The Beverly Hills Film Festival returns for a milestone anniversary this year with its biggest lineup of films to date and a focus on giving the artist the spotlight.
“For me a film festival is a platform where an artist has to be showcased. So we take a lot of pride in sticking to showcasing the arts and leaving everything else out, and we’ve stuck to that,” said Nino Simone, founder and director of the Beverly Hills Film Festival.
While it was founded in Beverly Hills, the screenings all take place at the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood from Tuesday, April 1 through Saturday, April 5 with a program that includes mostly short films as well as feature-length movies, international films and panels with a closing night gala an awards event at the The Beverly Hilton on Sunday, April 6.
Simone founded the festival in 2000 and held it at venues around Beverly Hills until about 15 years ago when it outgrew those locales and the festival was moved to the TLC, where films are presented in blocks at various times daily.
This year the opening night spotlight film is “Hello Beautiful,” which is based on the life of cancer survivor Christine Handy.
“It’s a really powerful, emotionally charged film about a harrowing yet transformative journey of a breast cancer survivor,” Simone said. It screens at 7:45 p.m. on Tuesday, April 1.
Another film Simone is particularly excited about is the 18-minute short “Dizzy,” which screens at 8 p.m. April 1.
“It’s basically a story about growing up in a dystopian suburbia. It’s younger people that drop acid and the wild sequences that happen throughout the night,” he said.
Fans of Martin Scorsese, and in particular those who love the music he uses to layer his films, will not want to miss the 54-minute film “Martin Scorsese, My Life in Music.” The film screens at 6 p.m on Wednesday, April 2 and looks at the legendary director’s relationship with music and how he uses it as another character in his films.
The festival closes with “Dwelling Among the Gods,” an international tale of a young woman from Afghanistan who travels to Belgrade, Serbia, with her husband and three children in their journey to Europe as refugees. But she learns her younger brother has drowned in Serbia and will soon be buried unnamed. So she battles to give him a proper burial in the city.
“This is definitely one of my favorites of the festival,” Simone said.
Beverly Hills Film Festival
When: Tuesday, April 1 through Saturday, April 5 with closing night gala Sunday, April 6
Where: Films screen at 6925 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood.
Information: beverlyhillsfilmfestival.com