Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ‘Kindergarten Teacher’ to Open Hamptons Film Festival

By Dave McNary

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Kindergarten Teacher” will open the 26th Hamptons International Film Festival on Oct. 4.

Gyllenhaal portrays a kindergarten teacher uses questionable methods to cultivate the poetic talents of one of her students.

Sara Colangelo directed the film, which also stars Parker Sevak, Rosa Salazar, and Gael García Bernal. Colangelo is a 2013 alumna of the festival’s annual screenwriters lab. She and Gyllenhaal will both attend the festival.

“” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and will also be screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. It is scheduled to be released Oct. 12 on Netflix.

The festival will also feature works from two other alums of its screenwriters lab: 2015 participant Ísold Uggadóttir’s “And Breathe Normally,” about the blossoming relationship of two women in Iceland — one an airport worker, the other a detained refugee; and 2016 participant Cathy Yan’s “Dead Pigs,” about the interwoven lives of five individuals in Shanghai.

The festival also announced on Wednesday that it will screen the U.S. premiere of Eva Trobisch’s “All Good,” starring Aenne Schwarz, a look at the destructive instinct to refuse to define yourself as the victim; along with Rupert Everett’s “The Happy Prince,” starring Everett, Colin Firth, and Emily Watson in a biopic about the final years of Oscar Wilde’s life. Everett is also set to attend the fest.

In the world cinema narrative section, the festival will screen the U.S. premiere of “Capernaum,” a jury prize winner at the Cannes Film Festival directed by Nadine Labaki, about a 12-year-old boy in Beirut who
launches a lawsuit against his negligent parents. Ali Abbasi’s “Border,” starring Eva Melander and Eero Milonoff, about a woman’s struggle to realize her place in the world, will also screen at the festival.

The views from Long Island section will feature Michael Dweck’s documentary “The Last Race,” about a Long Island stock car race track trying to maintain the tradition and history of the sport. The air, land, and sea section will feature the U.S. debut of Sasha Friedlander and Cynthia Wade’s documentary “Grit,” chronicling the work of a young social and environmental activist in Indonesia after her village was buried by a toxic mudflow as a result of oil drilling.