Fifth Annual Albany Film Festival Coming to UAlbany This Weekend 

Composite image featuring a poster for the Albany Film Festival and five portraits of anticipated guests
The 5th annual Albany Film Festival will take place Saturday at UAlbany, with featured guests (clockwise from top) actor Frank Whaley, director Nicole London, author Gregory Maguire, director Sharon Liese and actress Sharon Washington.

ALBANY, N.Y. (March 25, 2025) — The NYS Writers Institute will present its fifth annual Albany Film Festival this Saturday, drawing thousands of film lovers and award-winning actors, filmmakers and writers to the University at Albany for a full-day celebration of film and storytelling.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place from 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. this Saturday in the Campus Center West and Performing Arts Center on the Uptown Campus. It will feature screenings of feature-length and short films, including several directed by and starring UAlbany alumni, as well as discussions with filmmakers, actors and writers from the region and beyond.

“We are proud to present our fifth annual Albany Film Festival,” said Paul Grondahl, Opalka Endowed Director of the NYS Writers Institute at UAlbany. “We are pleased to see how it grows and evolves in both enthusiasm and engagement, particularly with the next generation of student filmmakers who enter our short film competition.”

The festival will conclude with a presentation of the Ironweed Awards for Exemplary Achievement in Film and the Short Film Awards. The first Ironweed Award was given to renowned director Francis Ford Coppola, who launched the inaugural Albany Film Festival with a preview event in 2019.

Film poster for "Desperately Seeking Susan" featuring two blonde women leaning on each other smoking cigarettes

This year’s Ironweed Award will be presented to Susan Seidelman, director of the 1985 film Desperately Seeking Susan, and UAlbany alumnus Frank Whaley, an iconic character actor known for his work in Ironweed, JFK, Pulp Fiction and Field of Dreams, among other major films. Both Seidelman and Whaley will participate in discussions about their work ahead of the award presentations.

Featured guests at this year’s festival include other UAlbany alumni who have made their mark on the film industry, as well.

“This year we are highlighting the accomplishments of three UAlbany alumni: Gregory Maguire, Sharon Liese and Frank Whaley,” said Grondahl. “Their work has touched the lives of movie goers over the years, and they credit UAlbany with laying a foundation for their careers as storyteller, director and actor.”

Maguire will sit down with Grondahl for a conversation about his 1995 novel Wicked, which was turned into a major blockbuster film last year, and his novel’s new prequel, Elphie: A Wicked Childhood, about the future Wicked Witch of the West.

Film poster for "The Flagmakers" featuring a woman in head scarves and men in front of an American flag

Liese will participate in a discussion following a screening of her 2022 documentary film, The Flagmakers, which follows the local, immigrant and refugee workers at Eder Flag, the country’s largest maker of American flags and flagpoles based in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.

Other featured guests will include:

  • Kelly Carlin, actress, screenwriter, daughter of the late George Carlin, producer of the documentary George Carlin’s American Dream and author of the memoir, A Carlin Home Companion: Growing Up with George
  • Nicole London, Emmy-winning producer of Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool and co-director of Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom. Her newest film as director is The Disappearance of Miss Scott, the true story of African American jazz virtuoso Hazel Scott, an early civil rights activist and pioneering TV host who faced persecution during the Red Scare of the 1950s.
  • Mary Paley, on the 10th anniversary of her documentary, The Neighborhood That Disappeared, a landmark film for Albany residents and local history buffs about the vibrant urban neighborhood that was erased to build the Empire State Plaza
  • Sharon Washington, actress (Joker, Joker: Folie a Duex, Michael Clayton) and playwright. The 2022 animated and live-action feature, When My Sleeping Dragon Woke, a unique, true-life fairy tale, was inspired by Washington’s play.

Screenings of the Short Film Award finalists’ films will take place throughout the event. The Ironweed and Short Film Award winners will be announced at a closing ceremony at 6 p.m.

“Our audiences are hungry for communal experiences, and the Albany Film Festival – with its wide range of panel discussions, conversations, audience Q&A and film screenings from shorts to features — is a perfect way to bring together filmmakers and film lovers in one place for a full day devoted to the intersection of writing and cinema,” Grondahl said. “‘Bookish’ has become our niche and it describes the tone of the Albany Film Festival. We offer a special thank you to our sponsors, whose generosity allows us to keep this event free and open to all.”

For more information, a schedule of events and a list of sponsors, visit the Albany Film Fest website.