The Maryland Film Festival is an annual five-day international film festival taking place each March in Baltimore, Maryland. The festival was launched in 1999, and presents international film and video work of all lengths and genres. The festival is known for its close relationship with John Waters, who is on the festival's board of directors and selects a favorite film to host within each year of the festival.
Each American feature screened within the festival is hosted by one or more of its filmmakers. The many internationally known filmmakers who have presented their work within Maryland Film Festival include Barry Levinson, David Simon, Kathryn Bigelow, Melvin Van Peebles, Lena Dunham, Lisandro Alonso, Bobcat Goldthwait, Amy Seimetz, David Lowery, Joe Swanberg, Greta Gerwig, Barry Jenkins, Todd Solondz, Anna Biller, and Jonathan Demme.
In addition to forty or more new features and fifty or more new short films, each Maryland Film Festival includes one favorite film selected and hosted by legendary filmmaker and MFF board member John Waters. The films presented by John Waters within Maryland Film Festival have ranged from Joseph Losey's Boom! to Gaspar Noé's I Stand Alone.
Major names in contemporary music have presented favorite films within the festival, including Beach House, Dan Deacon, Branford Marsalis, Marin Alsop, Ian MacKaye, Will Oldham, Jonathan Richman, Bill Callahan, and members of Animal Collective. Each festival also includes a silent film with a live score by Alloy Orchestra. Additionally, personalities ranging from Harry Belafonte to Cal Ripken Jr. have appeared at the festival alongside documentaries about their lives and work.
The festival also programs film events in and around Baltimore year-round, including the film component of Baltimore's annual summer Artscape festival and many events for its membership support group Friends of the Festival.
Festival history
The first Maryland Film Festival screening took place Thursday, April 22, 1999, with an Opening Night presentation of Barry Levinson's documentary Diner Guys (about the real-life inspirations for his first feature film, Diner) at the historic Senator Theatre.
Full programming began April 23, 1999, using all five screens of the historic Charles Theatre. These screenings were the first public use of the newly renovated Charles, which had expanded from one to five screens.
In 2002, the festival dedicated its Opening Night to a collection of short films, and had done so each year since 2004.
In 2009, the festival expanded its offerings of international films, with the stated goal of expanding the scope of international films brought to Baltimore, and in future years bringing a filmmaker to host each foreign feature film screening as the festival does with all American-made feature films.
In 2013, the festival announced its expansion to five days, shifting its Opening Night to Wednesday, May 8, 2013. Previous festivals had been four days, with opening nights taking place on Thursdays. The festival continued as a five-day festival in each subsequent edition.
The 18th annual festival took place May 4–8, 2016, using five screens in and around the Station North Arts and Entertainment District as well as the auditoriums of the Baltimore Museum of Art and Walters Art Museum.
The 19th annual festival took place May 4–7, 2017, using the three screens of the newly restored and expanded Parkway Theatre as well as three additional screens on the nearby Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) campus.
The festival's feature-film programming has emphasized independent films represented by their filmmakers, as well as international works handled by such art-house and specialty film distributors as The Cinema Guild, Oscilloscope Laboratories, Factory 25, Milestone Films, Strand Releasing, and Kino.
The festival has offered the world premieres of such American independent features as Eugene Kotlyarenko's 0s & 1s (2010), Josephine Decker's Butter on the Latch (2013), Stephen Cone's Henry Gamble's Birthday Party (2015), Josh Crockett's Dr. Brinks & Dr. Brinks (2017) and Stephen Cone's Princess Cyd (2017). The 2017 edition featured the U.S. premieres of Hugh Gibson's The Stairs and Ashley McKenzie's Werewolf.
The festival launched a year-round, three-screen venue anchored by a historic, restored 1915 auditorium, The Parkway Theatre, in May 2017.
In November 2022, it was announced that Maryland Film Festival would not hold a 2023 edition, explaining that the festival would "recalibrate its business model amid major changes in the film industry."Amanda Yeager, "Maryland Film Festival will take a hiatus in 2023 as organizers rethink business model", The Baltimore Sun, November 7, 2022
The Maryland Film Festival returned in 2024 for a celebration of its 25th anniversary with KJ Mohr as the festival's new director of programming. Opening night was marked by a proclamation from Governor Wes Moore that May 2 was to be from then on "Maryland Film Festival Day." Highlights included Luther: Never Too Much, a documentary about legendary R&B musician Luther Vandross produced by Jamie Foxx with a Q&A with director Dawn Porter; an outdoor screening of Trans Shorts program hosted by Mickey R Mahoney and Lilly Wachowski, and a series of special retrospective screenings showcasing highlights from the festival's history. MdFF also launched CineTech, featuring new tech-forward programming with exploration of cinema and emerging technologies.
The 26th Maryland Film Festival ran November 5-9, 2025, under the leadership of the new executive director, Nancy Proctor. Highlights included Sun Ra: Do the Impossible, Christine Turner's Baltimore-connected documentary she first caught at Philly’s BlackStar Festival; Junkie, William Means’ feature debut that evolved from shorts work with MdFF; and Powwow People, Sky Hopinka’s experimental film that captures both cultural specificity and artistic invention. This edition of the festival launched student film summits, a dedicated Student Film Day, and a pipeline of student programming interns starting as early as middle school.
The 27th Maryland Film Festival was held April 8-12, 2026. Highlights included the world premiere of Crippled, a Baltimore production ten years in the making about a man living with muscular dystrophy – a horror film about his metaphorical journey of dealing with negligent nursing staff; the mid-Atlantic premiere of If I Go Will They Miss Me, the story of a 12-year-old boy in Los Angeles who turns his LAX neighborhood into his personal living mythological world, starring J. Alphonse Nicholson; the mid-Atlantic premiere of Kikuyu Land, set in Kenya's tea highlands about a man whose attempts to reclaim land and pursue justice for his family that turns into a deeper historical and personal conflict.
The Parkway Theatre
In December 2013, the festival announced its plans to restore The Parkway Theatre, located at North Avenue and North Charles Street in the Station North Arts and Entertainment District, for use as its year-round venue.Jacques Kelly, "Parkway Theatre to get tax credit to help with planned renovations", The Baltimore Sun, December 20, 2013 The Parkway was built for film exhibition in 1915, and became one of Baltimore's first art-house movie theaters in the 1950s, operating under the name Five West, but it closed in 1977. Maryland Film Festival's restoration preserved the original auditorium, and built two smaller screens in an adjacent space.
In Spring 2017, the Parkway restoration project was completed and the theater opened on May 3, 2017, with the opening night of the 19th Annual Maryland Film FestivalMichael Dresser, "Five city projects receive historic tax credits", The Baltimore Sun, December 23, 2013 The first public screening in The Parkway was the Opening Night Shorts Program of the 2017 Maryland Film Festival on the evening of May 3, 2017, hosted by Josephine Decker and Kris Swanberg and the directors of each short film presented. The first short presented, and therefore the first film to play in The Parkway in decades, was Jessica Kingdon's Commodity City. The other shorts presented that evening were Terence Nance's They Charge For the Sun, Jeannie Donohoe's Game, Matthew Salton's Richard Twice, and Nathan Truesdell's Balloonfest. The first feature film screened in the Parkway was Barry Levinson's television film The Wizard of Lies on the afternoon of Thursday, May 4, 2017. The first theatrical film screened in the Parkway, Theo Anthony's Rat Film the same evening, was also a part of the Maryland Film Festival. The first 35mm film screened in the Parkway was Agnès Varda's Vagabond, guest-curated and hosted by the band Beach House, on the evening of Saturday, May 6, 2017. These screenings all took place within Maryland Film Festival 2017. The first live music performance in the restored Parkway was Alloy Orchestra's live score for the German silent film Variety within Maryland Film Festival 2017 on Sunday, May 7.
Films shown at the 2022 event included Navalny, Sirens, and Homebody.
The Parkway Theater closed in January 2023, but announced in May 2024 that it would re-open to host the 25th Maryland Film Festival.
Closing night films
Year Film Hosted By 2003 Standing in the Shadows of Motown members of The Funk Brothers 2004 BAADASSSSS! Mario Van Peebles and Melvin Van Peebles 2005 Swimmers Doug Sadler 2006 The Eagle with live score by Alloy Orchestra Alloy Orchestra 2007 Rocket Science Jeffrey Blitz 2008 Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha Melvin Van Peebles 2009 The Hurt Locker Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal 2010 Mother and Child Rodrigo García 2011 Sing Your Song Harry Belafonte 2012 Dark Horse Todd Solondz and Jordan Gelber 2013 Mother of George Andrew Dosunmu and Bradford Young 2014 Little Accidents Sara Colangelo 2015 The Wolfpack Crystal Moselle 2016 Hunter Gatherer Josh Locy and Andre Royo 2017 The Hero Brett Haley 2018 All Square John Hyams 2019 Luce Julius Onah 2020 N/A N/A 2021 Women Is Losers Lissette Feliciano 2022 Becoming Fredrick Douglass & Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom Stanley Nelson Jr. and Nicole London 2026 Misper Harry Sheriff
John Waters picks
Within every Maryland Film Festival since its launch in 1999, filmmaker and Maryland Film Festival board member John Waters has selected one film to present to an audience. His selections have ranged from vintage cult and camp titles to contemporary ribald comedies and art-house dramas.