RiverRun International Film Festival

If you’re a local, you’ve probably heard about the RiverRun International Film Festival and know it’s a big deal. If you’re outside the film industry, you may know little about it. Sundance is a famous film festival, but RiverRun is a well-respected regional festival in the industry that has received acknowledgment from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the group that hands out the Oscars). Word-of-mouth details could be more precise, so we’re here to give you the rundown on the festival going on this week.

Who is RiverRun?

RiverRun is a non-profit cultural organization in Winston-Salem that delivers outstanding independent films not in wide release and holds one of the leading regional film festivals in the U.S. every spring. The RiverRun International Film Festival* presents films of various genres and types, including narrative, documentary, student, animated, and shorts. The festival has received acknowledgment from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as one of the only film festivals, out of approximately 130 worldwide, that allows filmmakers the opportunity to qualify in the short narrative, documentary, and animation categories. RiverRun films typically showcase interesting insights and explore empathetic topics, like documentary ethics and the effects it can have on its subjects. At this year’s festival, we’re personally excited about the movies that exude nostalgia, like Time Bomb Y2K, which is crafted entirely from archival material.

While the 10-day festival is their most visible platform, RiverRun also presents several year-round screening programs. Most films have yet to be rated by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), so they have their own rating system.

*The organization added ‘International’ to its title to indicate its global depth.

When is this festival and will there be dancing?

Between April 13-22, the festival will feature screenings of 174 selections pulled from a pool of over 1,700 submitted films. The lineup will present at eleven theaters across nine venues and have some tickets for virtual screenings. While dancing is probably discouraged during screenings, there will likely be dancing at the Closing Night Gala, a catered event with live music by The Radio Sparks to toast the conclusion of the 25th Anniversary Festival.

How did the festival begin, and why is it held in Winston-Salem every year?

We’re so glad you asked. The RiverRun International Film Festival was founded in 1998 by Gennaro and Beth D’Onofrio. It got its name from the French Broad River near Brevard, North Carolina, where the festival was initially held. In 2003, Dale Pollock, a former film producer and then-Dean of the School of Filmmaking at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, moved RiverRun to Winston-Salem, where it resides today.

But wait, there’s more:

• Academy qualification of the winning shorts at RiverRun began in 2014 with the documentary shorts (and in 2015 with the animated shorts). RiverRun board of directors member and former chairman Dale M. Pollock goes into detail about the festival’s relationship with the Academy in a Winston-Salem Journal article from 2022.
• In 2018, the festival was in Moviemaker Magazine’s “50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee.”
• In 2019, USA Today highlighted the RiverRun International Film Festival as one of the “10 Amazing Film Festivals Worth Traveling For.” 
• Today, RiverRun is celebrating its 25th anniversary as one of the fastest-growing regional film festivals in the U.S.