The Virginia Film Festival is bringing back its ‘Beyond the Screen’ film discussion series

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) -The Virginia Film Festival is bringing back its ‘Beyond the Screen’ film discussion series.

It will begin again next Thursday, February 4 with a discussion of a new psychological thriller featuring Denzel Washington called “The Little Things.”

The film festival will sit down with the film’s screenwriter and director John Lee Hancock and producer Mark Johnson.

“We started this last spring with the onset of the pandemic as a way to continue to engage our audiences through the Virginia Film Festival with a monthly series with filmmakers about their films or their careers,” Festival Director Jody Kielbasa said.

To register for the discussion, you can click here.

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The 2021 series will launch with a discussion of the highly-anticipated psychological thriller The Little Things, which stars a trio of Academy Award winners - Denzel Washington, Jared Leto and Rami Malek.

The conversation, let for February 4 at 3:00 PM, will feature the film’s writer and director John Lee Hancock (a member of the VAFF Advisory Board) along with Academy Award-winning producer and longtime Advisory Board Chair Mark Johnson. The conversation will be moderated by Emmy Award-winning journalist Elizabeth Flock.

The Little Things features Washington as Kern County Deputy Sheriff Joe “Deke” Deacon, who is sent to Los Angeles for what should be a quick evidence-gathering assignment. Instead, he becomes embroiled in the search for a killer who is terrorizing the city. Leading the hunt, L.A, Sheriff Department Sergeant Jim Baxter (Malek), impressed with Deke’s cop instincts, unofficially engages his help. But as the track the killer, Baxter is unaware that the investigation is dredging up echoes of Deke’s past, uncovering disturbing secrets that could threaten more than his case.

The Little Thjngs premieres Friday, January 29 on HBO Max and in select theaters.