The Savannah College of Art and Design is celebrating the 25th year of the SCAD Savannah Film Festival, the largest university-run film festival in the U.S., which will take place in person this year from Oct. 22–29.
This year, SCAD will honor Sandy Powell with the Variety Creative Impact Award in Costume Design for Living, the upcoming Sony Classics movie starring Bill Nighy in one of his very best performances.
Powell is a three-time Oscar winner who won for her work on Shakespeare in Love, The Aviator, and The Young Victoria, and she earned an additional 12 nominations — her latest for The Irishman, which she shared with Christopher Peterson.
Other SCAD honorees include:
Colson Baker a.k.a. Machine Gun Kelly – Discovery Award for Taurus
Kerry Condon – Distinguished Performance Award for The Banshees of InisherinJD Dillard – Rising Star Director Award for Devotion
Nicholas Hoult – Vanguard Award for The Menu
Ron Howard – Lifetime Achievement Award in Directing for Thirteen Lives
Jonathan Majors – Spotlight Award for Devotion
Janelle Monáe – Spotlight Award for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Jeremy Pope – Distinguished Performance Award for The Inspection
Eddie Redmayne – Virtuoso Award for The Good Nurse
Henry Selick – Outstanding Achievement in Animation Award for Wendell and Wild
Sadie Sink – Rising Star Award for The Whale.
The festival kicks off Saturday, Oct. 22, with the opening-night Gala Screening of The Banshees of Inisherin, directed by Martin McDonagh, and it will end on Saturday, Oct. 29 with the closing-night Gala Screening of Living. Along the way, there will be conversations with Miles Teller (2016 Vanguard Award recipient) following a Special Presentation of Top Gun: Maverick, and former U.S. Congresswoman and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Gabby Giffords, who will appear with Oscar-nominated directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West following a Special Screening of their celebrated documentary Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down.
A key stop on the Academy Awards festival circuit, 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.
“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.”
“The 25th annual SCAD Savannah Film Festival is set to delight guests with our exciting group of honorees and stellar film line-up”, said SCAD Savannah Film Festival Executive and Artistic Director Christina Routhier. “This milestone anniversary for the festival is an incredible accomplishment. For the past 25 years, the university has achieved unprecedented growth and academic success and the film festival has become a venerable stop for films on their way to the Academy Awards. With a slate of nearly 150 films, including some filmed right here in Savannah, we are ready for eight full days of outstanding cinema.”
The SCAD Savannah Film Festival will host 22 Gala Screenings, 10 Signatura Screenings featuring Q&As, a Docs to Watch series featuring Moonage Daydream, Fire of Love, and Navalny; an Animation Roundtable featuring the directors of Turning Red, Wendell & Wild, and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On; an After Dark series of genre fare, including Luca Guadagnino‘s cannibal movie Bones and All.
The fest will also host a Below the Line series focusing on costume design and production design; a SCAD Alumni Panel featuring graduates from the university; panels from Variety and Entertainment Weekly; and the Wonder Woman series — a selection of panels focusing on the cinematic achievements and contributions of female directors, producers, and below-the-line talent in film and television, including She Said director Maria Schrader, Prey editor Angela Cantanzaro, and indie producer Christine Vachon.
There will also be plenty of narrative features, documentary features, professional shorts, documentary shorts, animated shorts, student shorts, a shorts spotlight, and a global shorts forum.
