Rural Route Film Festival

Overview

The Rural Route Film Festival is a New York City-based festival dedicated to films about rural people, places, and cultures. Founded in 2002 by Alan Webber and a team of collaborators originally from Iowa, the festival screens work that deals with communities and subjects outside the bustle of the city. The primary setting for submitted work should be rural, or within an agriculture-based city of 200,000 people or less.

The festival is centered in New York City, where both founders met working in the film industry. The annual premiere takes place in NYC, followed by a touring program that brings the curated selection to rural communities, art houses, museums, universities, and community venues across the United States and internationally. Past tour dates have included locations in Iowa, West Virginia, Minnesota, Texas, Colorado, Maine, Oregon, Alaska, Croatia, Austria, France, and Canada.

The festival defines "rural" broadly and leaves it to filmmakers to interpret. Accepted work has ranged from a documentary about an organic turnip farm in Appalachia to a fictional backpacking drama set in the Peruvian Andes to a personal experimental piece about life in a Kazakh village. The programming philosophy is that rural communities are underrepresented in mainstream cinema, and the festival takes cinema directly to the communities whose lives it represents.

Submission Details

The Rural Route Film Festival accepts open submissions. Key details:

The festival accepts all films and videos that can claim a rural theme. This includes documentaries about farming families, fictional narratives set in small towns, experimental works about rural landscapes, and works that incorporate alternative country, country western, or folk music. There is no restriction on year of completion, country of origin, or length.

Submission fees have historically been low compared to larger festivals. The festival previously used Withoutabox and now uses FilmFreeway. Filmmakers should check the Rural Route Films website or FilmFreeway for current deadline and fee information, as the festival operates on a smaller budget than major festivals and its submission window varies.

Touring Program

The touring program is the most distinctive element of Rural Route. After the NYC premiere, a curated "Best of / Shorts" tour program travels to communities that may have no regular cinema access. Past touring venues have included:

• Community halls and micro-theaters (Lascaux Micro-Theater, Buckhannon, WV)
• Museums and art centers (Nevada Museum of Art, Reno; CSPS, Cedar Rapids)
• Universities (Sul Ross University, Alpine TX; Carleton College, Northfield MN; University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
• Independent cinemas (Clinton Street Theater, Portland; Gateway Film Center, Columbus; Indie Memphis)
• Outdoor and unconventional venues (Squeaky Wheel bike-in movie, Buffalo; Smiling Hog's Head Ranch, NYC)
• International venues (Festival Der Neue Heimatfilm, Austria; Festival Int'l du Film Documentaire sur la Ruralite, France; Kinookus Food Film Festival, Croatia; Arica Nativa Festival de Cine Rural, Chile)

The touring model means selected films reach audiences with the deepest personal connections to their subject matter. A documentary about Kansas farming screens for Kansas farmers. A film about Appalachian agriculture screens for Appalachian communities. This creates a feedback loop between filmmaker and audience that standalone urban festivals cannot replicate.

Filmmakers and community organizers can contact the festival to arrange a touring screening in their hometown, school, or community event.

Programming Categories

The festival does not publish rigidly defined competitive sections in the manner of large festivals. Programming is organized thematically around the submitted work each year. Typical programming includes:

• Rural Documentary - films about farming, agriculture, and rural life
• Short Films - short-form work from rural perspectives, including narrative, experimental, and documentary
• Environmental and Agricultural - films about land use, food systems, sustainability, and climate
• International Rural - films from rural communities outside the US, reflecting global rural experiences
• Archival Program - older works that engage with rural themes, screened alongside contemporary submissions

Festival History

The Rural Route Film Festival was founded in 2002 in New York City by Alan Webber (Creative Director), who hails from Elkader, Iowa, and a team of collaborators with rural backgrounds. The festival grew out of a desire to screen work about rare people and cultures normally overlooked by mainstream media.

Between 2008 and 2009, Webber traveled to all seven continents screening the Rural Route program, establishing the festival's international reach. The touring model developed organically from community requests and partnerships with rural arts organizations, universities, and independent cinemas.

The festival has maintained a focus on the slow food movement, environmental issues, and life sustainability throughout its programming. Its agricultural consultant, Severine von Tscharner Fleming, founded the Society for Agriculture and Food Ecology (SAFE) at UC Berkeley and produces the documentary "The Greenhorns" about America's young farming community. This connection to the agricultural world gives the festival a credibility that urban film festivals programming rural content cannot match.

The festival is based at PO Box 3462, Steinway Station, Astoria, NY 11103. Contact is available through filmfest@ruralroutefilms.com.

What Filmmakers Should Know

Rural Route is the most targeted platform available for filmmakers whose work deals with rural life, agriculture, and small-town communities. The submission pool is small relative to major festivals, which means a well-made film with an authentic rural perspective has a realistic chance of selection.

The touring model is the primary value proposition. A film selected for Rural Route does not just screen once in New York. It tours to communities across the US and internationally, reaching audiences who rarely see their own lives reflected on screen. For documentary filmmakers addressing rural subjects, this creates a distribution mechanism that no other festival offers at this scale.

The festival's definition of "rural" is deliberately broad. Filmmakers should not self-reject because their film does not fit a narrow definition of agricultural documentary. The festival has programmed everything from camping-trip comedies to Kazakh village portraits to films featuring loud rock music in cornfields. The key criterion is that the primary setting is rural or within a small ag-based community.

There is no stated premiere requirement, which means films that have screened at other festivals remain eligible. This is an advantage for filmmakers whose work has already played regional or niche festivals but has not yet reached the rural communities it depicts.

The festival operates on a small budget with a volunteer-driven team. Filmmakers should not expect large cash prizes or industry market presence. The value is in audience access, community engagement, and the opportunity to screen work for the people whose lives it represents.

See Also

Calculate your total festival submission costs and projected return using the Festival ROI Calculator. For documentary filmmaking approaches, see Documentary Filmmaking Guide. For environmental cinema, see Environmental Film Festival at Yale. For festival strategy guidance, see Film Festival Strategy. Visit the official Rural Route Films website or check FilmFreeway for current submission details.