Like many of your films, The Phoenician Scheme features a lot of fine art, and I liked that you show all the paintings in the end credits. How do you decide on the art you use in your work?
Well, usually we’re making things for a movie and there may be some inspirations. We had these Russian forger brothers who worked on The Grand Budapest Hotel, and they did wonderful work, and they made a Klimt for us. They’ve also made other pictures for us: some cubist paintings that we had in the Henry Sugar movies we did, and they made me a Kandinsky that I have at home, all these fakes. And they’re wonderful fakes; they age them and they’re great.
In the case of this film, I had the notion that I would like to use the real thing which you never do on a movie because, if you say, ‘We’re going to use a Renoir,’ well, it means that there’s a group of people who come with that painting, and there are rules, and you can’t get a light too close to a Renoir, and the temperature of the room and the dust level in the room has to be maintained, so it becomes an obstacle. And of course people don’t really want to give you their Renoir. But our friend Jasper Sharp, who’s a curator, we went about the process and we found pieces that were not too far away, that we weren’t transporting across the globe, so we borrowed things, and we did have a team of different security and different gloved people looking after them, and it was fine. It takes a bit of effort, it has a bit of cost, but it was a great thing because you could feel it on the set. These pieces never just appeared, they arrived with some fanfare and with a bit of warning. ‘Everybody, here’s the real thing.’
The actors felt it. They were in the presence of these real pieces, and Zsa-zsa is a collector. He likes to own things. He’s a possessor. For instance, he gives his daughter this rosary, and we decided, ’Well, let’s use real diamonds, real emeralds, real rubies.’ We went to Cartier, and they made this piece for us, and they own it, but they loaned it to us. Every time Liesel is holding this in her hand, she’s holding however many thousands of euros of diamonds and rubies. It took Mia some time to feel comfortable, because it would break sometimes and it had to be repaired, but it was interesting and fun to do it that way, and I think they look better.
As someone who is so particular about aspect ratios and film formats in your films, I’m curious to know if there’s any film formats you’d be interested in working with. VistaVision is having a renaissance at the moment…
Well, I wanted to shoot on VistaVision.
Oh, no way!
We didn’t do it in the end because the logistics of it seemed to defeat us. At a certain point, we were just trying to make a certain budget work, but VistaVision was my first choice. What I actually am planning to do and just am doing some tests right now to determine is… so, I shoot on film. This movie is shot on 35 millimetre film, but as you know, 99% of the theatrical screenings in a cinema are a DCP, and the DCP is almost like you’re screening the negative. When you make a print, there’s grain in the print. So you have the grain from the negative and you have the grain from the print, and it’s not as sharp as the DCP. The DCP is as sharp as the original negative. I’ve watched my films as a DCP against the 35 millimetre film print, and the print is… it has the quality of film, and the film print is different. It has the magical thing of being a film print, but it doesn’t have the detail of the DCP. So what I’m going to try to do here is to make 70 millimetre prints from our 35 millimetre negative, which has been made into a 4K DCP, and see what that’s like because I think that that might be a kind of combination which hasn’t quite been done, and which might produce a very good film print.That’s a response to what you just said, which is not really an answer to your question.
No, no, you did answer the question! That’s fascinating to hear – and it’s interesting given how many films shot on digital are transferred to prints nowadays.
Well the idea is you just shoot on 65 the old way, 65 millimetre and you print on 70, but maybe using the digital intermediate at 4K might match something like that… but anyway, I guess we’ll see. I probably will not accomplish the same effect, but it’ll be some other thing in between.
And you always discover something from doing these experiments. Sometimes the things that you end up creating are not what you wanted to create, but they’re great anyway.
Yes. You’re hoping for the right accident.
What a lovely way of putting it! Speaking of fathers and daughters, your daughter has a small part in this film, and I was curious to know if this was her idea or your idea?
I think virtually every filmmaker’s daughter who’s ever been in one of their films, it was the daughter’s idea. [laughs] I was reluctant to put my daughter in a movie. But I’m glad I put her in because I love what she did.
Oh, I loved what she did! She understood completely her role.
She was very thoughtful about it and very focused, and it was a great experience for her, but you know, I don’t particularly think everybody needs to know that that’s who that is, but I guess anybody who’s interested will quickly figure that out. She loved doing it, though. I will say she wants to do it again.
The Phoenician Scheme is rooted in the idea of legacy, whether that’s familial legacy or artistic legacy, and what we leave behind, and what is left to the wider world when we die. Not to sound horribly morbid, but I’m curious, is that something that you end up thinking about a lot?
Let me think… I’ll say this: I have never made a movie where I would feel comfortable saying, ‘oh, that one was a mistake’. I’ve only made the movies I really wanted to make: my own movies. If somebody likes one and hates another, they’re still part of my family, and I just have to live with whatever they all are, how they are. I’ve always tried to treat them as a body of work to some degree, and even now we’re doing a thing with the Criterion Collection, they’re releasing my first 10 movies as a boxset. We’re doing a similar thing with the soundtracks, and we have the books about the films, and so on. So it’s something that I am conscious of and have been conscious of. I want these movies to all sit together as a set.
After the event of my death, I don’t really know if there’s really much point, but I do think about it in relation to my daughter. She’s going to be the one who is responsible for this stuff and I want it to all be in order for her. And I feel like so many people’s work, my own and all my collaborators – and there’s a lot of collaborators and a lot of artisans of so many kinds, all these actors, my co-writers and directors of photography, and production designers and painters and sculptors and puppet makers – all this work is contained in these movies. I feel it’s partly my job to look after them.
This ties into the exhibition that is happening at the Cinémathèque Français at the moment and that will be in London later in the year at the Design Museum, and making sure that this work isn’t lost to time like so much amazing art and so much amazing film history is.
You know, the exhibition wasn’t something I particularly wanted to do because I knew it was gonna take some time. It’s too much trouble! But I’ve been saving all this stuff all these years. I’ve been storing all these props and pictures and all these puppets, and so every now and then someone would want to show them. I kept saying, ‘I need to be older for this,’ but then when the Cinémathèque wanted to do it we decided it was time. The Cinémathèque to me is something that’s important to support, and the fact they wanted to do this, turned out to be a way for us to get everything organised for it to be an ongoing thing, so it’ll go to London, and then it has other destinations after that. I was dreading the process because I just want to work on my movies! But then in the course of it, working with a lot of people who I know well, and then Cinémathèque and the Design Museum, it turned out to be a good experience. I was there yesterday, in fact, because I had an official task to do, and there were all these kids and students in there, looking at our puppets… there was something rewarding about it.
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Falling Into Place review – Sally Rooney-core for the big screen
About Little White Lies
Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
The Encampments review – inspiring portrait of collective action
About Little White Lies
Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
Almost everything in film is subjective, but with our annual list of 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee, we try to be as objective as can be.
It is largely about numbers: How many submissions does a festival receive? How much money, if any, does the festival pay in travel costs? How much does it offer in prizes? How many distributors, other industry representatives, and news outlets attend?
It’s also about specifics: Who are those distributors? Is the festival Oscar qualifying? Does it offer a screenwriting competition? Great panels? Interesting guests? Rides to the airport? Food?
We’re especially interested in ratios: We think a moviemaker’s best ROI will be found at a high-quality festival with an inviting submission-to-acceptance ratio, where you’ll have a good chance of getting in and meeting people who can help you — not at a loud party, screaming over a VIP rope line you’re not allowed to cross, but in pleasant settings where you can enjoy real human moments.
So we love hidden gems, and festivals that not only look great on paper, but show heart in person.
Each year, we prepare our list of 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee through questionnaires submitted by festivals, fact-checking with filmmakers who attend them, and, as often as possible, our own visits. We don’t bother including the biggest festivals on this list, because if you’re savvy enough to read MovieMaker, you’re probably also familiar with Berlinale, Cannes, Sundance, SXSW, Toronto, Tribeca and Venice.
We’ve also skipped a number of very prestigious festivals that receive so many submissions — and accept so few — that they’re real longshots. As always, festivals that are Academy Awards qualifying in at least one category have an “A” next to their name, and those with screenwriting competitions have an “S.” And like we always say, not every festival on this list will be perfect for everyone, but we’re sure at least one will be perfect for you.
So with that, here’s our list of…
50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee 2025
Denzel Washington at the American Black Film Festival. Photo by Bobbi Broome /ABFF
A perennial on this list, ABFF is one of the most respected festivals focused on Black artists, and has drawn a who’s who of A-list attendees including Issa Rae (the 2024 festival’s creative director), Halle Berry, Ryan Coogler, Kevin Hart, Will Packer, Anthony Anderson and many more. This year’s event will include Nia Long and Larenz Tate, who will reminisce about Love Jones, which premiered in 1997, the year founder Jeff Friday launched the festival. ABFF draws 5,000 visitors annually and has received backing from Warner Bros. Discovery, NBCUniversal, Sony, and many more. Some filmmakers’ travel costs are covered through the HBO Short Film Award Competition and the Black & Unlimited Fatherhood Project Director’s Showcase, and the latter includes a $10,000 cash prize, the largest prize offered at the festival. Many distributors have been known to attend, including from Warner Bros, HBO, TV One, Starz, Onyx Collective and Netflix.
AMERICAN DOCUMENTARY AND ANIMATION FILM FESTIVAL (A)
Palm Springs, California / March and/or April 2026 / amdocfilmfest.com
AmDocs draws some heavy hitters — Sean Penn’s Ukraine documentary Superpower was among the films in 2024 — but it has an inviting submission-to-admission ratio that makes it an especially appealing option for filmmakers who can easily make the 90-minute trip from Los Angeles to Palm Springs. The fest works with filmmakers on travel, offering discounted rooms or participation in its popular Homestay Host Program. It also notes that while a significant number of industry representatives attend, they tend to prefer to keep low profiles and discretely seek out filmmakers who capture their interest. Jockeying is generally discouraged: The festival emphasizes that every film is different, and that moviemakers should support each other by turning out for one another’s films, rather than seeing them as competition. That said, there is a Film Fund Pitch Competition that has helped filmmakers with both financial support and access to industry decision makers: Past AmDocs films have gone on to get industry representation from entities including HBO, Showtime, MTV Films and PBS.
The festival, which just celebrated its 49th year, is another regular on this list thanks in large part to its Oscar qualifying status, screenwriting competition, and generous hospitality, which includes covering airfare and lodging for moviemakers with feature films in competition and a travel stipend for other films. Distributors in attendance have included Oscilloscope Laboratories, A24 and Tubi. Additional industry representation has included 3 Arts Entertainment, Big Picture Casting, Rose Locke Casting, Vanishing Angle, Seed & Spark, Buffalo 8 and more. It is known for promoting Southern talent, and especially women and people of color, as well as for adventurous programming, including the dialogue-free Finnish feature Giant’s Kettle, which played the latest edition.The festival also hosts parties galore.
Especially popular with writers, AFF manages to be packed with events and laid-back at the same time. You’ll meet people at parties, waiting in line for tacos, and walking down the street. Guests this year will include indie icon Christine Vachon, who will receive the Polly Platt Award for Producing, and Living Single creator Yvette Lee Bowser, recipient of the Outstanding Television Writer Award. The films are always top-notch, and placing high in AFF’s screenwriting competition will likely get you the attention of agents and managers. The festival has a challenging submission to acceptance ratio, but getting in means being in the presence of a bevy of distributors and sales agents, including Netflix, Magnolia Pictures, The Coven, Vertical Entertainment and Cinetic Media. The festival also offers airfare and lodging reimbursements of up to $1,000 to the winning films in each category. Adding to the hospitality, each accepted film is assigned a local filmmaker liaison who can help with transportation, screenings, panels, parties, and introducing you to local flavor.
Blackstar describes itself as a “care-centered festival exclusively for Black, Brown, and Indigenous filmmakers globally, that is focused on liberation — not just representation.” It stands out for how many things it does right, including helping with travel costs for filmmakers and offering screening fees — $600 for features and $300 for shorts. Distributors known to attend include NEON, AmDOC/POV, Comcast/Xfinity, NBCUniversal, The New York Times and Netflix, and it is known for some of the best parties and panels around, as well a huge prize package for the BlackStar Pitch for non-fiction short films: the winner gets $75,000, and the runner-up $25,000. It also has a not-impossible ratio of submissions to accepted films.
This festival, established in 1980, just wrapped its latest edition — so you have plenty of time to apply for next year. If you can make your way to South Korea’s second-largest city — known for beautiful beaches, bustling markets and serene temples — the festival helps with three nights of lodging for invited filmmakers. It welcomes distributors from across South Korea, and past guests have included representatives of Blackmagic Design, the Korean Film Council, and more. Films come from all over the world, including Italy’s “The Birthday Party,” by Francesco Sossai, which earned Academy Award qualification last year by winning the Grand Prix in International Competition. Other 2024 highlights included a talk by Emmy-nominated director Vanessa Crocini, who also served as a jury member. With filmmakers’ permission, their films continue to be shown long after the festival ends: Following the main festival in April, BISFF organizes screenings in Busan and other South Korean cities. The 2025 edition of the festival was just starting as we went to press, and has ended by the time you read this.
Lining up at the Calgary International Film Festival. Photo courtesy of Calgary International Film Festival
CALGARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (A)
Calgary, Alberta, Canada / September 18-28 / ciffcalgary.ca
Calgary is one of the fastest-rising film hubs in the world — it just cracked the top five big cities on our annual list of the Best Places to Live and Work as a Moviemaker — and the festival reflects its growing importance. The programmers’ excellent taste includes programming the world premiere of the comedy Micro Budget, a story of disastrous DIY moviemaking that anyone in film will enjoy. The festival helps with travel costs for many filmmakers, and gets good press turnout, as well as industry attention from entities including the National Film Board of Canada and Raven Banner Entertainment. Its Industry Week panels have included insights into casting, approaching actors for indie films, punching up scripts, and rolling with industry ups and downs. The festival also hands out around $30,000 in prize money each year.
The Chilliwack Independent Film Festival awards ceremony. Photo courtesy of Chilliwack Independent Film Festival
CHILLIWACK INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL
Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada / November 19-23 / ciff.ca
Chilliwack, a largely agricultural community of roughly 100,000 people that’s about a two-hour drive from Vancouver, is surrounded by stunning rivers, meditative hiking trails and snowcapped mountain peaks, which means you can start your day with nature and then get down to the business (and pleasure) of film. Last year, for example, director Lawrence Jacomelli went out to watch eagles snatch salmon from a stream in the hours before Chilliwack world-premiered his grindhouse homage Blood Star. Last year’s event also included a screening of Longlegs, shot in Vancouver, and two very substantive talks with its director, Osgood Perkins, who explained how he shot the film and The Monkey in the region. Chilliwack thrives at highlighting the adventurous work of local and Canadian filmmakers — Jerome Yoo’s Mongrels, shot near Chilliwack, won 2024’s Best Feature Film award, and Matthew Rankin’s French and Persian Universal Language, Canada’s latest Oscar submission for the Best International Feature Film Oscar, won Chilliwack’s Best of Fest award. The fest also cares deeply about the next generation of indie film: It gave the Best Fraser Valley Film award to “Rat King,” made by students at Chilliwack’s GW Graham Secondary. The festival has many intimate, unpretentious parties and panels where you can meet industry representatives. Those who attended last year included representatives from Elevation Pictures, Raven Banner Entertainment and The Coven, one of the companies behind Terrifier 3. Chilliwack is a fast-growing place and fast-growing festival with an inviting submission-to-admission ratio.
CINEQUEST (A, S)
San Jose and Mountain View, California / March 2026 / cinequest.org
This Silicon Valley festival is dedicated to using technology to boost filmmaking, distribution and exhibition, but has a very human touch: Cinequest vows to treat every filmmaker like a star, and it’s a true discovery festival that offers an inviting admission-to-submission ratio and programs roughly 90 percent of its films from submissions. Distributors in attendance, always seeking the next new thing, have included A24, IFC, HBO, Roadside Attractions, Magnolia, Netflix, Oscilloscope and more. Other industry attendees include producers, managers and sales agents, and the hospitality package offers hotel deals, food and drink, lounges, and more. The fest also offers transportation allowances on a case-by-case basis. Even the biggest skeptics of technology will benefit from learning more about it, and Cinequest obliges with panels on subjects like AI and creativity, as well as traditional talks about storytelling and producing.
Known for crowd pleasers and huge prize packages — it hands out 35 awards totaling more than $130,000 — Cleveland draws a wide array of terrific films to the sprawling and historic Playhouse Square. In addition to programming films, it pairs them with local nonprofits to encourage robust discussions about their subject matter. Representatives of Cleveland’s own Gravitas Ventures are known to attend, as are industry representatives from AMC Networks, ESPN, and more. It offers travel stipends for both features and shorts, and this year’s smart programming included Wendy Lobel’s feature documentary Anxiety Club, about comedians dealing with anxiety, and Cincinnati filmmaker Maureen McEly’s “Golden Hour,” a tightly devastating five-minute short about loss and digital exploitation. Cleveland also offers a reasonable submission-to-admission ratio, so a great film has a good chance of getting in. Its latest edition wrapped in April.
Hollywood’s love affair with Coronado Island goes back more than a century, when the Hotel del Coronado, the festival’s presenting sponsor, began establishing itself as a playground for movie stars — among the guests over the years were Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable, Mae West, Katharine Hepburn and many more. Each year the festival basks in that history while looking to the future. It has a very inviting submission-to-acceptance ratio, generously puts up invited filmmakers, and provides prizes ranging from $500-5,000. Last year’s honorees included biopic masters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who received the Screenwriting Award at the Leonard Maltin Industry Tribute Gala that is hosted within the festival, and Jane Seymour, who recalled her journey from chorus girl to superstar as she accepted the Legacy Award. Screenings include Oscar contenders as well as inspired and idiosyncratic docs, many of which nod to the San Diego area’s strong ties to the military and veterans. Distributors known to attend have included Searchlight Pictures, A24, Amazon Studios and Tangled Bank Studios.
CUCALORUS FILM FESTIVAL
Wilmington, North Carolina / November 19 -23 / cucalorus.org
Cucalorus is not a festival where you’ll be wined and dined by distributors, handed prize money, or granted Oscar eligibility. But because all those things are off the table, you might get something more valuable: friendships that can turn into partnerships that can result in art for the sake of art. And great art — once you stop worrying about rewards — often, ironically, brings rewards. We can also promise you’ll take home priceless recipes for cheese grits and fried cornbread, a renewed sense of worth, and memories of laughing very hard while at the festival’s beloved venue, the community theater Jengo’s Playhouse. Chief instigating officer Dan Brawley will make sure everyone has fun watching weird, daring, inspiring films, paired with music and comedy and performance art pieces. And you can pay tribute to the late, great David Lynch by checking out the local locations for Blue Velvet, one of many masterful movies shot in Wilmington.
DENVER FILM FESTIVAL
Denver, Colorado / October 31 – November 9 / denverfilm.org
Known for hospitality — including generous help with transportation and accommodations — Denver draws an impressive guest list which last year included The Bear co-showrunner Joanna Calo and media outlets including Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair and more. Distributors in attendance included Vertical Entertainment, and the awards-season lineup included September 5, The Brutalist and Nickel Boys. The festival is also generous with cash prizes: its Music on Film-Film on Music Documentary Grant Program, for example, provides $20,000 annually in finishing funds for U.S.-based documentaries, specifically for licensing, scoring, and composition. Last year’s event included acting workshops, live podcast recordings, and private dinners for select filmmakers. The submission-to-admission ratio is fairly welcoming.
“Three Sessions” filmmaker Erica Michelle Singleton (center)speaks at an El Dorado Film Festival Q&A. Photo courtesy of El Dorado Film Festival
El Dorado is named for a lost city of gold — perfect for a festival where hidden treasures abound. A brand-new addition to our list, El Dorado is a former oil-boom town of less than 20,000, located between Little Rock (120 miles north) and Shreveport (95 miles southwest.) You could easily overlook it. But just off the main commercial drag is the South Arkansas Arts Center, the elegant home of the El Dorado Film Festival, and just a few minutes away is a revitalized, elegant downtown filled with history. On our trip to the latest edition of the festival, we found ourselves captivated, again and again: by a 40th anniversary screening of the horror classic Fright Night, featuring a Q&A with star (and El Dorado native) William Ragsdale; by daring, thoughtful films by University of Central Arkansas filmmakers; and most of all by an entrancing walking tour by raconteur and South Arkansas Historical Preservation Society curator Darrin Riley, which featured the secret histories of Gone With the Wind and True Grit, which was based on the novel by El Dorado native Charles Portis. The tour ended with a treasure trove of Hollywood memorabilia that a local resident collected over the decades without anyone knowing. This is the kind of small, intimate festival where you see a producer on the rise pull a student filmmaker aside to talk to him for an hour. We also got inside tips on financing and distribution from Vanishing Angle vice president Ben Wiessner, and feasted on snacks from a friendly local, Delaine Gates, who later turned out to have been the drama teacher for multiple filmmakers in attendance, including festival executive director Alexander Jeffery. The movie lovers of small-town America deserve more events like this. And we haven’t even told you about the secret speakeasy hidden in a comic-book store.
Three days of fun, smart, spirited films in a borderland city packed with the stories of three cultures: Texas, Mexico, and the fascinating places where they intersect. But that may be underselling it: El Paso also has a close rapport with nearby Las Cruces, New Mexico, another fast-rising film hub. This is still a smaller, intimate festival with a very favorable submission-to-admission ratio, so a great movie has a great chance of being accepted. Those who get in will find themselves quickly embraced by a film scene that emphasizes cheering everyone on and raising all boats. It assists filmmakers with airfare, lodging and local transportation, as well as very good food. Festival founder and artistic director Carlos F. Corral — himself a local filmmaker — keeps the good feelings going, sometimes surprising filmmakers onstage with awards during their Q&As. It’s also known for cut-to-the-chase workshops and panels presented by the El Paso Film & Creative Industries Commission at Visit El Paso. Recent films to screen at the fest include the festival darlings Breakup Season by H. Nelson Tracey and “Heart of Texas” by Gregory J.M. Kasunich.
Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival founder Sandra Lipski. Courtesy of EMIFF
EVOLUTION MALLORCA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (S)
EMIFF draws fabulous guests, is set in one of the most beautiful locations in the world, and has an attractive submission-to-acceptance ratio. What’s not to like? Guests to this paradisiacal event on the shimmering Balearic islands capital of Palma are drawn to unforgettable vistas and event venues, and also to its theme of “bridging cultures — bridging people.” Festival founder Sandra Lipski, who has ties to Los Angeles, Spain and her native Germany, both embodies and evangelizes the idea that film can connect people to bring about important changes on a global scale. The festival fulfills that idea with in-depth talks on subjects like how to shoot films sustainably. It has welcomed distributors including Magnolia Pictures, IFC Films, Roadside Attractions and A24, and past award honorees have included Mads Mikkelsen and Ana de Armas. The festival is generous in helping toward travel costs and with prizes, handing out nearly $30,000 in in-kind grants from Mallorca’s production and equipment rental house Palma Pictures. It’s a regular on this list for reasons that go well beyond its gorgeous setting.
Moviemakers Mike Flanagan, left, and Chris Stuckmann at Fantasia. Photo by Julie Delisle, courtesy of Fantasia.
Spanning two weeks, Fantasia is a testament to the power of seeing a film in a theater with an audience. Some of the most daring movies we’ve ever seen — like Alex Phillips’ All Jacked Up and Full of Worms and Scooter McCrae’s shocking Black-Eyed Susan — were in packed Fantasia screenings, where everyone buckled in and committed to bold, cathartic viewing experiences. The Fantasia audience, known for meowing when the lights go down, is one of the most sophisticated on the planet, knowingly laughing at every subverted trope or particularly audacious kill. Founded in 1996, the festival is generous with travel costs, lodging and ground transportation, and has drawn such industry movers and shakers as Arrow Films, Elevation Pictures, IFC, Mongrel Media, Music Box Films, Raven Banner Entertainment, Shudder, Universal Pictures, Vinegar Syndrome, XYZ Films, Yellow Veil and more. Artistic director Mitch Davis is one of the best in the festival world, known to elegantly extrapolate, in English and French, on the history and importance of genre filmmaking. Last year’s event included special book events for Kier-La Janisse’s Cockfight: A Fable of Failure and Heidi Honeycutt’s I Spit on Your Celluloid, as well as a retrospective on the Canadian genre classic Cube with director Vincenzo Natali in attendance, and artist talks with Mike Flanagan and Gary Pullin. The festival also hosts the international co-production market Frontières, which welcomes big, bold pitches.
Porto Alegre means “joyful harbor,” and Fantaspoa offers just that: a place for filmmakers to party and unwind at a genre-focused festival with an emphasis on audacious films. Last year’s lineup included the world premiere of Michael Pierro’s brutally efficient automation-and-alienation horror movie Self Driver. The festival helps with lodging and local transportation, as well as food and drinks. (In its application for this list, let it be known that it put an exclamation point after the latter.) Festival director Joao Fleck personally selects films for the festival’s press partner to pitch to news outlets.And while the festival makes no promises about industry attendance, distributors-in-the-know do pay attention to its lineup: See page 14 of this magazine, which explains how Ethos Releasing found Neal Dhand’s Dark My Light via Fantaspoa. The festival is also known for seeking long-term friendships, noting that it doesn’t like to program a film and never see the filmmakers again — its goal is to hang with them through long careers. It also offers a quite inviting submission-to-acceptance ratio.
This is a young festival, only in its third year, but it is making a mark with its emphasis on “showcasing and advocating for personal, ambitious regional cinema,” a pledge placed prominently on its homepage. Film Fest Knox is notably one of the very few festivals that can promise a theatrical run: The winner of the American Regional Cinema Competition plays on big screens to general audiences thanks to the fest’s partners at Regal. The fest offers $18,000 in total prize money, which includes $5,000 to the winner of its Elev8or Pitch competition and smaller prizes for second and third place. Another welcome attribute is an appealing submission-to-admission ratio, and the fest provides generous help with travel costs. Last year’s attendees included C. Mason Wells, director of distribution for MUBI. Selected films included Tracie Laymon’s Bob Trevino Likes It and Yen Tan’s All That We Love.
What if an ’80s slumber party were a film festival? That’s our best description of FilmQuest, where an almost all-filmmaker audience gathers in a wholesome, clean-living Utah mountain town to watch some of the most wonderfully depraved movies ever made. People who meet at the fest one year have been known to return the next as collaborators. But the best part of FilmQuest is watching long late-night shorts blocks, where your brain melts into the insanity of one shocking film after another. It’s a mind-bending, cult-like experience, and a total joy. Festival founder Jonathan Martin is the charisma machine who holds it all together, making everyone feel like an honored guest and instant friend. Also, we never visit Provo without eating the delicious, creative ice cream at Rockwell, down the street from Velour, the festival’s screening venue.
One of the world’s most respected documentary film festivals, Full Frame is known for excellent curation and making filmmakers feel appreciated even before they arrive. In addition to offering hotel accommodations and screening fees, it assists with travel planning so documentarians can focus entirely on the festival experience. Thanks to Full Frame’s hospitality, roughly 60% of the films at the fest have a filmmaker present for a post-screening Q&A. It also offers several awards that each include a cash prize of $5,000. Distributors in attendance have included ESPN, Netflix, HBO, Working Films and more. Oscar-nominated Nickel Boys filmmaker RaMell Ross was among recent jurors. The festival isn’t easy to get into, but those who are accepted can expect a very welcoming experience among fellow filmmakers at the top of their craft.
Located in an utterly charming city on Ireland’s West Coast, the fleadh (Gaelic for “festival,”) rejects red carpets. Instead it offers dreamy, walkable streets where you’ll bump into filmmakers from all over the globe. Besides inviting screening venues, it provides a relaxed, informal environment for buying and selling films. The Film Fair, which runs parallel to the fleadh, draws a wide range of industry representatives from Shudder, BBC Films, Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland, Lionsgate, RTÉ, Sky Cinema, Studio Canal, MUBI, Netflix, and more. Last year’s screenings included the Irish premiere of Rich Peppiatt’s unconventional music biopic Kneecap, which won three awards, including the Audience Award, and the festival presented its Galway Hooker award to Brian Cox. You can clear your head with walks along the gorgeous unspoiled coastline or the ripping River Corrib.
Demi Moore arrives. Courtesy of the Hamptons International Film Festival
HAMPTONS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (A, S)
East Hampton, Southampton and Sag Harbor, New York / October 3-13 / hamptonsfilmfest.org
HIFF could easily coast on its starry awards-season guest lists — its “In Conversation With…” series has included everyone from Steven Spielberg to Martin Scorsese — or on its storied East End locations. It could also rest on its prize packages, which total more than $100,000, including cash and in-kind goods and services. But as easy as it would be for the festival to kick back and bask in being an awards-season stalwart in a rich people’s playground, it also makes a serious effort to discover and promote new talent. This is a hard festival to get into, but make the cut and you’ll have the chance to gather in a casual, close-knit setting with agents, managers and producers who can help bring your next script to the screen. Distributors in attendance have included A24, Apple, Cinetic, Dark Star, Focus Features, NEON, Netflix, and many more.
Interior Chinatown creator Charles Yu and castmembers Ronny Chieng, Chloe Bennet, and Jimmy O. Yang at the Hawai’i International Film Festival. Photo by Sthanlee B. Mirador, courtesy of Hawai’i International Film Festival
Located in one of the most breathtaking locales of any festival, HIFF offers a one-of-a-kind hospitality and celebration of Asian-Pacific and international film. Unsurprisingly, the festival doesn’t have a hard time attracting great guests: Last year’s included legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins, as well as Hong Kong superstar Sandra Ng and Boba Fett himself, Temuera Morrison. It’s also a big industry draw, attracting distributors like Netflix, Fox Searchlight, Amazon, Well Go USA, Sakka, and Film Movement. Recent jurors have included Chris Kekaniokalani Bright (screenwriter of Lilo & Stitch), and prizes for filmmakers total more than $20,000. HIFF is also known for presenting the NETPAC award, which promotes Asian and Pacific cinema by celebrating exceptional talents. And its submission-to-acceptance ratio is more favorable than you might expect, given the obvious appeal of the location. You’ll want to allow yourself plenty of time for hikes, bikes, kayaks, surfing and rock climbing.
A screening at Indy Shorts. Courtesy of Heartland Film
HEARTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Indianapolis, Indiana / October 9-19 / heartlandfilm.org
The nonprofit arts organization Heartland Film puts on both the feature-focused Heartland in the fall and the shorts-focused Indy Shorts in the summer, and both are among the most friendly festivals you’ll find anywhere on the planet. The organizers, starting with Heartland Film president Michael Ault, take care to welcome everyone and show off the best of Indianapolis — including the sprawling Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, site of many screenings. The other excellent venues include the Living Room Theaters, one anchor of the thriving Bottleworks District. Heartland has a welcoming submission-to-admission ratio, and while Indy Shorts is tougher to get into, both are well worth the trip, and both festivals are generous in helping with travel. Major distributors to attend have included Netflix, National Geographic Documentary Films, Searchlight Pictures, Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, IFC Films, NEON, Prime Video and Magnolia Pictures, and both festivals offer generous prize packages: about $60,000 for Heartland, and $35,000 for Indy Shorts. The latter is Oscar qualifying, and Heartland re-showcases the three grand prize-winning films from Indy’s Oscar-qualifying categories: Documentary, Live Action and Animation. Heartland regularly shows award-magnet films — last year’s included Emilia Perez, September 5 and A Real Pain — in addition to DIY standouts. Indy Shorts is known for a mix of crowd pleasers and very adventurous programming, like the Finnish “Bright White Light,” an animated Finnish film documenting near-death experiences. Both Heartland and Indy Shorts are among the very few festivals on not only this list but also our list of the 25 Coolest Festivals in the World.
You want to screen your films for the HollyShorts audience: This is a very strong discovery festival that draws not only distributors — including Netflix, Lionsgate, Short of the Week, Omeleto, ESPN, and more — but also agents from Gersh, CAA and WME. Representatives from Monkeypaw, Vanishing Angle, LB Entertainment and the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge have also attended. And HollyShorts welcomes representatives from several festivals on this list, like NewFilmmakers Los Angeles and the Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival. Jurors have included Rosario Dawson, Rachel Brosnahan, Matthew Modine and David Dastmalchian. And the stunning prize package is valued at more than $175,000, including a $60,000 Panavision camera package and $10,000 in Kodak film stock. Company 3, meanwhile, gives out $80,000 in color correction work. The festival also spawned the short film streaming site BitPix and the festival offshoots HollyShorts Comedy and HollyShorts London. Last year’s films included Victoria Warmerdam’s “I’m Not a Robot,” which went on to win the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film. The festival, which just celebrated its 20th year, is the real deal in every possible sense.
This filmmaker-focused festival offers an intimate, rejuvenating setting near Hot Springs National Park where documentarians can celebrate each other’s work and strategize about the future of documentary filmmaking. It offers a fairly welcoming submission-to-admission ratio, generous help with travel costs, and access to a wide swath of industry representatives, including such distributors as ESPN Films, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and NatGeo Documentaries. Other industry attendees have included the Southern Documentary Fund, Kartemquin and Reel South. Last year’s films included a who’s who of celebrated docs, including No Other Land, winner of the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. The festival’s Wellness Series invites filmmakers to fully appreciate the beauty of the locale with hiking, yoga, and meditations.
Julien Dubuque promises “communication, filmmaker appreciation and respect” to all, epitomizing unpretentious Midwestern hospitality. It’s a budget-friendly, centrally located festival known for free transportation to and from the surrounding airports (including Chicago), bountiful free food, and lodging that includes the highly regarded HomeStay program, in which filmmakers can stay free in locals’ homes. The fest is designed to be walkable and offers free shuttles, and festival executive director Susan Gorrell goes out of her way to be accessible to all. Representatives from LeoMark Studios and Circus Road are among the industry professionals who have attended. The festival also hands out more than $20,000 in prize money, and its panels include daily coffee talks about filmmaking and industry insights, as well as a discussion where filmmakers can hear firsthand from jurors about how they select winning films. Finally, the admission-to-submission ratio is fairly welcoming.
This high-prestige festival is selective, yes, but not impossible to get into with a great, bold film — and the benefits of attending are obvious even aside from its stunning location along Lake Maggiore and the Alps. Locarno provides generous assistance with lodging and ground transportation, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes. You’ll also be a part of history at this fest, founded in 1946, when you join the 8,000 people who gather each night to watch films on one of Europe’s largest screens on the Piazza Grande. Among the many ways Locarno incubates talent is its Locarno Academy for young people, and it champions the film experience with its Open Doors programs for regions where independent cinema faces its greatest challenges. The festival unsurprisingly has a huge industry presence: Distributors known to attend include MUBI, Bande à Part Films, RTS Radio Télévision Suisse, France 2 Cinéma, StudioCanal, Sony and more. And the press team stands out, offering five press agents covering France, Germany and Austria, Italy, Switzerland and International, for films that don’t have their own publicist.
Established in 1983 to promote the films, videos, and digital mediaworks of Asian and Pacific Islander artists, the festival just wrapped its 41st edition. It follows core values that include serving as an agent rather than an impediment of change, and prioritizing community building over individual ego inflation. It also emphasizes “R3:NEWAL” — Regeneration, Reciprocity, and Renewal — to help filmmakers connect with and inspire each other. It is generous in assisting with travel costs, and has drawn industry representatives from NBCUniversal and Sony, among others. Recent films have included the world premiere of Nobuko Miyamoto: A Song in Movement, from the Japanese American National Museum and PBS SoCal. The festival has a very encouraging submission-to-acceptance ratio and hands out a bevy of awards, including for emerging filmmakers.
Perhaps the most unique of any film festival, this short-film competition requires that all entries be made in Louisiana. They vie for a $25,000 prize that goes up to $50,000 if the film is shot in Caddo Parish, where Shreveport is located, or nearby Bossier Parish. The entrants are whittled down to 20, who attend a weekend of screenings and other events that include street parties, food tastings, live comedy and much more. Though it’s a competition, the feeling is extremely convivial and collaborative — you frequently see the director of one film pitching in to be the cinematographer or cameraperson on a friend/rival’s short. While everyone is hoping for the $50,000 (or $25,000), many smaller prizes are handed out as well. It also welcomes filmmakers at all experience levels, from people who’ve never made a film to people who’ve made many, so it’s an ideal opportunity for those looking to break in. Festival founder and executive director Gregory Kallenberg and director Chris Lyon make everyone feel welcome, even remembering details like your favorite drink. If you aren’t from Shreveport, you’ll go home wishing your town had an event that brings the community together like the Prize.
Mammoth Lakes Film Festival attendees. Courtesy of MLFF
Devoted to finding unique, innovative and personal stories, MLFF packs screenings with audiences hungry for risky films, especially from previously overlooked filmmakers. Its commitment to diversity includes diversity of thought, style, and inspiration, and the festival cares more about heart than pedigree. Festival director Shira Dubrovner and her team create a warm atmosphere that includes trips to the local hot springs. Distributors in attendance have included Greenwich Entertainment and Indican Pictures, and last year’s guests included producer Tim Moore of Clint Eastwood’s Malpaso Productions and Oscar-nominated May December co-writer Alex Mechanik, who took part in a Saturday morning panel and also met with 10 screenplay competition finalists. Festivals can be gateways to other festivals, and that’s very much the case with the highly regarded Mammoth Lakes: programmers from Slamdance, Sundance, and Tribeca all attended last year. The submission-to-admission policy is selective but reasonable, and Mammoth Lakes also offers a total of more than $40,000 in cash and other prizes. The latest edition just wrapped.
Closing night at the Miami Jewish Film Festival. Photo by Ray Rivero, courtesy of MJFF
Welcoming more than 50,000 film lovers a year — about a third of whom are not Jewish — the festival is a platform for connection and cultural exchange through storytelling. It isn’t the easiest festival to get into, but selected filmmakers receive a standout experience that includes very generous travel packages and the opportunity to explore attractions like Miami Beach and the Wynwood Arts District. Distributors known to attend include Greenwich Films, Menemsha Films, and Briarcliff Entertainment, and the festival notes that three to five films are picked up for distribution from the festival each year. The festival also offers a large prize package totaling more than $60,000, including $18,000 each for the winner of the Grand Jury Prize and Documentary Achievement Award. (The winners should be substantially of Jewish interest and/or produced in Israel.) Another major prize, the Torchbearer Jury Prize, awards $10,000 to a film centered on the Holocaust, and the resilience and fortitude of victims and survivors.
Montclair, an affluent bedroom community for many who commute to Manhattan, has one of the most receptive audiences of any festival: It is filled with industry and media veterans who have seen it all and are up for challenging material — and reap the emotional and intellectual rewards of engaging with it. The festival’s reputation for stellar programming and proximity to NYC helps it draw a large industry presence, including such distributors as Netflix, A24, Focus Features, NEON, Lionsgate, and more. It also draws a large media turnout and packs its juries with journalists from the likes of EW, The Associated Press, and Rolling Stone. Attendees look forward to thoughtful filmmaker Q&As, some of which are led by Stephen Colbert, whose wife, Evelyn McGee Colbert, is president of the board of Montclair Film. The festival’s devotion to uplifting new talent includes giving the $5,000 Mark Urman Award For Fiction Filmmaking to an early-career filmmaker.
Nashville is now not just a music but film-and-TV industry town, which is reflected in the turnout for this highly respected, fairly selective festival: In addition to distributors like Oscilloscope and Paramount+, it has been known to draw production companies like Monarch Media and Riverside Entertainment, as well as agents from UTA and news outlets including USA Today. It helps narrative and documentary feature filmmakers with a $500 travel stipend for airfare and local transport, while covering their lodging. The fest’s Creators Conference includes a mix of locals and Hollywood visitors for panels on subjects like indie film success and film and TV music — this is Music City, after all. Another highlight is the Pitch Competition, in which 10 finalists pitch their ideas for feature films or shows to industry representatives. One recent festival success story is Tracie Laymon, whose screenplay Bob Trevino Likes It was a finalist in the 2022 Screenwriting Competition and became a film that debuted at SXSW last year, kicking off a long festival run that included Nashville before the film’s theatrical release in March. Laymon returned to Nashville last year as a Pitch Competition juror, sharing her experiences and expertise. The festival also offers cash prizes that include at least $2,000 for the winners of the Narrative, Documentary, Music Documentary and New Directors Feature categories.
A Nevada City Film Festival screening. Courtesy of Nevada City Film Festival
Located in the gorgeous and bewitching Sierra Nevada foothills, this festival works tirelessly to cultivate and promote rising and mid-career filmmakers, with a special emphasis on discovering and sharing bold short films. Like many of our favorite festivals in beautiful locales, it offers the chance to simultaneously boost your work and relax and reflect in thought-clearing, restorative environs — the town offers a storybook blend of Victorian architecture, Gold Rush history, and abundant trees. The strong support for moviemakers includes screening fees, splitting online revenue, lodging, good food, and travel stipends, and the career-enhancement opportunities include workshops that have, in past editions of the festival, covered subjects from documentary ethics to horror and sci-fi filmmaking to the roles of producers, music supervisors, editors, distributors and more. Every award includes money, totaling $10,000. But the best part of the festival may just be meeting fellow artists and film lovers under the maples, elms and dogwoods.
We can promise that filmmakers will get media coverage from this festival — because we’re among the outlets that provide it. Every month we feature interviews with NFMLA filmmakers on moviemaker.com, where they go in-depth on their inspirations and approaches to storytelling. Unlike the other festivals on this list, NFMLA holds events monthly, often focusing on a different slate of underrepresented filmmakers. Examples include the InFocus: Middle Eastern & Arab Cinema Program, InFocus: Indigenous Cinema, and Indigenous: Veteran Cinema Program. Co-founder and executive director Larry Laboe makes everyone know they’re appreciated and welcomed, and the joys of playing NFMLA include screening at a 500-seat theater, pre- and post-screening receptions, and industry meetings for those whose films are official selections. Distributors known to attend include A24, Amazon, Kino Lorber, Lionsgate, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery, 20th Century Studios, Max, Paramount and more.
Leave extra room in your luggage if you think you might win something: The Granite State festival hands out 20-pound-plus engraved and polished granite bricks as awards. That’s one of many distinctive traits of this festival, held during one of New England’s prettiest times of the year, when the leaves are exploding with color. The winner of the Grand Jury Narrative Award receives a private industry meeting with Oscilloscope Laboratories, one of many distributors known to attend. Others include Metrograph Pictures, Factory 25, A24, MUBI, Music Box Films, Roadside Attractions and more. As part of its commitment to growth, the festival recently merged into The Music Hall, a non-profit arts institution that has been a festival partner since 2004.It offers a reasonably inviting submission-to-admission ratio, and works with filmmakers to assist with travel when possible, including by offering luxury coach travel for some New York City-based filmmakers.
NOFF’s passion is to nurture Southern filmmakers and amplify their voices around the world, and it does that not just by showcasing films, but providing grants and funding. Its key initiatives include South Pitch, the Emerging Voices Directors Lab, and the Southern Producers Lab, all of which provide chances for regional filmmakers to tell their stories. The festival also welcomes key representatives in funding and grant programs, including the Catapult Film Fund, Tribeca Studios, and Sundance Institute, and evangelizes about talented filmmakers to other festivals including BlackStar, Tribeca, DOCNYC, Cleveland, Atlanta, Maryland, SFFilm, and Provincetown. (Yes, festival people talk to each other.) The festival also facilitates meetings between artists and industry representatives to create career launchpads. Distributors in attendance have represented entities including Searchlight Pictures, NBCUniversal, Black Public Media, POV/American Documentary, and MSNBC Films. Additionally, last year the festival offered more than $50,000 in prizes, including $10,000 each to winning documentary and narrative pitches. The festival also provided camera rental packages in partnership with Panavision, Light Iron, and Keslow Camera. It offers help with travel costs, keeps things as walkable as possible, and pays screening fees of $125 to $250. It’s not an easy festival to get into, but those that do can expect strong support. Last year’s films included A King Like Me, Matthew Henderson’s look at New Orleans’ Zulu Club, the nation’s oldest Black Mardi Gras krewe, and the world premiere of Zac Manuel’s Ghetto Children, a celebration Southern rap culture, as well as RaMell Ross’ Oscar-nominated Nickel Boys and Edward Berger’s Oscar-winning Conclave.
The one and only Nicolas Cage at the Newport Beach Film Festival. Photo by Travis Garcia, courtesy of NBFF
Say yes to everything if you get into this award-season festival, which celebrated its 25th anniversary last year and provides a glamorous, fashion-focused escape from the frenetic pace of nearby Los Angeles. You’ll see A-listers feted at spectacular settings like the Pelican Hill Resort, which hosted a sunset Q&A with Ewan McGregor for the festival’s latest edition, and attend unforgettable events like a yacht party or open-to-everyone retrospective between Carol Burnett and designer Bob Mackie, held at the Fashion Island shopping mecca. The long-list of celebrity honorees last year included Nicholas Cage, Colman Domingo, Margaret Qualley, Christoph Waltz, Terry Crews and Peter Saarsgard, who followed up an incisive Q&A by introducing his gripping journalism drama September 5. But in addition to seeing many stars, you’ll also find programming gems like last year’s short film “Reunion,” Zainab Jah and Timothy Naylor’s complex story of a West African immigrant meeting the former child soldier who destroyed her family. The festival has an appealing submission-to-acceptance ratio and offers very discounted hotel and transportation options. Co-founder and CEO Gregg Schwenk does a lovely job of making sure everyone feels comfortable and welcome, paying close attention to details. Screenings are packed with audiences known for thoughtful, engaged questions, and the many parties include exceptional food from local restaurants.
OUT ON FILM (A, S)
Atlanta, Georgia / September 26-October 6 / outonfilm.org
The festival just held its first Queer Film Summit, featuring four days of panels and workshops on artistry, yes, but also on the cold realities of getting your movie made. It offered detailed discussions on fundraising, contracts, and marketing, among other crucial details. The festival also offers expansive Q&As, featuring as many representatives of a film as possible, and is generous with travel assistance. Out on Film also gives any filmmaker who can’t attend the chance to tape a Zoom Q&A that promotes their screening and stays up on the festival’s YouTube channel. Not only Oscar but also BAFTA qualifying, the festival strives to make all guests feel recognized and appreciated from the moment they arrive. It also offers an attractive submission-to-acceptance ratio. Last year’s lineup included director Andrea James’ Becoming a Man in 127 Easy Steps, based on the one-man show by Scott Turner Schofield, and Didi Paulini’s Transcendence.
Colman Domingo at the Provincetown International Film Festival. Photo by Mae Gammino, courtesy of PIFF
Years ago we praised PIFF for “exquisite taste in an exquisite place,” and we honestly can’t improve on that. Cape Cod’s Provincetown, aka PTown, is an LGBTQ+ and arts capital known for elegantly preserved homes, excellent food, and fascinating history — it’s where the pilgrims first landed. It’s also home to a thriving, well-curated film festival blessed with John Waters as its patron saint. He’s known for campy and magnificent fundraisers. It has attracted distributors including HBO, Warner Bros. Discovery, Magnolia Pictures, and Strand Releasing, and last year’s award recipients included Colman Domingo, Joel Kim Booster and Andrew Haigh. Attendees have included Eugene Hernandez, director of the Sundance Film Festival, and manager and producer Adam Kersh, whose clients include Sean Baker. We’ve had some of our favorite film experiences in PTown, including watching B-movies at a drive-in event hosted by Waters. The festival is particular about what films it selects, which results in a slate of challenging films without a dull one in the bunch.
If you’re wondering what Salute Your Shorts looks for in submissions, you can read a thoughtfully detailed piece from festival co-founder and artistic director Erin Brown Thomas on page 18. Many festivals embrace the idea that festivals are like going to camp, but Salute Your Shorts takes that idea further than most: Brown Thomas even invites filmmakers to bonfires at her home. (And of course the fest shares a name with an early ‘90s summer camp-focused Nickelodeon series.) The intimate-getaway feel extends to screenings: They’re held on one screen, in one building, with one courtyard, on one weekend. Attendees are offered catered food between showings to encourage them to stick around. As much fun as the festival has, it’s very serious about craft, offering talks with such indie film inspirations as Mark Duplass, the Vanishing Angel team, and Oscar-winning duo The Daniels. Refreshingly, the focus is on creativity, not how to break into the industry. Past jurors have included Tony Hale and Lego franchise producer Dan Lin, chairman of Netflix Films. Agents and managers also make low-key visits to search for new talent, and an Oscar-qualifying theatrical run is among the prizes. Notably, the fest is led entirely by filmmakers.
(L-R) Tait Fletcher, Cassidy Freeman and Yolonda Ross in a Santa Fe International Film Festival panel on acting. Photo by Sasha Ewing, courtesy of SFIFF
SANTA FE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (A)
Santa Fe, New Mexico / October 15-19 / santafe.film
Located in the No. 1 smaller city on our 2025 list of the Best Places to Live and Work as a Moviemaker, SFIFF highlights both the best of its fast-rising film community and the best of cinema worldwide. Visit the festival, which earned Oscar-qualifying status last year, and you may seriously consider a move to New Mexico, drawn by the laid-back Southwestern chic of its parties and the artistic passion of the many ex-Angelenos and New Yorkers who move to the Land of Enchantment to live out DIY dreams. (They can pay the bills working for companies like Netflix, NBCU, and AMC, all of which have a substantial local presence.) It’s not surprising that the festival draws agents, managers, and distributors — last year’s Distribution Panel included representatives from Magnolia, Utopia Distribution and Oscilloscope. The prize packages are vast and include a $90,000 prize package from Panavision and Light Iron for the Best Narrative Feature winner. You’ll screen daring films in venues like the modern Violet Crown and the classically styled, George R.R. Martin-owned Jean Cocteau Cinema and Coffee House. (Martin also co-owns the Sky Railway, located near the two theaters and featured in Oppenheimer.) The festival is generous with travel assistance, and we suggest taking some side trips: You won’t have to travel far to see locations for productions like Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, AMC’s Dark Winds and the upcoming Young Guns 3: Dead or Alive. Last year’s honorees included Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston. Santa Fe is a town where everyone you meet seems to embrace film, all the way to the top: Highlights of last year’s SFIFF included a party at the sprawling hacienda-influenced Governor’s Mansion.
Amy Adams takes a moment with a fan at SCAD. Photo courtesy of SCAD
This festival run by the Savannah College of Art and Design — one of our Best Film Schools in the U.S. and Canada — draws an astonishing guest list each year of A-listers who turn out to promote their awards-contender films and share practical advice with SCAD students on their way into the industry. Last year’s honorees included Amy Adams, Jerry Bruckheimer, Kevin Costner, Felicity Jones, Richard Linklater, Best Actress Oscar winner Mikey Madison, Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner Zoe Saldaña — and we’re not even halfway through the list. The festival hosts packed screenings in elegant venues like the 1,100-seat Trustees Theater, and guests shouldn’t miss the chance to tour SCAD’s massive Hollywood-style backlot. The prizes include $10,000 to the juried winner and $5,000 to the audience award winner of the LGBTQIA+ Shorts Program, presented by Amazon MGM Studios. The festival’s hospitality is unmatched from the moment you arrive in Savannah, which always ranks high on our list of the Best Places to Live and Work as a Moviemaker, thanks in no small part to the career opportunities offered by SCAD. This isn’t the easiest festival to get into, but the filmmakers who are admitted are treated quite graciously.
Anxiety Club documentarian Wendy Lobel on a hike to Devil’s Bridge during the Sedona International Film Festival. Photo courtesy of Wendy Lobel
Wherever you are in your career, you’ll benefit from a trip to Sedona – for the films, great panels and exquisite parties, yes, but also for the meditative hikes through jaw-dropping scenery, up red rocks and over must-see landmarks like Devil’s Bridge. The festival is generous with travel assistance and draws big, well-informed crowds — Sedona is known for artists, retirees and spiritual seekers of all ages, which results in lively and thoughtful Q&As. One highlight of the latest edition was the world premiere of Shattered Ice, a film about a teenage hockey player’s suicide that provoked a moving panel discussion that included the film’s cast, director Alex Ranarivelo, and screenwriter-producer Jake Miskin, who wrote the film to encourage open talks about mental health after losing friends to suicide. Another standout was Wendy Lobel’s previously mentioned Anxiety Club, about standup comics’ coping with anxiety. The festival also programmed a striking number of films about resisting Nazis, and the perils of collaborating with them, including the outstanding documentary Riefenstahl. And attendees got to see a lively panel about choosing film festivals that included your friends at MovieMaker, as well as the Festival Formula’s Katie and Ian Bignell and New York Film Academy’s Crickett Rumley. Festival executive director Patrick Schweiss is an excellent ambassador for the festival and booster of other nearby attractions, inclined to point out that you might want to tack on time to see the Grand Canyon, about two hours away. Sedona is also known for vortexes believed to be centers of healing energy — or maybe it’s the sense of peace that comes from a terrific festival?
VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada / October 2-12 / viff.org
Drawing nearly 100,000 admissions last year, this fairly selective festival is known for high-quality discussions at its Q&As, which feature films from all over the world. Besides playing Oscar fare like Anora and Conclave, it hosted world, international, North American or Canadian premieres for more than 70 feature films, and covered the full cost of airfare and hotel accommodations for 50 feature filmmakers. Other draws include its Hospitality House, which serves free food and drinks, as well as good conversations with fellow artists, along with stunning mountain and water views. Distributors known to attend include major Canadian distributors like Elevation Pictures, Mongrel Media, FilmsWeLike, Photon Films, and Game Theory. VIFF also offered discussions of subjects ranging from adapting IP to rethinking documentary marketing and redefining genre moviemaking. Guests included Longlegs and The Monkey filmmaker Osgood Perkins, who shot both films locally, and Furiosa production designer Colin Gibson. The fest expanded its global reach last year by collaborating with the Swiss and Taiwanese governments to bring representatives of their film industries to Vancouver.
A classic example of the kind of smaller festival where you can really get to know people and make true connections. Case in point: Years ago, indie filmmakers Gregory J.M. Kasunich and Lauren Noll met at the festival and hit it off. Though neither is from Waco, they were inspired by its small-town feel, and devised a film set there. “Heart of Texas,” follows a diner waitress (Noll) whose dreams of winning a singing contest on the radio are threatened by an accident with an undocumented co-worker. It won Waco’s 2022 screenplay contest, and its $6,000 production grant to shoot locally. The film debuted at WIFF last year. It went on to play at several other festivals on this list of 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee and to qualify for the Oscars. “Waco Independent Film Festival was the spark that made ‘The Heart of Texas’ possible,” Kasunich tells MovieMaker. “Winning their screenwriting competition and receiving their grant gave us the resources to bring our vision to life and share it with the world. Without them, our Oscar-longlisted journey never would’ve happened.” The festival has also welcomed distributors like Dark Star Pictures, Summer Hill Films and Crafty, and last year’s guests included The Walking Dead star Chandler Riggs, supporting his role in the film Breakup Season. Waco also has a very inviting submission-to-acceptance ratio.
Amanda Seyfried, left, and Aya Cash discuss acting at the Woodstock Film Festival. Courtesy of Woodstock Film Festival.
The festival proudly states that its location, the Hudson Valley, has the largest number of artists per capita in the country. Looking at its guest lists, that certainly feels true: Last year’s attendees included Walton Goggins, promoting his film The Uninvited, Amanda Seyfried and Aya Cash, who discussed the craft of acting, and Seyfried’s First Reformed director, the inestimable Paul Schrader, who received the festival’s Honorary Maverick Award. (Past attendees have included Ethan Hawke, Ang Lee, Richard Linklater, Darren Aronofsky, Mira Nair and Jennifer Connelly.) Woodstock draws distributors including Disney+, NEON and Netflix, and is generous in providing travel assistance. There’s a strong emphasis on developing relationships between the industry and the many local artists and filmmakers in the thriving and fast-rising regional film scene. Last year’s films included the Oscar winners Anora and No Other Land. If you want to preview the festival before attending, check out its lively YouTube channel, featuring panels, Q&As and livestreams.
Liked Our List of 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee 2025?
Here are all 10 Quentin Tarantino movies ranked, in honor of his 62nd birthday today.
What’s that you say? Why yes — we do believe there are 10 Quentin Tarantino movies, despite the director’s assertion that his next film will be his 10th and last.
Why 10? Because we insist that Kill BillVol. 1 and 2 are two separate, wonderful films.
Here are all 10 Quentin Tarantino movies ranked.
The Hateful Eight (2015)
The Weinstein Company
We love The Hateful Eight, as we love all Quentin Tarantino movies, but something had to be lowest ranked on our list, and this is it.
Tarantino became known early in his career for certain hallmarks — pop-culture references, impeccable left-field song choices, a very modern sense of cool — and after his initial success, went about proving he could make great films without any of them. The Hateful Eight, set in snowy Wyoming in the late 1800s after the Civil War, leaves Tarantino with no attention-grabbing gimmicks to rely on. But he does have his most reliable tools: a terrific, twisty script, and magnificent actors.
The Hateful Eight puts Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kurt Russell, Tim Roth, Walton Goggins, Channing Tatum, and other excellent actors under one roof and lets all hell slowly break loose. The stakes aren’t as high as they feel in some of his other films, but the movie is still a warm cinematic fire.
Death Proof (2007)
The Weinstein Company
Death Proof is one of the flashiest Tarantino movies, filled with car crashes, mayhem, dancing girls, and cool music. Designed as a parody/homage to exploitation films, as part of Tarantino’s Grindhouse double feature with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, it pulls out all the stops to entertain — and it does, relentlessly.
Death Proof is Tarantino at his most unchained — it starts with a long shot of female feet, which feels like a jokey middle finger to everyone who ever accused him of a foot fetish — and inspired hand-wringing about whether Tarantino was objectifying or celebrating his heroines (played by Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd, Rose McGowan, Tracie Thoms, Sydney Poitier, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Zoe Bell).
Death Proof has it both ways: It’s lascivious while making fun of the lasciviousness of 1970s grindhouse films. It works, and it’s a nice breather between the epic scale of the Kill Bill films — which preceded Death Proof — and Inglorious Basterds, which followed it. It may be Tarantino’s least important movie, and that’s fine — sometimes you just want to have fun.
Smaller in scale than any other Tarantino movie, Reservoir Dogs introduces many of his trademarks: pop culture dissertations dropped into scenes that, in the hands of other directors, would be ultra-serious; shocking violence; cool twists; and an out-of-nowhere soundtrack that — like so many things in a Tarantino movie — shouldn’t work but absolutely does.
Reservoir Dogs also introduced Tarantino’s phenomenal way with actors and skill at bringing out their best work. Harvey Keitel, Michael Madson, Steve Buscemi and many others shine with dialogue different than we’d previously heard in any crime movie… but then heard throughout the ’90s, as countless other screenwriters tried to copy QT.
Jackie Brown (1997)
Miramax Films
Even more than The Hateful Eight, Jackie Brown feels like Tarantino setting out to prove he can make a movie that doesn’t rely on his most-familiar moves. It’s a beautiful meditation on aging, and continuing to hustle as you age, with a little more wisdom and a lot of disappointment behind you.
After the back-to-back success of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Tarantino could have done anything — and chose to elevate his genre heroes. The film is the only one of his movies that isn’t based on his own original story, and is instead adapted from the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch.
The director cast as his leads two actors who were not in especially high demand: Robert Forster, a new Hollywood star for 1969’s Medium Cool who later appeared in films films Alligator and Delta Force, and Pam Grier, a Blaxploitation icon for roles in Coffy and Foxy Brown who had not yet gotten the respect she deserved from mainstream Hollywood.
In another unconventional casting choice, he placed A-listers like Robert De Niro, Bridget Fonda, Michael Keaton and Samuel L. Jackson in smaller roles, where they waited, like little bombs, to explode.
Tarantino also personalized the material by moving the setting from Florida to L.A.’s South Bay, and setting key moments at the Del Amo Mall, where he (and I) saw many a movie in the ’80s.
Tarantino hit on a brilliant formula with Inglorious Basterds and continued it in DjangoUnchained: Find a bad guy so repugnant that you’ll be passionately invested in the hero’s success. Inglorious Basterds let us delight in the killing of Nazis, and Django lets us thrill in a revenge story against American slavers, as Jamie Foxx’s Django and Christoph Waltz’s Dr. King Schultz take on the repugnant Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his aide Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson) to rescue Django’s wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington).
Django does many audacious things, including holding back on the introduction of its biggest star, DiCaprio, and making Candie’s enslaved servant, Stephen, a bad guy. All the risks pay off.
Django is also fascinating for Tarantino’s exacting use of violence. The pain inflicted on slaves in the film is as real as the violence they suffered in real life. But the fantasy revenge carried out by Django on the slavers is fantastical, even comical.
The film makes us wish the slavers suffered violence as real as the violence they inflicted in real life, but there’s a vast emotional chasm between reality and the wish fulfillment on screen. Tarantino thrives in that chasm.
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Miramax
Pulp Fiction is a little like Shakespeare — you’ve seen it imitated so many times it’s easy to forget that when it first appeared, it was completely groundbreaking and new.
Tarantino and co-writer Roger Avary explicitly elevated inspirations once dismissed as trashy — like the pulpy novels of the title — and combined flashy dialogue and set pieces with grounded, troubled characters, hopeful strivers caught in the muck of violence.
It pulls off a barrage of cool narrative tricks that amuse on a surface level, then drill into and confuse our lizard brains — like having one character we love kill another, in a way that thrills and then horrifies us. And it manages an ambitious spirituality that, again, shouldn’t work but does.
It also marks the first of many collaborations between Tarantino and Samuel L. Jackson, and the start of his partnership with Uma Thurman, who will turn up again in our next entry.
Kill Bill, Vol. 2 (2004)
Miramax
After three smaller-scale films, with very ground-level characters, Tarantino made epics with the Kill Bill films. They were originally intended as one movie, then were released in two parts, Kill Bill Vol. 1 in 2003 and Kill Bill Vol. 2 in 2004. We love them both.
Once again, Tarantino elevated his genre inspirations, this time martial arts films. Uma Thurman’s heroine, The Bride, aka Beatrix Kiddo, even wears a yellow jumpsuit modeled on Bruce Lee’s in Game of Death.
Vol. 2 has some of Tarantino’s most showstopping moments, including The Bride’s trailer fight with Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), her escape from being buried alive, and a final faceoff with Bill (David Carradine), whose speech about Superman is one of Tarantino’s greatest pop-culture monologues.
But we still like Kill Bill Vol. 1 better, for reasons we’ll soon explain.
Inglorious Basterds (2009)
The Weinstein Company
This is the Tarantino film with the highest stakes: Brad Pitt’s ragtag group of Nazi-killin’ commandos, including Eli Roth’s magnificent, bat-wielding “Bear Jew,” are out to kill Adolf Hitler himself.
Inglorious Basterds has one of the best opening scenes of any movie, as Christoph Waltz’s charming but evil Hans Landa builds up unbearable tension while persuading a French farmer to give up the Jewish family he’s been protecting. But it gets even better from there, building to a climax absolutely no one would expect.
More than almost any other movie, Inglorious Basterds asks, “Why can’t you do that?” and then does it. It thrives, once again, in the chasm between cinematic fantasy and reality — between what we wish would have happened, and what actually did.
And the cast, including Melanie Laurent (above), is perfect.
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
Columbia Pictures
Speaking of that chasm: Quentin Tarantino uses our knowledge of the Manson murders to keep us utterly rapt, terrified, on the edge of our seats, through three hours of relatively low-stakes drama involving rising star Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), washed-up actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), and Dalton’s dangerous assistant, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt).
We watch them over two fairly uneventful days — at one point joining Tate on an errand and a trip to the movies — as Dalton and Booth reckon with their faltering prospects in life. Everything is imbued with a sense of menace (wait — is that Charles Manson?) because we know the real Tate’s fate.
But on the third day, Tarantino plunges us deep into his chasm — the place between what we know really happened, and what we wish could have happened. And he delivers cinematic wish fulfillment unmatched by any film, except perhaps his own Inglorious Basterds.
The film is also very fun for the chance to see early appearances by future stars Mikey Madison, Austin Butler, and Margaret Qualley.
Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003)
Miramax
I mentioned growing up in L.A.’s South Bay in the ’80s. If you, like Quentin Tarantino and I, spent any amount of time watching TV in that place and time, you became very familiar with an ad that ran constantly on local TV for a two-record or two-cassette collection of songs by “Zamfir, Master of the Pan Flute,” available for $19.98 by credit card phone order and pointedly not sold in stores.
It was the embodiment of dull-day, depressing TV schlock, when no one had the internet and not everyone even had cable. The Zamfir ad, like the ad for a four-record or three-cassette collection called Freedom Rock, was a thing you would endure or openly mock during commercial breaks between replays of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly or reruns of Gimme a Break, hating yourself a little for not having something cooler to do.
It took Quentin Tarantino to recognize its power. With his knack for elevating the most seemingly disposable elements of our culture, he realized that Gheorghe Zamfir’s version of “The Lonely Shepherd” was the perfect way to end Kill Bill, Vol. 1. In doing so, he created, for my money ($19.98), one of the best endings of any movie.
It comes after a stunning battle between The Bride and the Crazy 88s and Gogo Yubari, which leads into a cathartic faceoff in the falling snow between O-Ren Ishiii (Lucy Liu) and The Bride. The movie could have ended with O-Ren’s defeat, but instead continues with a montage as The Bride flies home in a plane, against a blood-red sky, as the film’s central characters take stock of her revenge mission, Zamfir playing softly behind them.
Bill delivers a final line that changes everything, as the drums and horns kicks in behind the pan flute. It’s devastating and hopeful: The chasm opens wide.
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Cucks are having their pop culture moment, from HBO productions like Mountainhead and The White Lotus to Apple TV+’s Your Friends and Neighbors, to the Manhattan courtroom where Sean “Diddy” Combs stands trial.
The word cuck, short for cuckold, refers to a man whose female partner has sex with other men, often humiliating him in the process. It alludes to the cuckoo bird, because of its tendency to lay its eggs in the nests of other birds. The word dates back to medieval times: References to cuckolds are found in the works of Chaucer and William Shakespeare. Humiliated men are natural fodder for drama.
That’s especially true today, an age when the term cuckold has been co-opted and shortened by conservatives, who demean moderate or conservative men they deem to be soft as “cucks.” Liberals (and sometimes fellow conservatives) have fired back by calling supposedly soft right-wingers as “cuckservatives.” The phrase has also come into common use to refer to anyone who is a sucker or rube.
But cuckolding need not be humiliating: For some, it’s a turn-on. Some research indicates that as many as 20 percent of North Americans have engaged in consensual non-monogamy, or CNM. (This of course includes men who have sex with multiple women, who are not, by definition, cuckolds.)
Hollywood’s cuck fascination may just be catching up to the general population. PornHub’s 2024 Year in Review, one annual indicator of people’s secret desires, indicated a slight uptick in the terms “cuckold wife” (up 8%,) and “wife swap” (up 6%).
And as modern pop culture reflects, cuckery is complicated: Sexologist Jill McDevitt has said that it can be a form of masochism or sadism. Some cuckolds enjoy “the arousal that comes from relinquishing power and being humiliated,” she told Men’s Health last year. Others, she said, enjoy watching their partner with someone else, from a sadistic perspective, because he is role-playing “getting revenge on his partner by pimping her out.”
Nowhere is the complication more evident than in the Diddy trial, where the rap impresario is accused of hiring male escorts to have sex with his then-partner, Cassie Ventura, in “freakoffs,” or, in their shorthand, FOs. Prosecutors say the freakoffs amounted to sex trafficking, but Diddy’s lawyers have used texts between Ventura and Combs to argue that they were consensual, and that she enjoyed the freakoffs.
Jurors will have to decide whether Diddy’s orchestration of his partner into something that has been, since Shakespeare’s time, a shorthand for humiliation was, in fact, a power move — and abuse of power.
Hollywood is asking viewers to ask the same questions about a wide range of fictional characters. But what’s different about the cucks of today and the cucks of old is that today’s cucks are often fully aware of their partner’s sex with others, if not fully on board.
Hollywood’s Fascination With Cucks
In Wes Anderson’s 2021 The Royal Tenenbaums, Bill Murray’s Raleigh St. Clair cuts a pitiable figure as he realizes the extent of his wife Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow’s) cheating: “You’ve made a cuckold of me,” he laments.
But the Hollywood cuckolds of today are likely to be well aware of their partner’s cheating, if not encouraging of it.
Whatever the reasons, cucks and cuckery are very much in the zeitgeist, especially on prestige TV: On Season 3 of The White Lotus, the malevolent Greg Hunt (Jon Gries), who recently came into a fortune via the murder of his wife, has a fetish for watching his new partner with younger men. In the new HBO film Mountainhead, the sole likable character, Jeff (Ramy Youssef), is a multibillionaire who doesn’t want his significant other going to a sex party in Mexico, but feels powerless to tell her it’s a dealbreaker. He is open with the other powerful men in his wealthy cohort about his hopes that she won’t sleep with anyone else.
Jesse Armstrong, the writer-director of Mountainhead, previously examined cuckoldry on his show Succession, in which Tom Wambsgans (Matthew MacFayden) was afraid his wife Shiv Roy (Sarah Snook) would leave him if he objected to her sleeping around.
Perhaps the most prominent cuckold now on television is Andrew “Coop” Cooper (Jon Hamm), the protagonist of Apple TV+’s hit Your Friends and Neighbors. Coop appears, in most senses, to be an alpha male: He has a big house, a huge finance job, and a Maserati. In some ways he’s a modern Don Draper, the sturdy, traditional alpha Hamm played on Mad Man.
But Coop becomes a cuckold against his will when his wife Mel (Amanda Peet), sleeps with one of his best friends, former NBA star Nick (Mark Tallman). Unlike many other TV cucks, Coop exits the marriage because of her infidelity. But in a shock to all the friends and neighbors of the show’s title, Coop remains friendly with both Mel and Nick, and even shocks everyone by attending a party at Nick’s house. (He gets in a fight there — but not with Nick.)
In an interesting reversal, Coop makes a cuck of the man who cucked him when he sleeps with Mel on a visit to Princeton. Nick doesn’t take it well, punching Coop. But, soon after, they put their differences aside and bro out with a night on the town.
Perhaps both are heeding the words of Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello: “Beware, my lord, of jealousy/It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock/The meat it feeds on/That cuckold lives in bliss/Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger.”
Main image: Ramy Youssef as Jeff in Mountainhead. HBO
These movie masks are the coolest in cinematic history.
Remember when everyone was wearing masks all the time?
We’re glad we don’t have to do that anymore.
The Bane Mask in The Dark Knight Rises
Tom Hardy as Bane, Christian Bale as Batman – Credit: Warner Bros
We’ve all replicated the “Bane mask voice” by cupping our hands around our mouths and talking with a high-pitched British accent.
But the mask also gives Bane an aura of mystery: Does it help him breath? Does it hide scars? Bane’s mask is as enigmatic and stylish as the man who wears it.
The Ghostface Mask in the Scream Saga
Matthew Lillard as Ghostface – Credit: Miramax
The Scream Ghostface-slasher mask is somehow silly, pulpy, and menacing all at once. Its innocuous simplicity hides the dreadful killer(s) underneath.
It would be very unusual to experience a Halloween absent of this costume, built around one of the most immediately recognizable movie masks.
The Hannibal Lecter Mask in The Silence of the Lambs
Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter – Credit: Orion
Hannibal Lecter technically wears two famous movie masks in the greatest Thomas Harris adaptation, The Silence of the Lambs. The first is his terrifying muzzle, a Jason Vorhees-esque mask with bars blocking his mouth.
The second is not nearly as stylish — it’s an actual human face.
The former has certainly been more integrated into pop-culture more than the latter, but both are worth mentioning.
The Jason Mask in the Friday the 13th Films
Derek Mears as Jason Voorhees – Credit: Paramount
The cinematic influence of the Jason Vorhees hockey mask is incalculable. So many films reference Jason Vorhees’ crude face-covering that it is practically expected every time a bank robbery is depicted on screen.
Fascinatingly, the mask that would become the trademark of Friday the 13th — and slasher movies in general – didn’t make it to the screen until Friday the 13th Part III, released in 1982.
The hockey mask is a cheap yet effective symbol of dread that won’t be disappearing from the zeitgeist anytime soon.
Tie: All the Eyes Wide Shut Masks
Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut – Credit: Warner Bros
The Venetian masks that appear in the secret party sequence of Eyes Wide Shot represent exactly the kind of extravagance and costume work we expect from a Stanley Kubrick film.
They are ethereal and refined — a beautiful piece of ironic characterization designed to protect the identities of those about to become intimate. Among the most jarring and tragic movie masks.
The Darth Vader Mask
David Prowse as Darth Vader, Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia – Credit: 20th Century Fox.
The most obvious, and inevitable choice is still a correct one for this list. Darth Vader’s masked visage is still the most awe-inspiring in the history of movie villains. It made countless other filmmakers realize great movie masks are among the most cost-effective storytelling devices.
Max’s Mask in Mad Max: Fury Road
Tom Hardy as Max – Credit: Warner Bros.
Though he spends the majority of his time with the mask attempting to forcefully remove it, Max’s metal face protector is nonetheless visually compelling.
There is a running joke in the film world that every director Tom Hardy works with makes him cover his face. He could easily have made this list more than twice.
The Guy Fawkes Mask in V for Vendetta
Hugo Weaving as V – Credit: Warner Bros.
The Guy Fawkes mask that V wears in V for Vendetta was infamous long before the film was released.
But the rhyming swashbuckler certainly provided it with a new flair, and turned it into one of the best movie masks of this century.
The Dread Pirate Roberts Mask in The Princess Bride
Cary Elwes as Wesley, aka The Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride. 20th Century Fox.
As you wish. Wesley returns to save his Princess Buttercup disguised as the Dread Pirate Roberts, and his mask allows him to find out if he’s still her true love.
Sporting a new mustache and elegant, black mask-scarf, he is skilled, debonair, and frightening, no longer the farm boy she once knew.
The Princess Bride is captivating even before the Dread Pirate Roberts arrives, but then he takes the movie into the stratosphere. With a detour through the Fire Swamp, of course.
The Mask of Zorro in The Mask of Zorro
Antonio Banderas as Zorro – Credit: C/O
See what we did there?
Antonio Banderas’ incarnation of Zorro is overflowing with charisma. His classic combination of black mask, large gaucho hat, and flowing cape never disappoints.
There have been many Zorros throughout cinematic history — in fact, Zorro helped inspire Batman to become a vigilante, decades ago. But Banderas’ Zorro is our favorite.
When the handsome David Aames (Cruise) has his face disfigured in a car crash, he takes to wearing a blank, expressionless mask to cover his scars and deformity.
The mask’s total absence of expression suggests that all life and joy has gone out of David, and maybe it has. But Vanilla Sky still has plenty of twists ahead.
The Michael Myers Mask in Halloween
Credit: C/O
Sometimes simplest is best.
Tasked with finding a suitable mask for Michael Myers, the monster of John Carpenter and Debra Hill’s horror masterpiece, production designer Tommy Lee Wallace went to a Hollywood Boulevard magic shop, where he found a Captain Kirk mask designed to look like Star Trek star William Shatner. He painted it white, changed the hair, and Michael Myers was born.
Wallace later directed Halloween III: Season of the Witch — which is all about masks. Specifically, a plot to take over people’s minds through microchipped Halloween masks.
Some old scary movies just don’t feel scary anymore. But these films stood the test of time.
The Exorcist (1973)
Warner Bros. – Credit: Warner Bros.
Profoundly chilling even before Linda Blair’s head starts spinning, The Exorcist did for unearthing ancient demons what Jaws did for going in the water.
The franchise returned last year with David Gordon Green’s Exorcist: Believer, in which Ellen Burstyn reprised the role of Chris MacNeil for the first time in 50 years.
Jaws (1975)
Universal – Credit: Universal Pictures
A perfect movie that deploys its doll-eyed villain with impeccable skill, Jaws made everyone who has ever seen it think about sharks at least a little bit every single time we went to the beach for the rest of our lives.
It’s still every bit as scary now as it was nearly 50 years ago.
The newest film on this list, based on the first Stephen King novel, remains anxiety-inducing not because of the literal bucket of blood, but because of the high-school cruelty that still rings in the souls of anyone who experienced it.
The casual bullying, from a time when it was much more tolerated than it is today, is as upsetting to watch as it ever was.
This low-budget George Romero masterpiece retains an eerie, simple power that makes it more frightening than The Last of Us, The Walking Dead, or any of the other countless zombie stories and other scary movies it inspired.
Everyone today talks about gaslighting all the time, but Rosemary’s Baby takes us inside a Manhattan apartment building that has perfected it to terrifying extremes.
When Rosemary (Mia Farrow) becomes pregnant, everyone around her attributes her well-founded fears to hormones and paranoia. But just because you’re paranoid, as the saying goes, doesn’t mean they’re not after you. Or your baby.
Psycho (1960)
Paramount – Credit: Paramount Pictures
The Alfred Hitchcock classic implied more than it showed, but implied it quite effectively.
Psycho spawned the slasher genre, made horror respectable, and made lots of people feel a lot less safe in the shower.
A giallo masterpiece worth watching for the lurid colors alone, Dario Argento’s beautiful, haunting and terrifying story follows an American (Jessica Harper, above) at an elite German ballet academy who realizes, via some very creatively presented murders, that the school is hotbed of witchcraft.
The very confusing sequel, Inferno, released in 1980, is also very worth a watch. Don’t try to sort out the plot. Just let yourself be hypnotized in a wash of blood, color and fire.
Like them or not, Argento makes the most visually stunning horror movies.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Bryanston Distributing Company – Credit: C/O
You’re creeped out just reading that title. The film’s relentlessly menacing atmospherics — buzzing flies, animal sounds — make it one of the creepiest things ever committed to film. The chainsaw stuff pushes it far over the top. But Tobe Hooper’s very smart direction also lifts it far above its many imitators.
Despite the ominous title, the film implies more than it shows — like all the best horror movies.
Also: Grainy ’70s film stock makes everything scarier.
What Have You Done to Solange? (1972)
Italian International Film – Credit: C/O
This giallo thriller has a straightforward premise: a private school teacher becomes a murder suspect when he can’t provide an alibi for a killing — because he was in the arms of one of his students. The manner of death remains gasp-inducing, all these years later.
Please note that all the other scary movies on this list are quite tame compared to the next two scary movies.
Last House on the Left (1972)
Hallmark Releasing – Credit: C/O
The directorial debut of future Scream and Nightmare on Elm Street icon Wes Craven, Last House on the Left is a difficult-to-watch story of two young women who are terrorized by escaped convicts.
Eventually, parents seek vengeance. But before that you have to sit though a deeply unpleasant scene where the convicts treat the women horribly, and one walks hopelessly into water to die, rather than let it go on any longer.
It’s loosely based on Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, and carried the infamous tagline, “To avoid fainting, keep repeating, ‘It’s only a movie … Only a movie … Only a movie …’”
Johnny Got His Gun (1971)
Cinemation Industries – Credit: C/O
Based on a 1939 Dalton Trumbo novel, and adapted into a film by Trumbo during the Vietnam War, this powerful and deeply affecting anti-war story follows a young man named Joe who suffers battlefield injuries that cost him his arms, legs, sight and ability to see and hear. He’s left trapped in his own mind.
Long after Vietnam, the movie managed to terrify Gen X audiences thanks to Metallica, who featured clips of it prominently in their 1988 video for “One.”
Its entire ambiance is unsettling, even before we get to the scenes of Joe in his hospital bed. It’s not even technically a horror movie, but it’s one of the most resonant scary movies we’ve ever seen.
