FILM FEST KNOX announces the full festival lineup for the fourth annual edition of the event taking place at the downtown Regal Riviera November 12–15, 2026. In addition to the previously announced films in the American Regional Cinema Competition (Act One, Airport BLVD., And Then I Knew ‘Twas Wind, The Pirate King, and Ponderosa) and the Made in Tennessee Competition (three features and fifteen shorts), FILM FEST KNOX programming includes an array of acclaimed festival highlights and revivals, the Elev8or Pitch, panels, networking opportunities, and more.
Full Festival and VIP Passes are on sale now at FILMFESTKNOX.com. Passholders are now able to select their blocks.
Single tickets and 5 block passes will go on sale October 27.
Top 8 Elev8or Pitch Teams will be announced on October 31.
“As FILM FEST KNOX continues to grow, so does its impact on Knoxville, introducing new audiences to our area and strengthening our reputation as a destination for arts and culture,” said Kim Bumpas, President of Visit Knoxville. “We’re proud to welcome filmmakers and visitors from across the country while creating an experience our local community can enjoy and celebrate.”
“FILM FEST KNOX continues to build momentum as a premier film festival in the Southeast,” said Curt Willis, Sr. Director of the Visit Knoxville Film Office. “It has really become a standout event where emerging and established filmmakers can share their work, connect with industry professionals, and engage with audiences who truly appreciate independent cinema.”
The Elev8or Pitch competition kicks off the festival on the evening of Thursday, November 12, when the Top 8 teams will each screen their film and deliver a one-minute pitch in front of a live audience and the panel of judges. The other Elev8or Pitch films will screen on Saturday, November 14.
The Currents and Revival programs spotlight award-winning favorites from the world’s top festivals, alongside rediscoveries and restorations of underseen gems of American regional cinema. This year’s Currents lineup includes the previously announced The Leader, starring and produced by 2026 Agee Award winner Tim Blake Nelson, and the opening night film, Mouse. Nelson and Mouse’s writer-director Kelly O’Sullivan will introduce and participate in Q&As following the screenings of their films.
Currents also features Clarissa, an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, as the festival’s closing film. Filmed in Lagos and starring a Nigerian cast, Clarissa is a fascinating, beautiful, and deeply moving transposition of Woolf’s colonial-era family drama to our contemporary sociopolitical world. Union Town completes Barbara Kopple’s labor trilogy, which began in 1976 with Harlan County, USA, her Oscar-winning reportage from a strike at the Brookside Mine. Peter Gilbert, who served as Kopple’s cinematographer on American Dream (1990), the second film of the trilogy and her second Best Documentary winner, will discuss his career following the screening. Gilbert’s long resume includes Hoop Dreams (1994), which was recently named the fifth greatest documentary of all time by The Hollywood Reporter.
Currents is rounded out by Everything Else Is Noise, the latest—and funniest!—film by Mexican director Nicolás Pereda, and this year’s Flicker & Wow screening, which includes three new experimental films. Canticle of the Sun and Toss a Rose Over are both by Knoxville-based artists: Nathan Swann and Janelle VanderKelen, respectively. The screening concludes with The Rib of the Greater Bay Area, by renowned Chinese visual artist Zhou Tao, which isn’t quite like any film we’ve seen before.
The mission of the Revival program is to put lesser-known works of American regional cinema in conversation with today’s films. As previously announced, FILM FEST KNOX will present a rare theatrical screening of Tim Blake Nelson’s debut feature as a writer-director, Eye of God (1997), a small-town gothic parable anchored by an all-time great performance by Martha Plimpton. I Used to Be Darker (2013) is a rarity in independent cinema, in that it’s a musical of sorts. Set in Baltimore, with a brief stop in Ocean City, Maryland, it features early appearances by indie stars Deragh Campbell and Hannah Gross (both seen in 2023 competition film, An Evening Song), but the film rests on the performances of singer-songwriters Kim Taylor and Ned Oldham, who play a middle-aged couple navigating a painful divorce. Writer-director Matt Porterfield will introduce and discuss the film.
Revival also includes two noteworthy restorations. The story of a family vacation turned nightmare, Larry Fessenden’s Wendigo (2001) sits somewhere between The Shining, The X-Files, and Deliverance. Madeline Whittle, who recently presented the theatrical premiere of the restoration at Lincoln Center, will introduce the screening. Mississippi Triangle (1984) has been rereleased as part of a larger celebration of the Oscar-nominated Chinese American filmmaker Christine Choy, who passed away in 2025. Choy’s landmark film about Chinese communities that were established in the South following the Civil War has been fully restored and expanded to its original length.
“In addition to the Elev8or Pitch films that are yet to be announced, we’ll be showing seventeen feature-length films and seventeen shorts over the course of two-and-a-half days,” said artistic director Darren Hughes. “Where else can you see so many parts of the world and hear so many stories, from so many perspectives, in a single weekend? And where else can you share such an intimate and entertaining experience with a community of friends and strangers? I’ve been part of the film festival world for nearly twenty-five years, and it never gets old.”
Full program notes, this year’s festival trailer, and schedule are now available at www.FILMFESTKNOX.com.
LINEUP DETAILS
CURRENTS
Canticle of The Sun
Nathan Swann · 7 minutes
The quiet hum of varied streets gathers into a song of dust and light. Screening with Toss a Rose Over and The Rib of the Greater Bay Area. Filmmaker will be present.
Clarissa
CLOSING FILM
Arie and Chuko Esiri · 134 minutes
An adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa follows a Lagos society wife preparing for a party while reflecting on her youth and the choices that led her to marry a respected man instead of her poet boyfriend. Oscar nominee and Tony winner Sophie Okonedo (also featured in Mouse) stars as present-day Clarissa, alongside India Amarteifio (Bridgerton) as her younger version.
Everything Else Is Noise
Nicolás Pereda · 71 minutes
In Mexico, musician Tere (Teresita Sánchez) hosts fellow composer Rosa (Rosa Estela Juárez) for a TV interview. Their conversation wanders as unexpected guests arrive. A witty, absurdist comedy that lampoons art-world phoniness and pretension while honoring female friendship.
The Leader
JAMES AGEE PRIZE PRESENTATION
Michael Gallagher · 104 minutes
In 1997, thirty-nine members of the American cult known as “Heaven’s Gate” committed the largest mass suicide to ever take place on American soil. This is their story. Tim Blake Nelson and Vera Farmiga star as Marshall Herff Applewhite (aka Do) and Bonnie Lu Nettles (aka Ti), the leaders of the cult, and are joined in the cast by Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory) and Simon Rex (Red Rocket). Actor/Producer Tim Blake Nelson and filmmakers will be present.
Mouse
OPENING NIGHT FILM
Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson · 120 minutes
It’s 2002, and best friends Minnie (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) and Callie (Chloe Coleman) are heading into their senior year of high school. When their friendship is suddenly upended at the start of the summer, Minnie struggles to define her own identity and forms a complicated relationship with Callie’s poised, attentive mother (Sophie Okonedo, also starring in Clarissa), pulling her further from her own chaotic home. The ensemble also features David Hyde Pierce, Tara Mallen, and Iman Vellani. Filmmakers will be present.
The Rib of the Greater Bay Area
Zhou Tao · 70 minutes
Fragmented coastal scenes scattered across the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area: a security guard on duty at a Shenzhen beach, children playing in the shallows beneath a bridge, among others. Screening with Canticle of the Sun and Toss a Rose Over.
Toss a Rose Over
Janelle VanderKelen · 11 minutes
The green ones share stories of change in this travelogue from the vantage point of plants. In a canyon where all things move, these ancient beings urge humanity to reconsider acts of interspecies and intraspecies relation during a current period of intense anthropogenic climate change. Screening with Canticle of the Sun and The Rib of the Greater Bay Area. Filmmaker will be present.
Union Town
Barbara Kopple · 106 minutes
Union Town completes Barbara Kopple’s trilogy on labor rights following her Oscar-winning Harlan County, USA and American Dream, two landmark cinéma vérité documentaries. Set against the backdrop of New York City, Union Town follows delivery industry workers as they take on some of the world’s most powerful corporations, revealing the challenges, passion, and humanity at the heart of this growing labor movement. American Regional Cinema Competition juror Peter Gilbert, who was the director of photography of American Dream and producer of Hoop Dreams, will discuss his career, including his collaboration with Kopple.
REVIVAL
Eye of God
Tim Blake Nelson · 1997 · 84 minutes
Two tragedies unfold in a small Oklahoma town. One follows Ainsley DuPree (Martha Plimpton) as she meets and marries her prison pen pal Jack. The other tracks a sheriff’s (Hal Holbrook) investigation of a bloodied, mute teenager (Nick Stahl) found wandering in shock late at night. Very rare theatrical screening.
I Used to Be Darker
Matthew Porterfield · 2013 · 88 minutes
A runaway (Deragh Campbell) seeks refuge with her aunt (Kim Taylor) and uncle (Ned Oldham) in Baltimore and finds their marriage ending and her cousin (Hannah Gross) in crisis. In the days that follow, the family struggles to let go of the past while searching for new things to hold onto. Filmmaker will be present.
Mississippi Triangle (New Restoration)
Christine Choy · 1984 · 110 minutes
An intimate portrait of life in the Mississippi Delta, where Chinese, African Americans, and whites live in a complex world of cotton, labor, and racial conflict. The history of the Chinese community, originally brought to the South to work on cotton plantations after the Civil War, is framed against the harsh realities of civil rights, religion, politics, and class in the South. Rare historical footage and interviews with Delta residents are combined to create this unprecedented document of inter-ethnic relations in the American South.
Wendigo (New Restoration)
Larry Fessenden · 2001 · 84 minutes
Kim (Patricia Clarkson), George (Jake Weber), and their 8-year-old son, Miles (Erik Per Sullivan), are New Yorkers stealing a weekend away at a friend’s country farmhouse. But a fluke accident sets off a chain of events that alters their lives forever and conjures up the ferocious spirit of the Wendigo, a Native American myth made manifest in Miles’s imagination. American Regional Cinema Competition juror Madeline Whittle, the programmer of Film at Lincoln Center’s Scary Movies series, will introduce the film.
All details on FILM FEST KNOX are at FilmFestKnox.com. Follow FILM FEST KNOX on Facebook and Instagram.
Media: Images and Trailer Video
ABOUT FILM FEST KNOX
Launched in 2023 as an initiative of the Visit Knoxville Film Office, FILM FEST KNOX is an annual film festival held every fall in downtown Knoxville, with screenings hosted at the Regal Riviera in partnership with Regal and The Public Cinema. FILM FEST KNOX showcases and advocates for personal, ambitious regional cinema by featuring the American Regional Cinema Competition, the Made in Tennessee Competition, the Elev8or Pitch Competition, and other programming and social events. FILM FEST KNOX has been twice recognized by MovieMaker Magazine as one of the “50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee.” For more information, go to FilmFestKnox.com and follow on Facebook and Instagram.
