2026 Special Screenings
Click here for the full 2026 MFF Schedule
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19 / Douglass Theatre
7:15 pm– 9:30 (doors open 6:45 pm)
GEORGIA RISING: A RURAL HEALTH STORY
Directed by Tabitha Walker
Georgia Rising: A Rural Health Story explores the complex struggles of rural healthcare in Georgia by sharing the stories of three medical providers and their creative approaches in caring for people in their hometown communities. The documentary highlights the significant health disparities in rural Georgia, marked by hospital closures, provider shortages, and higher rates of chronic disease. It also showcases innovative solutions like tele-health, community health centers (FQHCs), and state tax credits, with organizations like the Georgia Rural Health Innovation Center at Mercer University and the Georgia Heart Hospital Program working to build resilience and improve access for underserved communities facing challenges like transportation and insurance gaps.
This is a free event, but tickets must be reserved in advance.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 20 / Douglass Theatre
7:30 pm– 10:00 (doors open 7:00 pm)
The Thursday Special Screening will be preceedeb by a reception in the Douglass Theatre Annex. All Access pass required.
DEFEND THE SACRED, PRESERVE THE PAST
Directed by Jason Salsman, Muscogee (Creek) Nation Communications Department
Special Guest: RaeLynn Butler, Secretary of Culture and Humanities at the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
This short film shows the Muscogee Nation’s fight for justice at the sacred site of Hickory Ground, a ceremonial and burial site, where ancestors were dug up to make way for the construction of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians’ Wind Creek Casino in Wetumpka, AL. Leader of Hickory Ground Mekko George Thompson shares his heartfelt account of what this struggle has meant to him and it’s foray into the legal realm. The film closes, with a different approach to handling and preserving the past, with a thoughtful and intimate visit to the British Museum in London from Muscogee leaders. The two films converge to show the irony of the Muscogee people having to travel an ocean away to receive respect for the past and what’s sacred.
AANIKOOBIJIGAN [ANCESTOR/GREAT-GRANDPARENT/GREAT-GRANDCHILD]
Directed by Adam Khalil and Zack Khalil
Trapped in museum archives, Ancestors bend time and space to find their way home. History, spirituality, and the law collide as tribal repatriation specialists fight to return and rebury Indigenous human remains, offering a revealing look at the still-pervasive worldviews that justified collecting them in the first place.
AANIKOOBIJIGAN [ANCESTOR/GREAT-GRANDPARENT/GREAT-GRANDCHILD] documents the emotional and vital work of MACPRA (Michigan Anishinaabek Cultural Preservation and Repatriation Alliance). This alliance, made up of repatriation specialists representing all Michigan tribes, fights to bring their Ancestors and funerary objects home from settler colonial institutions like museums, libraries, and archives.
Adam and Zack Khalil’s monumental and formally daring film follows the pressing struggle to rebury Indigenous human remains that have been held in sterile storage, laying bare the history of Indigenous collections and the battle to recognize and enforce the laws intended to facilitate their repatriation to the communities they were originally stolen from. Using an essayistic approach alongside vérité portraits, the film celebrates the courageous individuals who carry out this hard and emotionally draining labor of return.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 21 / MUSEUM OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
7:00 pm–10:00 pm
FULLDOME IMMERSIVE SHOWCASE*
Enjoy a night of exploring art galleries, drinks, food, and immersive special screenings! The Friday Special Screenings feature two Fulldome Immersive blocks. *Open to MAS members and All Access pass holders.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 22 / DOUGLASS THEATRE
TBA
SUNDAY, AUGUST 23 / DOUGLASS THEATRE
7:00 pm–9:30 pm (doors open 6:30 pm)
FOUR RATIONAL PEOPLE
Directed by Tristan Cook
A moderated Q&A will follow the film led by Lawrence Dutton of the Emerson String Quartet.
Goethe once said that a string quartet is like “a conversation between four rational peiple,” and for the members of the Emerson String Quartet, that conversation is coming to a bittersweet ending as they embark on their final season of a fifty-year history that includes 9 GRAMMY Awards and thousands of concerts. Interweaving vivid memories of the Emerson Quartet’s past with delicate observations of life on the road in the weeks and days before disbanding, Four Rational People explores the group’s difficult decision to walk away from the things that they cherish most in life: the music they play and the friends they hold dear. At once a frank examination of the tyranny of aging and a cri de cœur to pass the torch to a new generation of artists, Four Rational Peopl culminates with one final Emerson Quartet performance for the ages, leaving all to ponder what happens to us after the final curtain.