WorldFest Houston

51st WORLDFEST “ For Hardcore Fans”

Our first few days have been action packed with Ethan Hawke receiving a career achievement award at the opening night screening of his new film, Blaze. Perry King, received an award for his direction of The Divide and we still have many more films and fun until April 29th, 2018!
Mid-stride at WorldFest-Houston and continuing on until Sunday, April 29th, 2018! We are unspooling another exciting film line-up this year! Our website www.worldfest.org features schedule, trailers and ticketing with a new “hardcore” design by our official festival ad agency, Lopez Negrete Communications.
This year offers 14 world premieres from 76 independent features, the 13th Panorama Italia with a comedic flair and a continuing Focus on China which spotlights the vast emerging Chinese cinematic world! All screenings will be at our superb new venue, The Memorial City Cinemark 16 with luxury reclining seats. 
The festival concludes with Disobedience, directed by this year’s Academy Award winner for best foreign film, Chilean Sebastián Lelio (A Fantastic Woman). Disobedience explores the boundaries of faith and sexuality in a Jewish Orthodox community and has quite a buzz about the on screen connection between Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams. Not to be missed is the China closing film, The Lord of Shanghai directed by highly-acclaimed Chinese director, Sherwood Hu, in attendance. 
Filmmakers are attending 95% of this year’s premieres at WorldFest. Several compelling world premiere documentaries include Sea Change, a 7,000 mile harrowing rowboat journey from Africa to NY City captured by 8 GoPro cameras; Whitney Close Up, a docu-drama on Whitney Houston as seen through the lens of filmmaker and past Remi winner, Rudy Dolezal; When I Sing, an entertainingly raucous journey of Linda Chorney, the first truly independent musician nominated for a Grammy as she breaks out of her “almost famous” history of 30+ years of gigging on the road and Bruno, the docu-drama of the recently-late Bruno Sammartino, the Italian-born American professional wrestler who held the World Title for more than 11 years. 
Other special highlights will be Kazantzakis, the bio-pic on the life of the greatest Greek author of the 20th century, Nikos Kazantzakis, whose novels were adapted for the films, Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ. Also coming up is The Little God by director Jeo Baby, an uplifting family film from India about a little boy and the quixotic power of his prayers. Plenty of martial arts, love stories, comedies and even a Ming Dynasty musical can be found in the wide array of films from China to entertain one and all. 
The festival is proud to announce the Nominees for the 2018 WorldFest Remi Awards, honoring the best actor, best actress, best supporting actor, and best supporting actress and rising stars. The presentation will take place during the festival awards gala April 28th, 2018 at The Marriott Westchase Hotel (2900 Briarpark Drive). A few tables still available for purchase at $2,000. All Actor Awards will be announced at the 51st WorldFest Awards Gala on the night of April 28th.  All winners posted on our website as soon as Gala concludes.

BEST ACTRESS nominees 
Ilaria Falini, Lend a Hand (Dammi una Mano), Italy
Verena Altenberger, Best of All Worlds, Austria
Mariah Katharina Friedrich, August in Berlin, USA/Germany
Anna Evelyn, The Best People, USA
Marina Kalogirou, Kazantzakis, Greece
Chloe Rose, eHero, Canada

BEST ACTOR nominees 
Michael Dougherty, Love and Everything in Between, USA
Li Yifeng, Guilty of Mind, China
Maximillian von Pufendorf, August in Berlin, USA/Germany
Herbert Knaup, Blind Spot, Germany
Greg Hovanessian, eHero,  Canada
 
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS nominees 
Olga Rossi, Lend a Hand (Dammi una Mano), Italy
Tiffany Montgomery, Strategy and Pursuit, USA
Claire Donald, The Best People, USA
 Sara Arrington, The Divide, USA
 Sylvia D’Amico, The Last Prosecco (Finche ce Prosecco c’e Esperanza), Italy

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR nominees
Thodoris Athediris, Kazantzakis, Greece
Yves Bright, Santa Stole Our Dog, USA
Meng Hu, Grass Ring, China
Sean Astin, eHero, Canada
Bryan Kaplan, The Divide, USA

RISING STAR ACTRESS Nominees
Ali Atay, Ayla, Daughter of War, Turkey
Helena Zengel, Dark Blue Girl (Die Tochter) Germany
Snow Li, Nine to Nirvana, China
Cassidy Gifford, Time Trap, USA
Preslee Bishop, If I Could Run, USA

RISING STAR ACTOR Nominees
Adish Praveen, The Little God, India
Chase Pollock, Santa Stole my Dog, USA
Matan Hidaw (Suun Lin) Pakeriran, Taiwan
Jeremy Miliker, The Best of All Worlds, Germany

WorldFest will continue with its annual short film showcase, a special review of 116 new short and student films from the festival that gave first top honors to Spielberg, Lucas, The Coen Brothers, Ridley Scott, Robert Rodriguez, Randal Kleiser, Spike Lee, Gavin Hood, John Lee Hancock, Michael Cimino, Steven Poster, Oliver Stone, Ang Lee, Atom Egoyan and David Lynch, among many others! Few other festivals have such a “discovery” track record. WorldFest has emerged as the oldest continuous film festival management in the world with the same executive director, serving for 51 consecutive years. 

WorldFest began in August 1961, as Cinema Arts, an International Film Society,   screening Independent, Foreign & Art films. In April 1968 seven years later, it became an officially competitive International Film Festival, and has been in continuous operation ever since. It is one of the original three film festivals in North America, with San Francisco and New York as the first two. Following WorldFest was Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, and Seattle. Then Telluride, Sundance, Toronto, SXSW and more recently Tribeca.  Now there are more than 1,000 USA film festivals of various types, levels and quality, most being simply non-competitive screening events! WorldFest is international, competitive and invites filmmakers worldwide.

The 51st Annual WorldFest offers International Competition in: Features, Shorts, TV production, TV commercials, unproduced Screenplays & Teleplays, Experimental, Student, Documentary, Business & Industry, New Media, and Music Videos. WorldFest is the largest film & video competition in the world, in sheer number of actual category entries, with more than 4,300 category entries received in 2017- 2018. There are over 200 sub-categories for competition, allowing each film to compete in its own individual genre. 

WorldFest-Houston is sponsored by Boxer Properties, Memorial City Mall, Cinemark Theatres, The Houston Yacht Club, the Houston Arts Alliance (HAA) Masterpiece International, Regent University, Lopez Negrete Communications, Texas Film Commission, InkTip  and Maggiano’s Little Italy.   
We’ll see you at the movies! 
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