This year’s Cindependent Film Festival is bigger and better than ever ā although it’s kind of hard for it not to be, given the fact that the organization has acquired a theater, hosted a premiere for an eventual Academy Award winner and merged with another local film festival in the year’s worth of time since the last one.
The city’s largest film festival has now expanded to five days (Sept. 16 – 20) and two theaters: Over-the-Rhine’s Memorial Hall, which has been the festival’s home since 2023, and the Mariemont Theatre, which Cindependent assumed control of in January and reopened in late August.
In recent years, the Cindependent has been named one of the 100 best-reviewed film festivals in the world by FilmFreeway, the organization that’s home to major festivals like TIFF, Tribeca, and Sundance. Last year, the festival screened “The Singers,” a musical comedy produced by local Ohioan Jack Piatt that Netflix eventually picked up before it went on to win Best Live-Action Short Film at last year’s Oscars.
This year’s Cindependent received over 800 submissions; 80 were selected to play during the festival. It’s a far cry from the festival’s humble 2018 beginnings.
“The festival has gone from being three months worth of work to a year-round operation. Even in 2023, we had about eight or nine people on our team. We’ve now got 34. In years past, five or six people would judge each film. This year, we had 40,” said the festival’s curation director Jonny Shenk. (CityBeat‘s own Kane Mitten was one of this year’s judges.) “This is certainly our biggest year. And I don’t say this to say that we haven’t been at a high standard of quality all the way to this point, but I think this is definitely our best year in terms of programming.”
It helps, of course, to merge with your biggest counterpart. The Over-the-Rhine Film Festival, which was run by local nonprofit Living Arrangements for the Developmentally Disabled (LADD), turned over curation duties to the Cindependent team last year. The two have always worked together and shared joint screenings, so the eventual partnership made sense.
“There was a very connected symbiotic thing already happening between the festivals … LADD isn’t a film related organization. What they cared about most was elevating accessibility stories and the disability community,” Shenk said. “So they’re very vision focused, very mission focused. We’ve merged our energy with their mission, and it’s become a beautiful merge of vision and purpose for both of us.”
This year’s fest will open with an encore screening of “The Singers” at the Mariemont Theatre, followed by the feature film “Take Me Home,” a drama film about a Korean adoptee caring for her aging parents in the midst of a Florida heatwave. The next three days will move screenings to Memorial Hall, where groups of shorts and feature films will be presented in thematic blocks.
Blocks at the festival include “First Take,” which features films made by high schoolers; “Innovating in the Space,” which features all sorts of “innovative” films like “Coloring;” “All in the Family,” which covers family-related films; “Homegrown,” which features only locally made films; “Around the World,” which exclusively shows international works; “The Spark,” a grouping of films that explores what it means to be human; “Date Night,” a group of romantic films; and “After Dark,” which showcases all the weird and wild films that wouldn’t fit anywhere else.
Shenk took special care to shout out “Uncommitted,” a feature-length documentary about the community of Arab and Muslim people in Dearborn, Michigan who made headlines for refusing to vote for the Democratic Party due to its handling of the war in Gaza. Razi Jafri, a reporter at NPR, directed the film.
In addition to the film screenings, the Cindependent also features screenplay readings, panels with industry professionals, red carpet events each day, and afterparty events in Over-the-Rhine each night.
“I think you could come to the festival, spend a whole day just sort of checking out the red carpet, going to a panel, going to a workshop, sitting in the lounge, having a drink, meeting people. You might not even watch a film the whole day, but you’ll have a really nice, interesting experience,” Shenk said.
The festival will close with an awards ceremony and brunch at the Contemporary Arts Center on Sunday, followed by three more ‘closing night’ screenings at the Mariemont.
“We have a little something for everyone. If you’re a hardcore film fan, it’s a chance to see exciting new work from people who you’re gonna be hearing about soon, people who are maybe in the Oscar race this year, or maybe somebody who’s like the next Zach Cregger or Jordan Peele,” he said. “But even if you’re not necessarily a film person, particularly, it’s really just becoming a cool thing to do in Cincinnati. A day pass is $29, so it’s certainly worth trying if you’re just looking for a unique day out.”
For filmmakers, Shenk believes the festival “energizes” Cincinnati’s community. He shouted out local creatives Andre Hyland, Biz Young, Kiah Clingman, and Davis Cameron Chu as people who have participated in the festival and are now “doing really exciting work in the industry.”
“Celebrating how much talent we have in Cincinnati is meaningful. I think it starts to kind of light a fire under people, too, like ‘Oh, wow, they made this here? I need to up my game,'” Shenk said. “Cincinnati often plays as a stand-in for New York or Chicago, but I really want our local Cincinnati filmmakers to get celebrated the way they deserve. I want the festival to be a catalyst to to our film scene here. Because that’s how you start to really get a thriving scene: a little bit of cultivation and attention.”
In the future, Cindependent’s goal is along those same lines: to champion films from all over the planet, but especially in Cincinnati. For Shenk, who’s been involved with Cincinnati’s film scene for a decade and managed the Esquire Theatre before joining the festival team, the Cindependent’s continual growth is a dream come true.
“My two favorite things, for as long as I can remember, are movies and the city of Cincinnati. I think Cincinnati is a hidden gem with a lot of potential … It’s a very pure passion of mine, and it’s very exciting to come to work every day and feel that,” he said. “I think we’re moving towards becoming an organization that isn’t just showcasing films, but is actually able to support and fund filmmaking in Cincinnati. There’s a lot of opportunity for Cincinnati to become a hub for film, and I think we’re just starting to tap into that.”
The Cindependent Film Festival begins on Sept. 16. For more information on the Cindependent Film Festival, visit the official website.
