Red Rock Film Festival brings more films to St. George
By Matt Marxstein
Since its inception, the Red Rock Film Festival has received more than 6,000 entries and traditionally had a portion of its screenings in St. George. This year is no exception as the 13th annual festival brings more than half of its screenings to St. George — over 80 showings. The Red Rock Film Festival will run Nov. 1–5 in St. George and Nov. 6–9 in Cedar City at various locations.
Being an international event, entries came from 41 countries with Canada, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Australia taking the lead of foreign submissions. Tthe pre-selection committee came from around the world as well.
We are ecstatic with the support from St. George. We had to come back with more shows. We also had a stellar team of previewers, mostly filmmakers who are so sharp with their critiques. High-scoring films in the competition are based on their own merit with neither the special-interest politics of Hollywood nor southern Utah.
The Red Rock Film Festival’s programming includes a competition, headliners, parties, panels, seminars, full-length features, both pro and novice shorts, and even some student films. The collegiate category, for instance, will include Johah Haber’s “Midnight Marathon,” a family film from Canada about boys’ fears after watching a TV-show marathon. Serbian director Nikola Stojanovic’s “Mi Smo Videli Leto” (“Dog Days of Summer”) is a rite-of-passage entry about a teenage girl who moves to California, leaving behind friends and abandoned places that bring up memories of a wild childhood.
Ricardo Bonisoli and Babak Bina’s surreal fantasy short “The Seahorse Trainer” (Canada) contrasts with Greg Balkin and Len Necefer’s documentary short “Welcome to Gwichyaa Zhee” (Seattle) about fighting oil and gas development to protect a way of life and caribou in the Arctic. The film itself contrasts the support indigenous groups received as they fought for their land around southern Utah.
Two more films in the dramatic fiction feature category show the festival’s range as they explore the family dynamic. New York filmmaker Julio Vincent Gambuto’s “Team Marco” is a light comedy about the generation gap between an electronics-obsessed 11-year-old and his bocce-ball-playing Italian grandfather. California director Joe Raffa’s dramatic thriller “Dark Harbor” takes a pregnant woman back home in Maine to attend her father’s funeral only to unravel her father’s dark secrets.
Passes are available for a limited time in October only, and general tickets for individual shows ranging from $1 to $10 each go on sale Oct. 15. Tickets and information are available at redrockfilmfestival.com.
