(bright gentle music) (scene whooshing) (bright gentle music continues) - Hello, and welcome to "Prairie Pulse".

Coming up later on the show, we'll show clips from the winning films from the 2023 Fargo Film Festival.

But first, joining me now is Sean Volk, the Fargo Theater Development and Engagement Manager.

Sean, thanks for joining us today.

- Thank you so much for having us on "Prairie Pulse" to talk about the festival.

- Well, and that's what we're here to talk about.

But before we talk about the festival, tell the folks a little bit about yourself and your background.

- Well you know, I started working at the Fargo Theater in this role in March of 2020, right before a very certain event kind of derailed the world, and I have been a lifelong movie lover.

I attended Concordia College in Moorhead where I studied philosophy, communication and Spanish.

And then I was fortunate right after graduation I started working at the Fargo Theater as the operations manager there, and I worked there for a number of years before I went to get my film studies master's degree at Western University in London, Ontario.

And since then, I've been fortunate to work for a number of film festivals, programming at festivals around the country.

And then like I said, March 2020, it was like I was called back home to the Fargo Theater and I have been in the role ever since.

And I'm just so grateful to be here, able to talk about the festival, and able to celebrate in person again.

- Well, this is the 23rd annual Fargo Film Festival, March 21st through the 25th.

Tell us about this year's festival.

- Gosh, you know, I'm so excited for the festival this year because I think it's truly going to be bigger than it's ever been before.

We have three special guests that I know we'll talk about a little bit later that we are so excited to be welcoming, Cary Elwes, Mike Flanagan and Kate Siegel.

We have more than 100 films playing in the festival, 107 to be precise.

We've got visiting filmmakers coming from around the country and internationally.

It's just gonna be wonderful to see audiences coming in and out of the Fargo Theater all week long to watch movies, celebrate film, and support the Fargo Theater.

- Well there's a lot, I don't even know where to start here but let's go through the showcase nights- - Of course.

- At the festival, starting with Tuesday, March 21st with the documentary feature winner "JessZilla"?

- Yes, "JessZilla".

- "JessZilla".

- You know, I know I shouldn't say that I have some favorites, but "JessZilla" is certainly one of my favorites.

I'm really excited for audiences to see this film.

It's about a young boxer, she's a teenager in the film, and the film follows her for five to six years of her life as she trains to become an Olympic-caliber junior boxer.

She dreams of fighting in the world's biggest stages and biggest arenas, like at Madison Square Garden, but it's a documentary.

So we're following her behind the scenes, we're seeing her train, but then everything gets really kind of changed when an unexpected health diagnosis comes in and changes the trajectory of her life and her career.

It's not an exaggeration to say that I laughed, I cried, I cheered while I was watching it, and I can't wait to share it with audiences.

The film's director, Emily Sheskin, and the film's producer, Ben Kainz, they're gonna be here in Fargo.

Emily came with a short film version of this in 2018, and it won best documentary short then.

And so it's really exciting to have this kind of full circle moment, that she's coming back five years later with a feature, and it just premiered at The Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Montana and that's one of the most prestigious doc festivals in all of North America.

So we're truly one of the second or third audiences in the world to get to see this movie.

This is so exciting, and it's the best way possible to open the festival.

- Wow, well that's great.

And what about Wednesday night?

- So Wednesday we shift gears quite a bit, and we move from this kinda moving sports drama to a night of short comedies.

So across the different categories of the festival we received some really funny, funny films that we thought, "Let's build a block that helps us just kinda come together as a community and have a laugh."

So we're able to spotlight things from animation, documentary, and also narrative shorts, so fictional short films.

One of my favorites that's in it is a documentary short called "In Search of Boozers and Schmucks", and it's about a man who has a very unusual athletic card collection, where he tries to find names of players, real names, that are either inappropriate, a little bit silly, or kind of on the risque side.

And he has just amassed this huge collection, and this documentary profiles him and shows off some of his favorites.

We're also really excited because a frequent guest of the festival, Paul Bailey, is coming back.

He's an actor from the UK who just finished filming series four of "You" for Netflix.

He's coming back with a short film, "Can't Stop Me", that's about a young man who's on a job interview and he just starts lying.

And you hear his internal monologue trying to course correct and stop, like these series of weird lies that are just getting progressively bigger, and he doesn't, so it's great.

And then, you know we're also showcasing some local voices as well.

Toby Jones is a filmmaker that I'm sure some of our audiences will be familiar with if they've attended the festival in the past.

His short film, "AJ Goes to the Dog Park: Part One" is a really funny look at a man who is kind of spurred to action when the dog park that he takes his beloved pets to closes, and he wants to change it.

It was filmed right here in Fargo.

So you're gonna see a lot of familiar faces and places, and it's gonna be a lot of fun to have a hometown showing of that movie.

- Hmm, well and then Thursday night, March 23rd, you have a film by a frequent filmmaker guest.

- Yeah, so Mike Schultz is back, if you've seen some of his fantastic works before, like last year he had "New Horizons" and the feature documentary "Rip List".

It's so great, he is back with a film called "Iron Opera", and it's about a group of people in the Iron Range in Minnesota who are putting on a world class opera.

They fly in performers from around the country, around the world.

They get a full flight of musicians to create the music, and then they use locals to act and serve in the ensemble and sing and perform.

So it's this really very funny and very charming and really kind of earnest film about, you know, it doesn't mean that you have to be in a major city to have arts like opera.

You can create it wherever you are.

And Mike Schultz has this very unique, very quirky way that he sees the world, and he communicates that so beautifully here.

One of the film's primary protagonists, one of the subjects, his name is Steve.

The first time you meet him, he is on a skateboard going down the street playing an accordion.

Like, that's just kind of like a glimpse at the world of "Iron Opera".

So Steve is gonna be here and Mike Schultz, and they're going to do a Q&A afterwards.

And Steve is a really impressive musician, and he's gonna play music before the film starts.

- Mm-hmm, well you've already had three big nights, but Friday night's a really big night.

- Yes.

- Tell us about that evening.

- So Friday night is "An Inconceivable Evening with Cary Elwes", from "The Princess Bride".

So we are gonna be showing "The Princess Bride" on the big screen, and then Cary Elwes will be here in Fargo in person to do a discussion and Q&A afterwards.

So it's a really cool opportunity to meet a true Hollywood legend.

You know, he's in "The Princess Bride", he's in the "Saw" franchise, he's in "Twister".

He's in the next "Mission Impossible" movie that's coming out, and you know, he's stopping by Fargo for the festival to hang out with us and talk a little bit about a movie that's beloved by so many people.

I will say this is a sold out event, so even though I did just do a nice pitch, I hope you have your tickets already because they are gone.

They were sold out in less than a day.

It was remarkable to watch it.

And the theater seats more than 800 people, so you know there was demand for it.

- Yeah there was, there was.

And of course, finally Saturday night, March 25th, you've got another big evening.

- This is really exciting.

Mike Flanagan, who is a writer, director, producer, and Kate Siegel, who is an actor and writer, they're a married couple, and if you like horror movies or genre fare, you know and love Mike and Kate.

Mike is the mind behind "The Haunting of Hill House" on Netflix, "Midnight Mass", "The Haunting of Bly Manor".

He did the sequel to "The Shining", "Doctor Sleep" that came out a couple of years ago.

He's a real force to be reckoned with in the horror community, and his wife Kate Siegel is a really profoundly talented actress, and she shows that the very, very best of horror is personal and it is human.

And it shows that, you know, horror is used as a lens to see and understand the world in really rich ways.

They're gonna be here in Fargo for the festival, and we're closing out with a conversation between the two of them.

Mike was here, I wanna say it was in 2011, with his debut feature "Absentia".

And so it's incredible to see somebody who came in with their independent feature, who now has had development deals with Netflix and Amazon, that's adapting Stephen King works into movies.

It's so exciting to welcome him and Kate to the festival, and to get to spotlight their work and talk about, you know, how artfully they craft and treat the horror genre.

- Mm-hmm, well and I understand this year the Two-Minute Movie Contest is on a different night.

Can you talk about that real quick?

- Yeah, you know, the Two-Minute Movie Contest is a fan favorite at the festival.

Tickets for it are only $2, so you know, whether you are coming to the festival for the first time, or you just wanna see a bunch of really cool, eclectic shorts, like that's a perfect gateway.

That's moved to Thursday this year at 9:15 PM, and it's cool, everyone that enters a film for that is given a simple prompt.

You have to tell a story in under two minutes, and it has to firmly be under those two minutes.

And we fill out a really exciting, cool block of films that people will get to see this year on the big screen.

- What about your Best of Fest now on Saturday afternoon?

Tell us about that special session.

- Oh, yeah, Saturday afternoon is gonna be a really exciting time to be at the Fargo Theater.

We are gonna be showing some of the very best shorts in the festival, things that won their categories, and we're going to have a number of special guests who will be there as well.

So if you want just kind of like the perfect little snippet, this kind of encapsulation of all that the film festival has to offer, I'd say stop by at 1:30 on Saturday and you can see a lot of different kinds of films.

- You know, how many filmmakers, actors actresses will be attending, and who are some you can highlight for us?

- Yeah, well you know, including our special guests, you know we're really excited to be welcoming more than 20 filmmakers this year.

This is gonna be a really exciting year to have people traveling to Fargo to support their work, to talk all about the films that they've created and connect with our audiences.

You know, I know I've mentioned some of our special guests already, but one I'd really like to highlight is a filmmaker named Allison Otto who's coming on Friday afternoon.

She's going to be here with a documentary feature called "The Thief Collector".

And this is just another, it's a very quirky true crime documentary, and when you hear kind of true crime, you don't necessarily think quirky, but it's about a very brazen art heist that happens during the middle of the day.

A couple walks into a museum in Arizona, and they cut a painting out of its frame and walk out of the museum with it.

But the thing is, this painting is worth millions of dollars, and they just get away with it.

And it's about who took the painting, what their motivations were, but it's a, you know, it's told through this very kind of unique perspective that's looking at the art world, how art is valued, but then also what's the mindset of somebody who is gonna go and steal a painting like that, but then not sell it.

So that's the kind of person that the film refers to as a thief collector, thus the title.

She'll be here for her film screening on Friday, and you do not wanna miss it.

- Yeah, can you talk a bit about the history and how it got started?

- Yeah, you know, a group of movie lovers got together and planned our first festival back in 2001, and that group included Margie Bailey, Tony McCrae, Rusty Castleton, Ted Larson, and you know, I think that they looked around at the film landscape, at the arts landscape, at what the Fargo Theater does best, with showing movies.

And they said, "Well, why don't we have a film festival?

So many other places do."

You know the first one was two-and-a-half days long and had about 30 movies.

So you can see since then we've sure grown quite a bit, and it's exciting to see how we've stayed true to the legacy and mission that they have created, and also how we've been able to kind of grow and expand beyond some of those initial dreams and goals.

- Yeah, can you also talk about the good work of the many volunteers that you have that work on the project?

- Yeah, of course.

You know, I feel very fortunate.

I work very closely with our executive director, Emily Beck, who's our festival director.

And you know, she is just a tireless advocate for the theater and for our entire team.

She, you know, really kind of bolsters us and keeps us going and gives the fest the direction that it has.

And you know, we are so fortunate to work with a group of more than 60 people year-round to put on this event.

We always joke that one festival finishes, and then we take about a month off, and then we get back to work.

Because it truly, we work around the year, recruiting and soliciting films to get them to submit, reaching out to special guests and getting things coordinated.

And it's really a hometown festival.

There aren't a lot of places that can brag about that the way that we can, that the movies that we're playing, that we're showcasing, that we love, that we're putting on our screen at the Fargo Theater, are picked by your friends and neighbors, and that's really exciting.

- Yeah, can you talk about the various passes?

You've kinda mentioned $2 for the Two-Minute thing, but that they can get to attend the festival?

- [Sean] Of course.

- Or can they just attend one or two sessions?

- Yeah you know, it all depends on your availability and how much of your time you wanna commit to sitting in the dark, luxurious movie theaters at the Fargo Theater.

Whether you wanna come for one session in the morning or afternoon or evening, or you wanna come for the whole thing, we've got a ticket or pass for you.

We've got two passes on sale this year, the Festival Fanatic Pass, that gets you into almost every single thing, except for that sold out Cary Elwes event.

And then our Movie Lover Pass, that gets you into our official selection sessions, and they're built and designed to encourage you to come and try new things.

Because the Fargo Film Festival, it's all about variety.

We have so much going on, and you know, tickets range from $2, like you said, for the Two-Minute, and then you can go to movies in the morning or afternoon for $9, or at night they're 12.

And then those passes are either 100 or $150.

- Yeah, and I understand you have lunch panels.

Can we talk about that?

- We do yeah, so lunches are back.

This is something that we're really excited to be able to revisit this year.

On Friday and Saturday of the film festival we're going to be having two lunch panels at the Radisson.

The first one is going to be talking about true crime in media.

So we'll have special guests talking about true crime in journalism, podcasts and on film.

And then on Saturday we're going to do a panel specifically about screenwriting.

What does it mean to create a story and bring it to the screen, and how much of that comes from what's on the written page?

It's gonna be really exciting to sit down with some of these artists, and those will be at the Radisson at noon those days.

- Mm-hmm, do you feel like the festival has turned the corner since COVID?

You had two virtuals.

Of course now this is, you're back, this is the second time in-person since then.

Have you turned the corner?

- I really think so.

You know, I meant it when I said it at the beginning, I think it's bigger than it's ever been before.

Last year, you know, was very much a rebuilding year, because after, you know a film festival, you're meant to be in-person.

You're meant to be gathering, you're meant to be watching movies together on the big screen.

And when you do that virtually, and you're having people watch from their own homes, it's a different experience than when you get to be in person again.

So you know, we're excited to be back.

We're excited to already have a sold out event, and Mike and Kate are already, you know, so well sold as well, and so many of our passes have sold as well.

Like, it's just gonna be really exciting to see people in person going to the movies and celebrating independent cinema.

- You know, why are film festivals so important for young filmmakers?

- Yeah, well you know, I think a film festival is so important for a young filmmaker, for new filmmakers, and really anybody creating content outside of the Hollywood studio system, because it offers you a really unique opportunity to showcase your work.

You're gonna be able to get feedback from audiences, see what worked, what didn't.

You're gonna be able to connect with your peers as well.

It's a really wonderful opportunity for networking, and to meet people that you might wanna work on a project with in the future.

Film festivals are a really exciting, unique space for collaboration.

- Yeah, the film festival used to be held in early March, now it's a little bit later in March.

Have you seen a positive difference in that?

- Oh gosh, yes.

You know, if we're just thinking from a practical weather standpoint, you know March, towards the end of the month is you know, a lot warmer.

It's hopefully, knock on every wooden surface we have, less blizzards possible.

But you know, it's been wonderful.

The Fargo Film Festival is the Fargo Theater's largest annual fundraiser.

So it's really important for us to get that timing right because, you know every ticket we sell, every pass we sell, heck, every popcorn that we sell, you know at the concession stand, all of the money that we raise during those five days go to support the Fargo theater year round as a nonprofit arts organization.

So you know, we are so grateful to be back in person towards the end of March.

- Yeah, well finally, if people want tickets or more information, where can they go?

- Of course, go to fargofilmfestival.com.

You're gonna find out information about all 107 movies playing.

You can find out how much tickets cost, and you can even buy them online at fargofilmfestival.com.

- Well Sean, thanks so much for joining us today.

But right now, let's take a look at clips from the winning films at this year's festival.

(tense ominous music) - Step out.

Arms, arms.

(tense ominous music continues) - Hey.

- You don't need it.

We're just talking.

- Whoa, boys.

(laughing) No need to get testy.

Welcome, I'm Billy.

(tense unsettled music) It's all right, we're back to shaking hands.

I don't have the virus.

- Justin.

- Good.

Well now that we're not strangers, let's go on in, let's have a chat.

- [Narrator] Pro coach Don Somerville, a former pro boxer with nearly 30 years experience, says he's never seen a talent with Jesselyn's discipline at this age.

- She has that desire to be different, and that's the uniqueness.

At nine years old, I don't have to ask her to do anything twice.

- [Interviewer] Doesn't it hurt getting hit?

- Eh, I spar with boys a lot, so I'm used to like the punches.

- Whoa.

- You get hit, but then you hit them with a really hard punch, and then you're like, "Oh I got the leg, keep going."

And it's really fun, actually, I love it.

- With the little champ, JessZilla, you know it Jess.

- I already know that I'm gonna become professional.

I know I want to do that.

My big goal, I wanna go to the 2024 Olympics and win the gold.

I just keep repeating it to myself every day inside the gym so I could push myself harder.

- [Interviewer] Do you ever worry that this is going to be too hard?

- I never, ever, ever, maybe like a hundred evers, think anything's too difficult for me.

(dramatic expectant music) (gentle thoughtful music) (movie cast and crew speaking in foreign language) (Kingyo sighing) (gentle thoughtful music continues) (Kingyo speaking in foreign language) - [Narrator] You can never really imagine that hurtful and harmful person to be in the same house as you.

(camera clicking) (tense expectant music) (birds chattering) - I like the American country music.

I mean, just the quietness and the soothing.

I mean, I don't know how many kind they are.

There is just one that I listen, is this a background, a country music?

I listen to that, it kind of relaxes me.

- The country music, it seems to me it's coming from, from the heart.

How you feel about the society or the community, wherever you live.

And to express those feelings in a very simple and straightforward way.

- [Bibi] I felt I became American, I think after maybe five years after I learned that language.

I was in school, I had the second child born.

I became very comfortable with my life.

- I felt as an American probably early on.

And the community also embraced me without any hesitation.

- [Narrator] It's about a guy with the weirdest superpower that I've ever seen.

(soft thoughtful music) He was not the prettiest nor the smartest guy in town, (punches thudding) but he sure as hell was the toughest.

(punches thudding) (crowd shouting) For when he was a young boy, (door creaking) he saw something so deeply disturbing, (fighter sighing) so gut-wrenching, that he stopped feeling anything.

(boys speaking in foreign language) (skin scraping) (tense expectant music) (boys panting) (boy speaking in foreign language) (boys laughing) (soft tense music) (Grandma and boy speaking in foreign language) (slides clacking) (soft expectant music) (bell dinging) (soft expectant music) (slides clacking) (soft expectant music continues) - Well, that's all we have on "Prairie Pulse" for this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

(bright gentle music) - [Announcer] Funded by the members of Prairie Public.

(bright gentle music continues)