The Windsor International Film Festival (WIFF) will recognizing its 20th anniversary this year, and a number of events will be taking place throughout the year culminating with the festival this fall.
To kick off the celebrations, WIFF Under the Stars will be returning to downtown Windsor for a weekend of free outdoor community screenings.
It will be hosted on green space outside of the Windsor Aquatic Centre and Art Windsor Essex, where WIFF will be screening a variety of family classics, blockbuster hits and new Canadian titles.
That event will run from June 7 to June 9.
Also in June, WIFF will celebrate local filmmakers by presenting the WIFF Local Retrospective, a weekend event featuring local short and feature films from the past 20 years.
Many of the screenings over the weekend will include post-film discussions and Q&As with the filmmakers, and the event will run from June 21 to June 23.
WIFF Executive Director Vincent Georgie says another exciting bit of news is that Telefilm Canada has joined on as a major partner, with funding support.
"In honour of WIFF's 20th anniversary and in support of all the films, they've awarded us $125,000 of support. So we're thrilled by that, because that really comes from our film industry that says WIFF is doing great things in the Windsor community and they want to support that," he said.
Georgie says the funding will support programming, guest travel and all the film makers who will be visiting.
"Telefilm came on as a major partner and they're really proud of the program that we're doing here in Windsor. To know that we've got that support right of the gate for our 20th anniversary, we couldn't be happier. And it's a reflection of such a great festival that the Windsor community built, and I think that's really important."
He says when it comes to the WIFF Under the Stars event, it was brought back due to popular demand.
"We have a golden rule, which is always just listen to the audience. Because the audience always knows what we should be doing. Every time we've done outdoor events they always tell us 'it's so much, we love it' because people can bring their lawn chairs, or pets, or some drinks and snacks, whatever they want to do as they're watching a nice outdoor movie. It's free, so people can come enjoy that," he said.
The main WIFF event, which Georgie says they're expecting upwards of 47,000 movie lovers from across Canada to travel and attend, will take place from October 24 to November 3, 2024.
- with files from AM800's The Dan MacDonald Show