Sunday, November 15, 2026
Sea Cliff Arts Council board members and local filmmakers have begun planning for the 2027 Sea Cliff Film Festival. Organizers met with major stakeholders, like volunteers, sponsors, filmmakers and venue hosts to share their vision for the second annual festival.
The festival is set for June 12 and 13, with a kickoff screening on June 9 and an opening night preview event for filmmakers, sponsors and donors on June 11. Among films set to be shown are narratives, documentaries and animated films, both feature-length and short-form.
Organizers planned the 2026 festival in 100 days; from the day they officially decided to hold the event to opening night. Arts council Chief Operating Artist Meaghan Travis said at the Nov. 4 meeting that the grant secured by Nassau County Legislator Delia DeRiggi-Whitton was the “tipping point” that led to the decision.
“The amount that we accomplished in that 100 days was incredible,” said Katie Taber, festival co-director. “That was both due to the strong team we had, the ability to trust each other and to keep sort of everything moving forward as fast as we could.” She added that the event was community built and thanked volunteers, sponsors and venue hosts.
Travis presented statistics from the 2026 film festival, saying that 315 households purchased tickets from 95 ZIP codes. More than 1,000 screening reservations were made, 194 day passes and 339 individual tickets were sold. Attendees were primarily from Nassau County, but tickets were purchased by people in seven states outside of New York and one in Paris, France.
“If we can get to people that are already here, this close and this many households, and that was just done in 100 days,” Travis said, “what are we setting ourselves up to do for the next?”
One film shown at the 2026 festival, “The Librarians,” a documentary exploring book bans and censorship in the United States, has since won the Emmy Award for exceptional merit in documentary filmmaking. Three other films shown in 2026 are now on streaming platforms, one is in theaters and one is expected to arrive in theaters before the end of the year.
Taber explained that organizers chose to hold the festival on the second weekend in June again to show Sea Cliff at its best and to fit into the national festival timeline.
“As a small festival,” she said, “we have to fit in with some of the larger premiere festivals so that we have access to some of those films that have premiered, that it’s not too late after them, that folks haven’t come up with their distribution.”
Sea Cliff School, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, the arts council building and several local businesses served as venues in 2026. Organizers said they plan to add a new venue for 2027 but have not yet named it. Co-Director, arts council Producer-at-Large and Village Trustee Mark Sobel added that along with a filmmakers lounge, organizers plan to include a VIP lounge including food and music.
Sobel praised volunteers for their work at the 2026 festival and said that one of the next steps is to find a place for filmmakers visiting Sea Cliff to stay, adding that filmmakers that visited in 2026 enjoyed the village.
“The way we envision it is not only that we get more venues,” Sobel said, “we get more people, but we get more interest and we start getting people coming out here, and the businesses in town start doing better. The restaurants start doing better.”
Taber emphasized that she intends for artists on the filmmaker circuit to talk about Sea Cliff as a great place to go for a film festival. She added that she wants to elevate the audience experience and branding around the village, making the event more identifiable.
The 2026 festival had the theme “films that make a difference,” featuring films tackling different issues. One major piece of feedback organizers received, according to Travis, was that conversations were sparked.
“If we can’t all have conversations about things that are tough, maybe we don’t agree with, then we’re not really becoming a better community,” Travis said. “So those conversations came to us as well, and so I see that as a really big positive.”
Organizers will begin reaching out to filmmakers, and the submission portal opens on Film Freeway on Dec. 1. The submission portal will close in April.
