Produced and Written by: Sarah Arellano
A celebration of film, creativity, artistry, and voices in a time when censorship is a big issue continues on in Southern Arizona.
October 9th marked the start of the 21st annual Tucson Film Festival, a four-day celebration of films, that ended with a closing showing on October 12th.
The Tucson Film Festival, formerly known as the Tucson Music and Film Festival, has been active every year since 2005. The festival premiered at the 20th anniversary of the historic Club Congress with an opening screening of “High and Dry”(2005), a documentary about the Tucson music scene.
Throughout this year’s festival, attendees participated in Q&A sessions with the filmmakers. For 2025, the festival and all of its films took place entirely at the Screening Room, located at 127 East Congress Street.
According to Festival Coordinator Willie Cross, showcased diverse voices in a rich assortment of films, both feature-length and short.
“With us being a southwest film festival we really do try and focus at least some of the programing around either films based in the southwest, films shot in the southwest, films made by people who are from this area or live in this area but also are ultimately representative of some aspects of the culture of this area.”
Throughout its time, the festival has produced a number of Academy Award winning films and Academy Award® winning shorts “I’m Not A Robot” (dir. Victoria Warmerdam) and “God Of Love” (dir. Luke Matheny), plus feature films “Anvil: The Story of Anvil” (dir. Sacha Gervasi),”Strutter” (dir. Allison Anders).
The overall goal of the festival is to give filmmakers the opportunity to connect with a diverse audience in southwest Arizona in the Old Pueblo of Tucson.
“Festivals like ours are where those people[filmmakers] start to show their films and start to feel that experience and are galvanized to make more art and make more films. ”
