Rome film festival welcomes global filmmakers downtown

Welcome back. 838 is your time. It is the festival spotlighting independent cinema. The Rome International Film Festival is officially here. Yeah, the four-day event showcases independent feature films, documentaries, shorts, and student works from all over the world. And it's all taking place at Rome's historic De Soto Theater. And joining us now are Courtney Sullivan, Paul Romero-Mendez, and Saul Portillo, all joining us this morning to talk about it. Let's start with this gentleman. First of all, we appreciate you joining us. Of course. What is or how would you describe the Rome International? Film Festival to someone who's not familiar with it. Wow, what a great way of describing it. As a big living room, that just sounds like a party, easy to get involved with. But I'm really impressed here. I believe Courtney is a student filmmaker. So, Courtney, can you tell us about how you got involved with this? What's that like? Yes, Ms. Alex, I actually started going to college at Georgia Highlands last year. I had an incredible teacher that kind of got me into the whole film process, and he steered me in the right direction, and I made a movie called Branham, which is a bowling movie about the first ever black PBA bowler. And from then, it's kind of snowballed into what it is now. I love the entire process. Filmmaking has become my life, kind of. Oh, I bet. I feel like you have to be passionate about it in order to get good at it, and you must be good at it if you're at this festival. I assume you guys are sitting inside that giant living room right now. We're talking about the DeSoto Theater. If that is the case, tell us about the history of that theater because I know it's rich and why. Yeah, the De Soto has been, I believe, 120 plus years in this community. We just renovated this beautiful art piece. This is truly one of the preserved art pieces when it comes to building preservation in the state of Georgia. As you know, Rome is well known for the preservation of all historic buildings, where the De Soto is one of them. Here we house the Rome International Film Festival, we house Little Rome Theater, We have many other events and many other organizations that make this beautiful place their home base and it's just a marvelous piece of architecture that everybody needs to come and just visit but come and visit with us now that we have the festival here. Sure. Paul, I want to incorporate you into this conversation. Can you tell us a bit about what you've crafted for us? I mean, I was told about this festival and, you know, you're told it's the friendliest place, the champion independent film, and you're thinking it must be an exaggeration because, you know, to come all this way from London and you see it in person, it's my third year now, and, you know, there's no exaggeration at all. It's, for me, the best festival in the world, but it's not even close. Wow. That says a lot about Georgia, too. The fact that we're able to pull people from London, from all over the entire world to our little corner of the country. Tell us about how it's going to work. How does the event play out? What are people that want to attend? How do they get tickets? What do they need to do if they want to be a part of this? Great question. Yeah, riffga.com, R-I-F-F dot com, G-A dot com. Go up on our website, get your tickets, get your reservations, find out more about the films and the filmmakers like Paul. He's a two-time award winner. His two films, back to back, won the prestigious Sylvia Award, which is the award that we give to... the best in cinema, and now you raise your own bar, so I don't know, will it be at triplets this time? I don't know, but go to our website, rffga.com, and you're going to find out every detail about us, and you can book your ticket to come to our living room. So cool. Rome's a charming downtown anyway. It's conveniently located from Atlanta and elsewhere around the area, and even more reason to go visit this weekend. Gentlemen, we appreciate your time this morning, and hope the film festival goes fantastically. Thank you very much, and good morning to everyone. Good morning right on back. Thank you. The Rome International Film Festival will run through Sunday in historic downtown Rome. For tickets and for passes, you can head to rffga.com, and we'll also share that link on our website, fox5atlanta.com. Just look for it under the Good Day section.