The Hamptons International Film Festival has been a community tradition and a significant industry event for over three decades now. As this year’s festival came and went, four organizers at its helm reflected on how it has evolved, and where it will go from here.
David Nugent, the festival’s chief creative officer, became involved with programming in 2007, and took on his current role the following year. “When I first started this job everything was essentially exhibited on film — big cans of 35mm film — which weighed 60 pounds, that you had to lug around,” he said during a phone call on the afternoon on Oct. 3, as final opening night preparations were underway. “Now, of course, they’re all projected digitally, and that’s a change that happened after 100 years of films being shown on celluloid.”
The festival has had to adapt to many other changes over the years — a complete “pivot” during the pandemic, for example, and an expansion from the original five-day duration to an 11-day run last year — but Mr. Nugent believes that its audiences have come to trust that through any changes, he and his colleagues would continue to bring them “the best films from around the world” each October, and that they would be able to come together to watch them as a community.
“You go to some festivals and you’re seeing a movie with 1,300 people, and you’re really far away,” he said. “When you come to our festival, our biggest theater is the East Hampton Middle School, which is about 440 seats. When you’re seeing a film like this, and hearing from the artists that made these films in a small house, it has a much more intimate feel to it, and I think our audiences really appreciate it.”
“I’ve sort of leaned into the award-season part of our festival,” he continued. “We have a lot of influential audiences out here, and we have a lot of filmmakers, and members of the industry that are out here. And I have worked to sort of cultivate that audience, and that reputation of bringing films out here that we hope will work well and will be recognized at the end of the year — and that was something that did not exist as much when I first got this job.”
Kristin McCracken, the festival’s publications director and another member of the programming team, was particularly excited by this year’s selections. “Yes, we do have a lot of the Spotlight Films, which have some of the bigger stars in them, but we also have 14 films from around the world that are their countries’ submissions to the Oscars,” she said. “I think some of those films are super exciting, because they’re films that people may not have heard of, but then we can watch them go down the road into the Oscars for Best International Film, which is always a really exciting category.”
She was first brought in to “revamp” the festival’s website in 2013, and her role has since grown to include updating the Hamptons Film website year round, writing newsletters, creating the printed festival guides, and joining the programming team. “It’s not just the 11 days in October,” she said. “We want to keep everyone up to date with what we’re doing. We have a robust membership program, and so we try to keep our members involved all year long.”
Her updates include the organization’s many summer and off-season programs, and tracking the films played during the festival on their trajectories through awards season. That day, though, she looked forward to seeing their preparations realized. “We’ve been working towards this all year,” she said. “It’s a sunny day, and we came into the office and there was just a real wave of excitement. Everyone’s ready to put on a show, and it’s always the best feeling.”
Gregory Triana, who has been the festival’s director of events since 1998, was already thinking about preparations for next year’s festival when he was reached by phone on Saturday afternoon, as closing weekend began. “It used to be that you didn’t have to worry about trying to find a venue until, like, summer,” he said. “Now, pretty much as soon as this one closes, once the board releases the dates for next year, I’m already booking venues for 2026.”
Mr. Triana previously worked with the Nantucket Film Festival for 14 years, but Hamptons is now the only film festival team he works on. “I really loved what I was seeing, and what was happening. The programming is something that just blew me away,” he said. “Every year it’s just grown tremendously. We rely heavily on the community support. There are members of the community with their own businesses that we’ve developed relationships with that 33 years later are still a part of what I call ‘the family.’ “
In addition, many of the organizers have been working together for over a decade. “We do it because we have the passion for film and the industry, but also what we’re doing as a team,” he said. “There’s a synergy that you just can’t explain, but it’s there. We count on each other heavily, and we deliver.” The team was “heavily concentrated on this year,” he said, but in the next day or so “we will be on 2026, as crazy as that sounds.”
Casey Hindman-McIntyre, who was patched through on the call after Mr. Triana, started as the festival’s guest services director 10 years ago and was named deputy director of the festival earlier this year. “I think my highlight truthfully would be our pre-festival all-staff meeting,” she said — when all of the staff, from those who work on the festival year round to those working the venues on the festival dates gather together in the same room the night before the festival opens. “It just feels real, like we’re getting ready to go into this thing, and there’s a heightened energy and camaraderie about it that is truly why I do this.”
“I always call festivals like Hamptons the most precious film festivals there are, because they’re community-based and they’re intimate, and one of the great things about a smaller festival like this is they really work to take care of their staff.” Their “housing host” program, for example, matches up members of the community with free rooms or guest cottages with staff members for the duration of the festival, in exchange for tickets to the screenings. “I think both parties win, and there are a lot of really wonderful, giving people in the community that have the same passion as we do for filmmaking and storytelling and the arts.”
“I’m so proud of this year, across the board. It was just a beautiful experience as a whole,” she said. “We are very, very fortunate to have some stellar programmers and, you know, to have David at the helm, because they secure some of the best of the year — but I still have hopes of expanding the festival footprint even more.” The festival added screenings at the Sag Harbor Cinema last year, and expanded to the Southampton Playhouse this year, too. “I truly think the best is yet to come.”