Milwaukee, like the rest of the contemporary American Midwest, is increasingly making a name for itself as a place that nurtures, showcases, and facilitates access to creative excellence. Most recently, it was announced that the city will be receiving the world-renowned Michelin Guide. Like Chicago, its stunning lakefront’s infrastructure centers cars over people, and its film festival is weeks long with programming designed to serve its community by bringing important, passionate stories to their proverbial backyard.
I’ve been to Milwaukee many times, yet it was my first-ever visit to the festival. Having attended only six of the fifteen days of screenings, I still managed to squeeze in over a baker’s dozen films and events (and a Brewers game), evidence of the city’s and festival’s abundance and vitality.
Milwaukee Film, the organizing entity for the film festival, operates year-round at two historic, beautifully conserved theaters: the Oriental (a majestic movie palace in operation since 1927) and the Downer (a modest picture house that’s the oldest continuously operating theater in Milwaukee). Between the two cinemas, 5 traditional theater-style auditoriums were all dedicated to festival screenings. Like other indie theaters across the nation, such as Music Box Theater in Chicago and The Plaza in Atlanta, these theaters’ charm comes from keeping their original design and adornments intact, and their cinematic legacies linger in the air.
While the overcast, chilly late Spring weather did not permit walking between the two, their proximity allows one to easily bounce back and forth between screenings. Notably, even on weekdays, there are a handful of matinee screenings, mainly attended by an older cinematically curious audience. Like any film festival or general movie-going outing, the crowd can make a big difference in the overall energy and experience. At the Milwaukee Film Festival, I’m surrounded by those who have silently agreed to show respect for the cinematic by staying through the credits, with the house lights kept down low.
When I spoke with Milwaukee Film Programming Director and fellow native Oak-Parker Kerstin Larson, she remarked on the expansive nature of the team’s vision: “Every programmer really has the freedom to decide the titles for their section, and our technical team is really strong with a passion for good exhibition practices.”
The 2026 lineup included 106 feature films and 138 shorts from around the world, across every genre. Although only a few repertory screenings are scheduled, including an annual showing of “Stop Making Sense,” their focus is on presenting newer films that reflect the city’s evolving, passionate cultural fabric and bringing fresh, diverse narratives to Milwaukee County.
My personal programming began on a Friday afternoon with French director Alice Dourd’s “Love Letters.” The familial rom-com is a midlife coming-of-age story about two women navigating motherhood and adoption in the early days of France’s legalization of same sex marriages. The two other features I saw, curated under the festival’s “Genre Queer” category, were documentaries about prolific women creatives. “Barbara Forever,” by director Byrdie O’Connor, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year, is an intimate look at the creative, erotic, curious life and mind of filmmaker Barbara Hammer. Pegged as a “poet of images,” Hammer was a pioneer of capturing sapphic intimacy on celluloid and experimenting with the materiality and exhibition ambitions.
Similar to many independent theaters, Milwaukee Film thrives on its regular patrons and members. During the festival, members are celebrated at a super secret mystery screening. Hosted in the main, most spectacular theater at the Oriental, which seats over 1,000 guests, the 4 pm screening was a full house of dedicated movie lovers, anxious to know what was in store. To my absolute delight, we were graced with “Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World.” As only the second-ever audience to see the film, after its premiere at True/False in March, I am moved by its soft nature that mirrors Oliver’s practice and mind.
Regional film festivals are vital in providing opportunities to locally grown talent. To better ground myself in the scene, I attended a journalism and documentary panel focused on music. In discussing the different media and how they manifest in unique ways to accommodate both industries, it was interesting to hear the presenters touch on the similarities in the current struggles and solutions for distribution strategy in both film and music. Curious to see and hear more from local musicians, I also attended the Milwaukee Music Video Show, where over 15 local musicians showcased their music videos on the big screen. Spanning all genres, the synchronicities of different motifs and cinematic inspirations were woven into each story, showing us that creativity can be complex but unifying.
Another testament to the strength of the stories featured in the festival is that it draws from festivals all over and does not concern itself with the politics of premieres. Interestingly, and to my semi-biased benefit, there is a significant amount of shared titles between the Milwaukee Film Festival and the 2026 Chicago Critics Film Festival, which speaks to the similar tastes of regional film festivals and their role in the ecosystem in creating opportunities for independent filmmakers to reach audiences in markets they might not otherwise have access to. Some of the movies were so outstanding that I cannot wait to see them again. In particular, a couple of pictures from the Black Lens program were so powerful that I feel compelled to whip out the overused superlative “favorite film of the year” (so far).
On a Sunday morning, I sat in my preferred area of the cinema (up close and personal) at one of the smaller theaters at the Oriental and sobbed silently at the heartbreak and healing evoked by writer-director Walter Thompson-Hernández’s “If I Go Will They Miss Me.” The magical, mythological father-son story seared itself onto my heart. Its sun-soaked warmth, set in the housing projects beneath LAX’s flight path, is so dreamlike, and I’m struck by its ability to balance a mature yet innocent perspective on childhood and parenthood.
Director Maya Annik Bedward also unearths the intricacies of Black spirituality and selfhood through her spectacular documentary, “Black Zombie.” Tracing the origins of zombies from sugar cane fields in Haiti to novels by extractive anthropologists to adaptations by Hollywood’s horror filmmakers, it tenderly wraps a harsh history in honest, passionate accounts from knowledgeable university researchers and Haitian Voudou practitioners, pointing out seemingly subliminal messaging.
While playing my own balancing act between narrative and documentary features, I enjoyed other movies like Gregg Araki’s new movie, “I Want Your Sex,” and Milwaukee native Dasha Kelly’s “Makin’ Cake.” However, to my surprise, documentaries dominated my overall experience; titles like “Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild]” and “Paint Me A Road Out of Here” spotlighted institutional inequities in the archiving, preservation, and access to cultural artifacts and ancestral belongings.
In its 18th year, and only its 6th year taking place in the Spring, the festival is finding comfort in a different spot on the calendar. Reflecting on my time there, I remain quite taken and impressed by Milwaukee as a city and its movie-going scene, as its cultural confidence is only just beginning to reach new crowds. The festival has instilled a desire to return throughout the year to visit other essential Milwaukee-based institutions, such as the recently reopened American Black Holocaust Museum (which co-presented Makin’ Cake), The Rave music venue, and, most importantly, to enjoy more of Milwaukee Film’s programming.
