Mammoth Film Festival. Courtesy of Mammoth Film Festival
Movies and mountains! Mammoth Film Festival returns to California this year and will feature several indie flicks with star-studded casts.
The five-day festival will feature over 80 films across five different categories – Featured Documentary, Short, Music Video, Episodic and a highlighted Action Sports category. The judges panel this year includes Rob Weiss, Ashley Benson, Jamie Chung, Geoff Stults, Luke Watson, Curt Morgan, Carly Margulies and Daysha Broadway.
“Mammoth Film Festival looks ahead with great anticipation for its future as it breaks barriers to elevate the standard for film festivals by embracing our film competition, understanding the value of our coveted screenings and world premieres and establishing our marketplace to elevate our official selections,” festival cofounders Tanner Beard and Tomik Mansoori explained in a statement in January. “We are proud to celebrate each and every film that is selected, and proud to be Californina’s favorite winter film festival.”
Mammoth Film Festival — which was founded in 2018 — will kick off its feature category with world premieres of Bonded, starring Babylon’s Diego Calva, and director John Stalberg’s Bad Hombres, starring Luke Hemsworth, Tyrese Gibson, Thomas Jane and Nick Cassavetes.
Luke Hemsworth at Mammoth Film Festival. Courtesy of Mammoth Film Festival
The highly anticipated film Some Other Woman, directed by Avatar star Joel David Moore and starring Amanda Crew, Tom Felton and Ashley Greene Khoury, will headline “Friday Fright Night,” a staple of the festival.
“I can’t wait to dive into the universal and important themes within Some Other Woman, while shooting on breathtaking scenery and infrastructure,” Moore, 45, told Deadline Hollywood in July 2021.
The winter festival also sets out to highlight up and coming directors with their First Time Filmmaker Spotlight. This year the category will highlight actors-turned-directors Luke Roberts and Justin Matthews, who will premiere The Duel, starring Dylan Sprouse, Hart Denton and Patrick Warburton.
The documentary category is highlighted by the world premiere of Michael Madsen’s American Badass: A Michael Madsen Retrospective, starring Quentin Tarantino, John Travolta, Ron Perlman, Angie Everhart, Paul Sorvino, Mario Kassar, Donald Gladstein, William Baldwin, Chuck Zito, Mike Starr, Robert Forster, Daryl Hannah, Virginia Madsen and Charlie Sheen.
The Episodic category of the festival has become a signature focal point of the program and has led to numerous project sales and deals. It will feature Blair Redford’s The Many Worlds of George Goodman as well as A Girl. A Guy. A Ford. A Love Story starring Melissa Kirkendall and Alexandra Chando and the Lucas Grabeel-directed short Lucas Needs an Agent, starring Corbin Bleu and Katie Leclerc.
“Lucas Needs An Agent” Film Poster. Courtesy of Mammoth Film Festival
Due to Mammoth being a prime sporting destination, the Action Sports category is very important to the festival’s roots. This year, Jeremy McGrath, one of the most popular American motocross/supercross champions, will showcase a never-before-seen mini documentary and will hold a Q&A session.
Apart from the screenings, the 2023 schedule will also include the return of the Celebrity Charity Bowling Tournament to benefit Mammoth Media Institute. The event will continue to feature groundbreaking panels such as the “Importance of Indie Projects and Breaking it Down” and the annual “Her Voice” roundtable discussion of female filmmakers.
The Mammoth Film Festival will be held at Minaret Cinemas from March 2 to March 6 in Mammoth Lakes, California. Tickets are available on the festival website or in the Mammoth FF App.