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