Columbus International Film and Animation Festival to celebrate its 74th year of independent cinema

Olivia Arthur
Sat, 25 Apr 2026 01:10:03 +0000
Arts & Life, Entertainment, Fine Arts, Instagram Page, News, AI in film, animation festival, animation showcase, columbus events, columbus film festival, creative industry, documentary films, experimental film, Film Council Columbus, film education, film screening, film submissions, film technology, filmmaker Q&A, filmmaking community, filmmaking trends, global cinema, indie cinema, indie filmmakers, international film, Josh Folan, movie festival, Ohio film scene, Phoenix Theatres Lennox, Room Tone documentary, student films, The Disaster Artist [and 3 more]

Columbus’ International Film and Animation Festival is set to celebrate its 74th year Saturday. Credit: Courtesy of Josh Folan

North America’s first and longest continuously running film festival is set to return for its 74th year Saturday, bringing submissions from every continent and ranging in various forms of content.

The Columbus International Film & Animation Festival, hosted by the Film Council of Greater Columbus, will return this year at the Phoenix Theatres Lennox Town Center 24. There were 543 submissions across the animation, documentary, experimental, student and theatrical features genres, according to the event’s website. The festival brings a diverse range of film, leaning into its global identity and spotlighting evolving tools of technology in filmmaking.

“We’ve had a rather good turnout with filmmakers, crews and supporting members of production,” Maxwell Posival, executive director and treasurer of the festival, said. “We have a lot of very unique films.”

Posival said the festival is particularly unique this year, due to the conversation around recent technological advancements.

“What makes us unique, amongst other film festivals, is we have an animation aspect,” Posival said. “We’ve also had in the last number of years, an AI component, which has been growing consistently every year.”

Posival said he will be hosting a Q&A on AI at the festival, touching on the expansion of the technology and how it has already impacted the film industry.

“It’s very interesting to see the development of AI and filmmaking [in] the last at least three or four years,” Posival said. “[The] first one was a short film called ‘Critters.’ It was a children’s film. Since then, [it’s] been picked up, syndicated and turned into a feature-length film.”

Posival said there is a strong connection between attendees of the festival and filmmakers presenting their work.

“We allow the general public when they buy their ticket to be able to interact with the filmmakers, more so than maybe others locally here,” Posival said. “We’re trying to be more inclusive of the community.”

The festival not only supports filmmakers’ content, but also provides a learning tool for attendees through different filmmaking styles, Posival said.

“Our mission is not only to support the filmmakers, it’s also to provide the general public in Columbus access to the newest films for education — both what the content talks about, but also how to put film on, the new production techniques [and] styles of doing things,”? Posival said.

Ohio State alum Josh Folan will be presenting his film, “Room Tone: The Sound of ‘The Room,’” at the festival. The 27-minute comedic documentary short contains stories from boom operator Tim Lloyd and sound maker Zsolt Magyar from Tommy Wiseau’s film “The Room,” and shares their experience on set.

Folan said he recognized pictures of Magyar from a book he was reading at the time, “The Disaster Artist,” which sparked the idea for the documentary.?

“I see that it’s a sound mixer and I see the name Zsolt, and I’m like, ‘I had worked with a Zsolt when I first moved to LA, on a film that similarly had some parallels and kind of the culture of the set,” Folan said. “I was able to sit down with them [during] COVID and chat about [the idea] for two hours …? seeing him in the book and happen[ing] to have worked with [Magyar and Lloyd] on a film is kind of the genesis of it.”

Folan said his submission to the festival brings back memories for him, serving as a familiar return to his college days.

“[It’s] just a reason to come home and hang out with some friends that I haven’t seen in a while, and it’s also cool to share the work with the place I come from,” Folan said. “I mean, the idea that it’s going to be playing at the theater that is up the street from basically the theater I watch[ed] movies at in college, you know?”

Folan said his advice to young filmmakers and people in the industry is simply to enjoy it.

“Make sure you’re making things that you want to make, that you enjoy making [and] that you would want to watch, that way it doesn’t matter if other people like it,” Folan said. “So you don’t get discouraged by just the consumption of your thing or lack thereof, because it is very hard to get people to watch anything these days because of the saturation of availability and content.”

Tickets are available on Eventbrite for $20.?