“Coming of Age” at the 16th Annual Hamilton Film Festival

The 16th annual Hamilton Film Festival (HFF) starts Saturday and runs through November 14th. To tell us more, we welcomed executive director of the festival, Nathan Fleet.

The festival will feature around 100 films at 4 venues: Westdale Theatre, Staircase Theatre, Playhouse Cinema and Starlite Drive-in. 

The theme of this year’s festival revolves around the festival’s 16th year running. 

“16 is pretty young in terms of a person, so our tag-line this year is, ‘now we can drive’” said Fleet. “We’re doing a sweet 16 theme and I think the Starlite drive-in fits perfectly.”

Every director was asked to provide pictures of themselves when they were 16-years-old which was then made into a collage. 

Fleet says most of the films this year are Canadian. The reason there are less international films than other years is because people couldn’t travel. 

He says a huge highlight of the event will be an author event with Academy Award winner Colin Chilvers. He wrote a book called Believing a man can fly: Memories of a life in special effects and film. 

“We had him virtually last year, but now he will be [in-person] at the Westdale Theatre signing books and talking about his experiences working on Superman and The Rocky Horror Picture Show and even the Michael Jackson Smooth Criminal music video, which he directed.” 

A stand-out film at the festival is Abducted. Fleet says it is the first feature-length film from an indigenous HFF alumni filmmaker. 

“All proceeds from this film’s screenings will be donated to a local indigenous organization,” said Fleet. “There’s so many great stories being told with so much diversity [this year], It’s important that the audience is able to see all these stories.” 

You can find tickets for the 16th Annual Hamilton Film Festival here.