James Gray to Receive MVFF Director Award from Mill Valley Film Festival
JAMES GRAY TO RECEIVE THE MVFF DIRECTOR AWARD
Award Presentation, Screening of Paper Tiger, and Conversation
Filmmaker will discuss Paper Tiger in an onstage conversation
Moderated by Rian Johnson
Monday, October 5, 2026 • 7:00 PM
| San Rafael, CA. (September 2, 2026) — The Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) will present director James Gray with the MVFF Director Award on Monday, October 5, in honor of his work on the new crime drama Paper Tiger. The award marks Gray’s return to MVFF, which previously honored him with a Tribute for Armageddon Time. Gray will join filmmaker Rian Johnson for a live onstage conversation following the screening. In James Gray’s deeply felt and intense crime thriller, set in 1986 New York, a naïve engineer, Irwin (Miles Teller), accepts a seemingly lucrative business proposition from his brother, Gary (Adam Driver), a former cop. But when Irwin witnesses something he wasn’t meant to see at the Gowanus Canal, the brothers find themselves pulled into a dangerous confrontation with the newly emerging Russian mafia. As the threat of violence escalates, Irwin’s wife Hester (Scarlett Johansson) sounds the alarm, Irwin desperately tries to protect his family, and Gary is forced to make an impossible choice to save those he loves. The film premiered in competition at Cannes to a standing ovation and opens in theaters this fall from Neon. |
| James Gray made his directorial debut in 1994 at age 25 with Little Odessa, winning the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival. He went on to direct The Yards, We Own the Night, Two Lovers, and The Immigrant, three of which starred longtime collaborator Joaquin Phoenix and all of which screened in Competition at Cannes. His later work includes The Lost City of Z, starring Charlie Hunnam and Robert Pattinson, and Ad Astra, starring Brad Pitt, which premiered in Competition at Venice. Armageddon Time, drawn from his own 1980s Queens childhood, premiered at Cannes in 2022. His latest film, Paper Tiger, starring Scarlett Johansson, Miles Teller, and Adam Driver, again premiered in Competition at Cannes before its Fall 2026 release by Neon. Gray was born in New York City and studied at USC’s School of Cinema-Television. The MVFF Director Award recognizes filmmakers whose bold, independent vision has left a lasting mark on the art form. “James Gray has spent more than three decades investigating the myths of the American family and the culture that shapes it. With Paper Tiger, he returns to one of the most powerful relationships in his films: the fraught bond between brothers. We are thrilled to welcome James back to Mill Valley and to honor one of American cinema’s most distinctive filmmakers,” said Rose Kuo, Artistic Director of the Mill Valley Film Festival. “James Gray is a believer in art — art as a microcosm of the world, with the good, the bad, and the lovely. That belief is his moral compass, and in Paper Tiger, it takes us through the streets of Brooklyn and along Brighton Beach, into a world that is as multicolored as the man who made it. Gray doesn’t look away from what’s difficult, but he never loses sight of what’s tender either. His stories remind us that a single family, rendered honestly, can carry more weight than any blockbuster — that the small, human struggle for redemption is the story we all share,” said Mark Fishkin, Founder and Director of the Mill Valley Film Festival.MVFF49 runs October 1–11, 2026, at venues throughout Marin County and the Bay Area. |