Overview Hamptons International Film Festival is an Academy Award-qualifying film festival on the East End of Long Island, run each October by the non-profit HamptonsFilm. For eleven days it screens features, documentaries and shorts in village cinemas and halls, with gala premieres on opening, centerpiece and closing nights. Variety called it "Telluride East." The festival caps a year-round calendar that includes SummerDocs and a spring Screenwriters Lab. On site Screenings spread across three villages. Regal UA East Hampton Cinema shows films on every day of the festival. Guild Hall hosts the on-stage conversations. Southampton Playhouse adds an IMAX screen, and Sag Harbor Cinema screens on select days. The box office and a badgeholder lounge sit in The White Room Gallery on Railroad Avenue, while morning talks run at Lion's Nook. Premieres open on a red-carpet step-and-repeat. VIP events move outdoors to lawn receptions and candlelit whiskey and wine bars. Audience Patrons and film-industry guests come out from New York City, Connecticut and Los Angeles. The Hampton Jitney and the Long Island Rail Road both run out from Manhattan. More than 200 filmmakers visit the Hamptons each year. Walk-up viewers join rush lines at the door, and at a recent festival rush tickets were offered for 98% of screenings. Talent and Influencers The "Conversation With..." series puts film talent on stage for a sit-down interview. Past guests include Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Kate Winslet, Paul Simon, Sharon Stone, Andrew Garfield, Mark Ruffalo and Isabella Rossellini, plus twelve others. Career awards have gone to Julie Andrews, Vanessa Redgrave, Brian De Palma, Emily Blunt and Ethan Hawke. Past Breakthrough Artists include Timothée Chalamet, Jessica Chastain, Adam Driver, Mahershala Ali and Celine Song. Track record Films shown at the festival across its last 17 editions have received 663 Oscar nominations, and the centerpiece slot has gone to Moonlight, Spotlight, Twelve Years a Slave, The Shape of Water, Everything Everywhere All at Once and Anatomy of a Fall. Over its history HamptonsFilm has given filmmakers close to $5 million in cash, goods and services through its juried and audience prizes. Brand presence Artemis Rising Foundation is the presenting sponsor. Audi is the official vehicle, and its rings share the step-and-repeat and the doors of festival cars. Each signature program carries one sponsor's name, from Spotlight films and the Competition to the Conversation series and Films of Conflict and Resolution. Spirits and wine houses pour at their own bars during VIP receptions, and a wine estate cart and an espresso truck have worked the festival lawns. The sponsor wall runs seven tiers deep.