Winter Film Festival – February 19-23 2025 – WFF2025

Celebrate Diversity in Film with New York City’s WINTER FILM FESTIVAL! The 13th Annual Winter Film Festival runs February 19-23 2025, showcasing creative fresh voices from emerging filmmakers worldwide. Our outstanding 87 Official Selections are a diverse mixture of animated films, documentaries, dramas, comedies, horror films, music videos, and web series of all lengths, including 16 student films and 26 first-time filmmakers. Filmmakers come from 20 countries; half of the films were created by women, half created by or about people of color.

Official Artwork for 2025 Festival designed by Kervin Brisseaux. Read more about WFF2025!

Screening Tickets are $12.50/In Advance, $16.50/Door, $5/Door with Student ID. Parties, Meetups and Education Sessions/Workshops are free and open to the public. Screening blocks run 1½-2½ hours with a mix of shorts and feature-length films, with a Q&A Session with the filmmakers.

WFF 2025 Films

Click here to leaf through the WFF2025 Festival Program!

WFF 2025 Education Sessions

About Winter Film Festival

Winter Film Festival is an all-volunteer women and minority-run organization as part of Winter Film Awards Inc, a 501(c)3 organization founded in 2011 to celebrate emerging talent in local and international filmmaking. We showcase creative fresh voices from emerging filmmakers worldwide in all genres and lengths – feature length and shorts, narrative fiction, documentary, animation, horror, web series and music videos. Our mission is to promote diversity, bridge the opportunity divide and provide a platform for under-represented artists and a variety of genres, viewpoints and approaches. We believe that only by seeing others’ stories can we understand each other and only via an open door can the underrepresented artist enter the room.

Winter Film Festival programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Promotional support provided by the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media & Entertainment.

Winter Film Festival is thrilled to be included in Film Festival Alliance’s Film Festival Directory, a comprehensive list of more than one hundred reputable film festivals committed to upholding the newly established best practices for professional film festivals. Explore the directory to read through our profile and learn more about our fellow member festivals, their programming philosophies, and more here: https://bit.ly/FFADirectory

Have questions about who we are? Visit our FAQ

Winter Film Festival Sponsors and Partners

Corporate and local support of Winter Film Awards plays an critical role in the life of the Festival and underscores WFA’s commitment to quality, adventure and diversity in the art of cinema. WFA is privileged to work with the following partners and sponsors:

Thank you to Showtime Photo Booth for partnering with us for our event. Showtime stands out as the leading photo booth rental company in the City. Since 2013, they’ve excelled in experiential brand activations, corporate events, weddings, and private parties, offering over 27 different photo experiences for any occasion.

Filmmakers, sign up for a free casting account on Backstage by following this link: https://www.backstage.com/film-video-and-tv-casting/. You can then post casting and crew calls for free using the promo code WFACAST. Use your Backstage login details (email and password) to sign into our sister platforms, Mandy and Starnow, and post for free using the same WFACAST code. Please note that the code can be used each time you post a listing on Backstage, Mandy, and Starnow.

2025 Winter Film Festival Speakers and Panelists

2025 Winter Film Festival Writers

Amanda Lou

Anyu Ching

Belton DeLaine-Facey

Cristina Slattery

Danielle Cavaliere

Despina Afentouli

Joseph Mauceri

Julia Sexton

Kajal Kapoor

Lianna Albrizio

Mila Grgas

Nefeli Soteriou

Whitney Larkins

2025 Winter Film Festival Submission Judges

Justin Benz, Jonathan Burdick, Clay Cain, Ruiran Chen, Xiaoxiao Chen, Lance Courts, Anthony Falco, Zoe Fancher, Lechara Fletcher, Julie Furnas, John German, Sondra Gomez, Donte Grey, Rian Grey, Siyuan He, Dominic Hinkson, Quincy Irmiter, Veronica Kent, Asier Kintana, Zachary Kirby, Donn Lamkin, Whitney Larkins, Robert LaRue, Emilie Lorditch, Rebel Love, James Mahaney, Joseph Mauceri, Miguel Medina-carrion, Chris Meyer, Kyna Morgan, Michael Murray, Joanne Naclerio, Youlim Nam, PJ Nastasi, Martina Marie O’Boyle, Fey Okege, Nilufer Ozmekik, Yunhong Pu, David Pulson, Katy Rochelle, Joshua Segarra, Haley Simmons, Elise Smalley, Andrew Tang, Wendi Tang, Arianna Wellmoney, Lisa Wilf, Mya Wiseman and Hila Yaish

Winter Film Festival Team

Winter Film Festival is led by George Isaacs (CEO & Founder) and Steffanie Finn (Executive Director). Thank you to our tireless team – Joseph Mauceri, Michael Joseph Murray, Lisa Wilf and Vaughn Murphy.

Thank you to Winter Film Festival staff, volunteers, screeners, judges, writers, panelists, friends and helpers! This event couldn’t happen without you!