Randall Wallace Gives DaVinci’s 8th Edition Its Braveheart Center
The Los Angeles festival will give Wallace its Visionary Award on opening night, with Braveheart back on a big screen and new DIFF programs filling out the weekend.
F. P. Randall to General Lew Wallace, 1861-04-19 - DPLA - aa99492d548407e83385d5ebdb1ef79d · Randall, F. P (Public domain)
DaVinci International Film Festival will honor Randall Wallace with its Visionary Award during the festival’s 8th Edition in Los Angeles, BroadwayWorld reported on August 26, 2026. DIFF is set for September 25-26, 2026, at AMC Theatres at The Grove, with Wallace honored on opening night before a Braveheart retrospective screening, keynote, Q&A, and benefit reception. For film readers, that matters because Wallace’s name is tied to one of the most durable big-canvas Hollywood scripts of the 1990s, and DIFF is building its eighth year around both legacy and a wider international slate.
Randall Wallace Gets DIFF's Visionary Award
BroadwayWorld reported that opening night begins Friday, September 25, with a Getty red carpet at 5:00 PM. The night will honor Wallace with DIFF’s Visionary Award, following Michael J. Fox, who received the award in 2024.
Yahoo Entertainment, carrying Deadline’s July 9 report, described Wallace as the second person to receive the award. That report said the honor is meant for creative figures in cinema whose bodies of work have inspired and transformed global audiences.
That phrasing is big, but Wallace is not a strange fit for it. His Oscar-nominated Braveheart screenplay is the obvious anchor here, the kind of credit that stays attached to a writer for decades because the movie itself never really left the conversation. It is grand, bloody, sincere to the point of risk, and written in a register that modern historical epics often seem afraid to touch.
Yahoo Entertainment reported that Wallace also directed The Man in the Iron Mask, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and Secretariat. The same report said he reunited with Mel Gibson on the 2002 war film We Were Soldiers and more recently co-wrote the scripts for Gibson’s upcoming The Resurrection of the Christ films.
The opening-night plan is built around Braveheart, not simply around a trophy moment. BroadwayWorld reported that DIFF will screen Wallace’s film as part of a retrospective evening, followed by an exclusive keynote and Q&A.
Yahoo Entertainment reported one more detail that gives the night its own texture: the event will include a live traditional bagpipe processional before the screening. That could have been a cheap flourish in the wrong room. At The Grove, before Braveheart, it reads as DIFF leaning into the film’s scale rather than pretending the honor is a quiet industry plaque.
The reception will benefit Wallace’s charity, Hollywood Habitats for Humanity, according to BroadwayWorld. Attendees can also enter a raffle for signed Braveheart memorabilia, with proceeds supporting the organization.
There is a nice bluntness to that programming choice. DIFF is honoring the writer by putting the film back in front of an audience, then letting him talk. A festival can make legacy feel embalmed when it turns tribute into polite biography. A screening and Q&A gives the room something more alive to work with: the movie, its choices, its size, its afterlife.
BroadwayWorld reported that DIFF’s 8th Edition includes independent narrative, documentary, animation, and screenwriting projects, along with special programs, global sections, and honorees. The festival is also adding new partnerships and programming blocks this year.
RecFest, described by BroadwayWorld as DIFF’s guest festival and sister arm out of Vancouver, British Columbia, will make its official debut in the lineup. Its block will consist of short documentaries about sports, recreation, and human grit.
FilmAfrica returns as well. BroadwayWorld reported that the program brings storytelling from Angola and Kenya, with international shorts and narrative features paired with cultural events. One listed title, Kikuyu Land, directed by Andrew H. Brown and Bea Wangondu, is marked as a FilmAfrica spotlight.
DIFF is also introducing Rise UP, which BroadwayWorld described as an impact-forward program anchored by an Official Selection about child sex trafficking. The screening will be followed by a filmmaker Q&A, keynote, and executive panel. BroadwayWorld named ALLY.org as title sponsor, with Atlas Free and ARC, the Association for the Recovery of Children, also partnering on the program.
Those additions push the weekend beyond a tribute frame. Wallace and Braveheart may give the festival its marquee pull, but the rest of the slate tells readers what kind of room DIFF wants to be in 2026: shorts, animation, screenwriting, African cinema, sports docs, and cause-driven programming sharing the same two-day footprint.
The Writers' Corner Keeps Screenplays in the Room
One of DIFF’s returning pieces is The Writers’ Corner, a two-hour in-theater program tied to Storyline, the festival’s screenwriting competition, according to BroadwayWorld. Finalist scenes will be performed by professional actors, with the scenes projected on AMC’s 60-foot screen. A professional writer panel follows.
That is a smart use of a movie theater. Screenwriting competitions can feel abstract from the outside, all finalist lists and congratulatory copy. Live-read scenes change the temperature. They let an audience hear where a page moves and where it stalls, and they remind everyone that film writing is not only premise and structure. It is rhythm. It is breath. It is whether an actor can pick up a line and make it carry.
For a festival honoring Wallace, The Writers’ Corner feels especially apt. Braveheart is being used as the legacy object on opening night, but the screenwriting program points toward the next batch of writers trying to get heard in a room that still values pages.
September 26 Brings the Competitive Slate
BroadwayWorld listed the September 26 films as Farewellday, My Boyfriend, a Mannequin, Our Monsters, Firebird, Snorri - Catch Me If You Candy, Off-Time, Something Pointless, Trouble, Matched, In Formation, Four Hands, Light Bunny, Will Power, Kikuyu Land, The Gift, Growth, Superhuman: The Rebirth, and On a String.
Firebird, directed by Eric William Davis and Lapka Dolma Tamang, is marked by BroadwayWorld as a Rise UP spotlight. Kikuyu Land carries the FilmAfrica spotlight note.
Tickets and All Access passes are on sale through Tickettailor, BroadwayWorld reported, with full schedule and ticketing details at davincifilmfestival.com. The outlet also noted the boutique size of the festival and limited seating.
DIFF is produced by DaVinci Film Society Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit, according to BroadwayWorld. The festival is hosted annually at AMC Theatres at The Grove in Los Angeles and presents Leo Awards across feature, short, documentary, animation, and screenwriting categories.
The key date is September 25. That is when Wallace walks into DIFF’s eighth year, Braveheart returns to a Los Angeles theater, and a festival built for independent filmmakers opens with a writer whose most famous page still knows how to fill a room.
Every factual claim above is drawn from these. The reading of them is ours.
Randall Wallace DaVinci International Film Festival 2026DaVinci International Film Festival 8th Edition lineupBraveheart retrospective screening Los AngelesDIFF Visionary Award Randall WallaceAMC The Grove film festival September 2026DaVinci Film Festival Rise UP programFilmAfrica DIFF 2026 lineup
