Fall Film Festival Hits the Silver Screen at Rutgers-Brunswick Starting Sept. 5

The event, featuring 24 narrative features, documentaries and shorts from around the world, includes three free filmmaking workshops

More than 20 films from all over the planet will light up the silver screen at Rutgers University-New Brunswick during the Fall 2025 New Jersey Film Festival, which marks its 44th anniversary.

A scene from Hearts of Stone, a short film about a street artist who entertains people as a living statue.

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, Sept. 5, and Friday, Oct. 10. 

Al Nigrin, executive director, curator and founder of the Rutgers Film Co-op/New Jersey Media Arts Center, said this year's festival includes three filmmaking workshops thanks to a visual arts education grant from the Arts Institute of Middlesex County. Although the Sunday workshops - set for 1 p.m. on Sept. 14, Sept. 21 and Sept. 28 in Room 105 of Voorhees Hall, 71 Hamilton St., New Brunswick, N.J. - are free and open to the public, Nigrin noted they require registration and seating is limited.

The festival also will feature an audio-visual concert by Cold Weather Company, a New Jersey band comprised of Rutgers graduates, at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 10.

The festival will feature an audio-visual concert by Cold Weather Company, a New Jersey band comprised of Rutgers graduates.

"We have started a new concert series with a moving image component as part of our film festivals with the hope of reawakening the mostly dormant and underground New Brunswick music scene," Nigrin said. "I have been a huge fan of Cold Weather Company for the past decade. I love their cinematic sound, so it was a no-brainer to ask them to play at the New Jersey Film Festival."

The festival will feature a selection of 24 feature, short, documentary and experimental films from various nations, including the United States, Canada, Armenia, Belgium, Japan, France, Germany, Portugal and Ukraine.

The festival is a hybrid event: In addition to in-person screenings at Rutgers-New Brunswick, all the films will be available virtually as videos-on-demand for 24 hours on their show dates. In-person screenings will be held in Room 105 of Voorhees Hall 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. Ticket buyers will have access to filmmaker introductions and question-and-answer sessions for many of the films. Visit the festival's websitefor more information.

A scene from Alberta Number One, a contemporary revisionist Western filmed in Canada.

Nigrin, an experimental filmmaker who earned master's degrees in French literature and fine arts at Rutgers, will screen Anima Magia, his 10-minute shortinspired by PJ Harvey's tour for her album I Inside the Old Year Dyingand Sylvia Plath's poem "Witch Burning."

He added the festival's lineupincludes films made by two Rutgers student as well as a documentary featuring a former faculty member:

• Morgan Kalmbach, a senior attending Mason Gross School of the Arts, wrote and directed Jackie's Guide to Nature, an 11-minute short filmabout a free-spirited college student and her relationship with the outdoors.

• Vaneeza Shah, also a senior at Mason Gross, wrote and directed The Proposal, a 10-minute shortabout a successful 26-year-old woman facing a quandary.

• Daniel Wolff and filmmaker Marta Renzi directed Cathy & Harry, a 45-minute documentaryon Catherine Murphy, the inaugural Tepper Chair in Visual Arts at Mason Gross, and Harry Roseman, whose works are in collections ranging from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Metropolitan Transit Authority.

In a scene from The Muscle, a man wearing a black leather jacket walks through an empty hangar.

Nigrin, a cinema studies lecturerat Rutgers, said the films were selected by a panel of judges including media professionals, journalists, students and academics.  The finalists were selected from more than 300 works submitted by filmmakers from around the world, he added.