Copyright Variety
Positioned as the final major film festival of the year, AFI Fest is when the global circuit arrives on the doorstep of Hollywood at the TCL Chinese Theatre. For new releases with awards aspirations, it can serve as a climactic studio homecoming to springboard a wide release. For young directors, particularly graduates of the American Film Institute Conservatory, it’s an avenue to announce themselves to the film industry. For L.A. cinephiles, it’s a packed weekend of standouts from Berlin, Cannes and Venice. This year’s lineup is billed as AFI Fest‘s biggest ever, with more than 90 features for the five-day run from Oct. 22 to Oct. 26. Pulling together the slate is a year-round effort for festival director Todd Hitchcock, AFI programming director Abbie Algar and their team. Along with the festival, Hitchcock and Algar also work out of the Washington, D.C. area to organize the day-to-day programming of AFI’s Silver Theater in Silver Spring, Md. — fielding new releases, repertory screenings and themed festivals. In the years after the COVID pandemic, AFI president Bob Gazzale tapped the Silver’s team to take over direction on AFI Fest. The 2025 edition will mark Hitchcock and Algar’s third year heading it. “We see the full exhibition arc. We’ll be screening AFI Fest, then the following year we’re screening it as a first-run release at the Silver,” Algar says. As with most other film festivals since the pandemic, AFI Fest has made year-to-year adjustments to find a shape that makes sense for its future. That includes an introduction — and expansion — of a ticket-bundling option. First launched in 2023 as a package deal of six admissions, AFI Fest expanded it to eight tickets in 2024. For 2025, bundles come in 10. “Every festival is doing a certain amount of tinkering every year,” Hitchcock says. “We realized it’s not necessarily one person; it’s for pairs of people and families. The bundle is just pure functionality. You can use the tickets in any combination. A purchaser might be coming in a group, using them on one screening. It’s not like a pass, which is for one person.” While AFI Fest has been L.A.’s banner fall festival for many years, the early autumn Beyond Fest, operated in partnership with the city’s premier repertory org American Cinematheque, has continued to expand its footprint, maintaining a genre focus but adding in more awards-friendly titles. Neon, the presenting sponsor for Beyond Fest, elected to use the festival to house L.A. premieres for “The Secret Agent” and “No Other Choice” — its splashy festival acquisitions, with auteur prestige and awards ambitions. Neon is absent from this year’s AFI Fest. In fact, Beyond and AFI share only two features this year: Searchlight’s “The Testament of Ann Lee” and Focus Features’ “Bugonia,” both awards players. “There’s terrific programming going on at Beyond Fest, but there’s certainly enough to go around for everyone. So no, we don’t look at it as a competitive thing,” Hitchcock says. “There are realities to the commercial release part of it that we are trying to hold the line on. We want to have Los Angeles area premieres, so that factors in. But we love the lineup that we’re going out with. We think our audience is going to as well.” All seven of AFI Fest’s red carpets are L.A. premieres, housed in the Chinese Theatre’s main auditorium. Wednesday’s opening night selection is 20th Century Studios’ “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” a music biopic which sees Jeremy Allen White belting out as The Boss. The carpet represents one final promotional push for the film, which hits theaters nationwide the following evening. For closing night, Focus will bow its world premiere of “Song Sung Blue,” starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson as a couple whose Neil Diamond cover group endures significant personal hardship. “A hypothetical distributor could imagine they want a red carpet, but is it the right way to present the film? Are we going to fill that ginormous theater? It’s got to rise to the level,” Hitchcock says. “There’s also ‘Nuremberg’ and ‘Jay Kelly,’ which are certainly being talked about in Oscar context. But don’t count out ‘The SpongeBob Movie: The Search for SquarePants,’ a world premiere. We unofficially have that matinee spot with an animated film. We love getting families out to have that as part of our festival vibe.” The other two red carpet premieres — the Sydney Sweeney boxer biopic “Christy” and Gus Van Sant’s bank job thriller “Dead Man’s Wire” — both hail from new distribution ventures: Black Bear and Row K, respectively. As such, AFI Fest is hosting the first-ever L.A. premieres for both banners, each looking to announce themselves to the industry at large. “Black Bear has been a production company for a long time, but they’re now hanging out their shingle for distribution. And then ‘Dead Man’s Wire’ is Row K’s first acquisition, which it made out of Venice and Toronto,” Hitchcock says. “They’re both making a calculation, helping those films get introduced in a big way to the audience here and to stand out within the fall calendar. And I love the industry story of those new companies getting started as well.” Guillermo del Toro is AFI Fest’s guest artistic director this year, programming four repertory screenings: “Barry Lyndon,” “The Duellists,” “Fellini’s Casanova” and the little-seen Italian horror film “Arcane Sorcerer.” In 2023, you tapped Greta Gerwig for this role, but there was no guest artistic director last year. How’d it come about for this edition? HITCHCOCK: It was just a quirk of last year that we opted to forgo it. We had unofficially, in that spot, a director spotlight conversation with Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks. But there was a belief that we should go back. It came together pretty quickly with del Toro — obviously a fantastic filmmaker, and film lover. It was carte blanche; what would you like to program? And we are using the Egyptian for a day, which is screening all four films on Saturday. That’s new from a year ago. Netflix owns the Egyptian and del Toro partnered with the streamer for “Frankenstein.” That must help bring the venue onboard. HITCHCOCK: It doesn’t hurt! Are there any common themes that emerged as you were programming this year’s lineup? ALGAR: We seem to have a lot of music-related material this year, between “Deliver Me From Nowhere” and “Song Sung Blue.” We also have “Bruce Springsteen: Nebraska Live” as a world premiere. It’s a concert movie: Springsteen on a stage, very pared down, performing his album “Nebraska” in its entirety. I hope people will come see both. I imagine music-related features like that also help expand the audience of AFI Fest beyond cinephile and industry circles. HITCHCOCK: There’s certainly an aspect of that there; they have outside fans that wouldn’t necessarily go to a film festival. Music is something that I like for us to highlight where possible. We’ve also got the pro-shot version of the 2023 Broadway revival of “Merrily We Roll Along” and we have the Selena Quintanilla documentary. “The Testament of Ann Lee” is also a musical — like, really a musical — about the Shaker movement. And it’s brilliant. ALGAR: Our lineup feels very global to me — this year even more so. Just this morning, we learned the U.K. has submitted “My Father’s Shadow” for international feature consideration. That’s our 20th that we have now, which is a lot more than last year. HITCHCOCK: Abby and I are devotees of film history, which doesn’t mean that translates to what’s in the selection. But this year we’ve got “The Ozu Diaries,” a wonderful tour through the world of Ozu, and “The Hanging of Stuart Cornfeld.” He’s not a household name, but a pretty interesting producer who has some legit stories, not the least getting Mel Brooks to recruit David Lynch to direct “The Elephant Man.” Cornfeld was an alum of the AFI Conservatory, as was Lynch. It also features what has got to be one of the last interviews with Lynch. And there’s a number of films directed by AFI alum. There’s “The Plague,” which is a creative genre film: basically “Lord of the Flies” at a sports camp. It’s really a strong debut by Charlie Polinger. We also have a world premiere called “Junkie,” directed by William Means, about a woman well into addiction. Patty Jenkins, also an alum, is an exec producer. That mentor-mentee relationship we are happy to be celebrating. It’s important for a film festival to maintain a local identity. The connections to the AFI Conservatory are part of this. Is an L.A. focus something you’re considering when putting together a lineup? HITCHCOCK: We’re certainly cognizant of it. How can you not be? And this is separate from the Conservatory. Whether that’s the setting, the demographics of L.A. – we’re thinking, “The festival is taking place here.“ ALGAR: It’s almost like a homecoming for some of these movies. Our Carl Bean documentary “I Was Born This Way” has a strong L.A. connection. Amanda Kramer’s “By Design” is set in L.A. and most of the team is based there. It had its festival run, but this is the hometown screening. Some of our programmers are in L.A., so they have these insights. HITCHCOCK: None of which is to say this is a shortcut to being selected. But it’s wonderful that it did work out. We love the films and now that’s going to be part of the story. This interview has been edited and condensed.
