International Film Festival Includes Works by Graduates and a Student

The event, featuring online and in-person screenings at Rutgers-New Brunswick, is scheduled for Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays starting May 29 through June 7

Thirty-six films from all over the world will be screened at Rutgers University-New Brunswick during the 2026 New Jersey International Film Festival as it marks its 31st anniversary.

The festival, presented by the Rutgers Film Co-op/New Jersey Media Arts Centerin association with the Cinema Studies Programat the School of Arts and Sciences, will be held on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays between Friday, May 29, and Sunday, June 7.

The event features films from Austria, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Mexico and throughout the United States, including California, Maine, Michigan, Montana, New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C.

"Building cultures has always been one of the goals for our film festival," said Al Nigrin, executive director, curator and founder of the Rutgers Film Co-op/New Jersey Media Arts Center. "Our festival shows great films, and it is also a great place to meet like-minded cinephiles."

Nigrin said this year's lineup includes three films involving Rutgers graduates and one directed by a student, with all four being screened June 6:

• My Plastic Lung(New Brunswick, N.J.) - This 10-minute film was directed, written and produced by Nicholas Diodato, a Rutgers student attending the Mason Gross School of the Arts, where he is pursuing a bachelor of fine arts degree in the filmmaking program. The synopsis? A disabled teenager with artificial lungs that need to be manually operated by another person begins to lash out against his family. In addition to being a filmmaker, Diodatois an Honor College student and a member of the Rutgers Democracy Lab.

• Frankie's Okay(New Brunswick, N.J.) - This 11-minute short, cowritten and coproduced by Rutgers graduate Bassam Kaado and his wife, Kat Lindsay, (who directed), follows a woman (Frankie) and her husband who host a game night for their friends. The three couples engage in a game of celebrity when Frankie starts to experience an anxiety attack that becomes increasingly more difficult to cope with.

• Bajo el Sol (Under the Sun)(Somerset, N.J.) - Jamilli Pacheco-Urquiza, a Rutgers graduate who majored in cinema studies, directed this 18-minute short about a filmmaker exploring the layered relationship coastal city Puerto Escondido has with tourism through conversations around labor, water, paradise and gentrification with tourists and locals alike during a summer spent with his grandmother on the Oaxacan Coast.

• The Clam Guy(Brooklyn, N.Y.) - Rutgers graduate Max Beckerman, along with partner Jen Nista, codirected, cowrote and coproduced this 11-minute short about a clam-obsessed deadbeat plagued by otherworldly visions who searches for connection as his life spirals out of control.

The festival is a hybrid event: In addition to in-person screenings at Rutgers-New Brunswick, films will be available online as on-demand videos for 24 hours on their show date. In-person screenings will be held in Room 105 of Voorhees Hall, 71 Hamilton St., New Brunswick, N.J., beginning at 5 p.m. or 7 p.m. on their respective show dates.

General admission tickets are $15 per program; student tickets for in-person screenings are $10 per program. An all-access festival pass is available for $120. Each general admission ticket or festival pass purchased is good for both the virtual and the in-person screenings.

The festival features in-person special guest appearances by film directors, producers and actors as well as virtual filmmaker introductions, filmmaker panels and question-and-answer sessions "for many of the films," Nigrin said.

Nigrin, a cinema studies lecturerat the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences, said the films were selected by a panel of judges who included media professionals, journalists, students and academics. The finalists were selected from more than 680 works submitted by filmmakers from around the world, he added.

"It is a rigorous process and we are screening the crème de la crème of what was submitted," Nigrin said. "We are only screening 5% of the almost 700 films we received."

Prize winners will be announced on social media sites after the screenings on June 7.