©Searchlight Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection / ©Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection

Montclair Film Festival 2026 Reveals Full Winners List: ‘Possible Love,’ ‘Wild Horse Nine’ Take Top Honors (EXCLUSIVE)

by · Variety

The Montclair Film Festival has crowned some of the year’s best films.

Lee Chang-dong’s “Possible Love” earned top honors in the festival’s fiction feature competition, while Pegah Ahangarani’s “Rehearsals for a Revolution” was named the winner of the Bruce Sinofsky Award in the documentary feature competition. Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes’ documentary “One in a Million” was awarded the special jury prize.

Related Stories

Ventana Sur Proyecta 2026: A Powerhouse New Generation Lineup Backed by Some of Latin America’s Finest Producers

France's Luxbox, Spain’s Amore Cine Join Melina León's Ventana Sur Proyecta Title ‘Portrait Huaco’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Stephanie Ahn’s “Bedford Park” and William D. Caballero’s “TheyDream” were co-winners of the Future/Now competition and the $5,000 Mark Urman award for filmmaking.

Audience award winners included Martin McDonagh’s “Wild Horse Nine” for fiction feature, Juliane Dressner and Miriam Shor’s “My NDA” for documentary feature, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s “All of a Sudden” for best of world cinema, and Steven Leckart’s “An Unknown Substance” took honors for best short film.

Among the winners in the shorts competitions were K. Xian Ming Yu’s “I See You in the Flood,” Mars
Verrone’s “Buckskin” and Jeannette Louie’s “Us Being Epic.”

Additionally, Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson’s “Mouse” was awarded the Junior Jury prize, with a special jury prize for excellence in cinematography given to Senzo Ueno for his work on Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Look Back.”

“Congratulations to our award winners for their outstanding work,” Montclair Film artistic director Tom Hall said in a statement. “We are incredibly grateful to all of the artists who shared their films with our audiences at this year’s festival. The connection these films forged with our festival audiences created an incredible atmosphere of conversation, connection and community. We are so honored to have been given the opportunity to bring these films to our screens, and look forward to continuing our support of these films in our cinemas and in our community throughout the coming year.”