The Maryland Film Festival is an annual five-day event that takes place in beautiful downtown Baltimore each Spring, presenting top-notch film and video work from all over the world. Each year the festival screens approximately 50 feature films and 80 short films of all varieties—narrative, documentary, animation, experimental, and hybrid—to tens of thousands of audience members. For every North American feature film screened within the festival, a filmmaker attends the festival to present their work. The festival prides itself on creating a unique, accessible, and competition-free atmosphere. Each year since 2004, the festival has dedicated its opening night to a collection of short films.
The hundreds of filmmakers who have hosted screenings with Maryland Film Festival include such names as John Waters, Barry Levinson, David Simon, Kathryn Bigelow, Jonathan Demme, Melvin Van Peebles, Alex Gibney, Matt Porterfield, Joe Swanberg, Amy Seimetz, Lisandro Alonso, Todd Solondz, Barry Jenkins, Greta Gerwig, Bobcat Goldthwait, Alex Ross Perry, Riley Stearns, Julius Onah, and Lena Dunham.
In addition to a wide range of contemporary North American films, each festival also includes a sampling of cutting-edge international features (including such titles as Dogtooth, Post Tenebras Lux, Caniba, The Human Surge, and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives); a vintage silent film with live musical accompaniment; and a feature selected and hosted by legendary filmmaker John Waters (whose choices have ranged from Joseph Losey's Boom! to Gaspar Noé's I Stand Alone). Celebrity guest hosts from outside the world of film are also invited to present favorite films, including musicians such as Ian MacKaye, Branford Marsalis, Will Oldham, Jonathan Richman, Marin Alsop, Harry Belafonte, Dan Deacon, Bill Callahan, Abdu Ali, Beach House and members of Animal Collective.
The Maryland Film Festival has been named one of MovieMaker Magazine's "25 Coolest Film Festivals In the World" four times in recent years (2014, 2015, 2017 and 2019), as well as earning repeated praise from national publications such as The New Yorker, and ArtForum.
In the interest of providing a relaxed, non-competition atmosphere for filmmakers and filmgoers to enjoy and engage with each other and the work, MdFF forgoes prizes and awards.
