--- title: 'Mill Valley 2026 Lineup Sets McDonagh, Farrelly and Eisenberg for Its Biggest Nights' type: 'blog post' section: 'Industry' format: 'Editorial feature' standfirst: 'The 49th Mill Valley Film Festival runs Oct. 1–11 with 94 features and 80 shorts from 45 countries. Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine opens, Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky anchors the middle, and Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut closes the festival.' author: 'CinePixo' published: '2026-09-14' updated: '2026-09-14' about_people: - 'Sam Rockwell' tags: - '49th Mill Valley Film Festival lineup 2026' - 'Wild Horse Nine Mill Valley opening night' - 'I Play Rocky Mill Valley Film Festival' - 'The Debut Jesse Eisenberg Mill Valley' - 'Alex Gibney Musk documentary festival' - 'Mill Valley Film Festival New Directors section' sources: - 'https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/movies/mill-valley-film-festival-announces-stacked-lineup-featuring-damning-musk-doc/ar-AA2bYLIi' - 'https://awardswatch.com/49th-mill-valley-film-festival-lineup-wild-horse-nine-i-play-rocky-the-debut-and-more/' - 'https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/oscar-winning-bay-area-native-180000585.html' canonical: 'https://cinepixo.com/blog/mill-valley-2026-lineup-sets-mcdonagh-farrelly-and-eisenberg-for-its-biggest-nights' publisher: 'CinePixo' --- # Mill Valley 2026 Lineup Sets McDonagh, Farrelly and Eisenberg for Its Biggest Nights *The 49th Mill Valley Film Festival runs Oct. 1–11 with 94 features and 80 shorts from 45 countries. Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine opens, Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky anchors the middle, and Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut closes the festival.* By CinePixo, 2026-09-14 · Industry Martin McDonagh’s *Wild Horse Nine* will open the 49th Mill Valley Film Festival on Oct. 1, with Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich leading a dark comedy about CIA agents sent to Easter Island before Chile’s 1973 coup. The California Film Institute’s festival runs Oct. 1–11 across Mill Valley, San Rafael, Larkspur and Berkeley, and its full lineup now points to a strong run of filmmaker-driven premieres, awards-season titles and Bay Area connections. AwardsWatch reports 94 features and 80 short films from 45 countries, with women and nonbinary filmmakers behind 61% of the projects. ## *Wild Horse Nine* Gives Opening Night a Local Charge Rockwell’s return home is the emotional hook. The Daly City native will receive the festival’s Actor Tribute on Oct. 2, one night after *Wild Horse Nine* screens at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael and Sequoia Cinemas in Mill Valley. Yahoo’s G. Allen Johnson reports that Rockwell, McDonagh and co-star Mariana di Girolamo are expected to attend. The film reunites McDonagh and Rockwell after *Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri*, which earned Rockwell the supporting-actor Oscar in 2018. In *Wild Horse Nine*, Rockwell and Malkovich play longtime CIA operatives dispatched from Santiago to Easter Island. AwardsWatch reports that Steve Buscemi plays their bureau chief, while di Girolamo and Ailín Salas play young activists whose presence throws the mission off course. The setup has the kind of collision McDonagh tends to enjoy: institutional violence, brittle jokes and people whose private history keeps intruding on the assignment. Mill Valley is betting that its audience wants the festival to begin with actors who can make danger funny without making it feel safe. ![Sam Rockwell and Leslie Bibb attend the "Wild Horse Nine" Screening during the 83rd Venice International Film Festival at Sala Grande on September 03, 2026 in Venice, Italy](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/09/bf2de622-f15e-4c13-954b-956e994d8225.webp) *Photo: Colleen Sturtevant · [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sam_Rockwell_and_Leslie_Bibb_83rd_Venice_Film_Festival.jpg)* ## *I Play Rocky* Puts Stallone’s Gamble at the Center Peter Farrelly’s *I Play Rocky* is the Centerpiece on Oct. 7. The biographical drama follows Sylvester Stallone’s effort to create *Rocky* on his own terms, with Anthony Ippolito playing Stallone in what AwardsWatch calls a star-making performance. That choice gives the festival a different kind of industry story. *Rocky* is familiar as a champion’s tale, but *I Play Rocky* shifts attention to the person trying to force the film into existence. The picture is about authorship, leverage and the risk of refusing to hand your idea to someone else. Farrelly, whose credits include *Green Book* and *Dumb and Dumber*, will appear with Ippolito as part of the festival’s tribute programming. For a festival audience, the appeal is easy to read: this is a movie about the machinery behind a movie, with the machinery already carrying a famous name. ![Leslie Bibb Sam Rockwell Parker Posey 83rd Venice Film Festival](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/09/7a4e53f2-d339-4b2d-9a6f-27b6ee0126c4.webp) ![Actor Sam Rockwell at the premiere of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die at the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/09/929652ea-c1be-4ff1-b94b-79782c71f420.webp) *Photos: Colleen Sturtevant · [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leslie_Bibb_Sam_Rockwell_Parker_Posey_83rd_Venice_Film_Festival.jpg); Harald Krichel · [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sam_Rockwell-3920.jpg)* ## Jesse Eisenberg’s *The Debut* Closes on a Theater-Making Note The closing-night film, screening Oct. 11, is Jesse Eisenberg’s *The Debut*. Julianne Moore plays a shy woman unexpectedly cast in a local production, while Paul Giamatti plays the strong-willed director who casts her. AwardsWatch describes the film as Eisenberg’s love letter to local musical theater. That ending gives the festival a smaller, more intimate final movement after the geopolitical bite of *Wild Horse Nine* and the Hollywood origin story of *I Play Rocky*. Eisenberg will attend, joining a program that also includes a tribute and live performance honoring songwriter and producer Linda Perry. Moore and Giamatti are a particularly good pairing for this premise. Both can make social discomfort feel physical, and both understand how a room changes when performance becomes a form of control. ![Actor Sam Rockwell at the premiere of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die at the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/09/6973a811-2e59-4a64-b289-2687f44d2da3.webp) ![Sam Rockwell during Talk Easy live at the 2025 Tribeca Festival](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/09/d42df72e-60b1-43d4-ae09-0a58352512b0.webp) *Photos: Harald Krichel · [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sam_Rockwell-3953.jpg); Bryan Berlin · [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sam_Rockwell_Talk_Easy-59.jpg)* ## Alex Gibney’s *Musk* Joins a Slate Built for Arguments The documentary selection includes Alex Gibney’s *Musk*, which the festival presents alongside new work from Dawn Porter, Barbara Kopple and Julia Loktev. The Yahoo report describes *Musk* as a major title in a program that also includes *My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile*, Loktev’s chronicle of Russian independent journalists after they leave the country. The lineup also brings films from Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Gregory Kershaw and Michael Dweck, plus first features from Alessandra Sanguinetti and Sean Ono Lennon. AwardsWatch lists Cannes winners *All of a Sudden*, *Coward*, *Fatherland*, *Fjord*, *La Bola Negra* and *Minotaur*, along with Sundance winner *Josephine*. The festival is adding New Directors and Animation sections. The inaugural New Directors program includes *Clarissa*, *Mouse*, *Wicker*, *Lady*, *The Meltdown* and *Elephants in the Fog*, among other first and second features. The strongest argument for this year’s festival is right there: its marquee films bring recognizable names, while the new sections make room for filmmakers who do not yet have them. Bay Area viewers will also find local work in the mix, including *Josephine*, shot in San Francisco, and documentaries such as *The Unrooted Bloom*, *The A-Word: The Future of Aging*, *Miss Representation: Rise Up* and *This Bright Light*. Ticket details and the complete schedule will be released later at cafilm.org. ## How this piece was made **Format:** Editorial feature ## In this piece - [Sam Rockwell](https://cinepixo.com/people/sam-rockwell) ## Sources - https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/movies/mill-valley-film-festival-announces-stacked-lineup-featuring-damning-musk-doc/ar-AA2bYLIi - https://awardswatch.com/49th-mill-valley-film-festival-lineup-wild-horse-nine-i-play-rocky-the-debut-and-more/ - https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/oscar-winning-bay-area-native-180000585.html Every factual claim above is drawn from these. The reading of them is ours. Source: https://cinepixo.com/blog/mill-valley-2026-lineup-sets-mcdonagh-farrelly-and-eisenberg-for-its-biggest-nights Written for CinePixo. Nothing on this page is imported prose.