{"id":248529,"date":"2026-05-30T03:45:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T03:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/248529\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T03:45:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T03:45:22","slug":"art-of-brooklyn-film-festival-returns-for-its-16th-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/248529\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Art of Brooklyn Film Festival\u2019 returns for its 16th season"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>BOROUGHWIDE \u2014 It\u2019s showtime: The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival returns to the borough for its 16th season.<\/p>\n

The 10-day long festival, which began in 2011, will include 55 new independent films from local, national and international filmmakers. Feature films and shorts from every genre will screen in venues across the borough and stream online. The festival runs June 1 through June 10.<\/p>\n

Co-founder and Bay Ridge resident Anthony DeVito said the festival was created because Kings County didn\u2019t have a large-scale, filmmaker-focused event of its own.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a beautifully curated selection of shorts from comedies, to thrillers, to documentaries, to experimental films, with themes ranging from family ties, to romance gone wrong, to how we define friendship, to profiles of artists from around the world,\u201d DeVito said. \u201cWe\u2019re excited to be screening at Film Noir Cinema and 100 Sutton, both in Greenpoint, the Tom Kane Theatre in Industry City, and the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe designed Art of Brooklyn as a film festival for the entire borough, because we knew that there are artists and enthusiastic audiences in every community, from one end of Brooklyn to the other,\u201d he added. \u201cFilmmakers, audiences and the industry were ready for what we were doing, so it was a big success right away. By our second year, we\u2019d entertained audiences from every single zip code in the borough.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival has differentiated itself from other film festivals. It created a Guest Festival Director Program in 2016 by opening the role to different filmmakers every season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Co-founder<\/a>Co-founder of the Art of Brooklyn Film Festival Anthony DeVito. Photo: Anthony DeVito<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile filmmakers may program individual blocks at other festivals, we offer them an unprecedented level of creative control, surrendering the entire curation process and granting them final say,\u201d DeVito said. \u201cWe never throw anyone in the deep end though. We mentor our Guest Festival Directors in film curation and prepare them to take center stage at our festival, where they lead conversations about the future of independent film.\u201d<\/p>\n

Post-festival, the organizers become a hub in their professional networks, offering references, letters of recommendation and large social media platforms to support projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThese long-term relationships are central to our success,\u201d DeVito said. \u201cIt\u2019s a win-win. We create professional opportunities in creative leadership for filmmakers while ensuring that our curation doesn\u2019t ever default to a single point of view.\u201d <\/p>\n

The location of the venues is also important.<\/p>\n

\u201cProducing our festival in neighborhoods across the borough makes it possible to build a wide audience for new independent films, and we take that seriously, working closely with filmmakers to fill their screenings,\u201d said DeVito. \u201cAs of 2025, Art of Brooklyn has produced screenings and events in 29 ADA-accessible venues across 13 different neighborhoods around the borough, and we employ a Virtual Festival Platform to screen online encores of our films to maximize audiences from across the country, as well as creating even more access for disabled audiences and filmmakers to participate in our event.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the years, the festival has steadily grown in popularity, being recognized by outlets as a top festival in the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cFilmmakers in capitals around the world \u2014 Los Angeles, Toronto, Tokyo, Berlin, Paris \u2014 choose to premiere with us here in Brooklyn,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve built an audience that has endured despite the ups and downs in the industry. We\u2019re proud that we\u2019re now in a position to advocate for filmmakers in our network directly with distributors.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year promises to offer something different for everyone within the 55 new films.\u00a0A Japanese martial arts thriller called \u201cTraverse 2: Next Level\u201d will premiere. Local films include the road movie \u201cBerman\u2019s March,\u201d horror\u2013comedy \u201cThe Flesh People,\u201d and \u201cGrowing Up Slowly,\u201d a documentary about how important play is for children as they grow and develop.<\/p>\n

DeVito is a fourth-generation Brooklynite who grew up in Bergen Beach and has lived in Bay Ridge since the early 1990s. He worked in NYC agencies as a graphic designer and creative director. He is also a SAG-AFTRA actor who works in television and films.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou might have seen me cursing out Jennifer Aniston and Jon Hamm in \u2018The Morning Show\u2019 when they visited Coney Island,\u201d he said of one of his roles.<\/p>\n

One of the highlights of the festival DeVito is excited about is that it is opening with the East Coast premiere of a timely dark comedy called \u201cDead or Dying,\u201d a collection of Los Angelenos struggling to cope with a city where people have been dying off in droves.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the risk of sounding biased, all our selections really are wonderful,\u201d DeVito said. \u201cIt\u2019s always an achievement for independent artists to come together to create a film, no matter what the topic or genre. These films entertain and inspire audiences and other artists, and we\u2019re proud to do everything we can to showcase them and give these filmmakers the respect they deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOROUGHWIDE \u2014 It\u2019s showtime: The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival returns to the borough for its 16th season.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[2571,2572,98,100,99,8403,749,158,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-248529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-bklyn-live","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-festival","tag-film","tag-movies","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}