Film Festival season is in full swing across North America as SXSW just wrapped and this weekend, the Phoenix Film Festival officially kicks off.
The Phoenix Film Festival has been in existence for fourteen years and each year the films, and the number of attendees, grows. In 2013, over 23,000 moviegoers attended the festival, watching new films and mingling with the actors, directors and producers that were in attendance. Over 200 feature, short, documentary, and animated films will be shown during the seven day festival.
The 2014 festival opens on April 3rd with a showing of Locke, directed by Steven Knight (Eastern Promises) and starring Tom Hardy (Dark Knight Rises). There are thirteen other Showcase films scheduled to be shown during the festival, closing on April 10 with Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, which stars Ellar Coltrane, and follows the young man’s life for the first twelve years in real time.
There are ten films entered into the Competition category this year, and each film is the culmination of talented young voices that are just now only starting to be heard.
April 5 starts off as Kids day, with a screening of Disney’s The Pirate Fairy in the morning and DisneyNature’s Bears in the afternoon. Then the festivities switch to the teenagers as the Phoenix Film Festival shows the classic 1994 SoCal teenage comedy, Clueless, starring Alicia Silverstone, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, starring Logan Lerman and Emma Watson.
Due to its close proximity to Hollywood, the Phoenix Film Festival attracts a wide variety of actors, writers, directors and producers to the festivities and this year is no different. Lea Thompson (Back to the Future) and Dee Wallace (E.T.) will be on hand to showcase some of their work, as Wallace is hosting a special screening of the classic 1983 Stephen King film, Cujo on Friday, April 4. Writer-Director Richard Shepard (The Hunting Party) will be on hand to show off his latest film, Dom Hemingway starring Jude Law, and Steven Knight will present Locke on opening night.
The Phoenix Film Festival is one of the largest film festivals in the southwest and runs April 3-10. Check out www.phoenixfilmfestival.com for more information, screening schedules, or for tickets.
