The Atlanta Documentary Film Festival (Docufest), part of a slate of festivals put on by the Atlanta Film Series every year, celebrated its 20-year anniversary with a successful event this past weekend — with one of their best turnouts in years.
Docufest was held from March 22 and 23 at the Limelight Theater in Atlanta. It is the first of several film festivals that Atlanta Film Series hosts each year; in addition to Docufest, Atlanta Film Series hosts AtlantaShortsfest, Atlanta Underground Film Festival, Atlanta Horror Film Festival (Horrorfest) and Atlanta Micro Short Film Festival (MicroShorts).
Docufest 2025 sold over three times as many tickets as it did last year, according to Atlanta Film Series. Kelsey Coy, festival director for the Atlanta Film Series, said that organizers did several things differently this year than in previous years.
“For the first time, we offer[ed] an all-access pass, which gets you into all of our festivals for the whole year… I’m hoping that starting with this festival; we’ll get to see some familiar faces coming in for the rest of the year,” Coy said.
Coy said she was happy to be back at the Limelight Theater to show off such a great set of films this year, especially since so many are independently produced and from Atlanta filmmakers.
“The majority of what we work with are indie films. I’d say about a third of our lineup is typically student submissions from SCAD or Georgia State or other institutes across the country. And we do have a lot of international submissions,” Coy said. “So, these are not films with large crews and large budgets — although we do get a handful of those. But because this is mostly smaller enterprises… there’s a lot of passion behind these projects that you really see from people working hard to get funding and bring their dreams to the screen.”
Films this year ranged from the cocoa-making process to the state of education in the U.S. to some of the biggest decentralized finance cyber hacks of all time and just about everything in between.
Documentaries exist in an intermediary limbo space; they are understood to generally tell real stories but, at the same time, are able to take artistic liberties in how that story is told. They are often used by journalists and can be a form of journalism — though not always considered journalism — and are also true films in their own right.
The documentary film medium, traditionally, was tiny compared to its feature film counterparts that could fill up theaters on opening day. Few documentaries have been widely distributed through theaters that could command that sort of attention.
New forms of media consumption, such as streaming, have given documentaries a new place to exist and be appreciated; according to Parrot Analytics, the demand for documentaries rose 44 percent from 2021 to 2023. Coy said that some films from years past have gone on to be picked up by streaming giants. They’ve also given the films more agency to explore ways of telling true stories in an engaging way.
Moreover, docuseries have become fan favorites. Some, like Planet Earth, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, American Greed, Dateline and a number of other true-crime docuseries, have long existed. Other limited series like The Last Dance, OJ: Made in America and Tiger King became sensations and captivated audiences for a limited time.
“Documentaries don’t have to be stuffy; they don’t have to be boring. They can be highly entertaining,” Coy said. “They do tend to be very factual, but a lot of times, you’ll find documentaries about things you would have never imagined.
Filmmaker Thomas Hoebbel, whose film “Are We There Yet?” screened at Docufest 2025, saw his documentary rise in relevancy over the last few months — a trend for which he expected the opposite when he was initially looking at releasing the film.
His film, centered around migration, was created as a collaboration of funding from the Tompkins County Office of Human Rights and Cornell University. It follows nine immigrants from eight different countries from January 2024 to September of that year.
“We were well aware when we were shooting this of the debates going on between Biden and Trump about immigration… one of the reasons I really wanted to premiere the film in Ithaca, N.Y., in October was because I wanted it to come out before the election,” Hoebbel said. “One of my worries was after the election, this issue [in the public eye] is going to disappear because Trump’s going to disappear… I was wrong… it’s only become more relevant.”
What’s more, some of the topics covered in the film are outdated, Hoebbel said, with the new federal administration ushering in new policies, especially surrounding refugee status and seeking asylum.
“The rhetoric the news and everybody creates around this immigration problem as a ‘them’ — this huge monolith — that’s invading our country,” Hoebbel said. “The film really looks at individuals. You get to learn their names, see them in the program, the countries they came from, the types of things they were escaping, their reasons for wanting to live here — and it really humanizes that idea of immigration. They are a real person.”
The winners of the festival were announced on the second night:
- Best Feature Documentary: “Clear Sky” – Shawn Clearsky Davis and Michael Del Monte
- Best Documentary Short: “A Butterfly Has Been Released” – Jason Zamer, Jacob Ross and Barry Koch
- Best Student Documentary: “When I’m In The Water” – Kennedy Laylon
- Best Local Documentary: “Ride in Paradise” – Kent Thalman and Anna Thalman
- Best Director: “The Kids Are Not Alright” – Mikaela Shwer
- Jury Award: “Living UNDONE” – Amanda Kasmira Cryer
- Audience Choice Award: “On Beyond Fences” – Lara Jacqueline Hartzenbusch, Tom Donohue, Jack Kudas, Wes Smith and Silvia Sonntag
A final note Coy would make to independent filmmakers is that these festivals aren’t measured simply by winning an award.
“There’s value in the little festivals… you can meet people who have gone from our relatively smaller screens to every TV in America or across the world,” Coy said.
