Festival of Cinema NYC (previously the Kew Gardens Festival of Cinema) is an international

film festival A film festival is an organized, extended presentation of films in one or more cinemas or screening venues, usually in a single city or region. Increasingly, film festivals show some films outdoors. Films may be of recent date and, depending upon ...

held in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

for 10 days beginning on the first Friday of August . Since 2017, the festival has screened over 400 films from 40 different countries, by independent filmmakers. It was originally founded by festival director, Jayson Simba, as Kew Gardens Festival of Cinema taking place in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York. However, following the success of its inaugural year in 2017, Regal Cinemas became a sponsor and the Festival rebranded as Festival of Cinema NYC, moving to its new home in Forest Hills, Queens. It was first established in 2016 to provide an alternative to

Tribeca Film Festival The Tribeca Festival is an annual film festival organized by TriBeCa Productions, Tribeca Productions. It takes place each spring in New York City, showcasing a diverse selection of film, episodic, talks, music, games, art, and immersive progra ...

and

New York Film Festival The New York Film Festival (NYFF) is a film festival held every fall in New York City, presented by Film at Lincoln Center (FLC). Founded in 1963 by Richard Roud and Amos Vogel with the support of Lincoln Center president William Schuman, it is ...

according to

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Panelists

Past panelists and Jury Board members have included Anna Garduno, Executive Producer at

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...

; Charles E. Williams, two-time

Emmy The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...

Award winner at

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, Doug LeClaire, founder of Asbury Shorts USA, among many others.

Selected film highlights

The 2019 festival opened with Camilo Vila's ''5th of July''. Its closing night selections included Esmé von Hoffman’s premiere of ''Ovid and the Art of Love'' starring

Corbin Bleu Corbin Bleu Reivers (; born February 21, 1989), known professionally as Corbin Bleu, is an American actor and singer. He made his acting debut in the 2004 adventure comedy film ''Catch That Kid''. He has since appeared in the Discovery Kids dra ...

, John Savage and

Tara Summers Tara Summers (born 19 December 1979) is an English actress. Summers was educated at Heathfield St Mary's School, in Berkshire. She later attended Brown University, where she graduated with a B.A. in history in 2001. Her grandmother was Fritzi Go ...

and Santiago Rizzi’s “Quest- The Truth Always Rises”. The 2022 festival opened with Casey Nelson and Marchelle Thurman's ''Black, White and the Greys'' and closed with Michael Glover Smith's ''Relative''.

References

External links

Film festivals in New York City {{US-film-festival-stub

Sponsors

Panelists

Selected film highlights

References

External links