Dallas’ 2nd Best of Fests film festival brings filmmakers and fest toppers together for a big weekend

The 2020 edition of Dallas’ Best of Fests doubled down on the remarkable fact that the film festival, which incorporated more than two dozen of Dallas, Fort Worth, and North Texas’ film festivals was accomplished last year, by managing to produce a robust sequel this year. There is a rare collegial relationship between the vast majority of the film festival heads in the area and many of them share several seasonal staffers, volunteers, and, of course, audience members.

It is truthfully, a feat of cooperation, something that no other city in the country, as far as I know, has even thought about attempting, let alone figuring out how to pull it off. But this year, the Texas Theatre and Alamo Drafthouse Cedars enjoyed full houses, entertaining Q&As, and naturally, raucous parties celebrating the love of film shared so widely and enthusiastically in this region that this Best of Fests can literally become an annual event.

The other impressive aspect, as you’ll see demonstrated by the red carpet photo gallery, is the diversity demonstrated not only by the programming, and the filmmakers, but the heads of the film festivals and programmers themselves. Dallas filmgoers, Fort Worth film fans, the people that love movies in Waco and Denton, etc. are the beneficiaries of a rich film culture, and the people that put on those film festivals, And, as oftentimes happens with these things, there are a couple of people (if not just one) that is the lifeblood of the entire event. Best of Fests was no different as it was driven from beginning to end this year by the Asian Film Festival of Dallas’ Erin Parisi and EarthxFilm’s Sarah Bisnette. That twosome wrangled the participation of 26 film festivals and coordinated the films programmed by 11 of them during the four-day event.

Highlights included nearly filling up the Texas Theatre on opening night with the EarthxFilm offering of Louis Schwartzberg’s FANTASTIC FUNGI, a 10th Anniversary screening, courtesy of DIFF, of Will Cannon’s BROTHERHOOD, with a reunion of several cast members alone with Cannon, and The Women Texas Film Festival’s screening of Amber McGinnis’ INTERNATIONAL FALLS, previewing that film’s theatrical release on March 20. Appropriately, there was also a special screening of Melina McKinnon’s short film STANDING STILL, which had debuted nearly a couple decades ago at the Deep Ellum Film Festival, a precursor to much of the film festival culture Dallas enjoys today as well as the place where a number of prominent filmmakers and film festival heads got their start.