The first Fargo Film Festival was held in 2001. It was a three-day event that featured approximately 30 films. The FFF has seen remarkable growth since its inception. It is now the largest and most prominent media arts event in the Dakotas. Today, the FFF is a five-day event that typically features 90-100 films, special guests, educational opportunities, and social activities. My theatre colleagues and I work year-round with a team of approximately 70 volunteers to produce the Fargo Film Festival.
Fargo Film Festival’s 7 Category Winners
Category : Best Animation
FLY
A lonely bird, unable to migrate with the rest of its flock, finds purpose and joy when it begins to care for a new hatchling.
Category: Best Documentary Feature
Krimes
While incarcerated in federal prison, artist Jesse Krimes secretly creates an astonishing 40-foot mural made with bedsheets, hair gel, and newspaper. With the help of fellow artists, he smuggles out each panel piece-bypiece. As Jesse’s work captures the attention of the art world, he struggles to adjust to life outside.
Category: Best Documentary Short Film
When We Were Bullies
A mind-boggling coincidence inspires documentary filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt to track down his 5th grade classmates. He asks them to share memories of a bullying incident that occurred 50 years ago while reflecting on his complicity and the bully in all of us.
Category: Best Experimental Film
The Lenght of The Day
Using archival documents, this collaged essay film shares the emotional history of socialism in the United States as an account of dreams, struggles, and the loss of revolutionaries.
Category: Best Narrative Feature
We Burn Like This
When 22-year-old Rae, a descendant of Holocaust survivors, is targeted by NeoNazis in Billings, Montana, her ancestors’ trauma becomes real. As antisemitism continues to rise in the community, we follow Rae on her journey to forgive herself, her mother, and the broken world. Inspired by true events, this coming-ofage story shows the inherited effects of historical trauma and the strength of survival and healing.
Category: Best Narrative Short Film
The Letter Room
When a kind-hearted prison officer is transferred to the letter room, he soon gets involved in an inmate’s personal affairs.
Category: Best Student Film
Winter of ’79
During the Iranian Revolution, a PersianJewish woman struggles to keep her family safe as she attempts to get her wrongfully convicted husband out of jail.