Tuesday 11 July 2000

Phoenix Film Festival 2017

The Phoenix Film Festival is the premier festival from the Phoenix Film Foundation and the largest film festival within the city of Phoenix, now in its 17th year.

I counted 131 films screening this year: 53 features (same as last year) and 72 short films (up from 67). There's also the Arizona Student Film Festival, screening short films made by local high school students, but films haven't yet been announced for that.

All that's excluding the International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival, which I still think of as a separate event even if it technically hasn't been since 2010. I maintain separate index pages for IHSFFF.

The event runs from 6th to 13th April in 2017.

Like last year, the scheduling for Monday to Thursday includes daytime slots, allowing many to see more films than would normally be possible.

New for this year are a number of things:

Each of the eight competition features are scheduled on each of the three main days of the event (Friday to Sunday). If that's been the case before, I've completely failed to notice.

The Home Grown Shorts set has vanished, replaced by a second Arizona Shorts set, which is a welcome simplification.

Most obviously, there's a Unified by Film program this year, which focuses on minority filmmakers. This program includes two features (HOME and The Land of Rock and Gold) and three sets of shorts, directed respectively by African Americans, Latino Americans and Native Americans.

Here are all the films scheduled to screen this year, with titles linking to my reviews and the IMDb pages added for reference. Films screened as part of the International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival are covered on a separate page.

Rating System
1 - Abysmal | 2 - Bad | 3 - Poor | 4 - OK | 5 - Good | 6 - Excellent | 7 - Classic

Arizona Feature Films
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
The Dutchman 2016 Jeff Kimble IMDb
IMperfect 2016 Ryan Thomas Andersen IMDb
The Man Behind the Suit 2016 Victor Vargas IMDb

Competition Feature Films
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
Brave New Jersey 2016 5 6 Jody Lambert IMDb
Fallen 2017 Thomas Marchese IMDb
Happy 2016 Michael McKinley IMDb
The Happys 2016 Tom Gould & John Serpe IMDb
The Long Way Back: The Story of Todd Z-Man Zalkins 2017 Richard Yelland IMDb
The Midnighters 2016 Julian Fort IMDb
Painless 2017 5 5 Jordan Horowitz IMDb
Quaker Oaths 2016 Louisiana Kreutz IMDb
Secondhand Hearts 2016 Austin Everett IMDb
Unnerved 2017 6 5 Gary King IMDb

Showcase Feature Films
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
Blue Ruin 2013 Jeremy Saulnier IMDb
Born in China 2016 Chuan Lu IMDb
The Commune 2016 Thomas Vinterberg IMDb
Dean 2016 Demetri Martin IMDb
The Devil's Mistress 2016 Filip Renč IMDb
Different Flowers 2017 Morgan Dameron IMDb
Gold Star 2016 Victoria Negri IMDb
Graduation 2016 Cristian Mungiu IMDb
Here's to Life: The Story of the Refreshments 2017 Taylor Morden IMDb
The Hero 2017 Brett Haley IMDb
How to Prepare for Prison 2016 Matt Gallagher IMDb
I Heart Huckabees 2004 David O. Russell IMDb
In America 2002 Jim Sheridan IMDb
In Loco Parentis 2016 Neasa Gordon IMDb
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters 2007 Seth Gordon IMDb
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang 2005 Shane Black IMDb
The Lost City of Z 2016 James Gray IMDb
Magnificent Burden 2016 Rob Nelson IMDb
Menashe 2017 Joshua Z Weinstein IMDb
A Million Happy Nows 2016 Albert Alarr IMDb
Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer 2016 Joseph Cedar IMDb
Patti Cake$ 2017 Geremy Jasper IMDb
Pinch 2016 Jake Lloyd IMDb
The Promise 2016 Terry George IMDb
Punch-Drunk Love 2002 Paul Thomas Anderson IMDb
Rosewood 1997 John Singleton IMDb
Senna 2010 Asif Kapadia IMDb
Step 2017 Amanda Lipitz IMDb
That's Not Me 2017 Gregory Erdstein IMDb
Tommy's Honour 2016 Jason Connery IMDb

Unified by Film
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
HOME 2016 Daniel Maldonado IMDb
The Land of Rock and Gold 2016 Daniel Redenbach & Janine Windolph IMDb

World Cinema Feature Films
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
Fairy Tales for Emma 2016 Rudolf Havlik IMDb
FUNNE: Sea Dreaming Girls 2017 Katia Bernardi IMDb
The Good Goering 2016 5 5 Kai Christiansen IMDb
The Islands and the Whales 2016 Mike Day IMDb
Land of the Little People 2016 Yaniv Berman IMDb
Property of the State 2016 Kit Ryan IMDb
Undocument 2016 Amin Bakhshian & Kyla Simone Bruce IMDb
Waking David 2016 Kevin Nash IMDb

African American Directed Shorts
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
Olde E 2016 Xavier Burgin IMDb
Harvest: Quyurciq 2015 Andre Lewis & Michael Dempster IMDb
Priyanath Anietie Antie-Obong n/a
Ori Inu: In Search of Self 2015 Chelsea Odufu IMDb
Pinch 2014 Beresford Bennett IMDb

Animated Shorts
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
One Per Person 2016 Nasheet Zaman & Jacquelyn 'Jac' Piette IMDb
Quitting Time 2017 Robert Dollase IMDb
The Killer Buzz Barry Jackson n/a
The Past Inside the Present 2015 James Siewert IMDb
Fox and the Whale 2016 Robin Joseph IMDb
Hope 2016 Michael Scherrer IMDb
Pearl 2016 Patrick Osborne IMDb
White Tunnel 2016 Chien Lan-chi & Chang Chin-wei IMDb

Arizona Shorts A
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
Disciple 2016 Bob Reynolds IMDb
The Amazing Mortimer 2017 Phil Wilson IMDb
Tobi & Matt 2015 Joe Gruberman IMDb
Waiting for Goodbye 2016 Curt Apduhan IMDb
Limelight Killian Davies n/a
MISSing Marteen Cleary n/a
The Listening Hour 2016 Kelcy Valletta IMDb
Just Like Us 2016 Adam Benavides IMDb

Arizona Shorts B
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
Broken 2016 Robin Egan IMDb
LASER Pen David Miller & Tyler Riggs n/a
Finding Eugene 2015 Alfredo Enriquez IMDb
Homeless to Home Owner James Bustamante n/a
One Hundred Thousand Beating Hearts 2016 Peter Byck IMDb
Contentment 2016 Alexandria Rose Rizik IMDb
Path of a Luthier Cliff Sarde n/a

College Shorts
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
Choices 2017 Rick Hamilton IMDb
Stutter 2016 Ivo Huahua IMDb
The Ashes 2016 Jacob Kirby IMDb
A State of Emergency Tarek Roehlinger n/a
Bunee: The Boy from Constanța 2016 Bunee Tomlinson IMDb
At Ease 2015 Jacob Kirby IMDb
Jewish Blind Date 2015 Anaëlle Morf IMDb

Documentary Shorts
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
Milk & Honey Justin Clifton n/a
What's Eating Zack Turnquist 2016 Alexandra Kotcheff IMDb
The Collection 2017 Adam Roffman IMDb
Soy Cubana 2016 Jeremy Ungar & Ivaylo Getov IMDb
Lost & Found 2016 Naomi Iwamoto IMDb

Latino American Directed Shorts
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
Treintañera 2016 Dieglo Londoño IMDb
As Life Shifts 2016 Daniel Gras Pujalt IMDb
Hummingbird & Crane 2016 Veronica Rodriguez IMDb
Mysterious Ways 2016 Paul Sanchez IMDb
Written Off 2016 Margie Shabazz & Antoine McKay IMDb

Live Action Shorts A
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
Shy Guys 2016 Fredric Lehne IMDb
A Beautiful Day 2016 Phedon Papamichael IMDb
Swim 2016 Mari Walker IMDb
The Retriever 2016 Nicholas Thurkettle IMDb
Mine 2015 Nick Dixon IMDb
Miriam's Balloons Dan Czerwonka IMDb
The Babysitter Murders 2015 Ryan Spindell IMDb

Live Action Shorts B
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
I Love New York 2016 Christian Vogeler IMDb
4 Pounds of Flowers 2016 Rob Richert IMDb
The Scarecrow 2015 Phillip Rhys IMDb
Harper Shadow Nik Kleverov n/a
Off Track Betty 2016 Clayton Dean Smith IMDb
Wig Shop 2016 Kat Coiro IMDb
Toppled 2017 Paul DeNigris IMDb

Medium-Length Documentaries
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
Happy 2016 Mike Dorsey IMDb
Symphony in D Dennis Scholl & Marlon Johnson n/a

Native American Directed Shorts
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
Legacy Mark Lewis n/a
The Gift 2016 Sunny Moodie, Natalie Ulman, Joshua Indenbaum & Tom Blue Wolf IMDb
Sweet Oil 2017 Chris Cowden IMDb
The Lady and the Eagle Brian Young n/a
HAM 2016 Boise Esquerra IMDb

World Cinema Shorts
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
Under the Chinese Banyan Ross Yau n/a
Friday Night 2016 Alexis Michalik IMDb
Mate 2016 Tom Connolly IMDb
Child for Child 2017 Juan Avella IMDb
Aarsa 2016 Kawa Hatef IMDb
Minh Tam 2016 Vincent Maury IMDb

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