The always exquisitely curated Nashville Film Festival opens on Thursday, September 19 and runs through September 25 with a diverse menu of cinema. The Nashville Film Festival is the oldest running film festival in the South (this is the 55th!) and is an Academy Award qualifying festival. The program includes a mix of indies, docs and international cinema, including world and North American premieres.
Programming Director Lauren Thelen says, “I’m impressed, honored and excited to screen this year 150 films from 25 countries. I continue to be impressed by the diverse range of cinema out there, and I’m eager to see how our audience will react.”
I’ve sampled the program and, later this week, will recommend three films by new directors and an indie doc with 100% African-American voices.
The Nashville Film Festival embraces its home in Music City and emphasizes films about music, like Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road, Fanny: The Right to Rock, The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile and Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues from the three most recent fests. That’s the case with this year’s fest opener, Devo, and the closer, This Is a Film About the Black Keys. There’s some insider buzz about Songs from the Hole.
One sure fire crowd-pleaser will be the Netflix doc Will & Harper, featuring a road trip by Will Farrell and his longtime friend, former SNL writer Harper Steele, who has transitioned.
See it here first: several films in the program have already secured distribution and will be available to theater and/or watch-at-home audiences. Before just anybody can watch them, you can get your personal preview at the Nashville Film Festival: Will & Harper, Bob Trevino Likes It, In the Summers, Exhibiting Forgiveness and Endless Summer Syndrome.
Check out the program and buy tickets at the festival’s Film Guide. Watch this space in a couple days for my NashFilm recommendations. Here’s the festival trailer.