The Rome International Film Festival promotes the magic of film throughout Northwest Georgia and the world.
The red carpet opening for the 2024 Rome International Film Festival will feature a spooktacular double feature on October 31 with ‘It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown’ at 5 pm. Kids who will be out on Broad Street for the annual Trick or Treat event will be able to slide right into the show for free. Kids will have a chance to get their selfies on the red carpet.
Following The Great Pumpkin, the festival will show Gremlins, featuring Zach Galligan, who will be on hand for the show.
Executive Director Leanne Cook explains that planning for the annual festival usually begins in January. “We try to take the months of November and December after the festivals off so we can all recover because it’s all hands-on deck for about two months before the festival, “Cook said.
In January, the festival leadership gets together to determine what they learned from the recently completed festival, what needs to be done better, and how to expand the festival to become more of a film and entertainment event.
At some point during the first quarter of the year, RIFF will use FilmFreeway to call for submissions to the festival. This year, 588 submissions were received from producers and directors around the globe. “A little over half of them were from the US,” Cook said. We do have a lot of international submissions, and many times those (Continued on page 28) are documentaries or shots, so we can put a bunch of them together and have a film block.”
According to creative director Seth Ingram, planning for the festival ramps up about two months before the event. He became involved with the festival in 2015 and believes it has grown exponentially and has even more room to grow. “We have distributors now who are contacting us and wanting to play their films with us. That’s new,” Ingram said. Credibility within the industry has also grown tremendously, leading to higher-quality films.
The festival organizers are highly committed to promoting filmmakers from Georgia and work to feature Georgian films.
Once the entry deadline has passed, a group of film-loving volunteers is brought together to review the submissions and reduce the number of pictures to a manageable level for the festival. “We have a huge list of people who help us,” Cook said. Typically, the volunteers wind up reviewing a similar series of submissions, whether documentaries, horror films, environmental films, or romantic comedies.
There is an internal system where the films are rated on criteria ranging from their fit with the festival to whether or not they have a special story to tell.
The festival likes to attract directors and actors
whenever possible. “We won’t do a terrible film just
because somebody wants to come, it has to be the right quality film and if there is any way that a filmmaker can come, then we might lean into that film because we do like to have the filmmakers come,” Cook said. “When they do the Q and A afterwards, it’s definitely interesting to the audience to get that peek for the audience into how the film was made.”
Many of the films have yet to be rated, so moviegoers
should read the synopsis to determine whether the content is appropriate for a specific viewer.
One aspect of the festival that started a couple of
years ago with the 40th anniversary of Smoky and the
Bandit, which brought the late Burt Reynolds to Rome, is to find a film celebrating an anniversary and find a way to highlight it. This year, that’s ‘Oh Brother Where Art Thou,’ which is celebrating its 20th anniversary. The movie will be featured on the festival’s final day. It will be followed by a performance of soundtrack music from the picture by the Rome Music Collective.
This year’s festival will also feature a couple of podcast panels and a voice-acting panel, aiming to reach out to others in the entertainment industry.
The festival runs from October 31 to November 3. Passes are on sale through the website www.riffga.com.
