The New Jersey Film Festival Opens a Month-Long Window for Independent Film

The New Jersey Film Festival does not begin this year with a red carpet spread across a weekend. It begins tonight in a Rutgers screening room and then keeps going for a month. The 45th bi-annual fall edition opens Friday, Sept. 4, and continues on select Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through Oct. 4, giving independent films room to arrive one program at a time instead of competing for attention inside one compressed festival rush. Opening night belongs to Matthew Kozlark’s mystery-thriller Your Lips Never Left Mine, which is available online for 24 hours today and screens in person at 7 p.m. in Voorhees Hall #105 at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. Kozlark, producer/editor/sound designer Felicia Ricci and members of the cast and crew are scheduled to take part in a Q&A with the in-person audience. That combination - a film, the people who made it and a room able to ask questions while the experience is still fresh - is the part of a regional festival that streaming alone cannot reproduce. A festival that stretches the calendar The month-long format is one of the festival’s advantages. A feature does not have to share the same night with six other choices across three venues. The Fall 2026 program moves through narrative features, documentaries, shorts, animation and experimental work, with online-only dates mixed among in-person screenings at Rutgers. Most films receive a 24-hour video-on-demand window beginning at midnight Eastern on their scheduled date, while a general-admission ticket covers both the virtual and in-person presentation when both are offered. That hybrid structure makes the festival unusually accessible without abandoning the physical screening. Someone who cannot get to New Brunswick can still participate in much of the program, while the in-person dates retain what festivals are best at: a shared room, filmmaker introductions, Q&As and the possibility that the person sitting several rows away is the one who made what is on the screen. The month ahead

Date | Program
Sept. 4 | Your Lips Never Left Mine — online + 7 p.m. in person
Sept. 5 | Clan of the Painted Lady — online
Sept. 6 | Shorts Program #1 — online + 5 p.m. in person
Sept. 11 | Love New York — online
Sept. 12 | The Fright Stuff & Help Me — online + 7 p.m. in person
Sept. 13 | Imprinted — online + 5 p.m. in person
Sept. 18 | Shorts Program #2 — online + 7 p.m. in person
Sept. 19 | The Bond That Broke — online
Sept. 26 | The Flesh People — online + 7 p.m. in person
Sept. 27 | The Hanged Man — online + 5 p.m. in person
Oct. 3 | Best of the 2026 NJ International Film Festival — Part 1
Oct. 4 | Best of the 2026 NJ International Film Festival — Part 2

More than screenings The festival is also using the month to widen the definition of what belongs inside a film program. On Oct. 2, New Brunswick bands Hanging Coats and Lawns will perform an audio-visual concert from 7 to 9 p.m. at Rutgers, bringing part of the city’s basement-music scene into the festival. The two bands come from different mixtures of indie rock, shoegaze, R&B, jazz, folk and experimental music, which gives the night a useful bridge between moving-image culture and the music community surrounding the university. Two free filmmaking workshops add the practical side. Festival director Albert Nigrin leads an Introduction to Filmmaking workshop at 1 p.m. Sept. 20, with an emphasis on the decisions that happen before a camera rolls. On Sept. 27 at 1 p.m., entertainment attorney Steven C. Schechter leads a session on the legal and business fundamentals of production and distribution, including rights, clearances, contracts and production-company considerations. Both are free and open to the public, but seating is limited and advance registration is required. Independent by design The Rutgers Film Co-op/New Jersey Media Arts Center says the fall finalists were selected from more than 400 submissions by a judging panel that included media professionals, journalists, students and academics. That matters because a festival like this performs a different job from a commercial theater schedule. It gives work that may not arrive with a national ad campaign a temporary center of gravity: a screening date, an audience, a filmmaker conversation and a reason for people to pay attention at the same time. The program also ends by looking backward just far enough to strengthen that idea. The Oct. 3 and Oct. 4 closing dates revisit prize-winning work from the 2026 New Jersey International Film Festival, including animation, experimental film and documentary selections. A festival built around discovery is making room to say, in effect, these are the things worth seeing again. In-person programs are held in Voorhees Hall #105 at Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street in New Brunswick. General admission is $15 per program, in-person student tickets are $10, and an all-access festival pass is $100. Rutgers lists visitor parking in Lots 1 and 16 for festival patrons, with visitor vehicle registration required before parking. Most online films are available for 24 hours beginning at midnight Eastern on their listed date. The two filmmaking workshops are free but require advance registration through the festival. Current tickets, streaming access and the complete program are available through the festival’s Eventive site. The advantage of covering a month-long festival at the beginning is that almost all of the important questions are still open. We know what the organizers selected. We know where the screens are and when the films arrive. We do not yet know which movie creates the longest conversation in the hallway, which filmmaker changes the way an audience reads a scene, or whether a 7 p.m. Rutgers screening feels like a formal festival stop or a room full of people who simply wanted to see something they could not see anywhere else. That is what the attendance piece can answer later. For now, the Fall New Jersey Film Festival has opened the door and left it open through Oct. 4. A month is a long time for an event in a culture built around opening weekends. For independent film, that may be part of the point. Event Details

What | 45th bi-annual New Jersey Film Festival Fall 2026
When | Friday, Sept. 4 through Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026 (select Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays)
Where | Voorhees Hall #105, Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Tickets | $15 general admission per program; $10 in-person student; $100 all-access pass; VOD windows begin midnight Eastern
Also | Free filmmaking workshops Sept. 20 and Sept. 27 (registration required); AV concert Oct. 2; visitor parking Lots 1 and 16

SOURCE NOTES • New Jersey Film Festival — Fall 2026 Eventive catalog
• Rutgers University — New Jersey Film Festival Fall 2026 event information, tickets and parking
• New Jersey Film Festival / Rutgers Film Co-op — festival overview