Great Movies
The CU International Film Festival (“CUIFF”) is hosting its second annual festival on Saturday, March 2nd, in the evening at the Spurlock Museum of World Cultures in Urbana, Illinois. The festival showcases short films from around the globe that it believes have the ability to entertain, educate, and elevate. The festival includes a red-carpet gala and award presentations.
The jurors for this year's festival include "Gilbert" documentarian Neil Berkeley; C.L. Cole, Department Head of Media & Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois; Sammer Saleh Jones, Director for Global Relations at the University of Illinois; Chicago Sun-Times film critic Richard Roeper; Crickett Rumley, founder and senior director of the New York Film Academy’s Film Festival Department; and Ty Stricker, writer and director at Creative Artists Agency.
CUIFF's official lineup won't be revealed until the festival itself, but you can get a sneak peek of them in the trailer embedded below.
"I am really excited to see the festival transition from startup to an established event," said Max Libman, the founder of CUIFF and a senior in high school at Academy High. "This milestone allows us to expand our impact and build upon the relationships we formed with our partners and sponsors to enhance the overall experience this year. We learned [from last year's inaugural CUIFF] that the audience especially enjoyed hearing directly from the winning filmmaker at the festival, so we're expanding opportunities to hear from the filmmakers and those involved with the films at the festival."
General admission tickets are free. Doors open at 6 pm, and the festival begins at 7 pm. Attendees are encouraged to arrive early to secure a ticket for what the festival promises to be "a memorable night of food, film, and impactful stories."
Additional information about the festival is available on CUIFF’s website at www.cuiff.org.
