Four days, forty films: a weekend at the Fairhope Film Festival
The tagline tells you the scale before you ever buy a ticket: four days, forty films. The Fairhope Film Festival, held each year on the second weekend of November, turns the town’s walkable downtown into a distributed cinema — screening rooms at the university branch theater, the public library, the community college and an amphitheater, with downtown restaurants and bars filling the gaps between showings.
For one longtime volunteer who worked the festival’s first four or five years, the format is the whole point: walking from venue to venue with stops for drinks and meals in between is, in her words, a version of a perfect weekend. Choosing what to see is the hard part. Out of the forty-film slate one year, she settled on six — four winners, two misses — plus the Saturday-night Red Carpet Party.
From subtitle comedy to Palme d’Or chaos
She skipped the opening-night film at Halstead Amphitheatre — the outdoor screening of “Loren and Rose,” followed by a question-and-answer session with director Russell Brown — and started Friday instead at the USA Baldwin County theater with “The Weasel’s Tale,” a Spanish-language comedy with subtitles about four aging film veterans sharing a country estate who fend off real estate developers. It became her favorite of the festival, full of sharp dialogue and outrageous characters.
The weekend’s heavier turn came at the Fairhope Library with “Juniper,” starring Charlotte Rampling, the story of a suspended teenager assigned to look after his alcoholic grandmother — a character study that drew tears by the ending. Saturday brought two French films: “Haute Couture,” about the head seamstress at the Dior fashion house who takes on a young pickpocket as an apprentice in dressmaking, and “Both Sides of the Blade,” a slow-burning love triangle starring Juliette Binoche that left the audience ready for a party.
The party was Saturday night on Summit Street in front of the festival office: a band called Journey to Mars, fried oysters from a local caterer, and an awards ceremony run by festival founder Mary Riser, with prizes for best film, best short film, audience awards for documentary and narrative, and volunteer of the year.
Sunday’s suspense and a speechless finale
Sunday opened at the Coastal Alabama Community College theater with “Balloon,” a German thriller set in 1979 based on the true story of a family that escapes East Germany in a homemade hot air balloon while the state police pursue them — edge-of-the-seat material that tied with “Juniper” for second favorite of the weekend.
The closer carried the highest stakes: “Triangle of Sadness,” the Palme d’Or winner from Cannes. A satire of the very rich, the film is engineered for chaos and discomfort, and it worked — the festivalgoer left exhausted, saying it would take days to process. That, she noted, is what art is supposed to do.
Why the festival works
The appeal is partly the programming — world-class, award-winning films brought to a town of walkable venues — and partly the setting. Few festivals let you leave your front door on foot, walk to a matinee, have dinner downtown, and catch a late screening without moving your car. The founders built that rhythm on purpose, and it has made the festival a fixture of the town’s cultural calendar.
The Fairhope Film Festival returns every second weekend in November. The advice from veterans is simple: study the schedule, pick more films than you think you can see, wear comfortable shoes, and leave room for the ones you did not expect to love.