FILM FEST KNOX
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FILM FEST KNOX 2025: 96 Hours in Knoxville
The last time I visited Tennessee, I was 15, traveling around Memphis with my parents, and spent most of the time listening to In Rainbows on cheap headphones; we ate barbecue, visited my grand-uncle and toured Graceland. 17 years later, I returned to Tennessee for the third annual FILM FEST KNOX, co-founded by filmmaker Paul Harrill and Filmmaker contributor Darren Hughes, and quickly realized my half-remembered teenaged experiences bore almost no relevance to this trip. For all intents and purposes, Knoxville might as well be in a separate state called East Tennessee, or so I’m told given the so-called Grand […]
by Vikram Murthi on Dec 4, 2025 -
Going Up: Knoxville’s Elev8or Pitch Competition
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 -
FILM FEST KNOX Announces American Regional Film Competition Selections for Second Edition
Following its inaugural edition last year, Knoxville, Tennessee’s FILM FEST KNOX returns for its second year from November 14 to 17. Here are the five films announced for this year’s American Regional Cinema Competition, the winner of which will receive an Oscar-qualifying theatrical run in Regal Entertainment’s cinemas. From the press release: The directors of the competition films—Vera Brunner-Sung, Tracie Laymon, Nicholas Colia, Brandon Colvin, and Kelsey Taylor—will be in attendance, along with additional cast and crew, who will introduce the films, participate in Q&As, and discuss the current state and future of regional cinema. Collectively, these filmmakers have screened […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Sep 17, 2024 -
Committing to the Vision: On Launching FILM FEST KNOX
“What would you need from this event?” That was among the first questions Paul Harrill and I asked when we were invited to meet with Visit Knoxville in December 2022 to discuss the possibility of launching a new film festival. Keith McDaniel, founder and longtime organizer of the Knoxville Film Festival, had announced that he was stepping away from the fest after leading it for nearly two decades, bringing it to an end. If all of us on the Zoom meeting agreed this was a project worth taking on, then we needed to plant our flag by issuing a press […]
by Darren Hughes on Dec 15, 2023 -
FILM FEST KNOX 2023: A Fest is Born
Introducing Time of the Heathen on day two of the inaugural FILM FEST KNOX, artistic director Darren Hughes teased that “75 minutes from now, you will be among the hundreds—or perhaps thousands—who have seen this movie.” Access to something otherwise difficult to view is at least part of the premise for any film festival; in the case of 1961’s Heathen, Hughes noted that this might be not just the North American premiere of the restoration (following Il Cinema Ritrovato) but possibly of the film itself. Despite its very regional American origins (the performance of Milton Babbitt protege Lejaren A. Hiller […]
by Vadim Rizov on Nov 17, 2023 -
FILM FEST KNOX Announces Inaugural American Regional Film Competition Selections
The inaugural edition of FILM FEST KNOX, set to take place in Knoxville this year from November 9 to 12, has announced the six titles that will be featured in its American Regional Film Competition section, designed to highlight work produced outside of New York and Los Angeles, including the sophomore directorial feature by 25 New Face of Film Graham Swon. From the press release: An Evening Song (for three voices) (Dir. Graham Swon) 86 minutes – Drama In the 1930s a former child-prodigy writer moves to the countryside with her pulp-fiction scribe husband where they become entwined in a love […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Sep 21, 2023
