The 11th Bentonville Film Festival is underway in Arkansas, the annual event bringing together Oscar caliber talent and films, with an emphasis on
The 11th Bentonville Film Festival is underway in Arkansas, the annual event bringing together Oscar caliber talent and films, with an emphasis on inclusion in an industry not known for providing equal access to opportunity.
This year’s festival, running June 16-22, boasts nine world premieres, 28 feature films in competition, and a newly launched Homegrown Competition “highlighting powerful stories from filmmakers based in or filming in Arkansas” as part of a strong lineup of programming.
Deadline attended the opening night kickoff at Skylight Cinema, highlighted by a screening of East of Wall, the Sony Pictures Classics drama that presents “an authentic portrait of female resilience in the ‘New West’ inspired and played by the women and girls who live it.”
On the red carpet we spoke with BFF chair Geena Davis, asking about her excitement level as the festival began.
“On a scale of 1 to 10, I’m 11,” she told us.
(L-R) BFF President Wendy Guerrero, BFF Chair Geena Davis, and actor Bradley Whitford attend the Opening Reception at the 11th Annual Bentonville Film Festival on June 17, 2025 in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Jason Davis/Getty Images for Bentonville Film Festival
Actor Bradley Whitford attended the BFF opening night celebration ahead of the festival screening of For Worse, directed by his wife, actor-filmmaker Amy Landecker. The couple stars in the drama about a newly divorced and sober mom who “feels like she has a new lease on life after joining her first acting class and starting a fling with her hot, young scene partner.”
More than 65 percent of the films in the BFF lineup are from creators identifying as female or gender non-conforming, consistent with the festival’s commitment “to inclusion and authentic representation across all communities.”
“Our goal is to reflect the population as it is — both in front of and behind the camera,” Davis said. “We have so many diverse filmmakers and so many stories that might not ordinarily get told, or movies that might not get shown somewhere else.”
“Women are still way too unrepresented in storytelling,” Whitford told Deadline. “In writers’ rooms in Hollywood, it’s still ridiculous… I just came off Handmaid’s Tale, where the creative center of that show, one of the most talented filmmakers and actors on the planet, is Lizzie Moss. And it’s ridiculous that we don’t have more women in those positions now. So I think it’s great what Geena has done.”
Among the other women filmmakers in the BFF lineup is Rachel Israel, whose film The Floaters makes its world premiere in Narrative Competition.
“It’s a Jewish summer camp comedy,” Israel explained. “It’s a story about community… A struggling musician comes home to her childhood camp and is kind of led to direct a group of misfits at the camp and to putting on a play.”
Israel added, “I really, really care about the festival’s mission and expanding female voices and voices of diversity. And that was something that we were seeking to do in the film, in it being a Jewish film and a Jewish film that has Jewish diversity in it.”
‘The Floaters’ stars Jillian Jordyn (left) and Nina Bloomgarden
Matthew Carey
The Floaters, starring Jackie Tohn, Sarah Podemski, Aya Cash, Seth Green, Judah Lewis, Nina Bloomgarden, and Jillian Jordyn, premieres tonight.
“We’re very excited to let the world see what we worked so hard on,” actress Jillian Jordyn, who plays a camper, told us. “So excited to let everybody see it finally.”
The film was shot at a camp in New York. “The actual camp of our producers – the summer camp the story’s based on,” cast member Nina Bloomgarden said. “There’s nothing there,” Jordyn commented. “It’s on the border of Pennsylvania and New York.”
“It was a wild, wild place,” Bloomgarden added. “There’s no Ubers, there’s no Uber Eats.”
Director J Pinder attends the Opening Reception at the 11th Annual Bentonville Film Festival on June 17, 2025 in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Jason Davis/Getty Images for Bentonville Film Festival
Filmmaker J Pinder literally leapt at the chance to attend the opening night event. He managed to simultaneously blow a bubble and elevate off the red carpet, a nod to the title of his film showing at Bentonville: Cotton Candy Bubble Gum, starring Nick Darnell, Morgan Jay, JadaPaige, R. Marcus Taylor, Jack Stone, and Ben Scattone.
In Documentary Competition, BFF will host the world premiere of No Baby on Board, directed and produced by Julia Kots. Also in Documentary Competition is Seeds, perhaps the single-most honored documentary of the year so far. Brittany Shyne’s feature, about Black farmers in the South, won the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary at Sundance where it premiered, and has won top awards at the Seattle International Film Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, and RiverRun in North Carolina.
Olympic champion Allyson Felix
Tribeca Festival
Olympic gold medalist Allyson Felix, the most decorated track and field athlete of all time, will participate in the festival’s Shaping the Narrative conversation in partnership with Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and Ingeborg Initiatives. She Runs the World, a documentary about Felix directed by Perri Peltz and Matthew O’Neill, screens tonight at BFF.
Today Show weatherman and presenter Al Roker was honored with a Trailblazer award at the festival on Tuesday. He offered a sneak peak of his novel animated series, Weather Hunters, a show that “blends education and entertainment, helping kids understand the science of weather through fun, accessible storytelling.”
Moderator Sharronda Williams and Al Roker speak during In Conversation with Al Roker at the 11th Annual Bentonville Film Festival at Crystal Bridges on June 17, 2025 in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Jason Davis/Getty Images for Bentonville Film Festival
Roker participated in a discussion moderated by Blavity’s Sharronda Williams. He credited the tardy Today Show weatherman Willard Scott with giving a boost to his career and mentoring him. Roker confessed to trying to imitate Scott’s avuncular style early on.
“Without calling me out, [Scott] said, ‘You should always be yourself because everybody else is taken,’” he recollected. “And so, that’s kind of – for better or for worse – that’s who I’ve been.”
Sovereign, about “a father and son whose anti-government beliefs spiral into violence, and the police chief whose life is forever changed by their actions,” screens at Bentonville following its world premiere earlier this month at Tribeca. The crime drama directed by Christian Swegal and produced by Nick Moceri features a stellar cast including Nick Offerman, Dennis Quaid, Jacob Tremblay, Megan Mullally, Thomas Mann, Martha Plimpton, and Nancy Travis.
“They’re the top caliber actors working today,” Swegal told Deadline. “We really sort of had an all-star cast, especially for a film this size. It was really remarkable.”
For the film team, it marks a return visit to Northwest Arkansas.
“We filmed the movie in Fayetteville,” Moceri explained. “We were here a year ago shooting the film, and so to be back screening it is really special.”
Moceri summed up what makes the Bentonville Film Festival special.
“I think it’s becoming a premier regional film festival and people know it as a place with high quality filmmaking,” he said. “It’s a boost to the Arkansas film community and I think it just gets better and better every year.”
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