Indie Memphis Film Festival is back on downtown Memphis screens this week, four days of movies at the Halloran Centre and Malco Powerhouse Cinema after a year in which the organization went dark entirely. The festival runs November 5-8, its first edition since laying off its entire staff in 2025 and canceling that year's festival outright.
According to the Memphis Flyer, the nonprofit is now led by co-executive directors Alicia George and Joseph Carr, with Brandon Harris returning as artistic director to help steer the comeback. Harris previously held the festival's lead programmer position for two years beginning in 2016. Carr put the organization's 2025 collapse plainly, saying the operation was no longer sustainable before the staff cuts and cancellation.
George, who has said she believes Indie Memphis launched her own career, spent the intervening year revamping the board of directors and lining up sponsors and donors to revive the organization, per the Flyer's reporting. Carr said he was happy the festival was back, noting it offers programming for varied audiences. The pause followed years of financial strain: Indie Memphis previously ran a roughly $500,000 annual budget supported largely by grants, sponsorships and donations, and The Commercial Appeal reported that in 2023 expenses outpaced revenue by $273,305 even as that year's festival drew a record 10,704 ticket-holders and $54,226 in ticket sales.
A Festival With a Long and Rocky Run
Indie Memphis ran every fall from 1998 through 2024, and the newspaper's reporting notes the festival sold more than 10,000 tickets a year in the mid-2010s at its peak. The pandemic forced changes early on: Indie Memphis partnered with the Sundance Film Festival after moviegoing shut down in 2020, then used a hybrid model of online and in-person screenings before returning to its standard format. The organization also ran the Black Creators Forum and a youth program, both free, per the same reporting.
Even so, the financial pressure never let up. In 2024, the festival was scaled back from six days to four, eliminating days and venues; the shortened event was considered a success, but the organization remained in deficit, the Commercial Appeal reported. That shortfall led to the 2025 announcement that there would be no festival that year, followed by the layoff of the entire staff.
Opening With the Lorraine, Closing With Ira Sachs
This year's festival opens November 5 at the Halloran Centre with “The Lorraine,” a documentary directed by Sam Pollard and produced by Alvin Hall that focuses on the lives of Lorraine Motel owners Walter and Loree Bailey, who operated the motel for decades. The Lorraine Motel provided a safe haven for Black travelers in the Jim Crow South and was the site where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
The festival closes November 8 with Ira Sachs's “The Man I Love” as its closing-night feature. Also on the schedule is filmmaker Lynne Sachs, who presents her documentary “Every Contact Leaves a Trace,” for which she tracked down seven people, screening November 7 at 5:30 p.m. at the Halloran Centre.
Hometowner Features and a Packed Schedule
The lineup includes four hometowner features: “Hoop Street,” directed by Princeton James, “Hallelujah Station,” “Safe and Sound” and “Outside Ain't Free.” “Hallelujah Station” screens November 6 at 5:30 p.m., also at Malco Powerhouse.
Other films on the schedule include “Ronzo,” screening November 6 at 4 p.m. at the Halloran Centre, and “Come On Boy,” screening November 7 at 11:15 a.m. at the Halloran Centre. In all, the festival is screening more than 50 feature films along with dozens of short films and music videos, the Flyer reports.
Panels Draw Hollywood Names Alongside Local Talent
Programming beyond the screen room includes a noon panel on November 7 at the Halloran Centre titled Breaking In Is Tough, But Sticking Around Is Tougher, featuring Clare Grant, Seth Green and Vondie Curtis-Hall. A separate panel on November 8 at 11 a.m., also at the Halloran Centre, features Vivian Gray discussing Designing Obsession; Gray created the One Wish Willow, a magic novelty item featured in the film “Obsession,” which grossed $525 million at the box office. Local filmmaker Sàngkofi Jones, who earned a filmmaker badge in 2019 by producing an award-winning hometowner music video, is also part of this year's community of participants.
More than 50 filmmakers and producers are expected to attend, including the distributor Neon, with close to 100 filmmakers expected to attend overall, according to the Flyer's reporting. Encore screenings are set for November 9-10 at Malco's Studio on the Square in Midtown, giving audiences who miss the main run a second chance to catch standout titles.
