AFI FEST October 21-25, 2026 — Experience premieres, documentaries, world cinema, shorts and filmmaker conversations. Celebrate cinema with five days of screenings in the heart of Hollywood at the TCL Chinese Theatre complex at Ovation in Hollywood. AFI FEST is Los Angeles’ acclaimed film festival. Canva is the exclusive Presenting Sponsor of AFI FEST. FIJI Water is the festival’s Official Water Sponsor. American Airlines is the Official Airline of the festival.
The festival will open with the U.S. premiere of WILDWOOD and close with BEING HEUMANN. Additional Red Carpet Premieres include the World Premiere of THE MOSQUITO BOWL, I PLAY ROCKY and RAY GUNN. Special Screenings include 14th, ASHES, BEHEMOTH!, BITTER CHRISTMAS, BUNKER, CLARISSA, ELSINORE, JOSEPHINE, THE MAN I LOVE, MOUSE, TANGLES and WILD HORSE NINE.
WILDWOOD (TCL Chinese, Oct. 21, 7:30 pm), directed by Siân Heder, is a sweeping animated adventure about love, sacrifice and the magic that reveals itself when we dare to look beyond the familiar – based on a novel by Colin Meloy and featuring a headstrong teenager Pre McKeel on desperate mission into an impassable Wildness along with her hapless loyal classmate Curtis Mehlberg.
THE MOSQUITO BOWL (TCL Chinese, Oct. 22, 7:30 pm), directed by Peter Berg and based on the book “The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II.” After the attack on Pearl Harbor, four of America’s greatest college football stars set fame aside to enlist in the Marines and soon confront the violent realities of World War II. Starring Nicholas Galitzin, Bill Skarsgård, Ray Nicholson, and Tom Francis.
I PLAY ROCKY (TCL Chinese, Oct. 24, 2:00 pm), by director Peter Farrelly tell the electrifying true story of an unknown actor with a unshakable belief that he wasn’t just meant to write 1976’s ROCKY but that he was meant to play Rocky Balboa. It stars Anthony Ippolito as the young Sylvester Stallone.
RAY GUNN (TCL Chinese, Oct. 25, 1:00 pm), directed by visionary Brad Bird, is a retro-futuristic neo-noir mystery in the city of Metropia, where human and aliens live in uneasy coexistence.
BEING HEUMANN (TCL Chinese, Oct. 25, 7:00 pm), directed by Siân Heder is an account of the actions of a young disabled woman named Judy Heumann (Ruth Madeley) and a coalition of outsiders who decide to occupation a federal building and refuse to leave until the bureaucrat in their way (Mark Ruffalo) takes action. This is the closing night red-carpet event of AFI FEST 2026.
This year’s festival presents 157 films across 5 Red Carpet Premieres, 12 Special Screenings, 13 Luminaries selections, 18 Discovery titles, 16 World Cinema selections, 17 documentaries, 3 After Dark films, 4 Guest Artistic Director presentations, 45 films in the Short Film Competition, and 24 films from the AFI Conservatory Showcase presented by AMC Global Media. Of the official selections, 45% are directed by women and 32% are directed by BIPOC filmmakers.
Rounding out the impressive slate of already announced titles are highlights including Lee Chang-dong’s Venice Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize winner POSSIBLE LOVE; Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Cannes prize-winning ALL OF A SUDDEN, starring Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto; Werner Herzog’s highly anticipated BUCKING FASTARD, starring Kate Mara and Rooney Mara; Andrew Haigh’s A LONG WINTER, starring Fred Hechinger, Kit Connor, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Caitríona Balfe; Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert’s THE IDIOT(S) starring Johnny Flynn and Aimee Lou Wood.
It also features Mike Leigh’s San Sebastián Golden Shell winner TENDER LOVING CARE; and the North American Premieres of Asghar Farhadi’s PARALLEL TALES, starring Isabelle Huppert, Vincent Cassel and Virginie Efira; and Céline Sciamma’s TUTTI FRUTTI, which premiered earlier this year at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
