The Boulder International Film Festival returns April 9-12 with Alec Baldwin as this year’s guest on Scott Feinberg’s Awards Chatter podcast, a booking that gives the 22-year-old event one of its biggest names yet as Boulder prepares to host Sundance for the first time.
Festival director Kathy Beeck said the guest list reflects BIFF’s local identity and national reach. “This year’s guest is Alec Baldwin, and we’re very excited,” she said, while describing the festival’s mission as “Your Town, Your Stories, Your Festival.”
BIFF moved its dates because of Sundance’s arrival in Boulder, and Beeck said the shift fits the festival’s role in the city. “This is Boulder’s festival,” she said. That local emphasis has long been part of BIFF’s appeal, even as it has built a reputation for bringing in major guests and drawing attention well beyond Colorado.
The festival is also leaning into its ties with Sundance. BIFF and Sundance partnered last fall at Chautauqua for a screening of the Andrea Gibson documentary “Come See Me in the Good Light,” and the collaboration continues this year with select screenings of films that played at Sundance. One of them, “Time and Water,” will screen at Grace Commons on Friday during the festival.
BIFF’s programming also includes Call2Action, which connects films with local nonprofits, and free youth workshops with the Sundance Institute this year. Feinberg records his Awards Chatter podcast at BIFF and at only five other film festivals around the world, underscoring how much the Boulder event has become part of the industry circuit even as it keeps its community focus.
That balance is the point of BIFF’s latest chapter: a festival rooted in Boulder, adjusted for Sundance’s arrival, but still determined to stay recognizable as its own event.
