A film festival that's 'like a family': Atlantic Canada's main film event is back in a big way

Here's a fun fact about Halifax's FIN Atlantic International Film Festival: it wasn't supposed to be in Halifax every year. Originally, it was supposed to take place in a different Atlantic Canadian city every year. (FIN, which doesn't stand for anything, is the festival's parent organization, which puts on smaller film events throughout the year.)

"The first year was in St John's, the second year was in Halifax, and then it just never left," says the festival's executive director Martha Cooley.

Cooley says that the festival's objective is twofold: to showcase Atlantic Canadian film, and to show films from around the world that might not typically get a screening in the region.

"We don't have really large movie houses, so we don't necessarily get a lot of international titles or more sort of experimental or documentary work," says Cooley. "To bring that kind of work to audiences on the East Coast was the other reason it was born."

For the first time in two years, the festival will be entirely in person after an all-virtual 2020 and a hybrid 2021. Both Cooley and program director Jason Beaudry are excited for the return to in-person screenings, particularly for a festival that they say acts as a gathering point for the region's film community.

"One thing that really struck me even before I was [program director] was how much it felt like family… for both the filmmakers and the audience as well," says Beaudry. We have a really eager and very curious audience for the film festival. They're willing to take some leaps with us."

One major difference in this year's festival, versus previous years, is that all of this year's filmmakers will be paid screening fees. Traditionally, she says, festivals tended to pay screening fees to filmmakers who had distributors and sales agents, whereas the ones who didn't, filmmakers who are often less established, were paid in "exposure." This, Cooley says, is how festivals have traditionally worked, but the practice has recently been criticised. Cooley says that for many filmmakers at AIFF "exposure" isn't actually worth anything.

"All artists should be paid for their work regardless of whether they have representation or not," she says. "And that it isn't necessarily the case that these festivals are a springboard to selling your film to Netflix or Crave, right? The festival world might be, in fact, your main place to show your film to audiences, especially if you're working in the experimental world or if you're a short film maker. [For them] this is not a marketing platform. This is your platform for actually reaching people."

Cooley says that in addition to putting the festival "on the right side of history," guaranteeing every filmmaker a screening fee is a way to make AIFF stand out in the crowded landscape of mid-sized fall film festivals in Canada.

"Anything you can say that makes your festival a little bit more appealing to filmmakers, whether you fly people in or you pay them screening fees, or whatever, it does help raise the profile of your festival," she says.

Beaudry says that, more than anything, he's looking forward to once again proving that Atlantic Canadian cinema can "punch above its weight."

"We don't try to separate the films in great measure," he says. "We want them to all stand beside each other because we don't think there's much difference whether it's from Korea or whether it's from Prince Edward Island." 

The FIN Atlantic International Film Festival runs from Sept. 15-22.