Unprecedented Success at The Lakefront Film Fest
LFF’s strongest slate to date
LFF Grand Jury announces the best
(WASHINGTON, DC – August 17, 2022) – After completing its first back-to-back years of programming, the 3rd Annual Lakefront Film Festival continued to establish itself as the premier film festival in the city of Washington, DC as it came to a close on August 13, 2022, after fielding its strongest lineup ever.
Crippled by the pandemic two years ago, the Lakefront Film Festival re-launched in 2021 as a virtual festival. While still in the throes of the pandemic, the festival returned in 2022 with a bang outdoing all the success it had accomplished in the previous year. The festival flexed its international muscle by presenting films from a whopping eleven countries from four of the seven continents.
The festival opened with the celebrated festival darling from first-time director Dina Amer, You Resemble Me. Prior to this festival, Amer’s directorial debut received 18 festival wins including Best Narrative Feature and Best Middle Eastern/Israeli Film. The festival closed with Abi Damaris Corbin’s action/thriller Breaking, starring John Boyega, and Nicole Beharie with the final theatrical performance by the late Michael Kenneth Williams. In all, the festival screened 54 films including feature-length studio films from MTV Documentaries and Bleeker Street, more than double the number of films from last year.
Lakefront’s impressive line-up of short films was divided into six screening blocks, twice as many as the year before, and was headlined the Washington, DC premiere of the film New Moon by Black Reel Award winner, Colman Domingo. Festival alumni Joshua Reed and Kerry King returned to the festival this year with new features for screening. Lakefront also boasted a significant hometown presence with six features from the Washington DC area as a part of its programming.
The Lakefront continued to set itself apart from other festivals due to the quality of the talk series that were held. In celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the timeless beauty of the story of love known as Love Jones, a conversation was held with director Theodore Witcher about the impact of his seminal work. Also, one of the hardest working actors in the game, Rob Morgan (Mudbound, Stranger Things) joined Festival Director, Tim Gordon, and Talk Series Host, Sherin Nicole, to discuss the acting business and his role in it.
Having a top-notch director and actor as part of the festival was a great programming addition yet, Lakefront boasted the biggest addition to the festival was the welcoming of its first Grand Jury. Consisting of a mixture of filmmakers, critics, and other industry professionals, the Juries adjudicated the Best Narrative, Best Documentary, Best Narrative Short, and Best Documentary Short. The winners were:
Best Documentary – The First Step directed by Brandon Kramer
Best Narrative Feature – You Resemble Me directed by Dina Amer
Best Documentary Short – The Panola Project directed by Jeremy Levine
Best Narrative Short – Precious Hair and Beauty directed by John Ogunmuyiwa
The Lakefront Film Festival will return next year with more grand plans and a more grand direction including several in-person events before its Washington, DC in-person return next year. Stay tuned and join us!
About the Lakefront Film Festival
The Lakefront Film Festival is an annual showcase for cinematic talent hosted by the Foundation for the Augmentation of African Americans in Film (FAAAF). The festival serves as an opportunity to inform, collaborate, entertain and educate its audience through the cinematic achievements of a wide and diverse collection of filmmakers from around the world. From 2017 to the present day, the Lakefront Film Festival has been a unique and immersive cultural experience for its community, filmmakers, and stakeholders.
CONTACTS:
Taunja Pegues
marketing@lakefrontfilmfest.com
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