The Nashville Film Festival opens on Thursday, September 28 and runs through October 4 with a diverse menu of cinema. The Nashville Film Festival is the oldest running film festival in the South (this is the 54th!) and is an Academy Award qualifying festival. The program includes a mix of indies, docs and international cinema, including world and North American premieres.
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 two most recent fests. That’s the case with this year’s fest opener: Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive.
The closing night feature is Foe, a drama from Oscar nominated director Raoul Peck (I Am Not a Negro) that stars fellow Oscar nominees Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal.
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: Foe, La Chimera, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, Fingernails, Flora and Son, Eileen, The Taste of Things, Silver Dollar Road and The Disappearance of Shere Hite.
I love covering Nashfilm in person, but I’ll be covering remotely this year; that just leaves more pig-forward delicacies from Peg Leg Porker and Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint for you.
Check out the program and buy tickets at the festival’s Film Guide. Watch this space for Nashville Film Festival recommendations. I’ll be back in a couple days with my recommendations.