The 2026 Spring Arts Preview: Our picks in Film+TV

Georgia is still a center for film and TV production, and it’s also home to a wide array of film festivals and special screenings this spring.

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Out on Film’s main event happens in the fall, but it has screenings happening at other times of the year, too. The Spring Mini-Fest is especially significant, and this year’s edition packs five fascinating films into three days from March 17 through March 19. The Fest gets underway with A Deeper Love: The Story of Miss Peppermint. The film documents nearly a decade in the life of Miss Peppermint, a Black trans artist and activist who rose to fame as the runner-up on the ninth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race before becoming the first out trans woman to originate a lead role on Broadway with the Go-Gos-inspired musical Head Over Heels. It screens at 7 p.m. March 17 at the Landmark Midtown Art Cinema. Closing out the Festival is Bookends, which was filmed in Columbus, Georgia, and follows a young man forced to move in with his grandparents following a breakup. The cast includes F. Murray Abraham as the grandfather in cognitive decline, Caroline Aaron as the grandmother in denial and Charlie Barnett as the family doctor who sparks an unexpected romance. It screens at 8:30 p.m. on March 19. In between the opening and closing films, see Love Letters, a French production about the impending parenthood of Celine and Nadia; In Transit, in which a bartender models for an artist in small-town Maine; and On the Sea, about a mussel farmer in North Wales confronting desire in the form of a drifter passing through town. All films will screen at Landmark Midtown Art Cinema. ArtsATL Editor-at-Large Jim Farmer has served as director of Out on Film for more than 16 years.

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The Atlanta Film Festival is marking 50 years with the 2026 edition of this annual celebration of independent filmmaking. Every spring, the Festival presents approximately 150 local and international works representing more than 50 countries. This year’s slate of films hasn’t been announced yet, but there will be a preview of what’s in store at 7 p.m. March 23 at the Tara Theatre. The launch party will include conversations with filmmakers and opportunities to chat with the programming team behind the Festival. The Festival will also include the Creative Conference, which will offer 40 panels, workshops and discussions, available both in-person and virtually. The Festival and conference will take place April 23 through May 3.

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When Cape Fear was released in 1962, it shocked audiences and raised the ire of censors with its depictions of violence and hints of sexual assault. Robert Mitchum exudes menace as revenge-seeking Max Cady in one of cinema’s most memorable roles. It was partially filmed in Savannah, as was the 1991 Martin Scorsese-helmed version with Robert DeNiro as Cady. More than 60 years after the first Cape Fear, a new Apple TV series, filmed in Atlanta and other Georgia locations, resurrects the story. Much of the show was filmed at Doraville’s Assembly Studios, but scenes were also reportedly shot at Lake Allatoona and, in keeping with tradition, Savannah. This time, Javier Bardem plays Cady. We know Bardem can do violent menace. He won an Oscar for playing stonefaced psychopath Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. The new series also stars Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson and debuts on June 5.

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• Sundance Film Festival U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize winner Seeds is an exploration of Black generational farmers in the American South, examining the fragility of legacy and the significance of owning land. See it beginning on March 13 at the Tara.

• Bound (1996) was the directorial debut of the Wachowskis, a neo-noir crime thriller about an ex-con (Gina Gershon) and a mob moll (Jennifer Tilly) who plot to steal $2 million from the Mafia. It screens as part of Lavender Lens and the Bakery Atlanta’s Queer Movie Night series at the Supermarket at 6:30 p.m. March 18.

• The 21st annual Atlanta Documentary Film Festival will offer new documentary shorts and features from emerging and established filmmakers, along with Q&As and filmmaker mixers and parties at Synchronicity Theatre from March 19 through March 22.

• Local filmmaker Hal Jacobs’ new documentary, Stalking the Big Cat of Georgia, tells the story of Johnny “Big Cat” Mize from North Georgia, who was one of Major League Baseball’s top sluggers during its Golden Age. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Hal Jacobs, Jerry Grillo (author of Big Cat, a biography of Mize) and Gregory White. The event takes place at 7 p.m. March 26 at the Decatur Library.

• Akira Kurosawa didn’t just make samurai films. He made modern dramas, too, like the masterful kidnapping detective thriller High and Low (1963), which was recently reconfigured by Spike Lee in his 2025 film Higher 2 Lowest. Catch a screening as part of the Emory Cinematheque series at Emory University’s White Hall at 7:30 p.m. March 25.

• A weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident, in the 1970 Bernardo Bertolucci film The Conformist. It screens at the Plaza at 7:30 p.m. March 26.

• As four friends prepare for life after high school, turning-point dramas unfold and resolve at Atlanta’s Cascade Skating Rink in the 2006 film ATL, starring T.I. It screens as part of the Georgia on Film 1972-2006 series at 7:30 p.m. March 31 at the Plaza, exactly 20 years after its opening.

• With the 1941 film The Lady Eve, writer-director Preston Sturges created what many consider the greatest screwball comedy ever. On board an ocean liner, con artist Jean Harrington (Barbara Stanwyck) targets a wealthy brewery heir (Henry Fonda). The chemistry between Stanwyck and Fonda is a joy to behold. See it at 7:30 p.m. on April 15 at Emory University’s White Hall.

• Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game (1939), a satire of the French bourgeoisie in the years leading up to World War II, is a perennial entry in lists of the best films of all time. It screens at 7:30 p.m. April 22 at Emory University’s White Hall.

• The European Film Festival of Atlanta, a partnership between Alliance Française and Goethe-Zentrum, will team up with the consulates of 12 European countries for the Fest’s fourth edition from May 13 through May16 at the Plaza and Tara theatres.

Our 2026 Spring Picks