Ten Movies To See at the Charlotte Film Festival

The 17th edition of the Charlotte Film Festival (CFF) kicks off on Tuesday, running for six days through Sunday, Sept. 28. The event kicks off with a premiere screening of Roofman at Carolina Theatre in Uptown, followed by a week of screenings at Independent Picture House (IPH). 

A celebration for cinephiles, the fest’s range of cinematic selections can seem overwhelming. Even a normal week at IPH is sumptuously overstuffed, with multiple showings of several first-run features plus a handful of remastered classics. Now try to select which screening to catch out of more than 130 local, regional, national and international films — plus panels and talkbacks with filmmakers. 

Don’t despair. We’re offering a smattering of CFF’s cinematic goodies. By no means are we saying our selections are the only movies to check out or even the best of the bunch. Think of it as a film lover’s CliffsNotes — except there won’t be a test at the end of this list.

Each listed screening costs $14 for a general admission ticket, though five packs, ten packs and Discover Different passes are available. 

All screenings save for the premiere event are located at Independent Picture House, located at 4237 Raleigh St. Tickets for these films and many others can be purchased at the Charlotte Film Festival website. 

Roofman
Sept. 23 • 7:30 p.m. • Carolina Theatre • Sold Out
Encore showing: Sept. 28 • 5 p.m. • Independent Picture House

The festival opens with the Queen City premiere of director Derek Cianfrance’s Roofman, the Charlotte-based true-crime feature starring Channing Tatum.

Tatum plays serial robber Jeffrey Manchester, the former Army Ranger who was dubbed “Roofman” during his early-aughts crime spree. In the course of his criminal career, Manchester also became a member of a local church, dated a local woman and hid out in a Toys“R”Us store and an abandoned Circuit City. 

Cianfrance (The Place Beyond the Pines) shot at several locations where the events happened with a cast that includes Kirsten Dunst and Peter Dinklage. Reviews say Roofman refuses to conform to any one film genre, and perhaps that’s the point. Manchester’s nonviolent crime spree is utilized as a comic hook — a crook hiding out in a toy store is inherently funny — but the movie is also a heartfelt romance laced with melancholy. 

Roofman doesn’t flinch from examining Manchester’s psychological make-up; why is a smart and essentially decent man unable to control the urge to sabotage his life? While the Carolina Theatre premiere event sold out quickly, Roofman has an encore CFF showing at IPH on Sept. 28.  Watch the trailer here.   

Natchez
Sept. 24 • 7:10 p.m.

Mississippi’s unquiet ghosts persist in filmmaker Suzannah Herbert’s Natchez, a shrewd documentary that examines a Southern city that profits off its antebellum history while grappling with its legacy of slavery. 

Once one of America’s richest cities, Natchez was also home to the second largest domestic slave market in the country, the documentary reveals. Herbert’s fascinating interview subjects include a white woman who runs former plantation home tours while LARPing as a Southern belle and an openly gay white man with neo-Confederate sympathies. It’s an unsettling portrait of a place where the past is still present, which should resonate across America.

Eleanor the Great
Sept. 24 • 7:30 p.m.

In Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, a witty and proudly salty 94-year-old woman tells a harmless-seeming lie that quickly spirals out of control.

Overcoming the devastating loss of her roommate and best friend, Florida retiree Eleanor Morgenstein (June Squibb) is transplanted to Manhattan. Friendless and lonely, Eleanor accidentally hooks up with a support group for Holocaust survivors, where she claims her late roommate’s concentration camp survivor’s story as her own.

Though some reviews compare Squibb’s dialog to sitcom zingers, most find Johansson’s unconventional drama poignant and morally complex. Cast members include Erin Kellyman as Nina, a student journalist eager to hear Eleanor’s story, and Chiwetel Ejiofor as a local newscaster who is also Nina’s father. Watch the trailer here.

House of Ashes
Sept. 25 • 9:15 p.m.

After earning a stellar reputation for crafting visually striking and atmospheric short films, director Izzy Lee opens her crowdfunded debut feature by introducing the audience to a world where women can be criminally charged for having miscarriages. (In South Carolina and other states that scenario is called a documentary.)

Grieving the loss of her husband and unborn child, Mia (Fayna Sanchez) is put under house arrest. Her friend Marc (Vincent Stalba) moves into Mia’s home to provide comfort and support, but Mia starts having visions of her late husband’s ghost. Soon she and Marc are pitted against each other while their grasp on reality slips away.

The unsettling low budget spook show has drawn praise for avoiding jump scares and targeting the corner of your imagination where you can freak yourself out. Watch trailer here.

Deathstalker
Sept. 25 • 9:20 p.m.

Outside of the festival, IPH already runs a popular Grindhouse to the Arthouse series that spotlights low-budget, low-brow exploitation flicks from the past. To our knowledge, the series has never screened producer Roger Corman’s  gloriously trashy 1983 sword-and-sorcery programmer Deathstalker, but IPH balances the cinematic scales by featuring director Steven Kostanski’s 2025 remake/reboot of the same name.

Judging from the splattery trailer, Kostanski wisely treats the material straightfaced, which makes Deathstalker’s (Daniel Bernhardt) gory, practical effects-laden run-ins with grotesque monsters so much fun. The cast includes comic Patton Oswalt. Watch the trailer here.

The Opener
Sept. 26 • 1:30 p.m.

Director Jeff Toye’s The Opener is a feel-good underdog story that earns its warm and fuzzy feels through its unblinking look at the difficulty of making art in uncertain times.

The documentary follows street musician Philip Labes, who penned and played 30 songs amid the fear and uncertainty of the COVID lockdowns. By chance, Grammy-winner singer-songwriter Jason Mraz catches one of Labes’ live-stream TikTok performances and invites him to open for him on his post-pandemic tour. 

Reviews praise the inspiring narrative as it follows Labes’ first major tour and balances its innate sweetness with questions about the gap between reality and dreams. Watch the trailer here.     

Queens of the Dead
Sept. 26 • 8:15 p.m.

You could say Queens of the Dead director Tina Romero has zombies in her blood. Her father, after all, is George Romero, America’s greatest zombie auteur and creator of undead brain-munching classics like Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1980). 

In her feature-length debut, Romero crafts a genuinely funny and scary horror comedy that pits an eclectic group of club kids and drag queens against hordes of ravenous zombies. Reviews laud Romero’s borderline camp sensibility, and her accomplished cast, which includes comedian Margaret Cho. 

Like her father, Romero couples chills with trenchant social commentary. (The movie’s first queer victim is killed by a closeted but now zombified pastor. Make of that what you will.) 

Hard Boiled
Sept. 27 • 9:15 p.m.

With few exceptions, 1980s American action movies sucked. They were cartoonish, ridiculous and you never felt Stallone or Schwarzenegger were ever in jeopardy. So, when Hong Kong action cinema maestro John Woo’s Hard Boiled first played stateside in 1992 it was a revelation.

With operatic shoot em ups like Bullet in the Head, Woo established an over-the-top yet gritty coupling of balletic gunplay and laconic hard-assery that is still copied today. (Hello, John Wick!) In Hard Boiled, Woo’s best leading man, the charismatic Chow Yun Fat (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon), slides down a bannister with dual pistols blazing and blows away a room full of thugs while cradling a baby in his arm. It’s outlandish but somehow you buy it. 

Woo’s masterpiece is presented in a 4K Restoration. Watch the trailer here.       

Fucktoys
Sept. 27 • 9:30 p.m.

Cheerfully shocking, surreal and heartfelt, writer-director-actor Annapurna Sriram’s Fucktoys seems to be set in a post-apocalyptic, late-stage capitalist future where trash is treasured. 

As sweet-natured sex worker AP, Sriram drifts through abandoned homes, sleazy strip clubs and multiple sex acts, traversing a Louisiana bayou shithole called Trashtown in her quest to raise the money she needs to lift a curse that’s been placed upon her. 

With quirky characters, off-color humor and a DIY punk rock aesthetic, Fucktoys has won reviewers over with a sensibility that mixes early Pedro Almodovar classics like Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and a satire of grindhouse fodder like Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat Kill! Kill! 

Filmmaker Sriram will be at the screening. Watch the trailer here.    

John Candy: I Like Me
Sept. 28; 5:10 p.m.

The trailer for Colin Hanks’ documentary about comic John Candy’s life and death begins with a shot of his friend and frequent co-star Bill Murray vowing not to cry, then choking up. 

When Candy died in 1994 at age 43, he was known for his characters like raging egomaniac Johnny LaRue and obsequious talk show host William B. Williams, but as his colleague Catherine O’Hara (Schitt’s Creek) says, “No matter who he played, his true personality always came through.” 

Drawing from home videos, movie outtakes, rare footage from stage performances and interviews with co-stars like Dan Aykroyd, Steve Martin and the director’s father Tom Hanks, the documentary examines a man whose many faults never stopped him from being kind and thoughtful. Watch the trailer here.