"The importance of Mill Valley is extraordinary. It's the home of the festival." Mark Fishkin said that in 2004, the year a 25-foot section of the Sequoia Theatre's ceiling came down during a matinee of "Garden State" and forced the Mill Valley Film Festival, which he founded in 1978, to run almost entirely out of San Rafael for a season. The plaster had been weakened by water damage from years earlier, three moviegoers went to the hospital with minor injuries, and the town's one grand old screen sat dark while the festival scattered to the Smith Rafael Film Center, the Regency Theaters, and the old Odd Fellows Hall on Throckmorton Avenue, which had been the festival's very first venue before the Sequoia took over that role. Fishkin promised the town he'd be back the following year, and he was.
That story matters this October not because it repeats, but because it almost did. In October 2023, the Sequoia went dark again, this time because Cinemark's lease on the building ran out rather than because the roof fell in. For six months, downtown Mill Valley had no working movie theater at all. What happened next is the part worth understanding if you live within walking distance of Throckmorton and plan to spend part of festival week there this year.
A theater that stopped renting and started owning
The California Film Institute, the nonprofit that already ran the Smith Rafael Film Center and produced the festival itself, took over the Sequoia's lease, spent six months upgrading the projectors and sound system and refurbishing the lobby, and reopened the 95-year-old theater on May 20, 2024. The building had opened in 1929 as a 1,200-seat single screen, was split into a twin in 1975, and had passed through a string of operators, Century Theatres, then Cinemark, in the decades since. Each of those operators ran it as one commercial location among many, which is a reasonable way to run a business and also exactly why the theater's fate kept depending on whether a national chain's site math still worked for a small-town screen.
CAFILM's arrangement is different in kind, not just in name. The organization that programs the Mill Valley Film Festival every October now also owns the venue that hosts a meaningful share of it, and runs it as a first-run independent, foreign-language, and documentary house the other eleven months of the year. The Sequoia keeps its own regular hours, open 4 to 9 p.m. on weekdays and noon to 9 on weekends, which means the same building that hosts festival standby lines in October is showing a working slate of films in March and July too. The theater isn't dark between festivals waiting to be rediscovered. It's already part of the daily rhythm of the block, which is the actual change worth noticing two years in.
What plays where during MVFF 49
The 49th festival runs October 1 through 11 by the official festival listing, though some partner venues frame the run as October 2 through 12 depending on which venue's calendar you're checking. Either way, the geography is the same: the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, the Sequoia Cinema in Mill Valley, the Lark Theater in Larkspur, and a partner slate at BAMPFA in Berkeley. More than 200 filmmakers from over 50 countries are expected across World Cinema, US Cinema, the Valley of the Docs, Children's FilmFest, a daily shorts program, and the festival's Active Cinema strand.
Not everything lands in Mill Valley, and the pattern for what does is fairly consistent once you know what to look for.
| Venue | Where | What tends to play there |
|---|---|---|
| Sequoia Cinema | Mill Valley | Standard screenings where the film is the entire program |
| Smith Rafael Film Center | San Rafael | Tributes, Spotlights, Galas, and events built around a stage |
| Lark Theater | Larkspur | Selected screenings |
| BAMPFA | Berkeley | Partner screenings for the East Bay audience |
Anything that only needs a screen can run at the Sequoia. Anything that needs a stage, a Q&A, professional lighting, or a step-and-repeat for photos tends to move to the Smith Rafael Film Center instead. This year's Tribute to Spike Lee, a clips-and-conversation evening where he'll also receive the festival's Lifetime Achievement Award, is exactly that kind of program, which is why it belongs in San Rafael rather than four blocks from your own front door.
Tickets run $20 general admission, $16 for CAFILM members, $18 for students and seniors, and $12 for youth 12 and under and for shorts programs, with different pricing for Opening and Closing Night, Tributes, and other special events. During the festival, the box office releases additional tickets for sold-out screenings every day at noon, which means a Sequoia showing that reads as standby in the morning can open up again by early afternoon.
Miller Avenue is resetting its own menu at the same time
Festival week has always come with a dinner question attached to it, and this year that question has a genuinely different set of answers than it did even one festival ago.
Piazza d'Angelo, the longtime Italian spot on Miller Avenue, brought on a new general manager, Indira Diaz, this year along with a new craft cocktail program built around grappa, prosecco, and martinis. A few doors down, Watershed developed its own new cocktail menu with mixologist Scott Beattie, who has built bar programs around Wine Country and San Francisco, leaning into drinks like a yuzu and cucumber combination and a twist on the Hemingway daiquiri that suit the restaurant's indoor-outdoor room.
The same year also brought a chef's name that shows up twice on Miller Avenue. Chef Michael Siegel is behind the elevated pub fare at the new Tam Tavern and behind a reimagined menu at Playa, which has shifted toward Mexican and Latin American dishes including a molcajete stacked with steak and toppings and masa-based plates like tlacoyo. One chef resetting two menus on the same street in the same year is a small fact, but it's the kind of detail that tells you the food scene here isn't drifting, it's being actively rebuilt by people who already work the block.
There's a fourth name worth watching even though it isn't open yet. Fatma and Berk Kinalilar, who founded Troya Mediterranean Kitchen in 2006 and built a reputation for Turkish-inspired dishes and curated wine lists, filed a liquor license application this year for a new concept called Delphine at Mill Creek Plaza on Miller Avenue. No opening date has been confirmed, so it's not a festival-week plan yet, but it's the kind of thing worth checking on before you finalize where you're eating on any given night in October.
If you're catching a matinee instead of an evening screening, the daytime options have shifted too. A short walk from Miller, the Alto Center off East Blithedale is now home to Mendocino Farms, and Strawberry Village has a new bakery from San Francisco's Tartine, both useful if your festival day starts with a noon showing at the Sequoia rather than an evening one.
The actual planning logic
None of this means festival week has become simple. It means the decision residents are making has changed shape. Two festivals ago, the question was whether Mill Valley would have a working theater at all. This year, the question is narrower and more practical: which one or two events are worth the drive north to San Rafael, and which nights can be handled on foot, on standby, with dinner reservations at a restaurant that's doing something different than it was doing last October.
A resident on Miller, Cascade, or Sycamore can be in the Sequoia's standby line within minutes of leaving the house, check the noon ticket release for anything that opens up, and walk to Piazza d'Angelo or Watershed afterward without moving a car. That's the version of festival week that exists now because a theater that used to depend on a chain's lease decisions is owned, instead, by the same nonprofit that has been throwing this party since 1978.
Marks Realty Group spends a lot of time paying attention to the small, specific things that change in Marin from one season to the next, festival logistics and restaurant menus included, because that's the kind of detail that actually describes a place. If you want to trade notes on what's opening around Mill Valley this fall, Marks Realty Group is always glad to talk shop.
