On Tuesday evening, the Ivy Film Festival released its 2024 festival line-up — including guest speakers, advance screenings and exhibitions of student work. The festival, which is slated to take place from April 8 to 14, is the “largest student-run film festival in the world,” according to the IFF website.
This year’s festival comes amid widespread Undergraduate Financial Board budget cuts for student organizations, increasing “uncertainty about what resources (IFF) would have to bring guests and make the festival happen to (the) same capacities as previous years,” IFF co-director Ana Boyd ’24 said.
The 2023 SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America strikes also complicated the planning process for this year’s festival, according to IFF co-director Maiya Ramsaroop ’25. The conclusion of these strikes has set the entertainment industry back in motion, making it much harder to book guest speakers, Ramsaroop explained.
Co-coordinator of the IFF’s Speakers and Screeners Department Ailsa Kokoricha ’26 added that these events led to the organization prioritizing availability when booking guest speakers for the events.
The week-long festival will kick off on April 8 with guest speaker Avantika Vandanapu — best known for playing Karen in the 2024 movie-musical adaptation of “Mean Girls.” The talk will be followed by an advance screening of “The Fall Guy” — an action/comedy film with a star-studded cast, including Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt — at the Granoff Martinos Auditorium.
On April 9, the festival’s programming will consist of a screening of “Good One” and a conversation with its director, India Donaldson.
Two screenings will take place at the Granoff Martinos Auditorium on Wednesday. Organized by IFF’s New Media Department, the first screening will be of the experimental film “Last Things,” followed by a screening of “Sing Sing,” produced by A24.
On Thursday, director and producer Doug Liman ’88 will host a speaker event, and an advance screening of the horror film “Abigail” will conclude the day’s events.
Friday sees the screenings of two more films produced by A24: “Janet Planet” and the upcoming thriller “I Saw the TV Glow.”
April 13 and 14 are primarily devoted to the display of student films, screenplays and projects. The Granoff Englander Studio will host the New Media Exhibition on both days after the opening ceremony on Saturday morning. Following this ceremony, there will be a live screenplay reading at the Granoff Kooper Studio.
Student submissions to this year’s IFF rose to over 220 submissions from over 20 countries, according to co-coordinator of the IFF Programming Department, Kayleen Vicente ’24.5. The selected submissions were strong in both their storytelling and technical aspects, according to Vicente. These films were then grouped into three official selection blocks — “Limbo,” “Undergrowth” and “Reverb” — based on their themes.
The official selection blocks will be screened on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. and Sunday at 11 a.m. and 6:30 p.m., respectively.
After the official selection screening on Saturday, there will be an advance screening of “The Idea of You” starring Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine, followed by a conversation with director Michael Showalter ’92.
On Sunday, there will be two virtual guest speaker events with actress Cynthia Erivo and producer Jeff Luini. The festival will conclude later that day with an awards ceremony for featured student work.
Tickets will be available in the coming days on IFF’s Eventbrite and social media pages.
Manav is a sophomore from Indiana, concentrating in International and Public Affairs. In his free time, he likes attempting the daily Connections puzzle or falling down Wikipedia rabbit holes.
