RECAP: THE 56th Annual Nashville Film Festival

by Roy Frumkes

The 56th Nashville Film Festival, hosted over seven days from September 18–24, 2025, presented an electrifying celebration of film, music, and culture at some of Nashville’s most iconic arts venues. The festival showcased nearly 140 films from around the globe, alongside captivating Q&A sessions with filmmakers, dynamic industry panels, unforgettable parties, and plenty of opportunities to connect with fellow creatives and film fans.  

During the festival, the highly-anticipated NashFilm Creators Conference was hosted at the Hilton Nashville Green Hills from September 19-21, 2025. The three-day conference featured an inspiring lineup of panels with film and music industry professionals alongside networking events designed to educate and connect the creative community.

Film Festival List of the Winners

https://nashvillefilmfestival.org/2025-award-winners/

The Opener and the Closer films were fascinating choices, and provocative. The Opener was a feature doc, MAN ON THE RUN, brazenly edited and daring In the way it chose to portray its subject — the life of ex-Beatle Paul McCartney, both in concert and off, as well as early in his career and later. There has always been a perception that McCartney was pretty much a one-dimensional dullard with a gift that there was no getting away from. A dearth of cameo moments from his peers serve to reiterate this lifeless depiction of a music icon. No one seems to want to step up to the plate for him. The advance screenings country wide identify it as featuring McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison and John Lennon, but in fact their presence in the film is petty much nill. And McCartney is not really a creep or a negative force behind the original band. He’s just…uninteresting.

The Closer had quite a bit more central energy. I had seen the original film KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN (1985), which was gritty in the extreme. The remake is more fun (at times), and more experimental as it leaps back and forth between an intelligent, flamboyantly gay Argentinian prison denizen and his grim, political cell-mate. The Nashville Film Fest always seeks to open the event with films about music, and this was no departure from the formula. The performances are stellar, and the dance numbers, led by Jennifer Lopez, are on hyper-drive to balance the darkness of the prison location. The lead actor appeared for a Q&A following the screening, and we learned that it was a very brief shooting schedule in light of its elaborately choreographed sequences.