The 6th Annual Albany Film Festival

The 6th Annual Albany Film Festival - featuring a number of "bookish" events - will be presented by the NYS Writers Institute on Saturday, March 28, at the University at Albany.

Oscar‑nominated filmmakers and award‑winning writers highlight the 6th Annual Albany Film Festival on Saturday, March 28, at the University at Albany.

The event will take place from 11 a.m. through 7 p.m. at the UAlbany Campus Center, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12222. All events are free and open to the public. No registration is required.

Event details, maps, free parking locations, and more information available at www.albanyfilmfestival.org/

“We are proud that we’ve carved out our niche as the ‘bookish’ Albany Film Festival while nurturing a wonderful audience of filmmakers and film lovers,” said Paul Grondahl, Opalka Endowed Director of the NYS Writers Institute at UAlbany. “Our approach to our festival centers conversations and discussions while exploring the intersection of writing and filmmaking in all its forms.“

Oscar-nominated filmmaker and acclaimed novelist John Sayles headlines the event and will receive the Ironweed Award for Exemplary Achievement in Film.

Sayles, who grew up in Schenectady, is a two-time Academy Award nominee for Best Original Screenplay: “Passion Fish” in 1992 and “Lone Star” in 1996. His other films include the iconic 1980 drama “Return of the Secaucus 7,” “Matewan” (1987), and “Eight Men Out” (1988).

An accomplished writer, Sayles’ first published story, "I-80 Nebraska", won an O. Henry Award, and his 1997 novel Union Dues was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. At the film festival, Sayles will discuss his film career and his new novel Crucible (2026), a story about Henry Ford, the ruthless, power-mad “tech bro” of his generation.

“Ironweed Award honoree John Sayles epitomizes the indie spirit of our undertaking and an emphasis on homegrown talent,” said Grondahl. Earlier this month, the Writers Institute screened Sayles’ directorial debut “Return of the Secaucus 7” (1980) to a large audience.

Ironweed Awards will also be presented (virtually) to filmmakers Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, co-founders of Rada Studios. Their 2023 documentary, “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project,” won a Primetime Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking, and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. The film was also shortlisted for a Best Documentary Oscar.

Sayles (in-person), Brewster and Stephenson (via Zoom) will participate in earlier events at the festival.

Another popular feature of the Albany Film Festival returns in 2026: the Short Film Contest. Finalists will screen their films – in categories for animated, comedy, drama, experimental, documentary, and horror.

Winners in those categories, along with Best Overall Film and an award for the Brendan Fahy Bequette Student Short Film Award, underwritten by Brendan’s parents, Senator Pat Fahy and Wayne Bequette -- will be announced at the Ironweed Award ceremony at the close of the festival. 

Along with the Sayles and Brewster/Stephenson events, other highlights include:

Dylan and Springsteen: Biographies and Biopics

Music biographers Elijah Wald, author of Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties, the book that inspired the 2024 Oscar‑nominated film “A Complete Unknown,” and Warren Zanes, bestselling author of Deliver Me from Nowhere, the basis for the recent Springsteen biopic “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.” Zanes’s previous bestseller was Petty: The Biography (2015), one of Rolling Stone's 10 Best Music Books of the Year.

On the Set of “Forrest Gump”

With Phillip Caruso, known in Hollywood as “Still Phil,” one of the most sought-after still photographers in the film and television industries. His many iconic images include the “Forrest Gump” movie poster of Tom Hanks as Gump waiting on a bench for a bus. Caruso received the Society of Camera Operators Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017.

Discussion of “Trump and Television”

James Poniewozik, New York Times chief TV critic, will revisit his 2019 book, Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America, named a “Notable or Best Book of the Year” in the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Publishers Weekly, Slate and NPR.

Kareema Bee: Film screening and discussion of “The Self-Love Act”

Kareema Bee is a two-time Emmy-nominated writer, producer, on-camera talent, and digital content creator who graduated from the University at Albany (B.A., English, 2009). Her newest project is “The Self-Love Act” (2024-present), a docuseries that follows her personal journey to rediscover self-love through dialogue with others.

Film screening and discussion of “Death by Numbers”

With Sam Fuentes, a poet, activist and survivor of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Documentary in 2025.

Film screening and discussion of “The Truck”

Director and screenwriter Liz Rao will discuss the film short (executive produced by Spike Lee) about a Chinese-American teen and her Iranian-American boyfriend on a frantic search for the “morning after” pill in rural Tennessee in post-Roe v. Wade America.

“Calico Rebellion” - The Anti-Rent War and the Second American Revolution

A multi-media presentation with director Victoria Kupchinetsky, producer Misha Gutkin, author Nancy Newman, and featured musicians.

Film screening and discussion of “We Were the Scenery”

With Christopher Radcliff, the director of the Oscar-nominated short documentary, “We Were the Scenery” (2025), based on the experiences of writer Cathy Linh Che’s parents, two Vietnam War refugees who, while living in a refugee camp in the Philippines, were utilized as background extras in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now”

Short Film Finalists screened throughout the day, with awards presented at 6 p.m.

11 a.m.–7 p.m. Saturday, March 28

UAlbany Campus Center

1400 Washington Avenue

Albany NY 12222

Free admission. No registration needed.

More info: AlbanyFilmFestival.org 

ALBANY FILM FESTIVAL -- COMPLETE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Events subject to change.

All venues are located at the University at Albany, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222.

Check www.albanyfilmfestival.org for updates.

Screening of short film finalists

11 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.

Republic Records Music Hall (Campus Center West Auditorium) and Campus Center West Boardroom

Screenings of the finalists’ films will take place throughout the event. See website for schedule of screenings.

The short film award winners, including a prize for Best Student Short Film and Best Overall Short Film, will be announced at the closing ceremony beginning at 6 p.m. in Republic Records Music Hall (Campus Center West Auditorium)

“The Anti-Rent Wars: A Multimedia Presentation”

11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., Campus Center Ballroom

USA | 2024 | 70 min

With director Victoria Kupchinetsky, producer Misha Gutkin, author and UAlbany Professor Nancy Newman, and featured musicians

An award-winning documentary that brings to life one of New York’s most dramatic but often overlooked chapters of history. The farmers’ uprising in the Catskill Mountains 180 years ago changed the course of American history. Today it lives on through direct descendants of those rebellious farmers, through their stories, songs, and eerie costumes preserved since the 1840s.

"Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project"

Virtual Q&A: 11 a.m. – noon, Campus Center West Multi-Purpose Room

With filmmakers Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson

Filmmaker Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, founders of Rada Studios, will discuss their documentary, "Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project" (2023), their film about major American poet and civil rights activist Nikki Giovanni. It won a Primetime Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking, and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. The film was also shortlisted for a Best Documentary Oscar.

“Dylan and Springsteen: Biographies and Biopics”

11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m., Campus Center Assembly Hall

Elijah Wald is the author of Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties (2015), the book that inspired the blockbuster movie, “A Complete Unknown” (2024). Wald’s newest book is Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs and Hidden Histories (2024). NPR music critic Ann Powers called it, “A hot and essential read.”

Warren Zanes, writer and notable rock musician, is the bestselling author of Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska (2023), the basis of the 2025 film, “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.”

Zanes’s previous bestseller was Petty: The Biography (2015), one of Rolling Stone's 10 Best Music Books of the Year. At the age of 17, Zanes became the lead guitarist of the 1980s garage-band sensation, The Del Fuegos. He currently teaches cultural studies at New York University.

Film screening and discussion of “The Self-Love Act”

12:15 – 1:15 p.m., Campus Center West Multi-Purpose Room

USA | 2024 | 20 min

With director and UAlbany alum Kareema Bee

In this series hosted by Kareema Bee, a Black woman and artist explores her journey through self-love in dialogue with others, supported by The Big We Foundation. In the pilot episode, Bee finds out her African ancestry in an unexpected way, which catapults her into an exploration of her roots and how it extends to her community, only to find what she's been searching for may have been there all along.

Kareema Bee is a two-time Emmy-nominated writer, producer, on-camera talent, and digital content creator who graduated from the University at Albany (B.A., English, 2009).

Discussion of Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America

12:45 – 1:45 p.m., Campus Center Assembly Hall

James Poniewozik

James Poniewozik, chief TV critic for the New York Times, will revisit his acclaimed and bestselling 2019 book, Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America. Tom Carson in Bookforum called it, "The smartest, most original, most unexpectedly definitive account of the rise of Trump and Trumpism,” and said, “It’s also the best book yet written about the bride-of-Frankenstein mating of American politics and American pop culture.” Audience of One was named a Notable or Best Book of the Year in the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Publishers Weekly, Slate and NPR.

Joel Perez: Film screening and discussion of “Villa Encanto”

1 – 2:00 p.m., Campus Center Ballroom

USA | 2025 | 16 min

Joel Perez, Broadway and off-Broadway actor, is the director and co-writer of “Villa Encanto” (2025), a short film about a teenager’s experiences in a Puerto Rican summer resort in the Catskills in the 1950s. Featuring Lin-Manuel Miranda as executive producer, the film celebrates a vanished world known as “Las Villas” and the “Latin Borscht Belt.”

Film screening and discussion: “We Were the Scenery”

1:45 – 2:45 p.m., Campus Center West Multi-Purpose Room

USA | 2025 | 15 min

Christopher Radcliff is the director of the Oscar-nominated short documentary, “We Were the Scenery” (2025), based on the experiences of writer Cathy Linh Che’s parents, two Vietnam War refugees who, while living in a refugee camp in the Philippines, were utilized as background extras in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” — effectively placing them at the margins of their own story. Cathy Linh Che’s family story is also explored in her poetry collection, Becoming Ghost (2025), a 2025 National Book Award Finalist that she presented at the NYS Writers Institute last fall.

Discussion of Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star

2:15 – 3:15 p.m., Campus Center Assembly Hall

Mayukh Sen is the author of Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star (2025), a biography of the leading actress of the American film industry’s Golden Age in the 1930s and ‘40s. Born in Bombay, Oberon hid her Indian origins throughout her career to escape racism in the film industry. A finalist for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, Love, Queenie was named a Best Book of 2025 by Publishers Weekly and Booklist. An award-winning food writer, Sen won the James Beard Award for Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America (2021), an NPR Best Book of the Year.

John Sayles: Discussion about his film career and new novel Crucible

2:30 – 3:30 p.m., Campus Center Ballroom

John Sayles, legendary independent filmmaker, is the author of Crucible (2026), a novel about Henry Ford, the ruthless, power-mad “tech bro” of his generation. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Sam Sacks called it, “A sprawling, mural-like novel that engages with the process, the spirit and especially the conflicts of breakneck industrial progress ... [with] a dynamic vision of American history.”

Sayles, who grew up in Schenectady, is a celebrated pioneer of indie cinema. He has twice been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay— for “Passion Fish” (1992) and “Lone Star” (1996); and once for the National Book Award—for the novel, Union Dues (1977).

Film screening and discussion: “The Truck”

3:15 – 4:15 p.m., Campus Center West Multi-Purpose Room

USA | 2024 | 14 min

Liz Rao is the writer-director of “The Truck” (2024), an award-winning short film about a Chinese-American teen and her Iranian-American boyfriend on a frantic search for the “morning after” pill in rural Tennessee in post-Roe v. Wade America. Spike Lee and Joan Chen executive produced this film, longlisted for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short. Spike Lee said, “’The Truck’ is an urgent, gripping look at teen love and the freedom to choose in this America right now. Liz Rao brings her unique vision as a screenwriter and director who is unafraid to provoke, and dares to speak truth to power, and does it in high style.”

Phillip Caruso: “On the Set of ‘Forrest Gump’”

3:45 – 4:45 p.m., Campus Center Assembly Hall

Phillip Caruso, known in Hollywood as “Still Phil,” is one of the most sought-after still photographers in the film and television industries. His many iconic images include the “Forrest Gump” movie poster of Tom Hanks as Gump waiting on a bench for a bus.

Caruso received the Society of Camera Operators Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017.

“Death by Numbers” with writer Sam Fuentes

4 – 5:15 p.m., Campus Center Ballroom

USA | 2024 | 33 min

Screening and discussion with writer and school shooting survivor Sam Fuentes

4:00 p.m. – 5:15 p.m., Campus Center Ballroom

Four years after being shot with an AR-15 in her high school in Parkland, Florida, Sam Fuentes reckons with existential questions of hatred and justice as she prepares to confront her shooter. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Documentary in 2025. 

Film screening and discussion of “Tahlequah the Whale: A Dance of Grief"

4:30 – 5:30 p.m., Campus Center West Multi-Purpose Room

USA | 2023 | 15 min

Daniel Kreizberg is the writer-director of the acclaimed animated short, “Tahlequah the Whale: A Dance of Grief." A nonfiction recreation of an incredible true story, the film follows Tahlequah, a mother orca, as she carries and continues to care for her newborn baby daughter after her sudden death.

The late primate scientist Jane Goodall said, "How beautiful, how sad, and what a powerful message." Lori Marino, founder and president of the Whale Sanctuary Project said, “I cannot express how moving this film is.” The film received “Special Mention of the Festival” at the Oscar-qualifying Animayo International Film Festival. This is Kreizberg’s first film.

Presentation of the Ironweed Awards and Short Film Awards

6 p.m.

Republic Records Music Hall (Campus Center West Auditorium)

Ironweed Award recipients: Filmmaker and acclaimed novelist John Sayles, and Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, co-founders of Rada Studios.

Short Film Award categories: – Animated / Comedy / Drama / Documentary / Experimental / Horror / Best Student / and Best Overall.

About the Albany Film Festival

Francis Ford Coppola launched our first Albany Film Festival with a preview event in Fall 2019. Coppola received the first Ironweed Award for Exemplary Achievement in Film and talked with Writers Institute founder William Kennedy about his director's cut of “The Cotton Club.” Kennedy wrote the original script of that film.

The NYS Writers Institute would like to thank our sponsors who made the Albany Film Festival possible:

Presenting sponsors:

The Opalka Endowed Directorship

Times Union

Supporting sponsors:

The Brendan Fahy Bequette Fund, per Patricia Fahy & Wayne Bequette

The Lee Thaw Charitable Trust, Richard J. Miller Jr., Trustee

NYS Writers Institute Classic Film Series Endowment

The Swyer Family Foundation

The Towne Law Firm, P.C.

University Auxiliary Services

Friend:

Laurie Bank and Stuart Freyer

Brown & Weinraub

Skip Casano and Bella Pipas

Clover Pond Vineyard

​Community Care Physicians

Hank Greenberg, Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Paul and Mary Grondahl

David and Lauren Hayes

Mr. and Mrs. Daniel J. Hogarty Jr.

Michael and Mary Keegan

William Kennedy

Betsy Lopez

Steve McKee Foundation

Thomas O. Maggs, PhD

Paula Mosher

Annette Nanes

Dan O'ConnellHerb and Cynthia Shultz

Scott & Lucie Schuster

Dr. Bob Wishnoff and Dr. Eva Joseph

www.albanyfilmfestival.org