Featured Films 2026
The following films will be screened during the Albany Film Festival.
CALICO REBELLION: The Anti-Rent War and the Second American Revolution
Directors: Victoria Kupchinetsky, USA | 2024 | 70 min
Multi-media presentation with director Victoria Kupchinetsky, producer Misha Gutkin, author
Nancy Newman, and featured musicians
11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., Campus Center Ballroom
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An award-winning documentary that brings to life one of New York’s most dramatic but often overlooked chapters of history. In the lush woods of New York State’s Catskill Mountains, an almost mythical memory lives on. Of a time when men—armed with rifles and pitchforks, disguised in spooky masks and gowns—descended from bucolic hills to stage the Anti-Rent War, or “Second American Revolution,” as they called it, to challenge the unbridled power of the patroons. That farmers’ uprising 180 years ago changed the course of American history. Today it lives on through direct descendants of those rebellious farmers, through their stories, songs, and eerie costumes preserved since the 1840s.
DEATH BY NUMBERS
Director: Kim A. Snyder, USA | 2024 | 33 min
Screening and discussion with writer Samantha Fuentes
4:00 p.m. – 5:15 p.m., Campus Center Ballroom
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Four years after being shot with an AR-15 in her high school, Samantha Fuentes reckons with existential questions of hatred and justice as she prepares to confront her shooter.
TAHLEQUAH THE WHALE: A DANCE OF GRIEF
Director: Daniel Kreizberg, USA | 2023 | 15 min
Screening and discussion with director Daniel Kreizberg
4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m., Campus Center West Multi-Purpose Room
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In the aftermath of her newborn baby's sudden death, orca mother Tahlequah carries her daughter's body across the Salish Sea in the incredible true story that captivated the world.
THE SELF-LOVE ACT
Director: Kareema Bee, USA | 2024 | 20 min
Screening and discussion with director and UAlbany alum Kareema Bee
12:15 p.m. – 1:15 p.m., Campus Center West Multi-Purpose Room
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In this series hosted by Kareema Bee, a Black woman and artist explores her journey through self-love in dialogue with others, supported by The Big We Foundation. In the pilot episode, Kareema finds out her African ancestry in an unexpected way, which catapults her into an exploration of her roots and how it extends to her community, only to find what she's been searching for may have been there all along.
THE TRUCK
Director: Liz Rao, USA | 2024 | 14 min
Screening and discussion with director/writer Liz Rao
12:15 p.m. – 1:15 p.m., Campus Center West Multi-Purpose Room
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Against the simmering anxieties of post-Roe America, Jo, 16, and Arash, her boyfriend, attempt to buy the morning-after pill in a small town where reproductive rights are contested and quietly policed.
“THE TRUCK is an urgent, gripping look at Teen Love and The Freedom to choose in This America right now. Liz Rao brings her unique vision as a Screenwriter and Director who is Unafraid to Provoke and Dares to Speak Truth to Power, and does it in High Style.” — SPIKE LEE (executive producer, THE TRUCK)
VILLA ENCANTO
Director: Joel Perez, USA | 2025 | 16 min
Screening and discussion with director/writer Joel Perez
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m., Campus Center Ballroom
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After her mother’s death, a precocious teenager is uprooted from 1960s Spanish Harlem when her musician father takes a gig at a Puerto Rican summer resort in upstate NY. Through music and community, she learns to redefine the meaning of home.
WE WERE THE SCENERY
Director: Christopher Radcliff, USA | 2025 | 15 min
Screening and discussion with director Christopher Radcliff
1:45 p.m. – 2:45 p.m., Campus Center West Multi-Purpose Room
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After fleeing Vietnam by boat in 1975, Hoa Thi Le and Hue Nguyen Che arrived in the Philippines and were cast as extras in Apocalypse Now.
