Overview Sidewalk is Birmingham, Alabama's independent film festival, a week each August when more than 200 films play in walkable venues across the downtown Historic Theatre District, with the 2,200-seat Alabama Theatre, a 1927 movie palace, as its biggest room. MovieMaker Magazine has named it one of the Top 25 festivals in the world, and TIME put it on a list of the top 10 festivals "for the rest of us." It began in 1999 as the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival, took its current name in 2010, and the 2026 edition was its 28th. The nonprofit behind it also runs the Sidewalk Film Center + Cinema, a two-screen, year-round house that opened in the basement of the Pizitz building in 2019. On site In 2026 the festival used eleven venues within walking distance of each other and ran more than 250 screenings, panels and special events. The lineup is sorted into tracks: Life and Liberty for civil and social issues, Black Lens, Women in Film, Festival de Cine for Spanish- and Portuguese-language films, SHOUT for LGBTQ films and filmmakers, and a track for Alabama filmmakers. Screenings run with filmmaker Q and As, and the days fill out with workshops, networking events and parties. The 2026 program opened with The History of Concrete and included an animation masterclass with Bill Plympton. Audience The venues sit within walking distance of each other, so pass holders spend the festival on foot, moving between theaters, panels and parties. About 250 filmmakers come in each year, and the Q and As, panels and workshops put them in the same rooms as the audience. The SHOUT track grew out of Birmingham's own LGBTQ film festival, founded in 2006, which merged into Sidewalk in 2010. Talent and Influencers John C. Reilly received the first Spirit of Sidewalk Award in 2005, and John Sayles and Maggie Renzi received it in 2006. The festival's awards carry Alabama names: the Alan Hunter Best Alabama Film Award, the Clint Howard Character Actor Award and the Kathryn Tucker Windham Storyteller Award. Track record About 4,000 people came to the first festival in 1999, over the first weekend in May. The festival later moved to late summer and grew into a weeklong run with more than 200 films, and in 2019 its organizers opened their own year-round cinema downtown. Brand presence Partners can put their name on a single film, as Gilead Sciences did with the 2026 opening-night film, or on the festival as a whole, up to presenting and title partner. The festival also sells on-screen advertising before screenings, content integration and VIP hospitality at its parties.