Boffo BIFF 2025

GREAT BARRINGTON, MA—Seventy-five films have been selected for this year’s Berkshire International Film Festival, slated for May 29 through June 1.

"You would think that, after 20 years, it would get easier,” sighed Kelley Vickery, founder and artistic director of the Berkshire International Film Festival, who had just released the schedule for this year’s festival. “It takes a herculean effort and is totally stressful and nail-biting and then I can breathe a sigh of relief.”

But not for long. By September Vickery and her team will be looking at movies again, laying the groundwork for next year.

This year’s films will be screened at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center and Triplex in Great Barrington and at the Lenox Town Hall. Other events will be held in the former firehouse next to the Mahaiwe where the Indigo Room has been created to offer a smaller stage, flexible floor plans for 75 to 150 guests and a concession area.

The old brick building was acquired by investors and converted to a community space that is run by the Mahaiwe. “Some things are not big enough for the Mahaiwe stage and this is a great place to gather,” Vickery said. “We’re not showing films there but will used it for three Tea Talks.”

The festival has pulled back from presenting films in Pittsfield but Vickery said the Lenox Town Hall has “been great for us. It’s right downtown so people can show up and eat and go to a movie. People really do like hanging out in the center of town.”

The “bones” of the festival are still in place for this year’s event. It will start Thursday, May 29th, with a Taste of BIFF, a filmmaker’s cocktail party and dinner-by-the-bite from area restaurants and caterers, to be staged under the BIFF Tent behind Town Hall, 5 to 7PM. It is open to sponsors, filmmakers, all-inclusive and opening night passholders.

It will be followed at 7PM by an opening night screening of A Man with a Sole: The Impact of Kenneth Cole at the Mahaiwe. Designer and activist Kenneth Cole and Emmy and Tony Award-winning director Dori Berinstein will attend for a Q&A following the film. It, too, is open to sponsors, filmmakers, all-inclusive and opening night passholders.

“It’s a wonderful film,” said Vickery. “Kenneth Cole is a global fashion icon who has put cause before commerce’. He’s a compassionate capitalist who's been involved with AIDS, LGBTQIA+ rights, civil liberties, social justice and now, mental health and homelessness, working to divide and shatter the stigmas. This film has incredible footage of New York City making it another character in the film.”

The festival will screen Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion Friday, May 30th, at 4:30PM. Mackie, a six-decade costume designer who received a Tony nomination for The Cher Show, will be in attendance.

“He is an amazing, creative kind of guy,” said Vickery. “Cher is quite prominent in the movie. He created the very naughty outfit that she wore for her 1989 music video, If I Could Take Back Time. In talking about it, he said, ‘I can’t imagine what we are thinking.’”

There will be films all day Saturday and Sunday, drawn from 22 countries ranging from Macedonia and India to Germany, France and Chile. “We have some wonderful documentaries,” Vickery said. “We tried to make it not too heavy this year—they are very inspiring, funny films. It was not by design but 31 films of our films are by women. These are bold, beautiful, courageous films.”

She referred to André Is an Idiot, a film about a “crazy, charismatic, brilliant kind of guy” who is given a terminal cancer diagnosis. “I was crying, I was laughing—it was so moving,” said Vickery.
Saturday night, May 31st, actor Brian Cox will be honored in a special tribute featuring an intimate conversation at the Mahaiwe between the multi-award-winning Cox, who has appeared in Succession, The Escapist, L.I.E., and The Bourne Trilogies, and his wife, Nicole Ansari-Cox, an actor, director and producer.

“He rose to super fame with Succession and has done hundreds of things on film and stage. He’s won two Olivier awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, two British Academy Scotland Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, had two nominations for a British Academy Television Award and numerous Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. In 2003 awarded the Order of the British Empire at the rank of Commander. The list goes on and on,” said Vickery. “We’re thrilled to have him in conversation with his wife, Nicole. It will be fun. They are cute together so it will be a good conversation.”

The evening begins from 5 to 7PM with cocktails and dinner-by-the-bite at the BIFF Tent, catered by the Old Inn on The Green Catering & Events. The conversation begins at 7PM and will be followed by a screening of The Escapist.

“Sunday, the final day of the festival, there will be an intimate brunch from 10:30AM to noon with the jury, filmmakers and nominees to announce the Juried Prize and nexGEN Awards at Granville House, 98 Division Street, catered by After Hours. It is open to the filmmakers, sponsors and all-inclusive pass holders.

“The festival closes at 7PM with a beautiful movie, Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, about the first deaf actress to win an Academy Award. It is directed and produced by Shoshannah Stern,’” said Vickery. “It follows her career from Children of a Lesser God through her difficult relationship with Bill Hurt and her friendship with Henry Winkler. It’s very uplifting.”

There will be three Tea Talks that celebrate all facets of filmmaking, from screenwriting to directing, from critiques to producing and more. Tea Talks take the audience behind the screen, for a deeper conversation with professionals from different parts of the genre.

The first, Fashioning a Greener Future, will be held Saturday, at 11AM; the second, The Directors Circle, is at 1PM, and the third, at 3PM, is Break the Frame.

There are six level of passes for the festival, ranging from a BIFF Social Club one-day pass at $100, to the All-inclusive plus streaming at $650.

For further ticket information Click Here.