And now the thrilling conclusion of my DIFF 2026 adventures!
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film festival coverage
DIFF 2026 is the fifteenth film festival that I’ve covered for this site over the course of 3.5 years. After that much experience, I think I’ve finally become immune to the high-octane excitement that comes with a festival premiere in which a significant portion of the audience worked in some way on the movie being screened.
This is the first year that I got a chance to set my lineup for the festival before writing the usual curtain raiser. So, instead of using the rest of this space to list movies that I hope to see, I want to highlight a few of the titles that I’ll definitely be seeing, barring some unforeseen event, like a nuclear detonation. Without further ado, let’s dive into five of my most anticipated DIFF 2026 screenings!
Welcome back to the thrilling conclusion of my Denton Black Film Festival 2026 coverage!
Welcome to the first part of my coverage of the Denton Black Film Festival, 2026 Edition. The fest was held January 28 through February 1, and extended virtually from the first through February eighth.
I’m kicking off my 2026 film festival coverage with a trip to my old college stomping grounds. Denton, Texas, home of my alma mater, the University of North Texas, is host to the Denton Black Film Festival, the largest fest in Texas that focuses solely on Black-created films and performing arts.
The theme of this year’s fest, True Texas Tales, delivered to the audience, among other things, Depression-era bank robbers, an East Texas murder scandal, an inspiring account of Black excellence in the Jim Crow South, and a (highly whitewashed) look at the state’s most iconic location and historical event.
If you’re sleeping on the Oak Cliff Flim Festival (OCFF), I’m here to let you know that you’re missing out on one of the country’s most authentic, scrappy, and original celebrations of the moving image. Each of the handful of times I’ve attended the fest – including once as a volunteer over a decade ago, and twice now covering it for this site – I’ve been delighted by its punk-rock aesthetic and complete and total immersion in film culture. The programmers and staff at OCFF schedule quirky, thought-provoking titles that rarely disappoint.
OCFF 2025’s theme, Real Movies for Real Movie People, stresses the idea of human emotion and connection through movies. The fest’s website landing page features a graphic that includes the phrases “Human Cinema, Filling Heads, Connecting Souls, Sparking Feelings.”
Based on my personal belief that the absolute best antidote to small people with small minds – a constituency that only seems to grow by the day here in the good ole US of A – is as much exposure to different cultures, perspectives, ideas, and art as possible.
So, if anything can get me out of my funk, it’s a film festival.
A depressed writer, a group of angry librarians, nuclear waste, and a pioneering comedian all played a part in my cinematic adventures at DIFF 2025, along with a few detours to connect with friends and loved ones, as well as to join in solidarity, for a few hours at least, to others like me who are desperate to stem the tide of the spreading fascism in our country.
On my way to Cinépolis for my first screening of DIFF 2025, I heard a ping from my phone. As I drove, my car’s robot voice delivered the incoming message from a North Texas Film Critics Association colleague. He was letting the NTFCA Discord channel know that he saw one of the DIFF opening films, called Omaha, at Sundance, and that it was his favorite film of that fest. I was, in fact, on my way to see that very movie.
My film festival coverage for 2025 is in full swing with the upcoming Dallas International Film Festival (DIFF). This is an exciting year for DIFF for one particular reason. For the first time in its nineteen-year history, DIFF is now an Oscar-qualifying festival following an announcement last October from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). The Dallas International Film Festival is now one of 181 festivals worldwide – 59 in the US – that has been approved by the AMPAS as a qualifying festival. According to the DIFF 2025 website, “[F]ilms that win qualified awards between October 1, 2024, and September 30, 2025, may be qualified to enter the 98th Academy Awards®, provided that the films meet all the requirements set forth in the official rules for that season.”
Standing near the entrance of the South Lamar Alamo Drafthouse, waiting to get into my next screening, I noticed something odd. On the street right in front of the theater, where a lone curb forms to separate cars from pedestrians and street from sidewalk, a large, black SUV swiftly pulled up and a flurry of activity followed. The SUV stopped about thirty feet from where I was standing; there was a direct line from the vehicle to the theater doors.
I branched out a little this year at SXSW by attending my first of the many discussion sessions available during the fest, which are held in the Austin Convention Center ballrooms. It wasn’t a movie, but the conversation was certainly movie related, as it was an interview with actor Kyle MacLachlan, hosted by Jenni Kaye, who is a contributor to Letterboxd.
There were a few bad omens trying to tell me that my fate with the mobile Criterion Closet was a doomed one. I decided to try to get into the closet on Sunday morning, the penultimate day of its appearance at SXSW 2025. The plan was to try again for Death of a Unicorn, at it’s second and final screening, then pop across the street after that movie was over to try my luck with the Criterion Closet.
There’s something familiar yet exciting about showing up in the morning waiting for a new day of screenings to start at a film festival. I got to the Lamar Street Alamo a little early on day two of SXSW 2025. The volunteers of the fest have been instructed to start handing out queue cards for each movie an hour before each screening starts. I arrived with about 90 minutes to spare before my chosen first screening for the day, The Spies Among Us, was to begin.
As soon as I dialed into one of the many conversations that was happening around me in theater three of the Lamar Street Alamo Drafthouse, I knew I was in the right place. Waiting for my first screening of South By 2025 to start, I heard one festival goer ask a few others what brought them to the fest. They responded that one of their children was celebrating his impending college graduation. The family celebrated graduations by gathering for an event of the graduate’s choice. This child studied film in college, so his pick was for the family to attend the festival together.
Next week, for the third straight year, I’m heading down to Austin, TX to cover the Lone Star State’s biggest multi-hyphenate festival and conference, South by Southwest. I’ll be honest, I really wasn’t expecting to get in this year, but I was pleasantly surprised a few weeks ago when I received confirmation that I had been approved for press credentials. In 2023, I was gifted a pass by a friend. In 2024, I was sponsored by, and primarily wrote for, a website with a bigger reach than mine in order to cover the fest. This year, I applied on my own, thinking there was no way my little 2800-visitor-a-month website would secure me a press pass.
