Golden Anniversary Atlanta Film Festival Features Two Olympic-Tethered Films + Coffee's For Closers!

Three cheers as the 50th Atlanta Film Festival kicks off today, celebrating five decades of movies and Georgia's storied history, present and future with broadcast and big screen entertainment.

A couple of months ago, it was delightful to learn from ATLFF 50 Executive Director Christopher Escobar, who also champions the historic Plaza Theatre and Tara Atlanta cinemas (the latter a former pro-bono client), that one of this year's festival special presentation screenings is Clint Eastwood's compelling "Richard Jewell" starring Paul Walter Hauser as the doppelganger of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing hero-turned-suspect. 

If you're local and didn't already see "Richard Jewell" around its Dec. 2019 debut, the April 25 presentation at The Plaza is worth a look. 

Bonus: Hauser and others with the film, including one of the authors of "The Suspect" on which the screenplay was partially based, are slated to participate in a post-screening Q&A.

Another Olympic-tethered title also enjoys its Southern debut via ATLFF, with the new doc "The Brittney Griner Story" slated for a May 2 presentation at Tara. I'm still digesting some of the reports from the world premiere and Sundance, and the ESPN Films PR team is mum about filmmaker or the star athlete's potential attendance at the screening. 

I've been keenly interested in speaking with Griner for years, as I was also in the same Moscow airport the week of her arrest there, and her Olympic feats are amazing.

Other ATLFF 50 events that piqued my interest include:

• 
  Current client Mark Mori's feature doc "Baristas vs Billionaires" concerning the earliest days of Starbucks Workers United and the uphill battle they've waged, including their recent record-setting national strike. My engagement at the film's publicist began in the weeks before the film's world premiere at the Buffalo International Film Festival, at which contributing producer Alec
  "Coffee's for Closers!" Baldwin participated. The film's Georgia premiere was reported by GPB Radio, Rough Draft, Saporta Report and Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- please join us at Tara April 28
  
• Mori's first film, the Oscar-nominated doc "Building Bombs," opened the 1989 Atlanta Film & Video Festival (now ATLFF) and recently enjoyed a 4K restoration to debut at Tara April 28
• Another Legacy Screening, this time for 2007's futuristic "Blood Car." Have neither seen nor heard of it but the film's poster image of an axe-wielding driver and his scantily clad female passenger on the chase did catch my eye (The Plaza May 3)
• The filmed in Georgia world premiere of the narrative feature "THIRD" regarding what appears to be a new twist on a love triangle (at Tara April 24)
• "Carolina Caroline" as a crime/romance that, at a glance, smacks of "Natural Born Killers" vibe (Tara May 1)
• "B.F. Skinner Plays Himself" feature doc on the researcher much studied before my psychology major GPA got nuked by statistics class grades (C's and D's) at Minnesota State (The Plaza April 24).

This year's festival is much calmer for this publicist, blogger and film enthusiast as last year around this time we were deep in preparation for the ATLFF world premiere of "The Games in Black & White," a client film enabling my first IMDB credit but more importantly forged four Southeast Emmy nominations for Atlanta Story Partners filmmakers George Hirthler and Bob Judson, who teamed up much like their subjects Ambassador Andrew Young and Billy Payne. 

Their unlikely partnership to successfully bid for and deliver the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games is a most interesting and entertaining five-ringed treat, which also includes numerous Olympians and Olympic Family members. 

The film team is eager for the Emmy winner announcement on May 16 (to tide me over, the media relations for the film recently picked up a Georgia PRSA Phoenix Award and two ICey Independent PR Counselor certificates). 

Check out the full schedule, badge options, tickets, parties and more via the Atlanta Film Festival website. Hope to see you at the movies. 

ATLFF 50 T-Shirt via the festival; "The Brittney Griner Story" via ESPN Films and Sundance