The Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival could use a giant marquee. This year’s headliners, Jane Fonda and Anaïs Mitchell, need little introduction. But many of the 123 feature films, documentaries and shorts that make up the 12th annual iteration of the fest are also deserving of their names in lights, even if they’re lesser known … for now.
The five-day event is dedicated to the work of first- and second-time filmmakers from around the world. It opens on Wednesday, August 26, with a new managing producer on board — more about him in a moment — and a slate of special guests.
“I’m really excited about this year,” festival cofounder and artistic director Jay Craven said. “I think it’s our best selection of films.”
Mitchell, Vermont’s own singer, songwriter and playwright, headlines opening night, hosting a screening of the newly released Hadestown: The Musical, a live-capture movie of her Tony- and Grammy Award-winning Broadway musical.
Actor and activist Fonda, who has known Craven since they were Vietnam War protesters in the 1970s, will close the festival on Sunday, August 30. Klute, the 1971 drama for which Fonda won her first Academy Award, will screen as well as Gaslit, her most recent project. That Greenpeace-produced documentary follows Fonda as she travels from the oil fields of west Texas to the Louisiana Gulf Coast, talking with residents adversely affected by the oil and gas extraction boom that has made the U.S. the world’s leading exporter of liquefied natural gas. It’s the feature debut of director Katie Camosy, who will participate in a post-screening discussion with Fonda and Craven.
The festival’s new managing producer, who started in June, needs no introduction in Middlebury. Andy Knight Mitchell attended Middlebury College — departing one credit shy of his 1996 graduation to take a job with National Geographic — and has called the town home for the past 22 years.
A four-time Emmy Award winner, Mitchell, 51, is a director, cinematographer, producer, writer and underwater cameraman. His work — much of which focuses on the natural world — has appeared on Netflix, National Geographic, Disney+, Animal Planet, PBS, HBO, the BBC and the Smithsonian Channel. He has chased tornadoes, flown through the eyes of hurricanes, jumped into a shark feeding frenzy, and filmed on every continent and in every ocean.
The adrenaline junkie once had to pick between two job offers: tour Europe and Asia with the band Aerosmith or film lions on the Serengeti for National Geographic. “I chose the lions,” he said, “because it paid more, frankly, and I had a kid on the way.”
He and his wife, Lisa, executive and artistic director of Middlebury’s Town Hall Theater, are the parents of two teenage sons and founders of Middlebury Underground, a nonprofit multidisciplinary arts and event production organization best known for Foodaroo, the food and entertainment festival that had its 11th run earlier this month.
Andy Mitchell emerged as the clear top choice for the managing producer job, festival cofounder Lloyd Komesar said, because “he brings a mix to the job that is perfect for what we need to move forward.” Rooted in the Middlebury community, Mitchell has broad knowledge of film, deep experience as a filmmaker and a winning personality, Komesar continued. “He’s affable. He’s approachable. He’s humorous.”
Mitchell was a bit out of breath when he spoke to Seven Days two days before Foodaroo. A portable stage he planned to paint for the event had nearly toppled over a cliff. Dramatic, yes, but hardly worth a footnote in Mitchell’s action-packed life.
You’re busy! Why did you want this job?
I’ve known about MNFF almost since its inception. We were working with Lloyd, I believe, in year two. Middlebury Underground coproduced one of his evening parties. So we got to know Lloyd pretty well early on, and we’ve been watching his fledgling festival grow and see it do just wonderful things. I was talking to someone about being on the board — right about the same time that the job opening came out.
As I’ve been writing more and traveling less, and since starting Middlebury Underground, we’ve gotten more and more involved with the community. And with Lisa very involved in the community, that’s where we’re getting most of our happiness right now: working with and helping bring fun stuff to our community. MNFF just felt like such an unbelievable fit. I’ve been to plenty of film festivals, but I’ve never worked in one, so it’s also a really great opportunity to learn something new.
This festival is dedicated to first- and second-time filmmakers. Will you tell us about your first film?
National Geographic was trying to find themselves back in the aughts and was trying every manner of television show to keep up with cable television and Discovery Channel. So they started a series called “Ultimate Explorer,” which was [taking the tone of a hyped-up promo voice-over] four really gorgeous, young, hip scientists traveling around the world investigating cool stuff!
It wasn’t one of their flagship programs. I’d been there for years, and I had associate produced a bunch of stuff and shot a bunch of stuff. But the first one they gave me all my own — where I shot, directed, wrote, edited, everything — was an “[Ultimate] Explorer” about the cicada emergence, hosted by a primatologist named Mareya Mayer. The two of us went all over the East Coast, filming cicadas and working at the University of Maryland with a weird entomologist dude there, making this little movie about cicadas. I look back at it now, and it’s so rough and dirty. It makes me cringe, but it’s still a lot of fun.
What plans do you have for MNFF?
First thing is, I’m not going to change their festival. They’ve found this amazing balance between down-home Vermont and Middlebury and community and bringing in very legit people from Hollywood and New York and from the upper echelons of the industry. But I definitely think there’s room for continued growth.
I truly believe that Jay and Lloyd have built the best festival yet.
Andy Knight Mitchell
Step one is to shore up the festival so it is here forever, and we’re well on the way to doing that. And then the next step would be to start potential programs that give opportunities to young filmmakers. There’s been the Franklin Fund for years. [The Franklin Film Development Fund awards $10,000 matching grants to festival alumni whose narrative scripts are selected.]
If we can build on and grow that program, that would be one thing that I’d be very excited about. This year is going to be so amazing with Anaïs Mitchell and Jane Fonda and all of our honorees and 123 really, really great movies. I truly believe that Jay and Lloyd have built the best festival yet. So I’m just looking forward to taking what they’ve done, working with them and building it to the next level.
Most of your paying jobs have involved wildlife. Do you have a favorite animal to film?
All of them. I’ve been lucky enough to film pretty much every big animal out there: lions, lots of bears, all sorts of sharks, every cat that I can think of. I love the feeling when you’re not the alpha predator in an area, when you know there’s something out there that could eat you. That doesn’t scare me. That exhilarates me.
I love the feeling when you’re not the alpha predator in an area.
Andy Knight Mitchell
And yet, you don’t want to be pigeonholed as a wildlife cinematographer. What else do you want to be known for?
I’m really proud of some of these movies that I’ve made with Banker White and his team. The movie we just did called Yo: Love Is a Rebellious Bird, which won an award at Berlinale [the Berlin International Film Festival], I was the primary cinematographer on that. Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars [a 2005 documentary White codirected about musicians in a West African refugee camp]. I’d like to be considered multifaceted, if I could.
You dabble in one genre that might surprise people.
I love scary movies. I made a bunch of shorts — a couple that have been in sort of the small festival circuit. I think my favorite is called “The Red Door.” A buddy of mine, Clint Bierman of the Grift, we’d give ourselves a weekend to make a film. So we did this little film in a weekend, and it’s a little thriller based on my office down in the Marble Works in Middlebury, and it’s kinda fun. ➆
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
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The original print version of this article was headlined “Fresh Takes | Jane Fonda and Anaïs Mitchell headline the 2026 Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival, the first with Emmy winner Andy Knight Mitchell on staff”
This article appears in August 19 • 2026.
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