The Fort Smith International Film Festival returns on Aug. 26-27, 2022. Films chosen by the festival screening committee will compete for cash prizes, trophies, and scholarships. TempleLive, a historic downtown Fort Smith venue, will serve as the anchor location for the 2022 festival. Built in 1929, the masonic temple houses several rooms with original art deco fixtures and Egyptian themed murals, which will serve as the backdrop for screening rooms and filmmaker workshops. Harkening back to the venue’s past as a theater, TempleLive will provide an all-in-one movie going experience for festival goers and filmmakers.  “Borderlands” has been chosen as the theme of this year’s festival, which is presented by Arvest Bank.

“Why Borderlands as the theme?" said Dr. Brandon Chase Goldsmith, president of the River Valley Film Society and executive director of Fort Smith International Film Festival. "Fort Smith is an original wild west border town. Physical and societal borders are where innovations and novel concepts are born.  Creativity flourishes in these spaces. Film acts as a threshold between actuality and fantasy capturing the moment a border is established, defended, or overcome. The stories of our lives exist within these borderlands and movies bring those experiences to the screen.”

Beginning Feb. 4, filmmakers from around the world may submit their film for the 2022 festival via FilmFreeway. The entry fee per film ranges from $10 for early birds to $25 for later entries. Categories include people of color, indigenous, music video, animation, high school and college student short film, documentary, short and feature-length films.  For the inaugural festival, 396 films were submitted from 43 countries. Of those, 130 were screened during the festival.

“The Fort Smith International Film Festival gives Fort Smith the opportunity not only to view amazing independent films from all over the world but also allows us to share the beautiful city of Fort Smith with the rest of the world,” said Clay Pruitt, festival coordinator.

In February, the River Valley Film Society will announce details on a pre-festival, summer film series in Fort Smith and Van Buren that will also be themed “Borderlands” and run 130 films that ran in the inaugural festival.

Creative expression isn't the only benefit to the area.

“The film festival acts as a catalyst for our area’s creative economy. Not only do movies ignite the imagination; they represent jobs from content creation and set construction to hair and make-up artists, to painters and costume designers,” said John McIntosh, vice-president of the River Valley Film Society and director of development for the festival.  

Last year, after representatives from TGE, a global movie production company, attended the festival, they decided to help facilitate the production of an authentic film featuring Bass Reeves, the legendary lawman who was one of the first U.S. Deputy Marshals west of the Mississippi and the longest-serving deputy in Judge Isaac. C. Parker’s historic Western District of Arkansas federal court. TGE also has plans in the works to build a multi-million-dollar sound stage and movie studio at Chaffee Crossing in Fort Smith.  

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