Overview The Nashville Film Festival is a week of independent film every September whose short-film prizes carry Oscar eligibility: winners of its narrative, documentary and animated short competitions become eligible for the Academy Awards. Running alongside them are feature competitions for narrative, documentary, new directors and Tennessee films, and, in a music town, a Music Documentary Feature prize and a Music Video award; a recent edition opened with Morgan Neville's Paul McCartney documentary, Man on the Run. It began in 1969 as the Sinking Creek Film Celebration, founded by Mary Jane Coleman in East Tennessee, took the name Nashville Independent Film Festival in 1998 and its current name in 2003. NashFilm is a nonprofit and runs school screenings, a summer film camp and free outdoor movies through the year. On site Recent screenings ran at Regal Green Hills and the Belcourt Theatre, with the awards at the Hilton Nashville Green Hills and the closing night at the Belcourt; the opening-night party moved to Urban Cowboy's bar in The Arcade. Screenings carry filmmaker Q and As, and the week adds industry panels, a Creators Conference, a Women in Film social and parties for badge holders. A screenwriting competition runs in parallel, with categories from features and pilots to a Tennessee Writer prize, and the Graveyard Shift shorts block covers horror and genre. Audience NashFilm describes its crowd as filmmakers, artists, industry professionals and curious audiences. Filmmakers in town with their films take questions after screenings, and the panels and the Creators Conference are aimed at people working in film. Talent and Influencers Recent Grand Jury awards went to Rohan Kanawade's Cactus Pears for narrative feature, Karla Murthy's The Gas Station Attendant for documentary feature and Matt Finlin's Matter of Time for music documentary. That year also brought the first Stacy Widelitz Music in Film Award, for the song "The Weight" from Faithful Defenders. Lauren Thelen has served as the festival's programming director. Track record In a recent year the festival drew more than 3,800 submissions from over 100 countries and programmed 183 films. MovieMaker named it one of its 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee repeatedly since 2013, and Dread Central has listed it among the best genre festivals for the Graveyard Shift sidebar. Brand presence Partners are sold at four levels, Associate, Supporting, Partner and Premier. The most visible slot is in the theater: sponsor slides and a 30-second spot run before every in-person screening. A partner can also present a competition category and introduce its films, co-host a mixer, film block or panel, present the VIP happy hours, co-brand the red-carpet step and repeat, or take activation space on site.