
And the award-winners are...
The Ann Arbor Film Festival is proud to announce this year’s award-winning filmmakers selected by jurors Thorsten Fleisch, Lynn Loo, and Sheri Wills. The 2021 awards competition presents $22,500 to filmmakers through mostly cash and some in-kind awards such as film stock, film processing, and camera equipment. This year we are excited about the addition of two new awards, the Barbara Hammer Feminist Film Award and the Best Experimental Animation Award!
An award from the AAF

59th AAFF Features in Competition
This year the 59th Ann Arbor Film Festival is presenting eleven features in competition. They are available for on-demand viewing from March 23 until March 31. Get your tickets and check them out below. Al Largo Tickets Filmmaker Names: Anna Marziano Location of Production: Padoua, Italy / Berlin, Germany Year of Completion: 2020 Runtime: 61 North American Premiere Immersing us in a sea of words and images, Al Largo brings us into contact with the experience of suffering. Dis


There are Deaf Mansplainers Too: Thoughts on Sylvanie Tendron
Yes, there are deaf mansplainers too. Like their hearing counterparts, these self-assured fools think they’re all-knowing, but have a psyche arrested at the sovereign state of his-majesty-the-baby. Some must just think women have nothing to contribute. I imagine the deaf mansplainer’s hands moving assuredly, unstoppably. He has perfected the art of losing eye contact with his reluctant one-woman audience in order to proceed with the monologue. In Sylvanie Tendron’s short vide

Vote for Your Favorite Film
Remember to cast your vote for the UMCU Audience Award! Sponsored by the University of Michigan Credit Union, this award—affectionately dubbed the Vox Populi Award – goes to the year’s most highly rated audience-selected film in competition. The winner of last year's Audience Award was Tetlalli: The Place of Stones by Miguel Nájera. See a full list of 59th AAFF awards here. Learn more about how to vote here.


Letter from the Director
From the land of the Chippewa, Huron, Ottawa, and Potawatomi, the banks of the Huron River: What a year. When we concocted new methods to reach you all last March online, we never imagined being here again, one year later. Did you? Thanks to National Endowment for the Arts CARES funding, a forgiven PPP loan, and the generosity of our donors, members, sponsors, and grantors we made it through. Your dedication to the festival makes it possible for the best experimental film art


Announcing Two New Awards
The Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF) is pleased to announce the addition of two awards, the Barbara Hammer Feminist Film Award, established by filmmaker and 58th AAFF juror Lynne Sachs, will be given to the film that best conveys Barbara Hammer’s passion for celebrating and examining the experiences of women; and the Best Experimental Animation Award, established by media artist and AAFF advisory board member, Deanna Morse, which recognizes the best experimental animated film t

Ann Arbor Film Festival Introduces New Major Sponsor: a2tech360
The Ann Arbor film festival is thrilled to announce a2Tech360 as our newest major sponsor! a2Tech360 offers a series of tech-related events connecting key community actors who enrich the Ann Arbor region. Their platform is for innovators, researchers, investors, businesses, academic institutions, non-profits, job seekers, and the general public. It’s organized by Ann Arbor SPARK, an economic engine within southeast Michigan, cultivating a network of business and manufacturing

Reflections on CYCLE 0, Indigenous Cinema at the 59th AAFF
Time blurs, myth and history collide, and form is reinvented in CYCLE 0, one of the special programs of the 59th Ann Arbor Film Festival. Featuring Indigenous artists working with experimental film and moving images, the program is curated by the COUSIN Collective, a consortium of artists founded in 2018 by Sky Hopinka, Adam Khalil, Alexandra Lazarowich, and Adam Piron, whose work is rooted in supporting avant-garde Indigenous filmmakers. The artists in CYCLE 0 employ element

Please stand by for our Super Screeners...
When George Manupelli started the Ann Arbor Film Festival in the 1960s, he assembled a group to help wade through the submissions and plan the program. There was a rule to leave each film on the projector until the very end and everyone was expected to view each film in its entirety. Though we have changed some things about the process and our group has expanded beyond the small group that would get together to review films, the core idea of giving each submission a fair chan

LGBTQ+ Programming at the 59th AAFF
Silver Femme, Nico Reano, Jimena Lucero The Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF) is pleased to announce its lineup of LGBTQ+ programming for the 59th AAFF (online March 23-28), consisting of the 20th Out Night, a films in competition program celebrating queer cinema; the world premiere of feature film in competition Instructions for Survival; and a special program, Object (im)Permanence, curated by Andrew Robbins and Kai Tillman. Find more details about the programs below. Films in