131 Films, Workshops and More at Mystic Film Festival, Sept. 24-27

MYSTIC, CT – The ninth annual Mystic Film Festival will run from Thursday, Sept. 24, through Sunday, Sept. 27, screening 131 new short and feature-length movies and documentaries. 

The festival will also include panel discussions, filmmakers’ workshops, screenwriters’ competitions and award presentations. The recipient of this year’s lifetime achievement award will be actor William Sadler, whose credits include Heywood in The Shawshank Redemption, Colonel Stuart in Die Hard 2 and Death in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.

The festival will take place at multiple locations, including Mystic Luxury Cinemas, the Mystic Noank Library, the La Grua Center in Stonington and the United Micro Cinema in Westerly, R.I.

Documentary filmmaker Shareen Anderson founded the festival in 2018 after moving to Stonington and getting a glimpse of the art scene in the Mystic region. 

In an email interview last week, she said she found the community to be a fertile environment for film. It was certainly strong enough as a festival in its infancy to survive the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. That year, organizers opted for a hybrid approach with online screenings and discussions in addition to in-person opportunities. They offered reduced seating to honor six feet of separation and provided masks and hand sanitizer. 

“We had an amazing turnout,” Anderson said. “And filmmakers and audience members were so grateful to have the opportunity to gather and watch films together in person.”

The following year involved the same hybrid setup. But Anderson said they quickly concluded that the virtual model was not as enjoyable as the in-person experiences, so they dropped the virtual component entirely. 

“There’s simply no substitute for the experience of sitting in a theater together, watching a film, and sharing that experience with filmmakers and fellow audience members,” she said.

Anderson emphasized that a team effort has kept the festival going year after year. This includes the volunteers, as well as partners, grantors, sponsors, filmmakers and community support.

As for this year, Anderson reiterated that the festival is not just about the movies.

“It’s about bringing people together,” she said. 

Festival Schedule

The festival will open at 7 p.m. on Thursday,  Sept. 24 at Mystic Luxury Cinemas, preceded by a wine reception at 6:30 p.m., with a screening of Slowburn Shoot, a feature-length documentary by Adam Wilde covering the world of independent wrestling. A Q&A with the filmmaker will follow. 

The centerpiece narrative, Road to L’Etape du Tour, by Julia Coulter, tells the story of a cyclist with a heart defect training for the Tour de France. It will screen on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. at Mystic Luxury Cinemas and will also include a Q&A session afterward.

Free educational workshops will take place at the Mystic Noank Library Saturday and Sunday. While all sessions are free and open to the public, there is limited seating and tickets must be reserved online.

Kicking off the workshops on Saturday at 10 a.m. will be I Made a Movie, Now What? by film publicist Lee Meltzer, offering marketing advice for approaching festivals, distributors and sales agents to reach wider audiences.

Starting at 12:30 p.m., writer/director Rachel Thomas-Medwid and actor Jaci Kjernander will lead From Script to Screen: Producing an Independent Narrative Short Film. The presentation will offer a practical approach to bringing a script to life through budgeting, fundraising, casting, crew, locations, scheduling, post-production and preparing for the festival circuit.

At 2:30 p.m., actress Corrie Legge will offer Casting Yourself: Using Independent Filmmaking. The workshop is designed to show artists how to create their own opportunities without waiting to be discovered.

The panels continue Sunday at 10:30 a.m. with Character-Driven Documentaries: Finding the Story in the Person with Geoff Yaw, producer of Slowburn Shoot, about the process of finding the larger story in the filming experience. The panel will be moderated by festival founder Shareen Anderson.

At 12:30 p.m., Gabriel Theis of Roadmap Writers will present Marketing Your Script, offering tips for writers on loglines, marketing and getting scripts noticed.

At 2:30 p.m., the team from IRIS, a Connecticut-based streaming platform for independent cinema, will offer an introduction to navigating today’s distribution landscape.

Student short films will be screened in three blocks on Saturday at the La Grua Center. Screenings will take place at 11 a.m., 1:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. The screenings showcase student filmmakers from across the country and a wide range of emerging voices and perspectives.

The festival will close Sunday with the awards ceremony at Mystic Luxury Cinemas, hosted by Mike Slifer of Channel 3 Eyewitness News, at 7 p.m. 

Schedules, tickets and passes are available online.