The Stony Brook Film Festival is returning to the university’s Staller Center for the Arts, and will run from July 18 through July 27.
This marks the festival’s 29 th year, and its presenting sponsor is Island Federal Credit Union, which is headquartered in Hauppauge. Additional sponsors include Campolo, Middleton & McCormick, which is headquartered in Ronkonkoma; Suffolk County; Altice Media, headquartered in Long Island City; and WLIW21, headquartered in Manhattan.
This year’s festival comprises 36 feature and short films from 19 countries.
The full schedule won’t be announced until June 12, but nine of the films are from festival alumni, according to a news release about the festival. Filmmakers rely on festivals as a vehicle toward distribution for their films. Festivals make it possible to get people to see the films in a venue in which filmmakers can gauge a live audience’s response to their work.
Both the opening and closing night films this year are U.S. premieres.
The festival will open with The Blond Boy from the Casbah, from France. Writer and director Alexandre Arcady's feature follows the story of a filmmaker as he travels with his son back to Algiers to present a film about his childhood there. The festival described it as a “thought-provoking, unique journey through the past on the surprising path to self-discovery.”
The festival closes with One Million Minutes, from Germany. It is the directing debut of writer and producer Christopher Doll and stars his wife, Karoline Herfurth, a well-known actress and director, also from Germany. This is Herfurth's fourth film to be featured at the festival. Herfurth and Doll will attend closing night and answer questions about their latest work.
"We first got a look at Karoline's acting abilities as she starred in the lead role in our 2009 premiere of Berlin 36 at just 25 years old and illuminated our large screen,” Alan Inkles, the festival’s director, said in the news release.
Herfurth, Inkles said, “attended the festival and [led] the Q&A in 2016 when her delightful comedy that she starred in and directed, Text For You, was the festival’s closing night film. In 2019, the festival premiered Sweethearts, another comedy that Karoline starred in and directed with both comedies produced by Christopher Doll. This year, we are extremely excited to have the first screening in North America of Doll's feature directorial debut, One Million Minutes, starring Karoline in a dramatic role also produced by Doll."
The question-and-answer session will be followed by an award ceremony and a closing night party.
Early bird passes with discount rates are available through June 10. More information is available here .
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