Film Festivals
From local screens to statewide stages, Louisiana's film festival scene is as diverse and vibrant as the culture that inspires it.
Local Festivals
Baton Rouge is home to a growing collection of film festivals that celebrate everything from indie cinema to cultural storytelling, right here in the Capital City.
Baton Rouge Underground Film Festival
If you’re tired of predictable blockbusters, it’s time to head underground. The Baton Rouge Underground Film Festival (BRUFF) is a four-day annual celebration dedicated to the bold, the bizarre, and the fiercely independent. More than just a screening series, BRUFF serves as a vital hub for the "genre-focused" talent flowing through Louisiana, proving that the most compelling cinematic voices often operate outside the studio system.
BRUFF was built on the belief that film is a powerful tool for cultural connection. By showcasing a gritty mix of indie dramas, experimental shorts, and genre-bending features, the festival provides a platform for creators who take risks. It’s about fostering a vibrant, interconnected film community where the line between the screen and the audience disappears through intimate Q&As and networking.
Every year, the festival highlights incredible local talent alongside high-caliber indie works from across the globe. From avant-garde experiments to DIY horror, the programming is curated by humans, for humans. It is an invitation to step off the beaten path and witness the future of filmmaking in its rawest form. Support local art and discover a community that values passion over profit at this year's festival.
Take Film Festival
The Take 12 Film Festival exists to promote and celebrate the films of all undergraduate/graduate students and alumni from LSU, Baton Rouge Community College, and Southern University. The festival judges will award best Directing, Cinematography, Actress/Actor, Editor, and Writer, as well as an overall Audience award winner and Best Alumni Film.
For more information about the festival visit https://www.lsu.edu/cmda/theatre/forms/theatre-sixth-take-film-festival.php
Baton Rouge Irish Film Festival
The Baton Rouge Irish Film Festival was founded in 2009 by The Baton Rouge Irish Club. The Festival showcases Irish talent, promotes cultural diversity and encourages collaboration between individuals and businesses in Louisiana and Ireland. Our annual Festival features Irish short films, feature films, dancing, music, food, art, merriment and much more.
The mission of the Baton Rouge Irish Club is to help support and keep alive the heritage that over 60 million Americans claim as theirs. Since the 1950s and 1960s, parades, grand dances, and large dinners celebrating St. Patrick’s Day have been a part of the social landscape of Baton Rouge. Today our city’s St. Patrick’s Day parade draws one of the largest attendances for any single event in Louisiana. The Baton Rouge Irish Club hosts and participates in numerous cultural, educational, and social events throughout the year, and The Baton Rouge Irish Film Festival is the next natural step in that community outreach.
Baton Rouge Jewish Film Festival
Every year BRJFF highlights Jewish issues, traditions, challenges and characters that will resonate with our audiences whatever their background or beliefs. In addition, the festival presents filmmakers and speakers who will bring an added dimension to the dramas, documentaries, shorts, and animated films in our programs.
State Festivals
Beyond Baton Rouge, Louisiana's statewide festival circuit offers filmmakers and film lovers even more opportunities to connect, compete, and celebrate the art of cinema.
Louisiana Film Prize
Filmmakers from all over the country came to Northwest Louisiana to make a short film between five and fifteen minutes long to compete for the $50,000 cash prize – the largest short film prize in the entire world.. 127 film teams participated and of those films, twenty were selected to appear in competition at Prize Fest. These 20 films are known as the “Top 20” of the Louisiana Film Prize. Of the Top 20, one will be crowned the winner of the 2017 Louisiana Film Prize and take home a grand prize of $50,000 cash.
For more information about the festival visit www.prizefest.org
New Orleans Film Festival
The New Orleans Film Festival celebrates cinema like only New Orleans can, with brass bands, second-line parades, gumbo, and Mardi Gras beads for every filmmaker. It’s a city known the world over for its hospitality—and it’s also a city that knows how to party. NOFF is no exception—but the festival never loses sight of what it’s celebrating: exciting new films from bold, passionate storytellers.
Now in its 28th year, the New Orleans Film Festival has grown into an internationally respected annual event. It is one of the few film festivals that is Oscar-qualifying in all three Academy-accredited categories: Narrative Short, Documentary Short, and Animated Short—and it’s been recognized by MovieMaker Magazine as one of the “Top 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee” every year since 2012 (one of only two fests to receive that recognition for five straight years).
Overlook Film Festival
The Overlook Film Festival is a 4-day celebration of all things horror held in America’s most haunted city, New Orleans. Each spring, genre fans and cinephiles from the world over convene in the heart of the French Quarter, home to countless apparition sightings, voodoo legends, vampire curses and even some lore related to our namesake, horror fiction’s most frightening creation. The festival is produced in partnership with The Prytania Theatres.
Cinema on the Bayou
Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival is committed to presenting nationally and internationally acclaimed documentary and narrative fiction films and filmmakers with truly original voices. The festival is also committed to advancing the understanding of Cajun and Creole cultures through film screenings, film panels and cultural exchanges among French Louisiana, the United States and the Francophone countries of the world.
Cinema on the Bayou presents U.S. and Louisiana premieres of new, cutting edge, fiction and non-fiction films from around the world in a relaxing environment, laced and embellished with Cajun culture’s unique identity markers, exquisite cuisine and great music. We screen uncompromising, thought-provoking films that make us laugh and cry; engage in serious discussions about matters important to independent filmmakers; and have a lot of fun and good times with old friends and make important connections with new friends who share our commitment to quality film.
