Miami Film Festival GEMS

Award-season films, international cinema and appearances by actors and filmmakers fill screens across Greater Miami during Miami Film Festival’s annual fall showcase. The 13th edition of GEMS runs October 29 through November 5, presenting a wide-ranging slate of narrative films, documentaries and animation alongside filmmaker Q&As, award presentations, career conversations and other special events.

The festival opens with the Florida premiere of Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut, starring Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti, and closes with Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid. Centerpiece selections include James Gray’s crime thriller Paper Tiger, Being Heumann, Bunker, Elsinore, Behemoth! and Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine. Other highlights range from Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas and Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden to Mike Leigh’s Tender Loving Care, Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beloved and Miami-set dark comedy The Gallerist.

Special programs include a Variety Creative Vanguard Award conversation with John Turturro, whose new film The Only Living Pickpocket in New York also screens during GEMS, and a Variety Virtuoso Award conversation with filmmakers Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi and musician-actor Guitarricadelafuente surrounding La Bola Negra. Screenings and events take place at venues including Koubek Center, Silverspot Cinema, the Bill Cosford Cinema, Coral Gables Art Cinema, O Cinema and Miami Dade College’s Wolfson Campus.