Alexander Ullom’s north Florida-shot festival breakout “It Ends,” opens TFF’s 17th year on Sept. 26 at the Challenger Learning Center, the fest’s presenting sponsor, heralding a weekend much focused on Floridian themes and filmmakers.
This September, the Tallahassee Film Festival begins at the end. Or rather, “It Ends.” One of the year’s biggest festival breakouts, the North Florida-shot “hangout horror” film marks the bold debut of writer-director Alexander Ullom, a Florida State University film school graduate who brings a whole new Gen Z perspective to familiar genre tropes. One of Filmmaker magazine’s “25 new faces of independent film,” Ullom has wowed festival audiences at South by Southwest with what Variety calls his “brilliant, existential road thriller.” He just took top prize in the “New Flesh” category at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal.
The film opens TFF’s 17th year on Sept. 26 at the Challenger Learning Center, the fest’s presenting sponsor, heralding a weekend much focused on Floridian themes and filmmakers. Among highlights are Miami native Sasha Wortzel’s meditative cinematic essay “River of Grass,” which uses Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s 1947 book about the Everglades as the starting point for a poetic exploration of the near-mythic yet all-too-endangered swamplands, now also the site of a tragic political flashpoint.
The iconic Florida theme continues with “John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office,” Courtney Stephens and Michael Almereyda’s brilliant archival examination of the controversial “psychonaut” and his rogue experimentation with dolphins in Miami and a Virgin Islands compound – experiments that inspired the movies “Day of the Dolphin” and “Altered States.”
Another FSU alum, Paula Gonzalez-Nasser brings the Florida premiere of her debut feature “The Scout,” a drama based on her own post-graduate experiences as a location scout in New York City, scoping out shoot sites (and engaging with their eccentric residents) for HBO comedies like “Broad City” and “High Maintenance.” Meanwhile, Tallahassee superstar chef Leon Brunson is the subject of “The Winning Recipe,” a documentary about his struggle to open his own restaurant, Leon’s at Lake Ella. It’s among several short films by Panhandle filmmakers, many of them showcased in the popular “850” program. The festival also partners with the Florida Animation Fest to present a program of award-winning selections – among multiple shorts blocks.
Other notable films include “Bunnylovr,” the debut feature from writer-actor-director Katarina Zhu, who plays a young woman struggling to navigate her life after a breakup, while rebuilding a relationship with her dying father and dealing with an increasingly strange client in her side hustle as an online cam-girl. South by Southwest favorite “The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick,” brings together director Pete Ohs (“Jethica”) with writer Jeremy O. Harris (“Zola,” “Slave Play”) and an ensemble of young actors (Zoe Chao, Callie Hernandez) in the story of a summer country getaway that goes super-weird after a tick bite. The non-fiction slate features “WTO/99,” an archival chronicle of the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, and “American Theater,” a Slamdance winner that tracks the chaotic efforts of a “canceled” Georgia theater director to create an immersive musical based on the Salem Witch Trials.
The festival runs through Sunday, Sept 28, with more than 50 films playing through the weekend at multiple venues, including the Challenger Learning Center IMAX, Cap City Video Lounge and 621 Gallery in Railroad Square.
Special events include an opening night lateshow: A 50th anniversary screening of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” in a new 4K restoration, with a shadowcast led by local performer Indie Sinclair. The festival also partners with Tallahassee Downtown to bring a host of additional free happenings outdoors to Kleman Plaza on Sept. 27. Catch an array of local musicians, with up-and-coming acts like hip-hop performer One.Will, singer/songwriter Tommy Cooper, and more, organized by Cat Family. Festivities wrap up with a free 30th anniversary screening of the Gen X cult classic, “Empire Records.” Bring your blankets or chairs and settle in! Food trucks and pop-up vendors, including Midtown Reader, Cap City Video Lounge and Rearview Vintage and Vinyl, will also be on site during the day. Capping the evening is the Saturday night party at The Filibuster from 10 p.m. to midnight, with a DJ set and live visuals by Glenn Swan of Burlap Productions. And, as always, VIP passholders and filmmakers will dig in for the Sunday brunch at the Challenger, followed by a special presentation on the IMAX screen (to be announced).
All-access and VIP passes are on sale now with more titles and details to be announced soon!
