Tuesday, September 3, 2024–11:10 a.m.
-David Crowder, WRGA News-
Passes for this year’s Rome International Film Festival are on sale now.
The 21st edition of RIFF is from October 31 through November 3.
Since it begins on Halloween, a special event is planned for the kids following the annual downtown trick-or-treat, according to Leanne Cook, executive director of RIFF.
“At the DeSoto Theatre we are going to show ‘It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown’ for free,” she said. “So, all the kids and their parents can come and have a rest after walking around downtown. It’s like a fun way to kick off the festival.”
As far as the rest of the festival goes, they are still working on the specific programming, but we do know a new partnership has been created with the University of West Georgia.
So their students are going to be involved with us that first night,” Cook said. “They usually do film challenges. I think they’re going to give them 24 hours to do a film. They are all and coming up and are going to be a part of that and then we’re going to have a celebration for them and show the films that were completed. That’s the first night, so we will have a big film. We don’t know exactly which one yet, but it will be a fun and scary film. We’ll have the red carpet as usual and then we will have a Halloween themed party that first night.”
Cook added the festival get hundreds of film submissions from all over the world.
“The hard part is actually choosing them because we have an embarrassment of riches,” she said. There are so many great ones, especially the documentaries and shorts. We really try to find the best ones. We like to do local ones if possible. Some might be from Georgia, some might be student-oriented, some might be horror shorts or some might be documentaries. We will have a lot of shorts. We also have a great partnership with PAM Studios, so we always try to do something Latin X. That is definitely going to happen this year.”
Cook was a guest on Monday’s First News with Dan Bevels on WRGA.
For more information, and to purchase passes, visit riffga.com.