Each year, the city rolls out the red carpet to thousands of guests from around the world for the Atlanta Film Festival. The packed lineup features local, national and international works across 11 days — and it’s all helmed by Christopher Escobar, Executive Director of the Atlanta Film Society.
“I’m looking forward to welcoming folks back, getting everyone together and our team finally being able to share all of these films and these conversations about film with that they’ve been working on for months and months with the audience that they’ve been imagining and intending to share it with,” Escobar said.
From April 25 to May 5, the Plaza Theatre and the Tara will transform into hubs for one of the world’s few Academy Award-qualifying festivals. Nearly 28,000 people come from around the world each year to see some of the 90 short films, 29 feature-length films and 22 creative media pieces shown in the festival.
For 13 years, Escobar has run the Atlanta Film Society, a membership-based nonprofit aimed at leading the community through creative and cultural discovery. He also owns Atlanta’s Plaza Theatre and Tara Theatre.
He’s become a fixture in the growing Atlanta film community across the past 13 years, and with the festival Escobar aims to knit its factions together.
“For all the talent there is for an arts community, I will say that in many other cities, the film community is a little bit more settled, and we’re much more in pockets here in Atlanta,” Escobar said. “This, to me, I think, is an exciting opportunity to create some more unity across it.”
For the first time, the festival will be hosted in part at the 56-year-old Tara movie theater. The Tara briefly shut down in 2022 before being purchased and reopened by Escobar. Since then, it’s become a hub just like the Plaza for partnered events with Wussy Magazine, Wax & Wane Productions and Videodrome.
Now, the iconic Atlanta cinema will…
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