Stratford Winter Film Festival promises a quality experience for all tastes

Ethan Hawke stars as Lorenzo Hart in Blue Moon, the opening film of the Stratford Winter Film Festival screening Feb. 6 at Stratford City Hall.

The third annual edition of the Stratford Winter Film Festival (SWFF) is shaping up to be an eclectic mix of comedies, documentaries and foreign films to cover something for everyone. Films curated are highly acclaimed and recently produced bringing an experience current to the times with relevant choices.

Movie goers can look forward to nine films over three days beginning Friday, Feb. 6 with a ticketed opening night Gala in advance of the screening of the film Blue Moon, starring Ethan Hawke as Lorenzo Hart, the celebrated American lyricist and half of the songwriting team Rodgers and Hart. The film, directed by Richard Linklater, was released in 2025 and received 14 awards and 46 nominations.

Ticketed access to the opening gala grants the opportunity to begin the weekend with fellow movie goers over catered hors d’oeuvres and beverages in advance of the 8 p.m. screening.

“Beginning at 6 p.m., it will be a long cocktail hour at 151 Albert St. and the move over to city hall. Always thinking of our patrons, we were a little hesitant to have it at that venue because of the distance to walk but I went and mapped it out and it’s 300 metres, two blocks, so we thought, yes, that would hopefully be okay with the audience,” said Craig Sangster, co-founder and festival director.

This year, the logistics of the weekend are simplified by using a single venue to screen the films. City hall will be home from Friday through to Sunday, with nine screenings timed to allow for breaks in between.

“We think that the experience is going to be far less concentration on how do I get to the next movie to instead be ‘Hey, this is a fabulous venue, these sightlines are perfect and sound is the best auditorium in the city.’ We can control the light, so the sound and vision experience is going to be better than any we’ve had previously,” said Sangster. “We enable more time to focus just on the film and to pop across the street or go to Foster’s for dinner before the last show. You don’t have to park the car multiple times, so we think all this is value-added.”

Screening times for Saturday and Sunday are 11 a.m., 2 p.m., 4:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday begins with the 2025 documentary film Steve Shapiro: Being Everywhere, exploring the remarkable career of photojournalist Steve Shapiro who documented iconic figures like Streisand, Robert F. Kennedy and various Hollywood legends.

The second film of the day is the comedy Wicked Little Letters directed by Thea Sharrock and starring Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley and Timothy Spall – about small townsfolk that start receiving letters filled with hilarious profanities. This is followed by the foreign feature Vermiglio, about a remote mountain village set in 1944. The final film for the day will be the second foreign film, this one by Radu Muntean, called Intelgrade.

Sunday’s schedule begins with the heartwarming foreign feature DJ Ahmet, about a 15-year-old boy in a remote Macedonian village who escapes into music amidst parental expectations, societal conservatism and forbidden love for a promised girl. The second film is Checkpoint Zoo, which documents the daring rescue of zoo animals left behind enemy lines once Russia invaded Ukraine.

Third is Fallen Leaves, telling the story of two lonely souls in search of love in modern day Helsinki that meet by chance in a karaoke bar but face obstacles in their path to happiness. The last film, Meadowlarks, is a 2025 drama about four siblings tragically separated in the ‘60s scoop that reunite for one week.

Tickets are available online at stratfordwinterfilmfestival.ca where there are also trailers for each film. There are a number of ticketing options available making the festival very accessible. Options include full festival pass including opening gala, festival pass only or tickets to individual films.