We made it through the winter and now it is one of our favorite seasons of the year – Milwaukee Filmfest season! You may think we are kidding but did you know that little old Milwaukee hosts a world class film festival each year? It does, and we are big fans!
Andrew and I are Milwaukee Film members because we are such avid film fans. One of of our membership perks is that we get to see an independent film once a month at the Oriental Theatre typically on the last Wednesday of the month. This is for members only and is usually a film that would be hard to see elsewhere.
We like to attend the 4:00 p.m. showing and each month the theater is full. Often Perry Petta will play the amazing historic 1925 Wurlitzer theater pipe organ at the Oriental Theatre. He is a phenomenal organist and his playing puts us in the mood for a great film. I never cease to chuckle when his performance ends just before show time and the organ lowers into the floor as he plays. Kristopher Pollard, the membership director comes out next to make announcements in a very entertaining way. Last week he announced that the filmfest booklets that outline and describe all 244 films featured during the festival would not be available this year. The crowd went wild with booing and out loud complaining. He laughed and said – if that was really true I would have sent an intern to make the announcement!
We LOVE when the Filmfest booklet comes out and we take home two because we have a little fun ritual that Andrew and I go through each year. It goes like this. We head to a secret spot with a pen and go thru the entire booklet separately and read thru the various movie descriptions, circling the ones that sound interesting to us. Then we compare notes and look for films that we have both chosen. This year we bought two 10 packs of tickets which means we get to see 10 films. We had found 13 films in common. So next we look at the film calendar against our personal calendars and see if there are any conflicts. The film festival will run from April 16-30, 2026 and will be held at Milwaukee’s two historic theaters – the Oriental and the Downer – both now under the ownership of Milwaukee Film. Most of the films are played more than once but it is still a feat to find the 10 that we want to see without time, location and personal calendar conflicts.
This year it went pretty easily but some years there is all manner of jockeying to get the schedule to work. After that we wait patiently for the day the tickets go on sale and we pounce! Milwaukee Film has a brand new website and it worked beautifully to exchange online our 10 packs into film tickets. We also bought 6 extra tickets so that we can take my siblings out to see The Kings of Venice – a hilarious movie we saw at the last member screening and want to see again and enjoy with our family – some of whom are pickleball players. If you have looked up what The Kings of Venice is about you will know why we want to take them to see this film.
This year we were able to attend a trailer/recommendation event put on by Milwaukee Film the week before tickets went on sale. The new Executive Director – Dr. Susan Kerns was the first to tell the audience what her favorite film was in this year’s line-up. She was followed by the movie reviewers of Milwaukee Magazine and the Milwaukee Record. After that Kristopher Pollard and several other directors of the various film categories came on stage to tell us their favorites. After each was finished we got to see a trailer of their favorite films. What fun! It really built excitement for the festival this year. And interestingly Andrew and I had 5 of the films they had recommended on our own lists.
Ticket sales for nonmembers starts April 8th. You can buy individual tickets or purchase a 6 pack, 10 pack or an all movies pass. If you don’t have the film booklet handy, all the films with descriptions are listed on the website with links to trailers. You can find this at mkefilm.org.
If you are a film nut like we are or if you are just in town some time those two weeks and are looking for something really fun to do, we highly encourage you to take in a movie! If you read this and think – Hey! That sounds fun! and want to head to Milwaukee for the film festival, know that there are rooms for you at The Muse. We will keep the booklets with our circled favorites for you to look at and we can talk all things movies at breakfast each morning! Hope to see you there! We will let you know our favorites after we see them ourselves.