Indie Grits Film Festival

We are excited to announce that the 14th Annual Indie Grits Festival will be held March 26-29, 2020 in Columbia, South Carolina. Celebrating 14 years of the best in low-budget and experimental film, media, and creative culture from across the Southeast, 2020 will not be a year to miss!

The Indie Grits Festival is a multi-day event that saw an average of over 12,000 visitors from 2013 to 2019. We pride ourselves in fostering and supporting a tight-knit, accessible filmmaking community. Filmmakers seek us out after premiering their films across the US including festivals like SXSW, Sundance, True/False, BlackStar and more. In 2019 Moviemaker Magazine named us one of the 25 “Coolest Film Festivals” in the world.

Indie Grits is the premier multi-day film festival focusing on documentary, experimental, and hybrid films in the Southeast, US. The Indie Grits Festival is organized by Indie Grits Labs, a non-profit organization that works to serve communities through media education, artist-driven projects, and the Indie Grits Film Festival. The spirit of Indie Grits comes from the heart of its host, the Nickelodeon Theatre — South Carolina’s only non-profit, art house theatre – affectionately known as “The Nick.”

Propelled by an inclusive artistic vision, festival organizers seek to break down the walls of accessibility intimidating Southern media makers by creating exhibition opportunities for filmmakers and their work often overlooked elsewhere. We host a wide range of cultural events featuring the very best of art, music, and experimental media from across the Southeast.

Filmmakers come first. We offer dedicated support for filmmaker hospitality including a fully stocked filmmaker lounge, a filmmaker travel/lodging fund, and a range of awards and opportunities. In 2019 we launched Filmmaker Focus, a new, FREE series of programs open to the public, aimed at supporting filmmakers currently working in the documentary and the doc-narrative hybrid field. Indie Grits has identified the need to be more than an exhibitor of emerging and established Southern voices. We are working to create an open space for dialogue and collaboration in which filmmakers can find support in every level of their projects from pre-production to post. Work-in-progress screenings, panels, workshops, and more make this festival track a unique, resourceful experience for filmmakers and film-lovers alike.

Our festival is run by a small, talented and dedicated staff – not the chamber of commerce or the tourism board – and we think it shows. Our staff is artist-led by Southern filmmakers and media artists, and we are committed to inclusive, accountable storytelling. There are so many amazing stories, projects, and movements happening in the Southeast that are beginning to tear down decades of stereotypes and misconceptions about our region. We aim to speed this process, amplify movements, begin changing our field's current structures and rules governing accepted excellence norms (maybe outright tear them down), and create new paths forward for our country as a whole.

We hope you’ll consider submitting.