Maine International Film Festival names 2026 award honorees
WATERVILLE, Maine—The Maine Film Center is pleased to announce three MIFF Achievement Award honorees for the 29th edition of the Maine International Film Festival, July 10–19, 2026. This year will celebrate the work of producer Christine Vachon, writer/director Alan Rudolph, and producer and longtime festival supporter Mike Kaplan.
The annual MIFF Achievement Awards honor those whose contributions to cinema have strengthened the film industry at large and here in Maine, as well as enhancing programming at the Maine Film Center and MIFF.
Christine Vachon, producer
This year, the festival is excited to honor prolific Oscar-nominated producer Christine Vachon. Her influential work behind the camera in independent cinema has helped shape the American indie landscape for over 30 years, including such hits, cult classics, and awards darlings as The Brutalist, Velvet Goldmine, Carol, Boys Don’t Cry, The Notorious Bettie Page, Still Alice, First Reformed, Materialists, and May December.
“We’re proud to welcome Christine Vachon to the Maine International Film Festival,” said MIFF Executive Director Mike Perreault. Screening five of her films from the last 25 years, this year’s festival will celebrate her “dedication to uplifting voices from the margins, promoting the cinema as a place for discovery and belonging no matter your background, and producing works that are totally legendary,” Perreault said. “We’re so excited to celebrate what she’s produced so far and to encourage her to make much more.”
Audiences at MIFF this year will have five opportunities to view Vachon’s films with the producer in attendance, including:
Late Fame (2025, starring Willem Dafoe and Greta Lee in a deeply human story of a New York poet whose long-lost single volume of work is rediscovered by a group of overeager art enthusiasts—Late Fame is touring the festival circuit but has not been released yet, so passholders can see it before it hits theaters.)
Past Lives (2023, Vachon received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture for Past Lives, which stars Greta Lee and Teo Yoo as two long-estranged childhood friends who reconnect for a brief encounter after 20 years.)
I’m Not There (2007, Todd Haynes’ unorthodox biopic examines the life of Bob Dylan as represented by an ensemble cast of six different incarnations of the groundbreaking artist, starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw, Richard Gere, and Marcus Carl Franklin.)
Far from Heaven (2002, Julianne Moore in an Oscar-nominated performance stars as a 1950s Connecticut housewife whose idyllic life is suddenly upended as she is forced to confront social inequities in her community.)
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001, John Cameron Mitchell wrote, directed, and stars in this at times uproarious, at times poignant musical comedy about a gender-queer East Berlin punk rocker.)
“More than the incredible films she’s produced, Christine’s impact on independent film throughout her career has championed the work of countless filmmakers, including Todd Haynes, Mary Harron (honored at MIFF in 2024), Celine Song, Wash Westmoreland, and Kimberly Peirce,” Perreault added.
Alan Rudolph, director and writer
MIFF29’s program will also include a retrospective series celebrating the classic films of writer/director Alan Rudolph.
“Known first as a protégé and assistant to one of America’s greatest directors [Robert Altman], Alan Rudolph has, since his first film, Welcome to L.A., in 1976, been one of the most distinctive and innovative of genuine American mavericks, working in and out of Hollywood and the American independent film movement,” said Ken Eisen, MIFF’s founding program director. “‘An Alan Rudolph Film’ credit means just that: a film that embodies his very distinctive personal sensibility and touch.”
MIFF will welcome Rudolph for screenings of four of his films:
The Secret Lives of Dentists (2002, a dark, dreamy comedy starring Campbell Scott, Hope Davis, and Denis Leary.)
The Moderns (1988, a roaring ’20s dramedy starring Wallace Shawn, Keith Carradine, and Geraldine Chaplin.)
Trouble in Mind (1985, a stylish neo-noir where the lives and dreams of mobsters, cops, and civilians are all intertwined.)
Choose Me (1984, a cult classic through and through about the tangled and complicated loves and anxieties of a love doctor radio host, a bar owner, and a drifter.)
Rudolph will also attend a screening of Robert Altman’s Nashville, on which he served as assistant director.
Mike Kaplan, producer and longtime MIFF supporter
Over the years, Mike Kaplan has held lots of roles in movies, working with major filmmakers and stars, including previous MIFF honorees Malcolm McDowell and Clive Owen. Through years of support, friendship, and collaboration, he has also had an immeasurable impact on MIFF.
“Mike Kaplan has made his own unique path through American moviemaking for the past five decades in ways visible and deliberately invisible,” Eisen said. “Kaplan is perhaps best known for his close work with two titans of unique and great 20th century American filmmaking—Stanley Kubrick and Robert Altman—serving as a publicist for each of them. He conceived imagistic and imaginative campaigns to bring the work of powerful, utterly original, and uncompromising artists to general, rather than just cinephile, audiences in America and the world, working on films from A Clockwork Orange to Nashville.
“As a producer, the films he’s been involved with range from Short Cuts to a film near to Mainers and others’ hearts, The Whales of August.”
MIFF29 will honor Kaplan with two film screenings:
Luck, Trust & Ketchup: Robert Altman in Carver Country (1993, a must-see documentary for Altman fans goes behind-the-scenes of Short Cuts, and features rare interviews with the likes of Julianne Moore, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Robbins, Andie MacDowell, Matthew Modine, and of course the director himself.)
The Whales of August (1987, the beloved Maine-set drama features a one-of-a-kind cast including Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, Vincent Price, Mary Steenburgen, Harry Carey Jr., and Ann Sothern in an Oscar-nominated performance.)
The 29th Maine International Film Festival (MIFF) will take place in Waterville, Maine, July 10–19, 2026, welcoming thousands of movie lovers, filmmakers, and arts enthusiasts. This year’s program features nearly 120 films from around 50 countries and includes nearly 20 made-in-Maine productions, which will compete for the juried Tourmaline Prizes.
Passes and packages are now on sale. The full festival program will be announced Friday, June 5. Visit miff.org to learn more.
About the Maine Film Center
The Maine Film Center (MFC) brings world-class independent film and filmmakers to Maine through year-round independent film screenings, the annual Maine International Film Festival, and by delivering impactful, accessible exhibitions and education programs. Founded in 1978 as Railroad Square Cinema, MFC is now a division of Waterville Creates and a member of the Art House Convergence and Film Festival Alliance. For more information visit MaineFilmCenter.org.
About MIFF
Founded in 1998, the Maine International Film Festival (MIFF) is a project of the Maine Film Center. The 10 days of the festival showcase nearly 100 films, representing the best of American independent and international cinema, and spotlight some of Maine and New England’s most exciting and innovative filmmakers.