Hamptons Film Festival to Open With R.J. Cutler’s Martha Stewart Documentary
By Hilary Lewis
July 30, 2024
The 2024 Hamptons Film Festival will open with the East Coast premiere of R.J. Cutler’s Martha Stewart documentary, Martha, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
Martha, from the Oscar-nominated and Emmy- and Peabody-winning Cutler, is being characterized as the definitive documentary on Stewart and includes a number of candid interviews with the businesswoman and lifestyle personality. The film is expected to be released by Netflix later this year.
“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.”
The festival will also host the world premieres of the Kenneth Cole documentary A Man With Sole, by Dori Berinstein, and the Erik Nelson documentary Daytime Revolution, about the week that John Lennon and Yoko Ono co-hosted The Mike Douglas Show, and will screen Daniel Robbins’ Bad Shabbos, with an ensemble cast including Method Man, Kyra Sedgwick and David Paymer, which is part of the Spotlight section.
“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,” said HamptonsFilm artistic director David Nugent. “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.”
Additionally, the festival will feature the North American premiere of Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, starring Matilda Fleming, Michael Cera and Francesca Scorsese, which is part of the Views from Long Island program; the New York premiere of Michael Premo’s Homegrown, about Americans at war with each other and the movement pushing democracy to the brink, part of the Films of Conflict & Resolution program; and a screening of Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan’s Nocturnes, an immersive film about nocturnal creatures, part of the Air, Land and Sea program.
