The Wisconsin Film Festival unveiled plans for this spring’s festival at a preview event March 4. The festival will run from April 9-16 and present more than 100 films, putting local filmmakers, restorations and international cinema on screens across Madison.
The screenings will be distributed across seven theaters: the UW Cinematheque, The Marquee at Union South, the Chazen Museum of Art, Music Hall, the Bartell Theatre, the Barrymore Theatre and Flix Brewhouse.
Beyond highlighting local artists, the Wisconsin Film Festival also brings movies from many larger film festivals to Madison. Artistic director Mike King said he went to Cannes, Toronto Film Festival and Sundance to bring the best films back to Madison.
Students can watch all of the movies for free by presenting their Wiscard at the theater or by claiming early tickets at box offices around the city. UW-Madison film student Kaitlyn Tofte said she attended the festival last year and is excited to see this year’s local offerings.
The festival screens winners of the “Wisconsin’s Own” Golden Badger award. The prize is given to locally-produced films with “significant technical or artistic achievement,” according to the website.
Many of the movies screened are not available outside of the festival.
“I would say that's a really cool thing about the festival, that it tries to keep at least a large chunk of it homegrown," Golden Badger voter Craig Benzine, also known for his YouTube channel WheezyWaiter, said.
A UW-Madison graduate, Benzine used to attend the festival annually as a student. After graduating, he did not attend for multiple years, but he came back to present his documentary “No Packers, No Life” in last year’s festival.
“Blue Heron, I’ve been wanting to see for a while — I was kind of hoping that was going to show up either [at the festival] or at the Cinematheque,” said Vincent Mollica, a filmmaker whose short movie “Bob, Paul... Byrd and Pete Go to the Movies” will be screened during the festival.
Historically, the festival was hosted at Sundance Cinemas, but the theater closed in 2022 and was last used for the film festival in 2023. Since then, the organizers have distributed the projectors to a few other venues across Madison, creating makeshift theaters out of locations such as Music Hall and the Bartell Theatre.
“If you’re watching movies at those two places, you are literally seeing a reconstruction of… the closest downtown theater we used to have,” King said.
The festival begins with a screening of “Poetic License,” directed by Maude Apatow, at the Barrymore Theatre on April 9 at 7:00 p.m. The movie follows an auditor at a college who becomes embroiled with two young guys in her class. Early tickets for “Poetic License” and all other movies are available on Saturday, March 7, at noon.
