Reel Nashville: Your Guide to the 48th Annual Nashville Film Festival

As the Nashville Film Festival nears the half-century mark, it continues to sprawl well beyond what it was at its inception — known as the Sinking Creek Film Celebration back in 1969. This year, more than 300 films from around the world are screening during NaFF’s 10-day run, from April 20 until April 29, at the fest’s new home — Regal’s Hollywood Stadium 27. With the move to the popularly neon-adorned Hollywood cineplex, the fest scales up an additional four screens from Green Hills Stadium 16, NaFF’s longtime home.

In addition to the Spectrum and Special Presentation films — rife with festival-circuit hits and movie stars, among them Cate Blanchett in Manifesto and Sam Elliot in The Hero — NaFF offers several competition categories and an enormous slate of short films. Though we couldn’t possibly fit synopses and critiques of every single film in these pages, our crack team of journalists, critics and snobs has put together overviews of the best films in each competition category, from New Directors, Documentary and Narrative to the local-centric — the Tennessee First and Music Films Music City competitions — and the creepy (Graveyard Shift!). You can also read about the standouts from the Young Filmmakers Shorts Competition and a rundown of some of the fest’s most promising shorts.

If you’d like to see the entire Nashville Film Festival lineup, purchase tickets or passes, or read about the Creator’s Conference speakers on April 27-28, visit nashvillefilmfestival.org.

And now, find your spot. The lights are going down.

Spectrum/Special Presentations

By Noel Murray

Every film festival attendee is looking for that one slam-dunk movie — the audience favorite that everyone will be talking about all week, and maybe even all year. For this year’s Nashville Film Festival, that movie’s likely to be Step (6:45 p.m. April 23), a wipe-away-a-tear/stand-up-and-cheer crowd-pleaser that follows a year in the life of a Baltimore high school step team. Sure to be a hit when it goes into nationwide release this summer, Step is a slick, stirring documentary with a lot to say about the value of education and the arts.

Step can be found in NaFF’s Special Presentations section, which — along with the Spectrum programming — offers the highest concentration of festival-circuit hits and movie stars. This year brings a bravura turn from Cate Blanchett in the challenging Manifesto (8:30 p.m. April 26; 12:30 p.m. April 27), in which the actress plays 13 different characters, each delivering monologues drawn from famous political and artistic screeds. Also highly recommended: Sundance favorite The Hero (7 p.m. April 20), featuring a potentially Oscar-worthy performance by the venerable Sam Elliot as an actor trying to make some amends as he eases into the last phase of his life.

The Special Presentations have just as much to offer for documentary fans, including the latest from Hoop Dreams director Steve James, whose absorbing Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (7 p.m. April 24) takes an intimate look at how and why a Chinese-American family became the one banking company charged with a crime after the 2008 financial collapse. Also of note: Judd Apatow (see our interview with him on p. 46) co-directs a portrait of Americana favorites The Avett Brothers, May It Last (9:30 p.m. April 22), and Fera Fayyad offers an insider’s perspective on the struggles in Syria in Last Men in Aleppo (6 p.m. April 24).

The Spectrum section, meanwhile, features films by two of our best foreign filmmakers. Thomas Vinterberg (best known for The Celebration) brings The Commune (8:30 p.m. April 21), a funny and knowing reflection on life among ’70s Danish hippies; and Alain Guiraudie (best known for Stranger in Town) has his latest take on European gay culture with Staying Vertical (8:30 p.m. April 25), about an artist who becomes an unexpected father figure.

Lastly, don’t overlook two unforgettable sleepers at this year’s festival. The short, sweet Menashe (6 p.m. April 23) was made with the help of New York’s orthodox Jewish community, and tells the moving story of a hapless widower trying to convince his rabbi that he can be a responsible father to his son. And like Step, the uplifting Patti Cake$ (7 p.m. April 29) is an audience-satisfying machine, following an underclass New Jerseyite (played by Danielle MacDonald) who aspires to be a champion rapper.

New Directors Competition

By Erica Ciccarone

The New Directors category is the festival’s secret weapon, offering the best of what’s to come in film. This year doesn’t disappoint — a diverse group of directors cover a lot of ground, from family crises to controversial social issues.

Apricot Groves (6:30 p.m. April 24; 3 p.m. April 25) is the standout debut from Pouria Heidary Oureh. Aram is a young Iranian-Armenian transgender man who falls in love with an Armenian girl in the U.S. Because of her family’s strict customs, he travels to Armenia to propose, and he prepares to undergo gender reassignment surgery in Iran. Under normal circumstances, asking for a father’s approval to wed his daughter is nerve-wracking. In this case, the cultural and interpersonal tension is almost unbearable. Actor Pedram Ansari shines as Aram’s brother, with a knockout performance that celebrates the potentially crushing weight of familial love.

Dorie Barton’s Girl Flu (7 p.m. April 26; 2 p.m. April 27) is a delightfully real drama about a girl’s first period. Sixteen-year old Jade Pettyjohn plays Bird, a wise and mature teen who is flummoxed by her encroaching womanhood and its accompanying hormones. But this is no chick flick — Barton shines a compassionate light on parental shortcomings through Bird’s mom, Jenny (Katee Sackhoff of Battlestar Galactica fame), a pot-smoking Valley girl who is painfully aware of her limitations. It’s the kind of film that makes you skip out of the theater with eyes aglaze.

Another standout is Adam Keleman’s Easy Living (5:30 p.m. April 22; 9 p.m. April 23), a character-driven drama starring Caroline Dhavernas as door-to-door makeup saleswoman Sherry. Caught in a cycle of one-night stands and bank-account overdrafts, Sherry is grounded by self-help philosophy tapes that play in her head as she drags her makeup sample case around the suburbs. Written by Keleman, the screenplay does justice to the self-destructive tendencies of a woman off the rails, with a third-act surprise that brings it all home.

TV actress and stand-up comic Aisha Tyler (Criminal Minds, The Talk) makes her feature-length directing debut in the Kickstarter-funded AXIS (12:30 p.m. April 26; 7 p.m. April 28), a close-cut character study of an acclaimed actor confronting his demons. Jameson Brooks’ Bomb City (8 p.m. April 23; 7:20 p.m. April 25) is a gritty drama based on the true story of a punk musician who was murdered in North Texas in the late ’90s. In Jorge Thielen Armand’s La Soledad (6 p.m. April 25; 3:30 p.m. April 26), nonprofessional actors play characters based on their own lives in Venezuela’s current economic crisis.

Documentary Competition

By Michael Sicinski

Due to its place on the spring calendar, the Nashville Film Festival gets to pull some of the most notable documentaries from other key film events — Sundance and True/False in particular — in order to bring them to local audiences hungry for quality nonfiction cinema. As with any festival’s offerings, this year’s doc slate is a mixed bag, but there are several fine entries and one example of unimpeachable excellence.

Two of this year’s best share an abiding interest in waning traditions. But rather than taking a nostalgic or conservative stance, the two films strike a defiant tone, arguing that in capitalism’s endless clamoring for the newest, fastest and shiniest, certain basic human values are being left in the dust. Spettacolo (5 p.m. April 24; 1 p.m. April 25), the latest from Jeff Malmberg (Marwencol), profiles a tiny village in Tuscany where each summer, nearly all 300 of its residents participate in a public theatrical work that addresses the popular concerns of the townsfolk — free speech, gentrification, Berlusconi or the future of the village theater itself. More and more villagers, especially young people, are disenchanted with the process. Will it continue?

Similarly, California Typewriter (7:30 p.m. April 21; 5:30 p.m. April 27) is, at its base, a profile of a small typewriter repair shop in Berkeley, Calif., run by a man named Herb who keeps it going for the typewriting enthusiasts of the world. As we learn, there are a surprising number of them, and they count such luminaries as Tom Hanks and Sam Shepard among their ranks. As we follow collectors and historians, discover a “Typewriter Manifesto,” and learn the difference between Royals and Smith-Coronas, we discover that for some, the rejection of all-digital communication has philosophical links to the slow food movement or the preservation of celluloid film. The typers argue for the integrity of the material word.

Some films in the competition were not available for preview, but given that Quest (7:30 p.m. April 24; 3:30 p.m. April 25) is likely to be one of the finest films I’ll see all year, I feel confident declaring it the best documentary in the festival. Part nonfiction drama, part portrait of human defiance in the face of remarkable odds, Quest is the story of the Rainey family of North Philly. Patriarch Chris, aka “Quest,” runs an in-home studio for neighborhood kids who want to practice the art of rhyme. “Ma” Christine’a Rainey works at a shelter. Both are tireless advocates for change and strong role models for their kids, William, a cancer survivor, and PJ, their young daughter. When PJ is suddenly a victim of street violence, everything shifts around the Raineys, except for their resolve to keep their family and their neighborhood strong. An exceptional film about ordinary, decent people, Quest is not to be missed.

Music Films Music City Competition

By Steven Hale

The Nashville Film Festival’s signature has long been, appropriately, its music documentaries, and the 2017 fest looks to preserve that tradition with offerings that cover everything from cassette tapes to hip-hop to Japanese girl bands. One standout is Score: A Film Music Documentary (5 p.m. April 22; 6 p.m. April 28), which explores the swelling and soaring music behind the movies, or as one talking head puts it, “the symphonic music of today.” And who better to talk us through it than the likes of John Williams, Hans Zimmer and Trent Reznor. Looking at the music medium of yesterday that just won’t die, Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape (7:30 p.m. April 23; 5 p.m. April 24) joins Lou Ottens, father of the cassette, in an attempt to figure out why some artists continue to release material in a format that languishes between the hipness of vinyl and convenience of streaming technology.

Because a music category at a film fest wouldn’t be complete without a rock doc, Straight Into a Storm (7:30 p.m. April 22; 8 p.m. April 27) — directed by William Miller and making its world premiere at NaFF — celebrates the 10th anniversary of Deer Tick, the pride of Providence, R.I., and a band that has cultivated a die-hard fan base thanks to substance-assisted, bonkers live shows (not to mention the stage presence of current Nashvillian John McCauley, lately of Diamond Rugs). But as far as obscure, devoted fan bases are concerned, McCauley & Co. have nothing on Nils Rune Utsi, a.k.a. SlinCraze. The subject of Arctic Superstar (8:30 p.m. April 26; 12:30 p.m. April 27) is a Sami rapper whose rhymes are delivered in a language only 20,000 people on earth speak.

The whole category should have a particular resonance in Nashville, but no offering hits home more than The Last Songwriter (6 p.m. April 27; 3 p.m. April 28), Mark Barger Elliott’s look at the recent history and up-in-the-air future of songwriting in an era when “songwriters are paid less than a thousandth of a penny for every streamed song.” Another of the eight films making a world premiere at NaFF this year, The Last Songwriter features not just a familiar issue but familiar faces, among them Garth Brooks, Emmylou Harris and Jason Isbell.

Tennessee First Competition

By Steve Cavendish

Devise a competition where feature-length films must meet two out of three of these criteria — the director is a Tennessee resident; a producer or screenwriter is a Tennessee resident; at least 65 percent of the movie is filmed in the state — and, well, you get an eclectic group of six movies, split evenly between narratives and documentaries.

The most polished is Meanest Man in Texas (7:30 p.m. April 26; 3 p.m. April 28), based on the life of Clyde Thompson, a convicted murderer turned chaplin. As befits a story first published by Thomas Nelson, it’s a redemption tale. Other features include Wild Man (8 p.m. April 22; 12:15 p.m. April 23; 4:30 p.m. April 29), a boy-befriends-neighbor tale with a Kate Upton cameo; and Your Ride Is Here (3:45 p.m. April 22; 5:15 p.m. April 26), a claustrophobically shot Uber ride-along with a fading rock star and his annoying apprentice.

On the documentaries side, Scene contributor Seth Graves’ Kandyland (5 p.m. April 23; 5 p.m. April 25) is a completely fascinating look at last year’s Thelma and the Sleaze monthlong tour of 31 Nashville-area venues. It’s a flick the city’s energetic DIY music scene deserves. All the Way to Tacoma (8:30 p.m. April 21; 8:30 p.m. April 25) follows songwriters on a 3,000-mile Amtrak ride from Memphis to Tacoma, and Intentional Healing (8:30 p.m. April 21; 8:30 p.m. April 25) walks alongside music producer Jesse Boyce as he faces terminal prostate cancer.

Narrative Competition

By Ron Wynn

Thematic and content diversity are the qualities that make the 15 films in the 2017 Nashville Film Festival’s Narrative Competition appealing and compelling. All are making either their state, regional, national or North American premieres. Eight are from outside the U.S., and there are several women and foreign directors. These films emphasize relationships and personal portraits that range from seductive to questionable to troubling, and spotlight intriguing personalities, provocative characters and storylines.

Personal favorites include Maria Govan’s Play the Devil (8 p.m. April 25; 3 p.m. April 26) and Roberta Durrant’s Krotoa (5:30 p.m. April 25; 5 p.m. April 28). These are from Trinidad and Tobago and South Africa, respectively, and each spotlights a young person caught in difficult, complex situations trying to find their way. Play the Devil is set within the festive arena of Carnival, the Caribbean and Latin America’s magical yearly celebration. Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival also crowns each season a new king/monarch of soca, the contemporary version of calypso. But this scenario features a gifted young man trying to cope with being the object of admiration — and possibly something else — from an older businessman. Their paths eventually collide in unexpected fashion. Set in the 17th century, Krotoa delves into thorny issues, among them cultural assimilation and imperialism, as well as the psychological trauma of being snatched from a family as a child. Eleven-year-old Krotoa is taken from her Khoi tribe and given as a gift to her uncle’s trading partner with the Dutch East India Company. Her growth and development into a poised, confident woman who has mastered her captors’ language and customs, as well as the reaction from her people when she returns home years later, make a captivating tale.

For the martial arts lover, there’s Yoshinari Nishikori’s Tatara Samurai (8 p.m. April 23; 12:30 p.m. April 24), which focuses on a young man who must choose between following the family trade — steelmaking — or becoming a samurai to defend from invading clans the very village where the steel is forged.

Among the noteworthy U.S. productions is Renée Felice Smith’s The Relationship (6 p.m. April 22; 3 p.m. April 24), which examines the results when two self-proclaimed loners decide to take a trip together. Ian MacAllister McDonald’s Some Freaks (6 p.m. April 21; 2:30 p.m. April 22) presents a romance between a boy missing an eye and an overweight girl, and what happens between them when she suddenly loses weight upon going to college. Carl Bessai’s The Lears (7:45 p.m. April 22; noon April 23; 7:30 p.m. April 27) puts a 21st-century spin on Shakespeare’s masterpiece King Lear, opting for a dark comedic treatment as a patriarch puts his family through trials and turmoil at a retreat while he ponders approaching death and his legacy. Blake Robbins’ The Scent of Rain and Lightning (6:45 p.m. April 27; 4:30 p.m. April 28) — based on Nancy Pickard’s novel of the same name — centers on a young girl whose parents’ killer has been released from prison; her search for closure leads to uncovering difficult family secrets.

Graveyard Shift Feature Competition

By D. Patrick Rodgers

Each year, Scene film critic Jason Shawhan serves as the fest’s adjunct programmer — or Head Graveyard Juror, if you like — for the Graveyard Shift Feature Competition. “I go with originality, effectiveness and then finally shock value,” says Shawhan when asked what criteria he considers when booking NaFF’s gnarliest category. “I also prioritize films without distribution (though I will include films that have been acquired for distribution, like The Void this year, though they are ineligible for the competition).”

The Void (7:30 p.m. April 28; 5:30 p.m. April 29) is a practical-effects bloodbath that finds a small-town cop stuck between a rock (scores of cloaked, knife-wielding cult members) and a hard place (mutilated, pus-oozing creepy-crawlies). It’s one of those low-budget triumphs — the sort of gore-laden creepshow that proves once again that a solid idea, well-executed, is more important to a wig-out flick than all the studio dollars in the world. A fine exercise in spinning time-tested tropes (body horror as metaphor, the flickering lights of a somehow-wicked abandoned hospital, et al.) into something new.

Graveyard standout Birdboy: The Forgotten Children (10 p.m. April 21; 7:30 p.m. April 23) is a Spanish animated feature in the aesthetic tradition of Edward Gorey or The Nightmare Before Christmas — but built on the decidedly adult themes of violence, drug use and environmental catastrophe. Ecological horror show Without Name (10 p.m. April 23; 7:30 p.m. April 24) from Irish newcomer Lorcan Finnegan serves as the competition’s requisite dose of monster action — Variety’s Scott Tobias recently wrote that the film “finds Mother Nature in open revolt, getting back in touch with the people who have lost touch with it.” JackRabbit 29 (9 p.m. April 26; 2:30 p.m. April 27) is a hitman-featuring manhunt film, with one of the festival’s longer runtimes. Says Shawhan, “It’s almost three hours long, but it is the most rewarding if you make it all the way through.”

Other entries in the field include: Albania’s very first horror film, Bloodlands (10 p.m. April 24; 8 p.m. April 27); stab-happy vampire comedy The Night Watchmen (10 p.m. April 28; 3 p.m. April 29); and “homoerotic Evangelical exorcism movie” (sold!) A Closer Walk With Thee (10 p.m. April 20; 9:30 p.m. April 26), among others.

Young Filmmakers Competition

By Craig D. Lindsey

Those who attend the Young Filmmakers showcase (11 a.m. April 22) will be greeted with a fascinating smattering of shorts made by teenage filmmakers. “It’s students from all over the world, but you have to be under 18,” says Nashville Film Fest executive director Ted Crockett. There are eight films in all, ranging from three minutes to 21 minutes in length. “It’s a vital component to the festival, because that’s the next generation of young filmmakers, and we want to be able to reward those young people that are coming up with really creative ideas and making some great stuff.”

Among the stateside films, which make up the bulk of the 79-minute block: “Believed in Me,” an inspirational dramedy about a grandfather who thinks he’s a superhero, looking to “save” his cynical granddaughter; “Puget Sound,” a quirky ’80s-set comedy in which two dedicated brothers make action films with their pals; “Jouska,” a surreal brain-wrinkler in which a haunted old man gets a very extreme intervention; “Images,” a melodramatic teen drama about the budding friendship between a popular girl and a geeky shutterbug; “Recess,” where a kid humorously breaks down who’s who when a class convenes for playtime; and “Best Laid Plans,” which can best be described as Groundhog Day with a guy hoping to score on a big date.

There are only two films made outside the U.S.: “Façade,” an abstract Canadian piece involving four people and the ways they connect with each other; and “Wendy’s Suitors,” a dark comedy from Australia dealing with a deranged woman and her obsessive quest to find her ideal mate.

A $20,000 college scholarship will be awarded to the winning filmmaker, but Crockett believes that all the teens will gain appreciative viewers and will inspire future filmmakers when their films are screened. “We hope that people will watch these films, whether they’re young or old, and that they will realize that you can be a storyteller — anyone can be a storyteller,” he says. “You just have to use your phone now, and anybody can make a movie. It’s just all about being a good storyteller.”

Shorts Programs

By Megan Seling

The odds are in your favor when you check out a shorts program. There are dozens of chances to see some great work. And if one of the films is horrible? Good news — it’s already almost over! Not including the Young Filmmakers competition for aspiring teen directors (more on that above), this year NaFF’s shorts programs are divided into seven different categories — Narrative Shorts, Animated Shorts, Documentary Shorts, Experimental Shorts, Student Shorts, Tennessee First Shorts and Graveyard Shift Shorts.

The documentary collection looks fascinating — “Gut Hack” (8 p.m. April 26; 3 p.m. April 27) is an “inside” look at a former NASA scientist’s bio-hacker experiment, “4 Quarters of Silence” (6 p.m. April 22; 5:30 p.m. April 26) documents the Texas School for the Deaf’s football team, and the sure-to-be-heartbreaking “Happy Birthday Philando Castile” (6 p.m. April 22; 5:30 p.m. April 26) follows the family and friends of Castile as they celebrate his 33rd birthday — just weeks after he was shot and killed by a police officer.

Fans of Black Mirror may find something to appreciate in the Experimental collection — several of the films come with intriguing but vague synopses that read like BM episode descriptions. “Process: Breath” (3:30 p.m. April 22; 3 p.m. April 27) is “a chemical love story”; and “The Boyg” (3:30 p.m. April 22; 3 p.m. April 27) is “the inner voice that seduces you to choose the easy way out — it suffocates progress and drains initiative.” In “Hallo Mabuse” (3:30 p.m. April 22; 3 p.m. April 27), which is making its U.S. premiere, “something is running out, and in doing so, is already reaching its end.” Mysteries! 

If you feel like getting really weird, check out the Graveyard Shift shorts, featuring “Death Metal” (10 p.m. April 28; 3 p.m. April 29), a blood-filled short about a metalhead causing carnage with a satanic guitar, and, uh, “Actual Food Porn” (8 p.m. April 20; 8 p.m. April 25), which appears to be just what it sounds like: fucking food.

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