During the 33rd annual Florida Film Festival, movie fans can expect to see shorts and feature-length stories that focus on women’s empowerment, grief, artists and tiki culture, and they might also have the chance to meet John Cleese.
The 10-day celebration of cinema presents 171 films (48 features and 123 shorts) during the festival April 12-21 with the theme, “A Road Trip for Yer Mind.” Films are screened in the Enzian Theater and Regal Winter Park Village.
The journey kicks off on April 12 with the opening night film, “Rachel Hendrix,” starring Lori Singer from Florida-based director Victor Nunez, a Florida Film Festival alumnus. The film, which centers on a professor grieving the death of her husband, was shot in and around Tallahassee, where Nunez lives and teaches at Florida State University.
“We always try to pick someone who is Florida-based for the festival. We want to represent our hometown. He premiered some films at the Florida Film Festival ages ago,” said Deanna Tiedtke, the director of public relations for the festival and Enzian. “‘Rachel Hendrix’ is a little bit darker than we normally like to show for our opening night film, but it’s a fantastic movie, and it’s Florida-based. We loved it.”
Both Nunez and Singer are expected to attend the opening night screening.
Celebrity guests include Natasha Lyonne, known for her roles in “Orange Is the New Black” and “American Pie,” and Monty Python’s Cleese, now 84 years old.
“We are playing ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail.’ He’ll do an introduction and a talkback, plus a meet and greet,” Tiedtke said.
In making the final selections for the festival, all 26 members of the selections committee each watched around 2,000 films. This year’s festival received 2,811 submissions from 101 countries.
“Everyone ranks them, and they get averaged, so anything below a certain threshold doesn’t make it into the festival. Then it gets really intense to choose the final selection,” Tiedtke said. “Our film festival has a really good reputation, especially for launching filmmakers into their careers. Part of the fun of the film festival is that you can be sitting at Eden Bar, and you never know who you’re talking to.”
One year, that someone was Emma Stone, who was promoting an indie film she starred in shortly before “Easy A” launched her into stardom.
“She was at Eden Bar, having drinks and chatting people up,” Tiedtke said. “The next year, she blew up, so things like that happen at Florida Film Festival all the time.”
While it’s hard to single out films from such a wide array of shorts and features, Tiedtke found common threads between several features.
“We have a lot of strong women’s films and a lot of movies about iconic artists or people in pop culture,” she said. “Since we have our own tiki bar, one of the ones we’re super pumped about premiering is ‘The Donn of Tiki.’ It’s about Don the Beachcomber and the man behind the myth of modern tiki culture.”
Another film, “Wildcat,” focuses on the life and work of author Flannery O’Connor, just one example of a story centered on the experience of womanhood.
“We have a film in our international showcase this year called ‘Midwives’ that blends fiction and documentary fragments. It follows two young women at a public hospital in France who are trying to succeed working in women’s healthcare,” Tiedtke said. “There’s one called ‘The Queen of My Dreams’ that is a mother-daughter story about a Pakistani-Canadian girl and her very conservative Islamic mother that’s about navigating tradition and womanhood. We also have an incredibly powerful documentary called ‘Invisible Nation’ about the first female president of Taiwan.”
Now more than three decades old, the Florida Film Festival continues to grow each year, attracting a more diverse selection of films and a larger audience.
“Over the last couple of years, we’ve had distributors coming to our film festival. We’re also an Oscar-accredited film festival for all three shorts categories,” Tiedtke said. “We just keep getting bigger.”
If you go
The 2024 Florida Film Festival is April 12-21 at 1300 S. Orlando Ave. in Maitland and 510 N. Orlando Ave. in Winter Park. Tickets are now on sale for the opening night party and screening ($100-$150), plus festival passes ($125-$1,500) and tickets for single films ($13 each). For more information, call 407-629-1088 or visit floridafilmfestival.com.
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