For four days this fall, the stretch of North Charles Street around the historic Charles Theatre will feel like the center of the independent film world. The New/Next Film Festival, presented by Baltimore Public Media and curated by co-founder and director of programming Eric Allen Hatch, returns October 1–4, 2026, for its fourth and largest edition yet: more than 160 films, including 35 features and over 125 shorts, screening across all five of the Charles’s screens.
This year’s lineup includes six world premieres and five U.S. or North American premieres, a remarkable haul for a festival that launched in 2023. It opens Thursday, October 1, with Eternity One, Baltimore artist Marnie Ellen Hertzler’s documentary portrait of a disappearing Chesapeake Bay island community, featuring an original score by Baltimore dream-pop icons Beach House. It closes Sunday, October 4, with The Projectionist, Alexandre Rockwell’s story of a haunted old man confronting his past through the lens of a forgotten movie theater. Rockwell will be in Baltimore along with cast members Vondie Curtis-Hall, Kasi Lemmons (Eve’s Bayou, Harriet), and Karyn Parsons (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air).
World premiere features include Riptides, an uproarious dark comedy by Alex Karpovsky (HBO’s Girls) starring Steve Little; You Don’t Know My Name, a deeply personal documentary by Tommy Franklin; and The Tower, a DIY regional-cinema marvel by Auden Lincoln-Vogel and Philip Rabalais. North American premieres include Ana Baldini and Roly Witherow’s acerbic Lisbon-set comedy Kiss and Be Friends, Theodore Schaefer’s interlocking narrative triptych The Arrow at Rest at Every Instant of its Flight, and Mylissa Fitzsimmons’ sensory-rich coming-of-age study MacKenzie. Making their U.S. debuts are Big Break, a horror-comedy from director Ian Faria and comedy group Simple Town, and The Ground Beneath Our Feet, Yrsa Roca Fannberg’s Cannes Critics’ Week–winning portrait of a Reykjavik retirement home.
The festival will also host the world premieres of two restorations: Henry Jaglom’s character-rich road comedy Sitting Ducks (1980) and Allen Moore and Jack Shea’s bucolic documentary The Shepherds of Berneray (1981), which screens alongside the premiere of Moore’s 2026 follow-up, Returning to Berneray. Other buzz titles include Chronovisor, Everytime, La Gradiva, The Lorraine, and Zi.
“We’re thrilled and humbled that so many world-class talents have chosen us for their premieres,” says Hatch. “This festival isn’t about red carpets, but about discoveries and new experiences through cinema. Every one of these features, whether playing to its first audience or its fiftieth, affirms the robust state of film as an art form—and moviegoing as one of life’s great joys.”
Beyond the screenings, New/Next spills into two neighboring independent venues, Metro Gallery and the Baltimore Improv Group, for opening and closing night parties and late-night dance parties with some of Baltimore’s best-known DJs. I spoke with Hatch and festival co-founder Sam Sessa of Baltimore Public Media about how the festival came together, what’s new this year, and why New/Next feels so distinctly Baltimore.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
A Conversation with Eric Allen Hatch and Sam Sessa
Cara Ober: New/Next started in response to the Maryland Film Festival going on hiatus. How did it come together?
Sam Sessa: Our first festival was in 2023. Initially it was a response to the Maryland Film Festival taking a year off to regroup, but it was also a time when the Baltimore events scene felt very reductive. Light City was gone, the book festival had been on hiatus, Artscape was on hiatus, and then the film festival announced it was pausing. I was working at Baltimore Public Media, which owns WYPR and WTMD, and I think we all thought, “Isn’t there something we can do to help bring back one of these events, if only for the short term?” We got such a great response the first year that we thought, why not make it an annual event?
The initial idea actually came from Dan Deacon, who called me and said, “You should do a film festival.” I said, “What are you talking about? I don’t know anything about film festivals.” And he said, “Well, you do festivals. You do First Thursdays. That’s a festival.” I asked, “What about the films?” And he said, “Just get Eric Hatch to do the films. He’s an expert. Together you have a film festival.” If you put it that way, it sounds so easy! Once we found the funding for the first festival, it came together really quickly, and we were overwhelmed by the positive reaction.
CO: How would you describe New/Next’s footprint in the city?
SS: It’s in Station North, technically. One of the things I really love about it is that it’s a very tight campus. Everything happens within two blocks. A lot of film festivals are spread out across their cities, and you’re darting across town to catch a screening at this time at this place. At New/Next, everything is at the Charles, Metro Gallery, or Baltimore Improv Group, and they’re all right across the street from each other. So you can walk to everything, and it’s all independent Baltimore arts institutions.
CO: How are the films selected?
Eric Allen Hatch: We received just under 1,000 submissions this year, which is the highest number I’ve received at any festival I’ve worked for in town. On top of that, I watched a couple hundred other films at festivals or that were sent to me directly by distributors. So we’re looking at roughly 1,000 films that I watched between January and August.
CO: Do the films have to be from Maryland or the region?
SS: No, they can be from anywhere. The only rule is that it has to be the film’s Maryland premiere.
CO: And you have more world premieres than ever this year.
EAH: By far the most we’ve had. Understandably, for a festival in its first year, there were only one or two world premieres in our feature lineup. This year we have quite a few world, U.S., and North American premieres among our features, and I believe more than half of the shorts will be premiering with us as well.
Riptides by Alex Karpovsky is a world premiere that I frankly can’t believe we got. It stars Steve Little, known from Eastbound & Down, but also from an indie feature called The Catechism Cataclysm that I showed during my time at the Maryland Film Festival, where it was a big hit. You may know Alex as an actor from Girls and some Coen Brothers films, but since about 2008 he’s also built a filmography as a director, and this is a kind of triumphant return to that. It’s a hilarious dark comedy that would definitely appeal to fans of The White Lotus and Eastbound & Down. It’s a little more populist than many of the more art-focused films in the lineup, but the craft is top-notch, and it has a dark edge that makes it a great fit for New/Next.
CO: Tell me about the opening night film, Eternity One.
EAH: Eternity One is an experimental documentary, but also a crowd-pleaser. It’s set on Tangier Island, Virginia, which is rapidly losing its coastline to sea level rise and climate change. The protagonist is a child growing up with a love of their hometown but also an awareness of climate change. They’re an aspiring visual artist and cartoonist trying to find ways to celebrate in their hometown while thinking about a future in which it might not exist, or might exist in a clearly compromised form.
The filmmaker, Marnie Ellen Hertzler, is Baltimore-based, and her multidisciplinary approach will be very evident to people who come see the film. It has some science fiction visual elements and flair, and it also visits a convention of futurists discussing AI and other things that dovetail with the conversation around climate change. The other strong Baltimore aspect is the craft behind the scenes. Beach House did the score, one of their few works of original music outside their studio album discography. It’s dreamlike, and it’s Beach House in all the best ways. It’s really beautiful.
We’re also doing something unusual for an opening night film, which is holding a reprise matinee on Sunday. Part of that is anticipating exceptional Baltimore demand, but it’s also an acknowledgment that coming from Tangier Island, as we hope a lot of residents will, is a trek, and a Sunday afternoon screening might be more feasible than a Thursday night.
CO: What are some other films with local connections?
EAH: The Haunting of Pennhurst, which screens Sunday, is scored by Dan Deacon. It has three directors, one of whom was the original Director of Disability, Culture, & Inclusion at Johns Hopkins University. It’s about an institution in Pennsylvania that for many years, into the 1980s, purported to be a care facility for people deemed disabled but was really one of those institutions that caused widespread harm. The documentary is horror-adjacent, because the site is now a seasonal haunted house, and primarily people with disabilities run it as a way of reclaiming and redefining the space.
Little Doors was shot entirely in Baltimore. It’s a midnight movie about a person who finds a small wooden door in their body and what that does to their love life and sense of identity as the world crumbles around them. The director isn’t a Baltimorean, but Becca Brooks-Moran did the production design and Tyler Davis was director of photography, so it’s definitely a big Baltimore crew.
Chronovisor wasn’t made here, although it was partially shot at the George Peabody Library. It’s co-directed by two young filmmakers who are both former Baltimoreans, and they’re calling it an academic thriller, about someone researching something that supposedly happened in the past.
CO: Are the screenings followed by discussions with the filmmakers?
EAH: We have filmmakers coming for every new U.S. feature, quite a few of the foreign features, and the majority of the shorts. That’s really heartening, because as you might imagine, with 100-plus shorts, we don’t have the budget to pay for 100-plus flights and hotel rooms. So it’s a show of enthusiasm from filmmakers all over the world, many coming from outside the country, from L.A., or from other far-flung places to be with us. What’s really interesting is that our dates overlap with the New York Film Festival, and we have dozens upon dozens of New York–based filmmakers coming to show their work or just attend New/Next instead of their hometown festival.
CO: How many filmmakers are you expecting?
EAH: More than 200 visiting filmmakers, plus dozens of local filmmakers attending among the thousands of audience members. I’d guess we’ll be in the neighborhood of 250 visiting filmmakers, which is what we had last year.
CO: And how many films?
EAH: We’re showing 35 features and more than 100 short films, broken into 12 programs plus some shorts playing before features. It’s 160-something films in total, with opening night on Thursday and then three full days of programming on five screens.
SS: It’s the full Charles Theatre for the weekend, every screen.
CO: Are you seeing any trends in the films this year? Subjects that are kind of zeitgeisty right now?
EAH: The zoomed-out perspective I have is that film festivals like this one are attempting to repair what’s broken, both at the multiplex, which is gasping right now, and in the more institutional film festival landscape, which keeps celebrating and showing the same big films over and over again. Getting 1,000 submissions and rolling out a lineup with so many world premieres, including some by established names, is very unusual for a young festival. It shows there’s a gap, not just in Baltimore but internationally, between the plethora of great work being made and the number of places to exhibit it.
As far as themes, the sense that this is a chaotic moment in human history plays out in almost every film we’re showing. Everyone’s approach to that is just different. Some filmmakers create a slow, immersive, painterly experience that slows down time and takes us outside the chaos of the present. Others are more overtly political, like a City in the Forest, a film about efforts to stop the construction of “Cop City” in Atlanta. Some are really taking the gloves off and grappling with the moment.
SS: I wanted to add that my background is in producing concerts. I’ve produced a lot of shows for WTMD over the years, so I have a lot of inroads with the Baltimore music community. What’s happening here, and all across the country, is that musicians who aren’t making much money off their music anymore, not that they ever did, are finding they can sometimes make a living scoring independent films. New/Next sits at a very interesting crossroads between the film and music communities. Beach House presented films at the first two festivals, Dan Deacon has been a presence throughout the festival’s history, and Animal Collective has been here too. These are all artists who have scored films in the festival or built or expanded their careers as film composers. This festival feels very Baltimore in all the best ways.
EAH: That’s exactly right. For Baltimoreans, and also for visiting filmmakers and audiences, that interconnectivity between young filmmakers and the music scene really shapes the vibe of the experience. Some festivals try to convey that by booking a lot of live music or throwing parties simultaneous to screenings, which can distract from the primary purpose of the festival. With us, it’s woven more organically into the fabric.
We want all audiences to find something to love at New/Next, but we’re also aware that the audience for independent film always needs to be cultivated and refreshed. Speaking frankly, a lot of festivals skew toward an older and socially conservative audience. That’s not our aim. We’re trying to be more inclusive, both in our audience and in our creators.
CO: And the parties?
SS: Metro Gallery hosts opening and closing nights, and then we have private parties for filmmakers and passholders on Friday and Saturday nights at the Baltimore Improv Group. Dan Deacon has DJ’d the main dance party every year, and he’s the Saturday night DJ again. There’s such a deep well of talent in Baltimore, so this year we also have Ami Dang, Drew Daniel from Matmos, and DJ Mills, and we’ve had a long list of very talented performers over the years. Anyone can buy tickets to the opening and closing night parties at Metro Gallery, but for the private parties at the Baltimore Improv Group, which include drinks and dancing, you need an All Access Pass.
This is a young festival. This is a diverse festival. There’s a lot of energy in the room all weekend. And new this year, Tapas Teatro is setting up a mini bar in the lobby of the Charles for grab-and-go drinks to take into the theaters. We want people to have fun. It’s not a buttoned-up, uptight festival. The parties go late into the night. People are dancing, socializing, and having a good time.
I covered the Maryland Film Festival as a journalist 15 years ago, and what I remember best is walking that block of Charles Street and seeing it packed with people standing on the sidewalk, drinking wine, and having conversations. We see that at New/Next, and it’s so good for the neighborhood. It’s wonderful to bring people together in such a classic, historic Baltimore setting. For this weekend, it feels like you really live in a city, and you don’t always feel that way in Baltimore.
CO: That part of town can feel very quiet, and you wonder, where are all the people? When you can walk everywhere and the streets are full, that’s what a city is supposed to be.
SS: That whole block just lights up all weekend for New/Next. That’s one of the things I love most about this festival.
Festival at a Glance
New/Next Film Festival — Thursday, October 1 through Sunday, October 4, 2026, at The Charles Theatre, 1711 N. Charles Street, Baltimore
Special events
- Oct. 1: Opening Night screening of Eternity One at The Charles, followed by a party at Metro Gallery featuring DJ Ami Dang
- Oct. 2: Private filmmaker and All Access passholder party at Baltimore Improv Group featuring DJ The Soft Pink Truth (Drew Daniel of Matmos), drinks included
- Oct. 3: New/Next Dance Party featuring DJ Dan Deacon at Baltimore Improv Group (filmmakers and All Access passholders only), drinks included
- Oct. 4: Closing Night screening of The Projectionist at The Charles, followed by a party at Metro Gallery featuring DJ Mills
Tickets and passes: Individual screening tickets and a limited number of All Access Passes are available now through TicketHive. All Access Passes include premium access to all screenings, the Opening and Closing Night parties, and exclusive filmmaker events. The full schedule is at newnextfilmfest.com.
