The Savannah College of Art and Design hosts this year’s 25th anniversary edition of SCAD Savannah Film Festival in person, October 22–29, 2022. The SCAD Savannah Film Festival will screen 143 films, including 53 narrative feature films, 20 documentary feature films, and 79 shorts, with eight world premieres and six U.S. premieres.

The festival kicks off with the opening-night Gala Screening of The Banshees of Inisherin, directed by Martin McDonagh, feature a Spotlight Gala Screening of The Whale, and culminates with the closing-night Gala Screening of Living directed by Darren Aronofsky.

The 2022 schedule includes Gala and Signature Screenings, professional and student competition films, the Docs to Watch, Sketch to Screen: Top Animated Contenders, Shorts Spotlight, and Global Shorts Forum series, and the Wonder Women and Below the Line panel series.

SCAD will honor Kerry Condon with the Distinguished Performance Award for The Banshees of Inisherin, JD Dillard with the Rising Star Director Award for Devotion, Nicholas Hoult with the Vanguard Award for The Menu, Jonathan Majors with the Spotlight Award for Devotion, Janelle Monáe with the Spotlight Award for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Jeremy Pope with the Distinguished Performance Award for The Inspection, Sandy Powell with the Variety Creative Impact Award in Costume Design for Living, Eddie Redmayne with the Virtuoso Award for The Good Nurse, Henry Selick with the Outstanding Achievement in Animation Award for Wendell and Wild, and Sadie Sink with the Rising Star Award for The Whale. Other honorees include Colson Baker (Machine Gun Kelly) who will receive the Discovery Award for Taurus and Ron Howard who will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award in Directing for Thirteen Lives.

Miles Teller (2016 Vanguard Award recipient) will attend an In Conversation following a Special Presentation of Top Gun: Maverick. Former U.S. Congresswoman and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Gabby Giffords will appear with Oscar nominated directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West following a Special Screening of the celebrated documentary Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down.

“Join me as we celebrate the cultural phenomenon of film at SCAD’s silver anniversary SCAD Savannah Film Festival,” said SCAD president and founder Paula Wallace. “Each year, the world’s preeminent university-run film festival delights tens of thousands of theatergoers who love to escape into the screen to preview future Academy Award winners. The lights will be bright, the red carpets rolled out, and Hollywood royalty will be in the house. There’s no telling who you might see strolling down Broughton Street.”

Gala Screenings

• Aftersun (Director Charlotte Wells)
• Armageddon Time (Director James Gray)
• The Banshees of Inisherin (Director Martin McDonagh)
• Broker (Director Hirokazu Kore-eda)
• Causeway (Director Lila Neugebauer)
• Close (Director Lukas Dhont)
• Corsage (Director Marie Kreutzer)
• Decision to Leave (Director Park Chan-wook)
• Devotion (Director JD Dillard)
• Empire of Light (Director Sam Mendes)
• Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Director Rian Johnson)
• The Good Nurse (Director Tobias Lindholm)
• Holy Spider (Director Ali Abbasi)
• The Inspection (Director Elegance Bratton)
• Living (Director Oliver Hermanus)
• The Lost King (Director Stephen Frears)
• The Menu (Director Mark Mylod)
• My Policeman (Director Michael Grandage)
• Nanny (Director Nikyatu Jusu)
• One Fine Morning (Director Mia Hansen-Løve)
• She Said (Director Maria Schrader)
• Taurus (Director Tim Sutton)
• Till (Director Chinonye Chukwu)
• Women Talking (Director Sarah Polley)

Signature Screenings

• 38 at The Garden (Director Frank Chi)
• Blade Runner: The Final Cut and 40th Anniversary Panel (Director Ridley Scott)
• Fenom (Director Kayla Johnson)
• Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom (Director Evgeny Afineevsky)
• Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down (Directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West)
• Is That Black Enough for You?!? (Director Elvis Mitchell)
• Orlando: Celebrating 30 Years of Sony Pictures Classics (Director Sally Potter)
• Thirteen Lives (Director Ron Howard)
• Top Gun: Maverick (Director Joseph Kosinski)
• Triangle of Sadness (Director Ruben Östlund)

Docs to Watch

• All That Breathes (Director Shaunak Sen)
• Bad Axe (Director David Siev)
• Descendant (Director Margaret Brown)
• Fire of Love (Director Sara Dosa)
• Good Night Oppy (Director Ryan White)
• Last Flight Home (Director Ondi Timoner)
• Moonage Daydream (Director Brett Morgen)
• Navalny (Director Daniel Roher)
• Retrograde (Director Matthew Heineman)
• The Return Of Tanya Tucker — Featuring Brandi Carlile (Director Kathlyn Horan)

Sketch to Screen: Top Animated Contenders

• Inu-Oh (Director Masaaki Yuasa)
• Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (Director Dean Fleischer Camp)
• Minions: The Rise of Gru (Director Kyle Balda)
• First Look at “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” (Director Joel Crawford and Co-Director Januel Mercado)
• Turning Red (Director Domee Shi)
• Wendell & Wild (Director Henry Selick)

After Dark

• The Atomic Dream (Director Guy Kent)
• Bones & All (Director Luca Guadagnino)
• Enys Men (Director Mark Jenkin)
• Murmur (Director Mark Polish)
• Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (Director Eric Appel)

Panels

• The exclusive Entertainment Weekly’s Breaking Big Panel and Awards, hosted by festival media partner Entertainment Weekly. Participants will be announced at a later date.
• The inaugural Variety 10 Artisans To Watch. The 10 artisans selected are cinematographer Todd Banhazl (“Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty”), make-up head Michelle Chung (“Everything Everywhere All At Once”), composer Amie Doherty (“She-Hulk: Attorney at Law”), sound designer Mike James Gallagher (“Weird: The Al Yankovic Story”), VFX artist and SCAD alumnus Jessica Love (“Thor: Love and Thunder”), hair department head Deaundra Metzger (“Till”), editor Scott Morris (“Armageddon Time”), costume designer Gersha Phillips (“The Woman King”), supervising sound editor Mac Smith (“Moon Knight) and production designer Ethan Tobman (“The Menu”).
• The Wonder Women series, focusing on the cinematic achievements and contributions of women directors, producers, and below-the-line talent in film and television. Panelists include:
• Wonder Women Directors: Allison Anders, Sara Dosa, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, and Maria Schrader
• Wonder Women Producers: Carla Hacken, Nicôle Lecky, Alison Owen, Jurnee Smollett, and Christine Vachon
• Wonder Women Below-The-Line: Angela Cantanzaro, Kathrin Eder, Catherine Haight, and Nicole Whittaker
• The Below the Line series, highlighting the contributions of below-the-line talent to the art of cinema, with a focus on costume design and production design.
• The SCAD Alumni Panel, highlighting graduates of the university’s top-ranked film and television degree programs.

Competition Films

Narrative Features

• The Big Bend (Director Brett Wagner)
• Dealing with Dad (Director Tom Huang)
• The Moon & Back (Director Leah Bleich)
• Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game (Directors Austin Bragg and Meredith Bragg)
• Stay Awake (Director Jamie Sisley)

Documentary Features

• Afghan Dreamers (Director David Greenwald)
• Butterfly in the Sky (Directors Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb)
• Crows are White (Director Ahsen Nadeem)
• The Quiet Epidemic (Director Lindsay Keys and Winslow Crane-Murdoch)
• Sam Now (Director Reed Harkness)

Professional Shorts

• A Better Half (Director Marco Calvani)
• The Bardia (Director Gabriella Garcia-Pardo)
• The Daughter (Director Soumyak Kanti DeBiswas)
• Long Line of Ladies (Directors Shaandiin Tome and Rayka Zehtabchi)
• Love, Barbara (Director Brydie O’Connor)
• Miss Patti (Director Kate Hamilton, Grasie Mercedes)
• North Star (Director P.J. Palmer)
• Rosie’s Theater Kids (Director Steven Cantor)
• The Ruth Brinker Story (Director Apo W Bazidi)
• Soft Sounds of Peeling Fruit (Director So Young Shelly Yo)

Documentary Shorts

• A Very Fragile Thing (Directors Selah Eshetu and Ryan De Franco)
• Angola Do You Hear Us? Voices From A Plantation Prison (Director Cinque Northern)
• Bacon ‘N’ Laces (Director Stephen Michael Simon)
• The Flagmakers (Directors Cynthia Wade, Sharon Liese)
• Invisible Seams (Director Jia Li)
• Kinderland (Director Amy Grappell)
• Of the Moment: Sculpting a Union’s Future (Director Jacob Moises Menache)
• Our League (Director Sam Cullman)
• State of Alabama vs Brittany Smith (Director Ryan White)

Animated Shorts

• Black Slide (Director Uri Lotan)
• Cat and Moth (Director India Barnardo)
• Ex Creta (Director Jon Portman)
• Letter to a Pig (Director Tal Kantor)
• Manō (Director Brittany Biggs)
• Memento Mori (Director Paul O’Flanagan )
• New Moon (Directors Jeff Le Bars and Jérémie Balais)
• Pour Games (Director Patrick Smith)
• Regular Rabbit (Director Eoin Duffy)
• Reparations (Director Wilson Borja)
• Toddler Talks (Director Diana Reichenbach)

Student Shorts

• Avalanches (Director Liz Lian)
• Blue Curry (Directors Magali Dunyach, Chien-Ju Hung, Jimin Jung, Vajra Pancharia, and Léa Pietrzyk)
• Clicker (Director Charles Kugler)
• Darkside (Director Spencer Zimmerman)
• Goodbye Jérôme! (Directors Gabrielle Selnet, Adam Sillard, and Chloé Farr)
• He Was Hope (Director Taylor Conley)
• Kaghati (Directors Stanley Soendoro and Amanda Jayapurna)
• Laika & Nemo (Directors Jan Gadermann and Sebastian Gadow)
• Lost Souls (Director Christina Giordano)
• Maayanagri (A City of Dreams) (Director Sourab Reddy)
• Memoria(l) (Director Ian Kelly)
• Mileage (Directors Jennifer Wu, Kym Santiana, Ruyee Lu, Christopher Hsueh, Nicole Taylor-Topacio, Joy Zhou, Ruby Saysanasy, Miranda Li, and Saul Benavides
• The Pope’s Dog (Director Neko Pilarcik-Tellez)
• The Promised Land (Director Tanaseth Tulyathan)
• Remnants of the Night (Director Kathie Yang)
• The Soloists (Directors Mehrnaz Abdollahinia. Feben Woldehawariat, Razahk Issaka Celeste Jamneck, and Yi Liu)
• The Uncertain Snow (Directors Marion Boisrond, Marie-Liesse Coumau, Gwendoline Legendre, Ada Hernaez, and Romane Tisseau)
• Where No One Lives (Director Li Anne Liew)
• This Wild Abyss (Director Thomas Mendolia)

Global Shorts Forum

XX: A nuanced selection of films examining female-identifying perspectives drives this collection.

Of the Land: These short films explore the unique and sometimes harrowing relationships that humans have with the natural world and their environment, offering diverse perspectives and experiences.

Shorts Spotlight

Amusing Perspectives: A short film collection that reminds us that life is too short to miss out on the pursuit of amusement or a good laugh.

Person First: Through struggles great and small, at the heart of every story is a unique human being trying to navigate their way through a world riddled with unknown challenges and obstacles to survive.