Film: Inaugural Long Beach Film Festival packs historic Art Theatre with dozens of short and long films
In the heart of Long Beach’s Retro Row, the historic Art Theatre at 2025 E. Fourth St. hosted the inaugural Long Beach Film Festival the weekend of Aug. 29-30, following a launch party aboard the Queen Mary on Aug. 28.
The festival was founded by local filmmakers to support independent cinema, connect artists with audiences and strengthen Long Beach as a destination for film and creativity, according to a statement. It was sponsored by Sequence — a Long Beach firm offering a digital platform for collaborating on video production — with the Arts Council for Long Beach, City of Long Beach, Port of Long Beach and BMO Bank.
Hundreds of movie-loving locals and others came through last weekend to support the festival’s 26 short independent films and four feature films. Audiences were treated to a wide variety of genres from filmmakers hailing from all over the world, plus Q&A panels with directors.
Given the festival’s success, organizers announced that the festival would return to Long Beach next year.
“The response to our first festival was incredible,” said Hunter Steibel, one of the festival’s founders and its director of programming. “This weekend showed us that Long Beach is ready for a film festival of its own, and we can’t wait to come back even bigger in 2027.”
Inventive and meaningful films infuse the festival
One of the festival’s four feature films, “Rescued” — written, directed by and starring Long Beach filmmaker DJ Hale and filmed around the city — focuses on the unhoused, winning the festival’s 2026 Audience Award for Best Feature Film.
The Audience Award for Best Short Film went to Will Mayo and Ian Scott McGregor’s “Dropping Off,” about a rideshare driver struggling to help a grieving passenger spread her grandmother’s ashes, shot almost entirely on security cameras and iPhone.
LA Theatrix reviewer Anthony Gutierrez also expressed appreciation for five other short films at the festival:
“The Lord of All Future Space and Time,” directed by Chris Russell, delivers a high-concept, sci-fi Western. This film is a ton of fun. It’s refreshing to see a story involving time travel that doesn’t require any mental gymnastics to understand.
“Meet Your Maker,” written and directed by Gregory J.M. Kasunich, is a heartfelt comedic short that follows depressed puppet TV host Otis as he contemplates the value of his career. Shot entirely in Highland Park over the course of three days, it’s not only a feat of filmmaking and puppetry, it’s hilarious.
In “The Invisible Shield,” directed by Maximilian Barrón, a couple in Ciudad de México decide to deal with gentrification once and for all. Delightful performances and clever writing give us a poignant look at the struggle locals face when they are priced out of their hometown.
“Amazeze (Fleas),” written and directed by Jordy Sank, is set in a South African township where a young Zimbabwean boy needs water for his sick brother. He has to venture into the dangerous night as a gang of violent xenophobes roam the neighborhood. Filmed as one continuous scene — perhaps one or two long, continuous shots — this gorgeous and terrifying film features fantastic acting by both adults and children.
Documentary short “Memory and Loss,” directed by Cal State Long Beach alum Wilfredo Chavez, follows the nonprofit group Border Angels as they provide lifesaving water and food for migrants crossing the deadly southwest U.S.-Mexico border. While this film left me angry at the cold indifference to suffering that humans are capable of, hope was still to be found in the selfless work done by the Border Angels.
Director Danny Madden on scrappily making his feature film “Downbeat”
During the festival’s launch party aboard the Queen Mary, LA Theatrix caught up with director Danny Madden, whose feature film “Downbeat” played at the Art Theatre on Sunday night.
Madden said festival organizers invited him to screen his film when “someone tipped them off about the movie,” which is now available on the viewing platform Letterboxd.
Madden had previously directed music videos for David Gilmour, directed a film screened at Sundance in 2020, and did animation work for the Academy Award-winning 2022 film “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
But “Downbeat” — his Long Beach Film Festival entry about a busking drummer in Boston with sibling complications — is completely independently made, he said, from writing, directing and editing to the cast contributing dialogue and doing their own hair, makeup and wardrobe.
Madden described trying to film discreetly in different corners of Boston, including in a 24-hour pharmacy in the middle of the night.
“We couldn’t go to corporate to get permission,” he said, “so we just walked in and said, ‘Let’s film until they kick us out.’ And they never did, and we got all the shots we needed.”
One of Madden’s highlight experiences post-filming was mixing the film’s sound at Skywalker Sound north of San Francisco — which he says gave him a deal on costs — and working with Tony Villaflor there, who’d mixed sound for Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2025 film “One Battle After Another.”
Though Skywalker Sound works on major movies like the Star Wars and Jurassic Park series, it also supports indie films like his, Madden said, which he finds “validating.”
“I cut this movie on a laptop in my bedroom, you know?” he said. “So you’re doing this for a year, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and then you get to show up there and be treated like you’re a real filmmaker. It’s very meaningful.”
Mayor: art is economically important and ‘authentic’
During the festival’s launch party, Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson said arts events like the Long Beach Film Festival reflect the “soul and fabric” of the city while boosting the local economy.
“[The festival] brings art, culture and tourism together,” he said. “Now more than ever, people want to have experiences that are authentic, unpretentious and there’s nothing better than bringing people together.”
In answer to LA Theatrix’s question about the importance of the arts during a time of local budget cuts, Richardson said investing in public art is a way to “make it through.”
“Investing in arts has always been a part of Long Beach’s economic history,” he said, citing Long Beach mosaic murals created under the New Deal to help artists during the Depression and how the city founded a municipal band a century ago to help create a tourist economy.
The city’s recent investments in the Queen Mary to keep it afloat and developing the new F&M Bank Amphitheater across from it will help create sustainable revenue, Richardson added, replacing legacy revenue sources such as oil drilling and a defunct naval shipyard.
“Art, culture and tourism are sustainable,” Richardson said, ”especially given our national advantage as a coastal city right here in Southern California.”
For more information on the Long Beach Film Festival, visit LongBeachFilmFestival.org.
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