Virginia Madsen expects when many Sarasota Film Festival goers see the AIDS drama 1985, they will remember lost figures in their own life who were claimed by an epidemic at a time when so little was known. But she also hopes a new generation of filmgoers will consume the period piece. “I would like this film to be there for very young people,” Madsen tells SRQ. “I don’t think the dad in this movie would watch this movie, but I think very young people could be empowered by this story and recognize themselves.”

Madsen in the film plays the mother to main character Adrian (Cory Michael Smith), a closeted gay man who returns to his conservative family to tell them he’s dying. The 56-year-old Madsen in real life was a 24-year-old actress in Hollywood in the year 1985, and knew too many people facing the same struggles and fate. She even had an uncle, one largely estranged from family, who died in the AIDS era, and Madsen had to explain to older family how he died. “There was so much fear and misinformation out there, and so much of people in front of you dying,” she says. “It was terrifying.”

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Virginia Madsen takes on a supernatural thriller; Jason Wiles, Michael Beach, Lonnie Chavis, and Ryan Merriman star in “Sunny Daze” and FilmNation takes sales rights to Almodovar’s latest. Virginia Madsen and “The Florida Project” star Valeria Cotto will star in the independent supernatural movie “Sarah” with shooting starting in Los Angeles in May.

Tallulah Evans will play the titular role as Sarah. Rachel Crow (“Bumble Bee”), Spencer List, Malaak Hattab, and Daniel Pinder have also been cast. The project centers on a teen harboring a dark secret as she visits her relatives for the summer. Madsen will be playing an occultist in the film.The screenplay was written by Alexander Garcia, who will also be directing and producing under his Multi-Valence productions banner alongside producing partner Anne Stimac with Stuart Arbury.

Madsen received an Academy Award nomination in the best supporting actress category for “Sideways.” She starred in “1985,” which premiered at SXSW last month, as the mother of Cory Michael Smith’s character.

Oscar-nominated actress receives career achievement award, participates in Conversation With series and has new movie showing Three decades after visiting Bradenton to film one of her first movies, Virginia Madsen returns to the area in celebration of a career that’s since earned her Oscar and Golden Globe nominations.

The “Sideways” actress will receive a career achievement award at Sarasota Film Festival and participate in the festival’s In Conversation With series Saturday. She also co-stars in the centerpiece film “1985,” about a gay man struggling to come out to his parents (Madsen and Golden Globe-winning “The Shield” star Michael Chiklis) during the early years of the AIDS crisis.

In a phone interview with the Herald-Tribune, Madsen said part of what attracted her to the film was her familiarity with the era the film depicts. “I was a very young person during that time when nobody knew what AIDS was,” Madsen said. “Now I knew more about it because I was an actress and I’d already had a couple of friends die. But people outside of my community, it was just talked about in hushed tones and they still called it ‘gay cancer.’”

At the same time, she felt the movie had a relevancy to today’s world despite its period setting. “This story is not just about 1985,” Madsen said. “This story is still going on now because there’s still young people who can’t come out to their family, there’s still families who don’t want to talk about their identity of their kids.”

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