With submissions currently open for the 2025 Elev8tor Pitch Competition at FILM FEST KNOX (deadline July 9!), we’re unpaywalling Scott Macaulay’s article on the program from Filmmaker’s Summer, 2025 print edition. — Editor There’s a familiar ritual when you arrive at a film festival: check into your hotel, AirbnB or friend’s couch, pick up your lanyard and head to the opening night event. Most often, that event is an out-of-competition, relentlessly inoffensive opening night film provided by a sponsor that stimulates polite but limited conversation at the afterparty. I’ve participated in that ritual so many times that I was pleasantly […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 18, 2025