This year’s Hamptons International Film Festival will open with the East Coast premiere of R.J. Cutler’s documentary about icon Martha Stewart. The film, titled Martha, includes several candid interviews with Stewart and is being heralded as the definitive documentary on the businesswoman and lifestyle personality.
“It feels only fitting that we open this year’s event with R.J. Cutler’s portrait of Martha Stewart,” said HamptonsFilm executive director Anne Chaisson. “We are delighted to welcome Martha—a truly trailblazing cultural figure and an East End resident of more than three decades—back to the Hamptons community with open arms and give her space to graciously share her inspiring story with us all.”
Also in the impressive HIFF 2024 lineup are the world premieres of the Kenneth Cole documentary A Man With Sole by Doris Berinstein and Daytime Revolution, a documentary by Erik Nelson about the week that John Lennon and Yoko Ono co-hosted The Mike Douglas Show. The festival also plans to screen Daniel Robbins’ Bad Shabbos, which stars Method Man, Kyra Sedgwick, and David Paymer.
“We are incredibly grateful to the teams behind Daytime Revolution and A Man With Sole: The Impact of Kenneth Cole for entrusting our festival to launch their projects for the first time,” HamptonsFilm artistic director David Nugent told The Hollywood Reporter. “Both of these films are uniquely compelling in the ways they reintroduce audiences to familiar subjects while showcasing new sides to these characters and adding to their already vibrant legacies.”
Adding to the buzz around the festival is the upcoming North American premiere of Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point. The film stars Matilda Fleming, Michael Cera, and Francesca Scorsese and is part of the Views from Long Island Program. The New York premiere of Michael Premo’s Homegrown, about the state of democracy in America, will also take place at the Hamptons International Film Festival as part of the Films of Conflict & Resolution program. There will also be a screening of Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan’s Nocturnes, an immersive film about nocturnal creation, which is part of the Air, Land, and Sea program.
This year marks the 32nd Hamptons International Film Festival, which is set to take place from October 4 through the 14. Martha will open the festival on its first night, with a post-screening talkback afterward featuring Stewart and Cutler. Cutler is an Oscar-nominated and Emmy and Peabody-winning director known for his documentaries on prominent figures ranging from singer Billie Eilish to former vice president Dick Cheney. Martha focuses on Stewart’s rise to prominence as a lifestyle guru and her early start on Wall Street. The film will be released on Netflix later this year.
Stewart became a controversial figure after her arrest in 2004. She first rose to prominence in the 1980s when her first cookbook, Entertaining, was published. She published several more cookbooks throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, as well as authored dozens of newspaper columns, magazine articles, and more. Stewart also appeared on television shows like The Oprah Winfrey Show and Larry King Live, further expanding her reach. She secured her own television show in 1993, called Martha Stewart Living, which is the same name as her magazine. The show ran until 2004.
Stewart was convicted of felony charges after a six-week jury trial that concluded in March of 2004 after being caught in an insider trading scandal. She was fined $30,000 and served five months in prison. Stewart was sentenced to an additional five months of home confinement with electronic monitoring. The conviction changed the trajectory of Stewart’s career, but she triumphantly returned to her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, her daytime television show, and to writing books.
