Chattanooga Film Festival 2026 Announces First Wave of Films

Chattanooga Film Festival has kicked off year 13 with a bang by getting a head start with us cinephiles. Ready to excite us with its offerings, CFF has also lined up filmmaker Joe Lynch as a special guest. This year you can attend in person June 18-21, 2026 or virtually June 19-27. If you can’t attend in person, we highly recommend you attend virtually. One of the many reasons we love Chattanooga Film Festival is that virtual option. But we also love their eclectic choice of films. Here’s a taste of what year 13 has to offer.

GRIND (d. Brea Grant, Ed Dougherty, Chelsea Stardust)

This horror anthology tackles the modern work landscape through four timely perspectives – the hustle culture of an MLM, the endless repetitiveness of a food delivery driver, the online horrors of a content moderator, and the unionization of a familiar-feeling coffee shop.

CAMP (d. Avalon Fast)

Presented by Dark Sky

Haunted by a traumatic past, Emily finds solace as a camp counselor while navigating grief, witchcraft and the power of female friendship. Emily feels at home as she’s taken in by the other counselors, who accept her as she is and wrap her in a veil of peace & forgiveness. Emily stands at the forefront of a new kind of life, but there’s a voice out there in the woods she can’t quite seem to ignore. The voice is whispering – and she’s telling Emily to go home.

FLUSH (d. Grégory Morin)

Presented by Dark Sky

Middle-aged coke fiend Luc (Jonathan Lambert, Quentin Dupieux’s Reality) is having a pretty terrible night. Having gone to confront his ex at the club where she works, determined to somehow win back her love, one thing leads to another and he soon finds himself wedged firmly in a toilet, effectively trapping him in a bathroom stall. Trapped, we should mention, with a heap of coke that he stole from the bar’s resident dealer. He’s soon found, setting off an increasingly crazy series of circumstances that veer from the hilarious to the intensely grotesque as Luc’s world is assailed from every conceivable direction in a bizarre race against time that will have you gasping.

FIRST FEATURE (d. Curtis James Matzke)

World Premiere

Intrepid student filmmaker Thomas Reilly-King (affectionately known as TRK) spends years doing whatever it takes to complete his first feature film, aptly titled Enduring Destiny, as classmate Curtis Matzke documents his antics and looks back on the experience together ten years later. Searching for fame in a production spanning several years, the unflappable writer/director/actor calls in every favor and spends his last dime to realize his bizarre vision. The resulting film is its own brand of absurdity, featuring an 80s-style theme song, superfluous green screen, and excessive ADR. He even makes talking action figures of his character. What began as a behind-the-scenes student production, First Feature is a love letter to student filmmaking in the digital age, showcasing the absurdity of what could be a future cult classic.

MOCKBUSTER (d. Anthony Frith)

A struggling filmmaker’s chance at redemption collides with chaos and compromise as he navigates the eccentric world of notorious production house, The Asylum. Mockbuster is a comedic, behind-the-scenes documentary of the making of a B-grade smash, The Land That Time Forgot, that is both an unashamed celebration of trash cinema and a forensic look at the collision between art and commerce.

LUCID (d. Deanna Milligan and Ramsey Fendall) 

A 1990s art student uses a lucid dreaming elixir to break through creative blocks, but soon finds herself trapped in a nightmarish underworld where her suppressed memories and inner demons become deadly monsters.

Check out a cool film festival run by some cool people, Chattanooga Film Festival this June. Read CFF’s full announcement. Head over here to buy your badges!