Meet the Philly filmmakers showing their ‘very Philly’ films at the Philadelphia Film Festival this year

Every year, the Philadelphia Film Festival showcases a program of feature and short films that cast an eye on the fest’s home city.

“The Filmadelphia section acts as an extension and culmination of our year-round dedication to local filmmakers,” said Trey Shields, festival’s director of programming. For Shields, the program offers an annual insight into how the Philadelphia region is growing as an indie filmmaking hub.

Ten years ago, he said, programmers had a tough time cobbling together enough movies to justify the program’s existence. “Now,” Shields said, “the challenge is having to pare down the hundreds of inspiring local submissions we receive to just one limited dynamic and unique program.”

We spoke to the directors whose works are a part of Filmadelphia, about their films and how the city inspires them.

After she wakes up with a hangover to find a murdered stranger in her bed, Jill’s day spirals into chaos as she navigates a tied-up man in her closet, an unconscious roommate, and a knife to her best friend’s neck. The goal? Get to brunch before three o’clock.

The films works to capture the vibe of the people that live here. I’d call it “kind, but not nice.” This film is about friendship at its most chaotic. It’s about the sort of bond that makes you laugh one second and want to strangle each other the next. But if something awful happened, you’d still be the first person they’d call and you’d show up with a shovel. That’s the Philly I know and love.

I’ve lived here for about 15 years, but I’m originally from South Jersey. The city has a rhythm that I connect to in a way that I don’t connect to any other place I’ve been.

Favorite Philly-set movie? Brian De Palma’s paranoid thriller Blow Out (1981). Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky (1976), George A. Romero’s zombie classic Dawn of the Dead (1978), and Trading Places (1983) are all honorable mentions. And Rocky, of course.

Alice-Heart is an aimless college student residing in Philadelphia. She aspires to be a famous writer but drops out of school in her last semester of senior year on a whim. Immediately cut off from her disappointed Filipino mother, and dumped by her studious boyfriend, she finds that she has to pay bills on her own for the first time. It’s about how she navigates the beginnings of adulthood, and combats “adult baby” allegations along the way.

Alice-Heart captures Philadelphia through the raw black and white cinematography of Matt Connelly, a Philly-based cinematographer whom I met in college. He makes Philly look like a timeless place.

Growing up in suburban South Jersey, Philadelphia was my first exposure to big city life. Philly was the reason I fell in love with cities and I wanted to move to one as soon as I could. I enrolled at Temple University to study film, where I met my best friends and closest collaborators. My relationship to Philly is defined by these very special people and the tight-knit neighborhoods.

I’d go with Actual People (2021), from independent filmmaker Kit Zauhar. She premiered the film at Slamdance, and it inspired us to pursue making Alice-Heart.

It’s a documentary that follows the courageous journey of Lizzie, a former Amish woman who breaks her silence about sexual abuse in her community and ignites a nationwide movement of Amish survivors. She becomes a beacon of hope for Amish and Mennonite survivors grappling with generational trauma, shame, and thoughts of suicide.

The film is primarily set in places like Lancaster County and indirectly reflects Philly through its 300-year-old connection to neighboring Amish and Mennonite communities.

I am originally from Los Angeles but now live in Lancaster. So I’m just west of Philly. I frequently come to Philly for shows at the Met, Brooklyn Bowl, or Franklin Music Hall. I love going to the Art Museum for Friday Night Lounge. The food is insanely good — especially Suraya in Fishtown.

I’m a huge Kim Cattrall fan and came of age hanging out with my friends and working in the malls, so I might have to say Mannequin (1987)!

It’s a partially-animated documentary portrait of rapper/producer/Ph.D. candidate Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo, better known by her stage name, Sammus. Notably, Enongo is the first feature-length film in cinema history with animation team made up entirely of Black women.

Since Enongo and her partner, Lanre, lived in Philadelphia for many years (and during much of our production), we really wanted to capture what life as an artist is like in this city. It’s a thriving, diverse town, with art visible to the general public, as well as a dynamic underground music scene, which Enongo (as Sammus) has made her home.

It’s a tremendous privilege to have access to such a creative and kinetic city. We’re also fortunate that one of our talented animators, Anaiyah Tatiana now calls Philadelphia home.

It’s a terribly obvious choice, but I have to go with the Rocky and Creed movies. A big part of that is the underdog element. It’s a theme that was frequently on my mind while making Enongo.

In 1992, just as were about to leave college, we filmed five of our friends — an artist, a young mother, a dropout, a math graduate stuck [working] in fast food, and another grappling with mental health issues — with a borrowed VHS camera. Each voiced their dreams for the future. Over the next three decades, their lives unfolded in surprising directions as they scattered across the country, endured devastating losses, found love, stumbled, and stood up again. It’s part documentary, part time capsule, part reckoning, and part road map for anyone trying to make sense of life.

One of the film’s subjects is Anthony Carlos Molden, a prolific Philadelphia artist. One of the great things about this project was being able to reconnect with old friends and find out details of what happened to them. Anthony’s love of Philadelphia, and seeing the way the artistic community loves him back, was really inspiring and sparked discussions in the movie about what success in life really looks like.

I [codirector Eliza Fox] lived on Camac Street with my grandmother growing up, and have fond memories of roller-skating and playing wallyball with the neighborhood kids. I went to McCall’s Elementary where my best friend Daniela introduced me to Italian bread with hard cheese sandwiches. My mom organized a Ranger Rick club to pick up the litter in our neighborhood, and bought doughnuts in the Italian Market for coffee hour at St. Luke and the Epiphany. During high school and college, I spent my holidays and summers here working, taking guitar classes, and eating a lot of soft pretzels. My father and I would see movies at the Ritz. Later, I took a year off school to work as a bicycle courier and at Tower Records. The city has changed a lot since I was a kid but still feels like home.

Jonathan Olshefski’s Quest (2017). It’s a great fly-on-the-wall, long-haul documentary about a family in North Philadelphia, shot over the course of eight years.