FirstGlance Film Festival – Live Festival

FirstGlance curates a wide selection of independent films each year and is proud to screen all genres by professional, first-time, and student, national and international filmmakers. The weekend event will include a closing night awards ceremony, unique screening programs, filmmaker interviews on the red carpet, and audience voting for “Best of the Fest.”

Learn more about FirstGlance.

IMPORTANT TICKET INFO

To purchase individual screening passes, choose your desired date after clicking the “buy tickets” button.

Click here to purchase A Full Festival Pass ($100)

LIVE FESTIVAL | NOVEMBER 13TH – NOVEMBER 15TH

Please note all tickets must be purchased online for the in-person festival.

DAY ONE | FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13TH

Friday Screening I | 8:00 pm – 10:30 pm | $20

FILMS

• Make A Wish: A light-hearted comedy about the sweetest fiancé giving her boyfriend the best birthday present ever.
• It’s Okay:  A couple’s journey takes an unexpected turn in this futuristic, Sci-Fi short.
• Black Hearts, Red Hands: A first-time killer is about to be shown what it really takes to pull off the perfect crime.
• Bad Candy: Local Halloween stories of both myth and lessons learned in the community of New Salem.

DAY TWO | SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14TH

Saturday Screening I | 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm | $15

FILMS

• Tattooed Torah: An animated film based on the renowned children’s book educating young children about the Holocaust for generations.
• Alina: As Nazis separate children from their parents in the Warsaw Ghetto, a gang of women risks everything to smuggle their friend’s three-month-old baby to safety.
• The One and Only Jewish Miss America: The surprising story of Bess Myerson, the talented beauty queen from the Bronx, and how she won the world’s most famous beauty pageant 75 years ago, at the tail end of World War II.

Saturday Screening II | 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm | $15

FILMS

• How Long: Les Stroud uses his musical powers to challenge the planet’s citizens to take responsibility to do their part to protect the future of beloved earth.
• Die Like a Shark: An aging fighter’s life falls apart as he refuses to face the end of his once-bright career.
• Punch It: Tom breaks into a carnival closed to the public and stops in front of a punchball machine. From this moment, everything will be different.
• Icarus: In the twilight of the 21st century, the Earth subsists in a post-apocalyptic era. Animals and plants are dying. Humanity is in decay. A man is wandering alone in this place. He travels the roads by day and hides from dangers at night—his sole purpose: surviving.
• Progeny: This is a world exactly like ours, except that the wealthy elites are aliens, living and working among us, but with one key difference: they reproduce by implanting their offspring in a human host who raises the alien child as his own.

Saturday Screening III | 7:00 pm – 9:30 pm | $20

FILMS

• Every Night of the Week: Boys will be boys, but the woman always wins. Every Night of the Week is a fun, catchy music video with a touch of nostalgia.
• Before We Go: Elsee is a woman who can have it all, and she does. Seemingly on a whim, she takes two strangers, both on the verge of life-changing decisions, on the road trip of their lives.
• Egg on your Face: A documentary crew details the abated rise and evolution of a French Egg Chef.
• Kensington: When uptown therapist Doug Harper begrudgingly relocates to Philadelphia because of his wife’s promotion, he moves his practice to the crime-riddled, blue-collar neighborhood of Kensington.
• We Need to Talk: A social comedy that centers on Great Scott, a self-absorbed online video-game influencer and star who speaks to millions of fans every day but cannot bring himself to communicate with the people he loves.

DAY THREE | SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15TH

Sunday Screening I | 12:30 pm – 2:30 pm | $15

FILMS

• Monday: Dealing with the loss of a loved one.
• Woke: When Derek shares a racist slur with his Black co-workers, he is fired but given the option to keep his job if he participates in an experimental trial for a pill that cures racism.
• Luna: While filming a commercial for new artificial intelligence, Luna, the AI takes a mind its own.
• Our Philadelphia: The story of one high school in Philadelphia hit hard by neighborhood gun violence.
• Normal: Normal is a short documentary that follows Garren, a 23-year-old black male who has set out to redefine what it means to be “normal” in this society, as we reexamine his neighborhood in South Central LA, where various pre-existing conditions prevent young men from having control over their fate.
• Once in a Hundred Years: The Life & Legacy of Marian Anderson: The story of Marian Anderson, a young girl from South Philadelphia who, armed with only a voice, fought to break down one of the most daunting barriers closed to black Americans in the 1930s—the classical music stage.

Sunday Screening II | 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm  | $15

FILMS

• Urban Canvas: A deep dive into the eclectic world of Philadelphia street art and public art.
• The Mountain and the Maiden: This is the story of a day in the life of Asia. A 10-year-old girl living with her younger brother, older sister, and parents in a one-room-shack in New Delhi near Asia’s biggest landfill.  Asia is the main supporter of her family. Every day she walks up the landfill to collect trash that will later be sold to companies that reuse the materials for their products.
• Kensington in Crisis: Kensington, a Philadelphia neighborhood, lingers in the wake of the opioid epidemic.

Sunday Screening III | 6:00 pm – 7:25 pm | $15

FILMS

• Band Ladies: 5 women, fed up and on the cusp of middle age, turn heir book club into a punk band, twenty years too late.
• BKS: A short fiction film using A.S.M.R. video codes to unfold.
• Chi-Chi: Inspired by true events, the story follows Ava, a young naïve student, as she meets a smooth-talking, wealthy man and gets swept into a world of excess, luxury, drugs, and partying.
• Jamie: A struggling, nineteen years old is contemplating ending her life. On the train to her nan’s, her journey is interrupted by another young woman’s death.
• Anna: An aging single mother who is desperate for a change, goes to a party with a group of American men who are touring the country, searching for love.
• #Princess Problems: In the strenuous world of children’s party entertainment, an overly positive and well-meaning “princess” must win over a practical writer who is doing a story on female role models.

Sunday Screening IV | 8:25 pm – 10:30 pm | $20

FILMS

• Said No Lover: Music Video for the song Said No Lover by Aaron Gibson & Nahuel Bronzini. A song about leaving everything you love and the demons that follow you.
• Shepherd’s Gate: When a hotshot executive is threatened with resignation from her protégé, she’s forced to confront a mysterious past.
• Kinship: Rabah is forced to take over custody of his son Cédrick. The boy has been mute since losing his mother.
• Squall: Two strangers at rock bottom in their lives meet in a hotel bar before going on to spend a night putting their respective broken worlds to rights.
• Jane Doe: A pair of detectives pursue an elusive predator kidnapping women in the San Fernando Valley when they stumble across a victim uncertain she wants to be saved.
• Calf Rope: During the summer of ’66, a former rodeo champion and cattle auctioneer from Oklahoma bonds tightly with his young grandson from suburban Pennsylvania while teaching him a few tricks from his previous trades.

AWARD CEREMONY | SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15TH ~ 9:45 PM | LIVE AT THE COLONIAL | LIVE STREAM ON FACEBOOK

Click here to stream the award ceremony on the FirstGlance Facebook Page