This past weekend we were fortunate enough to attend the second annual Middleburg Film Festival (read our coverage here), which boasted an impressive lineup of Oscar contenders and festival favorites. At the top of the list was the historical wartime thriller, The Imitation Game, and after taking top audience honors at Toronto, Morten Tyldum's film has done the same at Middleburg. The Imitation Game won the Audience Award for Best Narrative feature at the festival, adding to its impressive run that many think will lead to a Best Picture nomination and a Best Actor run for star Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays codebreaking mathematician Alan Turing.
In a surprising turn of events, the Audience Award for Best Documentary turned out to be a tie between Gabe Polsky's Soviet ice hockey film Red Army, and Frédéric Tcheng's Dior and I. Red Army explores the Soviet domination of ice hockey during the Cold War era. The famous Christian Dior fashion house is the subject of Dior and I, giving a never-before-seen look behind the creation of Raf Simons' first haute couture collection.
