Running at Raleigh Studios from 1^st to 6^th October, the Hollywood Film Festival’s 22^nd event brought together a bevy of talented film creators. This year’s event welcomed cinematic voices from more than 55 countries, serving as a global stage where storytellers can showcase their work. Aside from competition, HFF creates relationships between producers, filmmakers, and other representatives. That creates an open environment in the industry experiencing huge changes in all sectors.

According to the HFF chairman and executive director Brad Parks, they aim to set unique goals and stand out from other film festivals. Brad further added that the HFF sees themselves as the UN (United Nations) for filmmakers. As a result, the HFF continues pushing for social change.

While it started its life as a celeb-friendly and glitzy awards season, the festival has taken a new direction since it was taken over from the founder Carlos de Abreu. Today, the HFF continues striving to become a progressive-minded entity that focuses on driving social and economic change.

Two years ago (2017), Parks re-launched HFF as an entity combining the new and the old. Today, he is excited about the festival’s growth and is highly optimistic about its future. This year, the Best of Showcase of the festival took place on Oct 5^th, with features including panel discussions, immersive entertainment presentations, and jury Class film screenings.

Broken in several categories, the festival awarded winners for the best documentary filmmaking, best global filmmaking, best independent filmmaking, and best studio filmmaking. Each of them received a day-long focus, with some of the winners including Honey Boy’s screenwriter Shia LaBeouf and Breakthrough actor Taron Egerton for his role in Rocketman.

According to HFF CEO Dave Knot, they didn’t plan to follow the traditional style. As such, they concentrated on strategically building relationships with a large section of partners and countries. That’s why the HFF consider what the people in your country expect from Hollywood and also welcomes suggestion on how these goals can be achieved.

Kamarco Williams debuted “Environment” for the independent short film spot, nominated by Jury member Choice Skinner. The movie focuses on the life of a young man who gets a chance to see an alternative version of his life if he hadn’t turned to drugs and crime.

Most filmmakers who have showcased their work at the HFF come back with other projects, allowing the organizers, peers, and judges to notice their growth. To some, it’s all about using the proper resources to make the films and also have them seen by a large audience to ensure there’s significant impact. Nonetheless, HFF has a large number of participants with different budgets and levels of experience.

Despite the diversity of participants, one thing remains constant – the desire and passion to use what’s created for the big screen to elicit change. That has made the HFF be truly a global platform of emerging voices without any religious or political influence.