AFI Fest Opens Tonight: President & CEO Bob Gazzale On Why It Matters In The Oscar-Season Deluge Of Film Festivals – The Deadline Interview

It is a landmark year for the American Film Institute‘s annual AFI Fest which this year celebrates its 40th anniversary. Opening tonight with the North American premiere of Laika’s epic animated feature, Wildwood. and closing Sunday night with Apple’s Being Heumann from Coda Oscar winning director Sian Heder, this year’s fest will be presenting 157 films across 5 Red Carpet premieres, 12 special screenings, 13 Luminaries selections, 18 Discovery titles, 16 World Cinema selections, 17 documentaries, 45 films in the short film competition, 24 films from the AFI Conservatory Showcase 4 Guest Artistic Director presentations, 3 After Dark films, and a Partridge in a pear tree.

Actually the Partridge has not been confirmed to appear, but this lineup right in the heart of Hollywood taking over the TCL Chinese Theatre for five days is quite the ambitious effort that has a rich history starting with the independently-created Filmex before AFI came in morphing into AFI Fest in 1986.

Other red carpet galas include Thursday night’s World Premiere of the Peter Berg directed Netflix WW2-set movie, The Mosquito Bowl; Peter Farrelly’s Rocky Oscar Best Picture winner’s origin story, I Play Rocky; and the North American Premiere of Brad Bird’s ambitious Netflix noir ‘toon, Ray Gunn. There will also be an evening devoted to this year’s guest artistic directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller who have chosen to present Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey in all its glory on the large TCL Chinese Theatre’s IMAX screen (appropriate since the pair directed 2026 outer space Oscar contender Project Hail Mary ); and on Friday Quentin Tarantino will appear for a Q&A following a sold out special screening of his 2019 epic circa ’69-set Los Angeles tale, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood which is a timely primer because late next month Netflix will be debuting The Further Mis-Adventures Of Cliff Booth with Brad Pitt reprising his Oscar winning role in the David Fincher-directed prequel from Tarantino’s script .

The lineup is peppered with a number of Oscar hopefuls like Searchlight’s Wild Horse Nine and Behemoth!; Mike Leigh’s likely final film Tender Loving Care; Florian Zeller’s Bunker; Elsinore with Andrew Scott’s much praised performance; and gems from early 2026 festivals such as Sundance sensation Josephine with Channing Tatum; and a truly not-to-be-missed discovery from Berlin, Mouse from directors Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson who also did the magnificent 2024 Sundance debut Ghostlight. If you want a good tip don’t miss Mouse. These filmmakers are the real deal and will be among many other filmmakers and stars attending in person. The lineup also includes 10 official country selections for the International Film race.

So on this occasion what better time than to catch up with AFI President & CEO Bob Gazzale? I did just that to find out where he thinks the Fest fits into their mission, as well as the crowded fall festival traffic jam that kicks off every Oscar season.

DEADLINE: So how did this all start and why is it so important for AFI to continue, even with the onslaught of so many other festivals competing for attention, not to mention one held right in the heart of where so many in the industry live and work?

BOB GAZZALE: You know the history of it. The AFI Fest was built on the very proud foundation that Gary Essert and Gary Abrahams built with Filmex but there was no festival… Oddly, I just saw a film of President Ronald Reagan welcoming everyone to AFI’s 1987 film festival to launch it. Wow! A piece of material I had never seen before. But it’s also what the AFI was built for. And even though times have certainly changed, the founding of AFI was 60 years ago next year, that was back in the day that you and I remember when you were held at the mercy of a programmer at an art house as to whether or not you could see a movie, and so the AFI’s job was to show movies. In the earliest days, it was George Stevens Jr. who programmed films at the National Gallery of Art, and of course at the Kennedy Center, and now at the Silver Theater. So it’s part of our DNA. But when Filmex ran into a little trouble, the idea of having something in Los Angeles was born, and even though the world has changed, and exhibition has changed, and movies and whatever we call them these days are more accessible, what remains true is the goal is to bring people together and to elevate voices, and you know to remind people that the movies are a common heartbeat that can only be experienced together. I mean you can watch a movie alone, but there’s nothing like watching it with a larger group. And what’s really interesting to me, after watching so many of these roll by, is that the last two years of Fest seem to be kind of a harbinger of what we’re seeing with Obsession and Backrooms, and that is that younger people are going to the movies, that’s true. And our research on this has shown that it’s kind of a post-COVID bounce, where people are eager to be together again. And there’s no better place than in the reflection of a light off a silver screen.

DEADLINE: How do you compete with the multitude of other festivals this time of year. It seems everyone has one, and they all want their piece of the pie.

GAZZALE: Well, the philosophy is mainly, you know, there are festivals that are focused on what’s first, right? And our focus is on what’s best. And that’s a very freeing way to program (Todd Hitchcock is director of AFI Fest and AFI Silver Theatre and Culture Center). Because we’re not in the game of first, and the idea that right here in the heart of Hollywood you can experience the very best movies from around the world, that there’s 10 films that are being submitted from their countries for Oscar. That you have the experience without getting on an airplane, that it’s right here in your own backyard, as Dorothy would say. It’s right here. That’s true. That is the goal of AFI Fest, you know, to be LA’s film festival, where you can see the very best films from around the world and the very best films from throughout the year. We have had distributors and streamers call us saying, ‘Well, you probably don’t want this because it’s been at Sundance’. Not true. We celebrate Sundance. We celebrate that all film festivals have their audience, and in our philosophy, the more the merrier.

DEADLINE: It is interesting this year that both your opening night and closing night films have a direct connection to the American Film Institute, don’t they?

GAZZALE: The other thing about 40 years is that it has allowed the institute to, how best say this, fulfill its mandate, it’s vast and varied mandates. We’re opening with Wildwood which is shot by Caleb Deschanel, who was in the very first class of the AFI Institute. We’re closing with Being Heumann. Sian Heder, of course, is an AFI graduate from the directing workshop for women, who has been quoted as saying, ‘If it wasn’t for the AFI, I would never be a director’. And there’s so many alums in here that you know. It just feels like that’s what 40 years allows you to do is to train the next generation of filmmakers and then celebrate their work. My favorite story about this is that Patty Jenkins graduated from AFI, and she had a thesis film called Velocity Rules, and she went to an event at AFI Fest where it was a meet and greet with producers. And she met Brad Wyman. She said, ‘I want to make a movie about a serial killer’. He said, ‘Let’s do it’. They made Monster, and then we had the world premiere at AFI Fest, like that’s all of AFI rolled into one. It’s a film school putting out talented people, and then we get the opportunity to celebrate them in the Chinese theater. Wow, what a thrill!

DEADLINE: How did the idea of getting Phil Lord and Chris Miller involved in your programming this year come about?

GAZZALE: We’ve had so many great artists with David Lynch and Pedro Almodovar and Agnes Varda and Ava Duvernay, and last year with Guillermo del Toro. Given the state of the world today and what’s happening in the exterior, I said to the team who is the most high energy, endlessly inventive group or filmmaker, and they came back with Lord and Miller, and I said ‘let’s go for it’, and they said ‘yes’. And then when they came back with 2001: A Space Odyssey, I said we’re showing that in the big Chinese theater, not the Chinette. They were over the moon thrilled, and then when they came back with other movies including Harold And Maude and Rififi, which I love, it’s the best best movie. And then The Muppet Movie I was like, ‘this is the tonic that ails’. This is why we have a film festival because if you have the opportunity to see two or one or three or four of those movies, you’re going to feel better about your life.

The 40th AFI Fest runs October 21–25 at TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.