Fall into film fests

Orlando to host multiple movie events

Exclusive to MeierMovies, August 23, 2025

If you live in or near the City Beautiful, get ready to fest! Orlando’s late-summer and fall calendar is packed, as usual, with film festivals.

Kicking things off is the Orlando Urban Film Festival, which runs August 27-29 at Regal Cinemas Pointe Orlando on International Drive. For more information about the event, which runs August 27-29, visit OrlandoUFF.com.

Overlapping the Urban Festival is Sanford’s Love Your Shorts Film Festival Summer Rewind, a one-night showcase of some of the best flicks from the main February event. Scheduled for August 29, at the historic Ritz Theatre, this year’s Rewind will screen I’m Not a Robot, which won the 2025 festival and went on to capture the Oscar the following month for live-action short. It will be joined by Birdy Man, Vance and the Afterlife, Contracting the Cooties, Edson’s Gravy, Les Betes, Gopher Games, The Mooning, Stressy Squishy and Ms. Rossi 3: Ms. Rossi Meets the Mob. Go to LoveYourShorts.com for more information.

If you’re a local filmmaker, you’re likely to miss both those events on Friday, as August 29 is also the kick-off for the Orlando 48 Hour Film Project (at F.I.R.S.T. Institute). Held in more than 120 cities around the world, the timed filmmaking competition challenges participants to write, shoot and edit a short film in just two days. The Orlando films will screen on September 13 at Fashion Square Mall’s Premiere Cinemas on Colonial Drive. And with more than 30 entries, this year’s screening will be one of Orlando’s biggest ever. Visit 48HourFilm.com for details.

Barbara Kopple will screen Harlan County, USA at the Global Peace Film Festival. (Photo by Cameron Meier)

Scheduled for September 16-21 at various locations in Orlando, Winter Park and Maitland is the Global Peace Film Festival. Go here to see the schedule, but you should probably get a ticket for now for the September 19 showing of arguably the best documentary of all time, Harlan County, USA, with director Barbara Kopple in attendance, at Rollins College’s Bush Auditorium. (I discussed the 1976 Oscar-winning film with Kopple during her appearance at the 2016 Sarasota Film Festival. Revisit my interview here.)

Orlando’s longest festival is also the only one that’s entirely free to attend. It’s the University of Central Florida’s Latin American / Latinx Film Festival, to be held at various locations September 27 – October 19. Check Sciences.UCF.edu for specifics.

Up next is Enzian Theater’s South Asian Film Festival, one of the art cinema’s mini-fests. Set for October 4-6, the event is expected to screen four features and a collection of shorts. Visit Enzian.org for details.

On that same Saturday (October 4) is the Organization of Independent Filmmakers’ Reel Film Challenge, at AMC Altamonte Springs. Like all OIF’s challenges, this one offers local filmmakers a chance to showcase their talents, this time with films fitting the horror, comedy or one-take genres. Go to OIFStudio.com for details.

The following weekend (October 12) will see another champion of local, low-budget filmmakers: Enzian’s Central Florida Film Slam. Held several times each year, the Slam usually screens several short films over about one hour, followed by a Q&A session with the filmmakers. Visit Enzian.org for info.

The biggest film event in Florida – one of the biggest in the nation, too, when judged by the number of films (more than 300) – is the Orlando Film Festival. Scheduled for October 31 – November 7, the fest is still looking for a home, as its longtime venue, the CMX Plaza Cinema Café (Orlando’s only downtown movie theater) closed unexpectedly earlier this year. Unless festival organizers can convince it to temporarily reopen, expect to attend the event at a new location this year. Stay tuned to OFFVirtual.com for updates.

Also set for Halloween weekend is the Spooky Empire Horror Film Festival. Part of the larger Spooky Empire convention at the Hyatt Regency on International Drive, the film fest will screen roughly 110 horror, thriller, suspense and horror-comedy movies (almost all shorts) October 31 – November 2. (The fest received more than 300 submissions this year, the most ever.) If you attend, don’t forget to visit the celebrity guests. (This “Poseyphile” can’t wait to finally meet Parker.) Visit SpookyEmpire.com for more information.

Another Enzian event, the Central Florida Jewish Film Festival, is also scheduled for Halloween weekend (November 1-3 specifically). (Talk about a busy few days! Contact your doppelgangers now.) The most popular of Enzian’s mini-fests, the event celebrates Jewish culture, film and food. Expect five feature films and probably at least one short. Visit Enzian.org to learn more.

Lastly, Enzian Theater offers up its Brouhaha Film & Video Showcase. Going strong for 33 years, the mini-fest, scheduled for November 22, usually offers about 30 short films curated mostly from film schools around Florida. Stay tuned to Enzian.org for details closer to the event.

Of course, the film world outside Orlando gets all festivaly in the late summer and fall too, with the Venice Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival and the Telluride Film Festival leading the charge. But if you can’t attend those cinematic behemoths, there’s still plenty to keep you occupied among the aforementioned Orlando events. Those local fests might not carry the quality and prestige of Venice’s Golden Lion, but they can still roar.

© 2025 MeierMovies, LLC

For all my past festival coverage, go here.

Disclosure: Paul Meier Dialect Services and the International Dialects of English Archive, for which I work, are sponsors of the Love Your Shorts Film Festival and the 48 Hour Film Project. I also am involved organizationally with the 48 Hour Film Project, but not the Orlando event specifically.