woodstock Film Festival who has filmed extensively in the region—directs this probing test of human empathy.
American Zoo
Generations of New Yorkers remember the Catskill Game Farm as a childhood wonderland. Tim Travers Hawkins’s documentary digs beneath that nostalgia, using 16mm films discovered in the abandoned zoo’s ruins to trace two families united by their obsession with exotic animals. What emerges is a stranger, darker history involving pseudoscience, Nazi-era breeding experiments, and a German zoological dynasty linked to Hermann Göring. This Hudson Valley premiere opens the festival with a bracing local excavation.
Our Dark Horse
At a horse sanctuary in Greenville, Susan Kayne devotes herself to rescuing animals discarded by the racing industry and threatened by the slaughter pipeline. Grace Oathout’s directorial debut centers on Kitty, a mare raced until she was no longer profitable and then auctioned to the highest bidder. Shot in an intimate cinema-verite style and produced by “Girls” star Zosia Mamet, Our Dark Horse is a stirring family portrait and urgent plea for compassion.
