Montclair Film Festival 2026: Ten Days, Two Hubs, and a Car-Free Saturday on Church Street

The 2026 Montclair Film Festival runs October 16 through 25. It is the first festival since The Bellevue went back to being a working, year-round movie theater. That changes the layout of the week. The festival used to be centered downtown. This year it has two working centers: Bloomfield Avenue downtown, and Bellevue Avenue in Upper Montclair. They have different parking lots, different train stations and different evening programs.

Public ticket sales opened October 1 at 10 a.m., and every screening and event requires an advance ticket. So the useful planning question is which hub you'll be at on which night, and how you're getting there.

The Bellevue's first festival as a full-time theater

The Bellevue had been closed since 2017. Montclair Film held the official ribbon-cutting on October 29, 2025, and the theater started regular operations two days later. Last year's festival came just before that date. It used The Bellevue for festival screenings, opening with The Sound of Music on October 18, while the building was still on its way back. The festival now describes it as a three-screen cinema at 260 Bellevue Avenue in Upper Montclair.

At the reopening, Evelyn McGee Colbert, president of the Montclair Film Board of Trustees, described how the first round of screenings went:

"Our festival screenings have been sold out, showing us just how deeply this theater is loved."

This year the programmers have given The Bellevue a big share of the guest-attended evenings. That makes Upper Montclair a real second center of festival week rather than an extra screen.

Two hubs, two parking plans

The festival's own venue guidance shows the split. The downtown venues share the same parking decks. The Bellevue has its own station, bus line and lots.

The Wellmont, the Mezzanine and Cinema505 are all on or just off the same stretch of Bloomfield Avenue, so one deck covers all three. The Bellevue has its own options. The festival map says many locations are walkable. It also suggests leaving extra time for parking or using rideshare. I found no shuttle schedule in the current festival materials.

Montclair Mezzanine calls itself a 10,000-square-foot loft event venue. For the festival it becomes the Audible Lounge, and its talks are generally free, with donations welcome, unless an event says otherwise. That makes it the cheapest way to see a festival guest in person.

Where the big nights land

Once you know which hub each night is in, the calendar is easier to plan. The guest-attended evenings fall like this:

1. Friday, Oct. 16, 7 p.m., The Wellmont. Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine opens the festival.
2. Saturday, Oct. 17, 8 p.m., The Wellmont. Director Ben Klein and producer Rachel Maddow receive the David Carr Award for Kill. Bury. Print., followed by a Q&A. Brad Bird's Ray Gunn also screens at The Wellmont that day as the Animation Centerpiece.
3. Sunday, Oct. 18. Stephan James is in conversation at the Audible Lounge at 6:30 p.m. Beth de Araújo's Josephine screens at The Bellevue at 7 p.m., and Elsinore screens at MKA at 7:30 p.m.
4. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, Oct. 19, 21 and 22, The Bellevue. Each of those nights has a 7:30 p.m. guest screening: Tim Blake Nelson with The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd on Monday, John Turturro with The Only Living Pickpocket in New York on Wednesday, and Susie Essman with The Good Life on Thursday.
5. Friday, Oct. 23, 7:30 p.m., MKA. Ava DuVernay attends 14th, the Documentary Centerpiece, with Stephen Colbert moderating.
6. Sunday, Oct. 25, 5 p.m., MKA. Tony Gilroy's Behemoth! closes the festival.

Three of the four weeknights from Oct. 19 to 22 put the headline guest at The Bellevue. If you live within walking distance of Bellevue Avenue, you can see most of festival week's guest evenings without moving your car.

Standard tickets are $20, or $17 for members. Spotlight events are $25 and $20, and premier events are $50 and $40. Opening night costs $35, or $30 for members. A 10-ticket pack is $180, or $150 for members. It saves $20, covers only standard and matinee screenings, and does not guarantee a seat.

Saturday, Oct. 24: the one day both hubs peak

On Saturday, October 24, the festival is busy in both hubs and out on the street too.

During the day, Church Street closes to traffic. The festival is running free, family-friendly programming there with Montclair Complete Streets, including a silent disco and a free outdoor screening. The rain date is Sunday, October 25. The festival hasn't yet published start and end times or the exact limits of the closure.

From noon to 2 p.m. on the same block, the Montclair Art Museum and NJPAC Arts & Well-Being host Summer on the Street. It's a free cyanotype workshop led by NJPAC Artist-in-Residence Javelin Manansala. Participants are invited to bring objects that mean something to them to use in their prints.

The Audible Lounge also has a 10 a.m. program that morning. At 7:30 p.m. the day splits across town:

• MKA Upper School. Jesse Eisenberg, Paul Giamatti and Julianne Moore talk with Stephen Colbert after The Debut.
• The Bellevue. Karina Longworth gives an extended introduction to Fred Zinnemann's 1948 film The Search.
• Edward Burns attends Beneath the Blue Suburban Skies at the same hour, though the release doesn't name the venue.

You can't attend all three, so pick an evening venue first and build the rest of the day around it. Church Street is the free part of the day, and it's a natural lead-in to an evening downtown or in Upper Montclair. Longworth also has a follow-up conversation at the Audible Lounge on Sunday at noon.

Eating near each hub

This year each hub also has newer places to eat nearby, many of which opened in the months before the festival.

On Church Street, Oggi Gelato holds its grand opening at 40 Church St. on Saturday, October 10, six days before the festival starts. The party begins at 5 p.m. with free gelato, a DJ and prosecco, and the first 100 people in line get a free shirt. The shop is in the former Oasis space and is the Sicilian-born chain's first New Jersey location. By the time Church Street closes to cars on Oct. 24, the shop will have been open two weeks.

On Bloomfield Avenue near the Mezzanine and Cinema505:

• Ju-Ichi Japanese Restaurant opened at 512 Bloomfield Ave. this summer.
• Hummus Republic opened at 412 Bloomfield Ave.
• Hotbirds is the new name for the Nashville hot chicken spot at 369 Bloomfield Ave. that opened as Rooster's in January 2023. The restaurant says only the name and look have changed.
• Lenwich has signs up at 520 Bloomfield Ave., in the former Tous Les Jours space. As of late September, no opening date had been announced.

Closer to The Bellevue, Farmhouse Fried Chicken opened at 223 Bellevue Ave. and held a ribbon-cutting on August 14. Jungle Juice opened at 51 Upper Montclair Plaza. For a longer meal before an MKA screening, Pig & Butter at 401 Orange Road opened in August. It combines a dinner and brunch restaurant with an all-day coffeehouse.

The same weekend, outside the festival

The first festival weekend overlaps with two other events. AAPI New Jersey's Light Up Diwali is on Saturday, October 17, from 2 to 6 p.m. at the Montclair Art Museum, 3 South Mountain Ave. It includes a community-sourced "Passage to India" exhibition, and the rain date is October 18. From October 16 to 18, Mosaic Dance Theater Company premieres "Cassandra: An Ongoing Tragedy," free, at First Congregational Church, 40 S. Fullerton Ave. Each performance is followed by an artist talkback.

That makes Saturday, October 17 a full day in its own right: Diwali at the museum in the afternoon, then the David Carr Award at The Wellmont at 8 p.m.

If festival week has you thinking about how your own home fits into the life around Bloomfield Avenue or Bellevue Avenue, I'd be glad to walk through it with you over coffee between screenings. At Best in Showing, I give Montclair homeowners a clear, design-minded read on what their home is worth. Get Your Free Home Valuation.