The Dallas International Film Festival is returning after canceling last year due to COVID. The return comes with a shortened three-day weekend edition focused on Texas stories and social justice themes.
The festival is scheduled to occur Oct. 8 through Oct. 10 at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, 1005 Bothan Jean Blvd.
James Faust, the artistic director of The Dallas International Film Festival, says that he had been looking forward to the return for a while. “I’ve anticipated this moment for more than 18 months,” he said, explaining that he never lost his passion for watching great films despite spending months away from movie theaters.
The French Dispatch, a collection of stories from the final issue of a fictional American magazine published in France, is screening on the opening night. The cast list includes Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, Elisabeth Moss, Willem Dafoe, Jeffrey Wright, Edward Norton, Benecio Del Toro, Frances McDormand, Timothee Chalamet, and Tilda Swinton.
Belfast is also on the schedule of the headliners. The film, the most recent of director Kenneth Branagh, is set to headline on Saturday. Puppy Love, a film that follows the lives of a brain-damaged dishwasher and homeless prostitute brought together through obscene circumstances, is also scheduled to screen that evening.
Other works to be displayed at the festival include Caged Birds, Cat Daddies, and Hall of State Redux, a trio of Dallas-connected documentaries and narratives about the restoration of the historic Art Deco building in Fair Park. The Marfa Tapes, representing other parts of the state, and At the Ready, about a criminal justice club at an El Paso high school, will also be screened at the festival.
The films to be screened at the festival were selections made from over 1,500 submissions.