Houston Cinema Arts Festival

HCAF 2024 will feature a wide variety of curated feature films with a focus on the diverse cultural community of Houston, Texas.

HCAF 2024 will also see the tenth Anniversary of CineSpace, our annual short film competition with NASA, as well as the fifth annual regional short film competition Borders - No Borders.

Our full festival lineup has been announced. Check out the schedule to discover the incredible films, performances, and special guests we have in store!

Schedule of Events:

5:30 pm: Opening Night Reception

Join us for the 2024 Houston Cinema Arts Festival Opening Night Reception at the Granger's Restaurant and Bar with complimentary lite bites and refreshments.

Admission into this event is exclusive to All Access Passholders and ticket holders to the Opening Night film, Tendaberry.

7:30 pm: Tendaberry

Featuring a post-film discussion with Houston born and raised writer-director Haley Elizabeth Anderson and star Kota Johan.

Our opening night selection for the 2024 Houston Cinema Arts Festival is a kinetic portrait of Dakota (Kota Johan), a twentysomething New York City transplant adrift in post-pandemic Brooklyn from writer-director Haley Elizabeth Anderson. When her boyfriend (Yuri Pleskun) is called back to his native Ukraine to care for his ailing father, Dakota is forced to navigate the city and its hardships alone and pregnant. Buzzing through the streets, she flits from job to job, moment to moment, creating memories of her own along the way. TENDABERRY makes use of Anderson's own DV recordings, the photographs of Helen Levitt, as well as the video diaries of Nelson Sullivan, who captured New York City's dilapidated 1980s downtown in 1900 hours of footage, to craft an impressionist character study of person and place. Audacious, ambitious - words do little justice when describing the scale of the collection of memories contained in Anderson's feature-length debut, an ecstatic love letter to New York City and the changes each season can bring to a life.

Director: Haley Elizabeth Anderson
Runtime: 117 minutes