What to See at the Nashville Film Festival

It’s festival season in the film world — including here in Nashville. This fall alone, local filmgoers can catch exciting and eclectic screenings all across the city at the International Black Film Festival (Sept. 30-Oct. 4), the Nashville Horror Film Festival (Oct. 3-4), the Film Endowment Festival (Sept. 26) and Vanderbilt University’s International Lens series (most Thursdays through early December). The Nashville Jewish Film Festival wrapped earlier this month, and the Nashville Film Festival kicks off this week.

The 57th edition of Music City’s most prominent festival will include more than 150 films and will last through Sept. 30 at the Belcourt, the National Museum of African American Music, Regal Green Hills and the new Nashville Yards venue Hooky Entertainment. This year’s lineup includes potential awards season players like the Sylvester Stallone origin story I Play Rocky (6:30 p.m. Sept. 27 at Regal Green Hills Theater 3), Carrie Coon-starring mystery The Liberation (7 p.m. Sept. 27 at Regal Green Hills Theater 4), British auteur Mike Leigh’s purported final film Tender Loving Care (8:30 p.m. Sept. 26 at Hooky) and biopic Tenzing (5 p.m. Sept. 27 at Regal Green Hills Theater 5), which features Tom Hiddleston as Sir Edmund Hillary. 

Two pieces of special programming to check out: the opening-night presentation of the documentary Frampton (6 & 6:15 p.m. Sept. 24 at Regal Green Hills Theaters 3 & 16), which was created by a team of mostly Nashville-based filmmakers and will feature an appearance from longtime local Peter Frampton; and Spotlight: Kurdish Short Films (11 a.m. Sept. 27 at Regal Green Hills Theater 15), which was created in partnership with the Kurdish Culture and Music Association and the New York Kurdish Cultural Center.

Visit nashvillefilmfestival.org to purchase passes and single-screening tickets and to see a full lineup. Below find our thoughts on 14 titles — both feature-length and short films — showing at this year’s Nashville Film Festival.

Feature Films

Mallory's Ghost

Mallory’s Ghost makes literal a classic dating pitfall: feeling haunted by a partner’s lingering exes. Mallory is insecure about her own creative prowess, and a writing retreat with her boyfriend Sam fuels her self-consciousness when their host Lorna lets it slip that he previously brought his last girlfriend Louise to the same house — doubly so when she starts to see Louise’s spirit manifesting in the yard. It’s a great watch, with such strong assurance in its own logic that its fantastical twists feel natural, and featuring nuanced commentary on creativity and insecurity. It’s also damn funny, as in a hilariously pretentious dinner-party question from Lorna: “Is that true, you have a creative mind?” 6:30 p.m. Sept. 25 at Regal Green Hills Theater 15 ANNIE PARNELL

Crooks

At only 76 minutes (with credits!), Mickey Keating’s stylish genre exercise Crooks flies by in a flash. Faye (scream queen Angela Trimbur) and Johnny (The Guest’s Chase Williamson) decide to rob a gangster. Said gangster sends his most fearsome hitman, The Ghost (longtime character actor Keith Kupferer), after the fleeing duo. All three leave a trail of bodies in their wake. But what’s an overly familiar premise is just window dressing for something darker and stranger. A lonely diner waitress named Blanche (the show-stopping Paul Thomas Anderson favorite Melora Walters) enters the picture, knocking this commonplace crime story off its axis. 7 p.m. Sept. 25 at Regal Green Hills Theater 14 LOGAN BUTTS

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother

What do you do when your chance to play a big-screen badass superhero gets canceled by the studio, leaving you with all this martial-arts training you learned for the role? Well, if you’re Mahershala Ali (aka the man who could’ve been the next Blade), you star as a hitman in Bassam Tariq’s strange action-drama. We’ll save our in-depth thoughts for when Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother gains its wide release, but let’s just say a film about a religious single-dad assassin in the middle of a war between a religious zealot and a Muslim porn king shouldn’t be this sincere. 9 p.m Sept. 25 at Regal Green Hills Theater 15 CRAIG D. LINDSEY

Stray Embers

We’ve all seen the flood of goodwill and support that comes in the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster — but what happens when the Red Cross and rescue workers go home? Stray Embers, a documentary directed by Erin Brethauer and Tim Hussin, opens in the aftermath of the 2018 wildfires that decimated Paradise, Calif. Following survivor Brad Weldon, the doc explores the awkward and often ignored long-term work of rebuilding a life. Together with the found-family of fellow survivors sheltered in his home, Weldon and Paradise at large witness the rebirth and renewal that comes in the wake of unthinkable disaster. They eat together, mourn together, and slowly begin to rebuild something vaguely resembling their old lives. With immersive cinematography that envelops you in the massive scale of the Northern California forests, the film beautifully depicts the parts of a life cycle not often seen on film. 11 a.m. Sept. 26 at Regal Green Hills Theater 5 HANNAH CRON

Sparks 

Fans of the 2024 animated indie comedy Boys Go to Jupiter will enjoy Sparks, a magical-realist coming-of-age story that establishes itself as “a film set in a city in northwestern Nevada” in its opening credits. There a group of teenage friends dreams of time-traveling through a reservoir portal to glamorous locales: Y2K Berlin, Woodstock, 1960s Paris. When Cleo (Eighth Grade’s Elsie Fisher) moves to town, the escapism becomes real, and the group starts to get pulled between the lives they lead and the ones they dream of. It’s a sweet indie charmer about the mythology that suburban malaise creates — and the magic of finding yourself through movies. 1:30 p.m. Sept. 26 at Regal Green Hills Theater 15 ANNIE PARNELL

Little Hollywood, Tennessee

One of the best looks at a truly local subject at this year’s festival, Little Hollywood, Tennessee follows high school students from across the state during the three-week Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts program on Middle Tennessee State University’s campus. The program includes students who are studying all aspects of the arts, but Christian Whittemore’s documentary homes in on 24 filmmaking-focused students as they try to accomplish the seemingly impossible: developing, writing, shooting and editing a feature-length film. Since the students reside on campus for the three weeks, they are truly living and breathing the project. And as an alum, counselor and faculty member of the program, Whittemore offers a perspective that is subtle and personal. 2:30 p.m. Sept. 26 at Regal Green Hills Theater 16 LOGAN BUTTS

Seahorse

Sometimes the only person who can save you is yourself. Seahorse explores this ethos through a raw, unfiltered look at grief, trauma and mental illness. The film’s writer-director Aisha Evelyna stars as Nora, a sous chef who begins a journey of self-discovery after a bicycle accident leads to her reuniting with her estranged homeless father. With hints of surrealism, Seahorse sees Evelyna navigate a complex father-daughter relationship and all the nuances that exist in between. Amid the film’s heartfelt glimpse into rebuilding one’s life, it also offers brief doses of comedic relief and cheeky references to influencers’ impact on the modern dining industry. 5 p.m. Sept. 26 at Regal Green Hills Theater 5 JULIANNE AKERS

Songs From the Circle

Featuring interviews with Grand Ole Opry members Luke Combs, Carly Pearce, Darius Rucker, Vince Gill, Ashley McBryde and 34-year member Marty Stuart — the last of whom is described by McBryde as the “lighthouse” of country music, a beacon to other performers — Songs From the Circle documents the Opry’s 2025 trip to Royal Albert Hall in London. Alongside the requisite archival footage of icons like Minnie Pearl, Johnny Cash and, of course, Dolly Parton, Circle features candid rehearsal footage shot at Abbey Road in the run-up to the Opry’s sold-out 100th anniversary show at Royal Albert, and ends with the main event. As much concert doc as reverent history lesson, it’s a must-see for any country music fan who wants to know how the sausage is made. 5:30 p.m. Sept. 26 at Regal Green Hills Theater 3 D. PATRICK RODGERS

The Haunting of Pennhurst

We fear what we don’t understand — that’s a long-held truth in human culture. For centuries, and even for some people today, that fear includes a misunderstanding of people with physical or mental disabilities. The documentary The Haunting of Pennhurst confronts this head-on, chronicling a group of disabled performers who stage a haunted house in Pennsylvania’s former Pennhurst Asylum. The scare actors and creative team behind the haunt fight to recontextualize institutionalization and the conversation around disability at large, taking the power from what was once a place of pain and suffering and using it to further the cause of those hurt by Pennhurst. Intercut with historical footage and microfiche, the doc is certainly disturbing, but not without good cause. Disabilities aren’t scary, but the way we treat them often is. For a viewer with disabilities or mental illness, this packs a powerful punch, but all stand to learn something from this provocative haunt. 7 p.m. Sept. 26 at Regal Green Hills Theater 4 HANNAH CRON

Crystal Cross 

Crystal Cross is one of those rare finds: a movie about Christianity that doesn’t try to convert. Instead, it centers on the opposites-attract relationship between plucky, devout singer Dottie and misanthropic, self-destructive James, who are drawn to each other on a drive to California. Filmed partially in Nashville and Memphis, the film’s road-trip twee and faith reckoning suggest Little Miss Sunshine and Electrick Children. It feels at times a bit too structured, nested in both a frame narrative and a series of chapters — but Crystal Cross has some real gems. Two of them: A gallows gag in which James tries to commit suicide by running a Tesla in a garage but fails (no emissions), and Dottie’s music, which is part Lana Del Rey, part Natalie Bergman. 8 p.m. Sept. 26 at Regal Green Hills Theater 5 ANNIE PARNELL

The Leader

On paper, The Leader sounds like comedy. Its subject, the Heaven’s Gate cult, seems at first absurd — members were required to have matching bowl-cut hairstyles, they believed that UFOs were sent by God, and they called their bodies “vehicles” with a hard H. In an early scene set in 1982, Jim Parsons walks through a grocery store while wearing a visor with blinders on it and a teal windbreaker, and when a woman brushes a piece of lint from his shirt, he has an orgasm in the middle of the checkout aisle — he later cries about ruining his six-year run of celibacy. But the scene is presented without any hint of humor, and Parsons is heartbreaking as a troubled, imperfect person who desperately wants to be healed. It takes the careful treatment of writer-director Michael Gallagher to expose the cult’s deeply sad, tragic reality. Astonishing performances by Tim Blake Nelson and Vera Farmiga anchor the film’s success — without their commitment to the over-the-top, troubled characters, the story falls apart. Luckily, they hold it together masterfully. 6:30 p.m. Sept. 27 at Regal Green Hills Theater 14 & 7 p.m. Sept. 29 at Soho House Cinema LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

Short Films

“Daylight”

Director Jon Kasbe’s short documentary “Daylight” plays like an installment of Modern Love. The impactful film follows Joe Garcia, author of the viral New Yorker essay “Listening to Taylor Swift in Prison,” as he approaches release following decades of incarceration and prepares for the potential of seeing his long-lost love once again. The short’s power is two-fold: exploring the power of love as a tool for hope, and examining the impact of music and arts access inside American prisons. Swift’s music gave Garcia the tools to express his desire for change and a fresh start. His favorite lyrics? “I’ve been sleeping so long in a 20-year dark night, and now I see daylight.” The short film is a must-watch for the romantic and the advocate alike. 10:30 a.m. Sept 26 at Regal Green Hills Theater 15 HANNAH CRON

“Mimic”

Ambitious in reach and structure, this moody short serves just enough information to kick the constructivist paths in the brain into overload. It’s a relationship drama (much respect to star Brennan Kelleher), sci-fi extravaganza and suspenseful body-horror effort, but what impresses the most is that A.F. Madison’s film keeps all its plates spinning. The foundation is strong enough that you could get a feature or streaming series out of this with very few shifts from the razor-sharp menace we’re given here. It’s always good when Tennessee voices show how it’s done. 5:30 p.m. Sept. 26 at Regal Green Hills Theater 16 JASON SHAWHAN

“Apart”

It’s time to get pissed off at apartheid all over again with this harrowing animated short, directed by South African visual artist Pola Maneli and co-written by Spike Lee. Set in late-’80s South Africa, “Apart” depicts a bond between two soccer-loving boys that’s on the verge of disintegrating when a Black kid offers one of his kidneys to his sick white bestie, only to get pushback from his bestie’s racist cop dad. We won’t give away the outcome, but we will say it’s another heartbreaking reminder of how destructive (and pointless) racism can be. 11 a.m. Sept. 27 at Regal Green Hills Theater 5 CRAIG D. LINDSEY