Bay Area native Sam Rockwell will bring Martin McDonagh's dark comedy "Wild Horse Nine" to downtown Mill Valley on Oct. 1, kicking off the 49th Mill Valley Film Festival with a homecoming screening at Sequoia Cinema.

Rockwell, who was born in Daly City and grew up in San Francisco, won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in McDonagh's "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" (2017). The pair reunite in "Wild Horse Nine," which casts Rockwell and John Malkovich as CIA operatives dispatched to Easter Island during the tense lead-up to Chile's 1973 coup. Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits and Parker Posey round out the ensemble. Searchlight Pictures will release the film in theaters Nov. 6.

McDonagh, Rockwell and co-star Mariana Di Girolamo are expected to attend the Oct. 1 screening, which will also play at Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The festival will honor Rockwell with a career tribute on Friday, Oct. 2.

"Bringing 'Wild Horse Nine' to our audience first, with a filmmaker as bold as Martin McDonagh and a cast featuring a fearless performance by Sam Rockwell, is exactly the kind of moment Mill Valley exists to create," MVFF founder and executive director Mark Fishkin said in the festival's announcement.

MVFF49, operated by the California Film Institute, runs Oct. 1–11 across five venues: Sequoia Cinema (25 Throckmorton Ave., Mill Valley), the Lark Theater (549 Magnolia Ave., Larkspur), the Outdoor Art Club (1 West Blithedale Ave., Mill Valley), Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael and BAMPFA in Berkeley. A New Directors Section debuts this year, spotlighting first and second features from emerging filmmakers. The full schedule and tickets are expected in early September at cafilm.org.