Sara Michelle Fetters: I'm going to start with the question that I imagine pretty much everybody always asks first: What is NFFTY and why is it important?

Krupa Kanaiya: That's a great question. NFFTY — pronounced "nifty" — is a youth film festival. One of the things I like to describe NFFTY as is this is content created by youth, but it's for a general audience. It's really about giving these filmmakers the platform and allowing them the opportunity to redefine what cinema is going to be. If there is a prediction as to where cinema goes in the future, this is where we start.

Amy Williams: Exactly. NFFTY, being the National Film Festival for Talented Youth, is about community building. When I fell into the NFFTY age range a few years back, I didn't have access to anything like it. It would've changed my life. Because of that, I feel very honored getting to work here and support this nonprofit that gives that opportunity to other filmmakers and shines a light on their work and their stories.

SMF: What's been the biggest challenge of making sure that this festival keeps going, especially through COVID? Not only making sure that the festival happens, but that these talented youth actually have the facilities and the capabilities to [make] the films.

AW: For sure. For the last several years — from when we had to shift to virtual in 2020 to getting ...back to our first physical festival in 2022 — that two-year period was really tough. We invested in trying to spark creativity with our community in whatever ways we could. We have a whole "Level Up" challenge hub that we do quarterly challenges with, trying to give people ...really accessible tools, and partnering with people who can provide free software, so participants can make films, be creative, and have fun.

We've also found that, through our virtual festivals and reestablishing and trying to maintain our community through virtual means for several years, we've really invested our time into reconnecting with our alumni. This is our 16th year, so we have hundreds of thousands of filmmakers that have found their way through NFFTY at one point or another. When we were locked down at home, it felt like the time to reconnect, to touch base with people, and see where they were right now. It was time to bring them back into the NFFTY fold and have them teach the current class what they've learned and how they've navigated the industry.

We found that this is a really interesting access point for our current filmmakers, to work with somebody just a couple rungs up the ladder. It's a little more accessible than a huge Hollywood producer that maybe doesn't have the same experience as a lot of our filmmakers [when reflecting] upon how they got there. That path's going to look a lot different.

SMF: How cool is it to have 16 years of knowledge for the current crop of filmmakers to tap into? I imagine these returnees get reinvigorated as well, working with these talented kids who were in similar shoes not so long ago.

KK: From a marketing standpoint, I love it, because everything is digital, and it means that our younger filmmakers who are so active on social media get to experience a little bit of this fun and glitz that our older filmmakers never did. Our oldest filmmakers come from MySpace and the early days of Facebook. This interaction is so different for them, and having them come back and teach a class is so invigorating.

SMF: I'm in my forties. I have been doing this for over 20 years. What I love about NFFTY is that it makes me feel like a kid again. Every time I attend the festival, there is an energy and a spontaneity and a burst of imagination that is completely different than every other festival I cover. Do you guys feel that?

AW: Absolutely.

KK: A hundred percent. I'm so excited. Opening night at a festival is always so fun, and I've preplanned some outfits. Amy and I were talking about it. I said, this year, I want at least two outfits that made me feel like the type of icons I wanted to see back in the day. If no one else gets to do it, at least I get to do it at NFFTY. [laughs]

AW: It truly is incredible. Every year I'm blown away. I've seen every film in the lineup. I know who all the filmmakers are. Maybe they don't know who I am, but I love it. I'll go up to them, see their badge, and just know everything about their film and everything about them. They're like, "How do you know who I am?" But I just get so excited to meet the filmmakers behind these stories. It's one thing to sit behind my computer and watch 300 shorts a year. It's another getting to meet the people behind those stories that I have been thinking about for months. Just getting to see them, and then to see them watch their film on the big screen, almost always for the first time? It's incredible.

SMF: How great is it to be back at SIFF Cinema Uptown for the entire in-person run of the festival?

AW: It's special. We have been working with SIFF for so long, and they're such great partners, and we love their staff. We love working with them. SIFF is a Seattle icon, and NFFTY being in Seattle, I think this is so special. It's perfect.

NFFTY is the largest youth film festival in the world, and not being in New York or LA, that feels really special. And then we get to do all of this with SIFF and at SIFF theaters? How could you not love that?

A lot of filmmakers that have reached out already and said, "This is my first festival. This is the first time I'm getting to see this film in a theater." We hear from our filmmakers how important and how great it is to have that opportunity. We're just relieved that we get to offer it to them again, really. SIFF helps makes this possible.

SMF: But you also did keep a virtual component again this year, and the viewing window is actually far longer than the festival itself is. For these filmmakers, I imagine that this is important, too, getting that extra bit of exposure.

AW: For sure. We have so many films that we cram into a four-day weekend — people can't see them all, and so we we've getting feedback forever of, "Man, I wish I could watch some of these that I missed." When we were able to shift to virtual and maintain that hybrid element last year, we were like, why get rid of it? If our filmmakers are down and they want to opt in and want this extra audience, we're so down to provide that infrastructure and platform. We've got it. Let's do it.

SMF: I admit that I have not had a chance to watch everything. But I'm really blown away by the craziness of some of the submissions this year. You've got some inspired, out-there, free-thinking forms of cinema that are truly extraordinary. What did you think when looking through these submissions, and how did you whittle it all down?

AW: We had over a thousand submissions. I personally screened three hundred. It is a gigantic task to whittle that down. But we have a great team, and we all have our little corners of it, ...what kind of genres and categories that we like to dig into. We're always limited by theater time and space, and can only play so much. It's very much like putting a puzzle together. How many shorts we can fit in all of the time that we've got, and what makes the best program? It's tough, but I feel great about this year.

SMF: The diversity of this year's selections is also exceptional. Not just from a racial or a cultural standpoint but the whole spectrum. You all have always done a fairly good job on this front, but it seems like this year, you get the entire panoply of the human experience. Was that the goal?

AW: Yes. It's always the goal. Frankly, we value having our programming be a reflection of the submissions that we receive, and we've got an incredible community telling incredible stories that really do span the whole human experience. So that is high praise. That is our goal. That is what we want. We want people in the audience to feel seen by the stories that they're seeing on the big screen and to have the access to those filmmakers and those young people telling those stories.

SMF: I want people to be surprised and I want them to experience these films without me giving too much away about any of them, so I'm going to try and avoid spoilers. What I will say is, some of the ones I've watched, they could not be any more important to see right now. They are so reflective of so many of the things that we are going through. Much like we're seeing a lot of this generation rise up in places like Tennessee, these stories reflect that energy. These films give me hope that we're going to be able to tackle some hard, tough issues that, frankly, my generation and the millennials have not done as a good job of handling as I'd have hoped twenty years ago. Do you get that feeling as well when you watch some of these films?

AW: I do. I've really been blown away by the optimism and resilience I've been seeing in these stories. One of my programmer's picks is Sophia Spinelli's Frog in My Throat. It's this short little stop-motion animation. I adore that film, and it's only three minutes and so efficient. When I finished watching, I was like, "I feel good." And this is a brutal depiction, a very honest depiction of what it's like to struggle with your mental health! Still, at the end of it... "I feel good." That was my response.

That's so impressive to me. Just a breath of fresh air. I love it, and I've been seeing that throughout this year's films, too, this air of optimism and resilience. Perseverance. It is really, really nice.

SMF: Say I'm a young kid. I want to make a film. How do I get involved with NFFTY? How do I submit? What do I have to do?

KK: Honestly? Show up in our DMs. We are so accessible. In true youth culture, NFFTY does a good job of [that]. If you email our staff, if you DM our staff, whatever way you can get in touch with us, we will respond.

There are so many opportunities and ways to get involved. We do paid internships for youth of all ages. It's really important to our mission that kids are not only getting these opportunities, but they get paid for them. It's so great to be on this team and just watch this happen. One of my favorite things is seeing kids have the opportunity to not struggle, that we get to help make it a little easier.

As for making a film, you can start with your phone if need be. Get involved with one of our challenges, grab a mobile device, and our partners or sponsors will usually give some sort of software or audio help. They can work within those parameters.

Our age range is so broad as far as our "youth" goes, and that is also really nice. We don't judge them all the same. A film by a five-year-old does not get the same critique level as a 24-year-old. That's important to us. We're super transparent about that judging process.

But potential filmmakers are always welcome to ask us, "Hey, how do I know I'm not going to get beat out by someone in high school?" We'll show them the documentation. We want them to know they have a fair shot at this festival. It's something that other film festivals do not do that I can pridefully say that we will.

SMF: And for adults, whether they're in their late twenties or in their early hundreds, how can they get involved? What can they do to support NFFTY?

KK: We have spaces on our board and in our industry advisory sectors. We're always looking for members of the community who care, whether they want to be involved in the day-to-day of NFFTY or become a patron or a sponsor... But we are actively looking for community members who are willing to be participants, in whatever capacity.

AW: Really the most important thing you can do for NFFTY is show up. Show up for us and come out to the theater. There is such a special energy being in that physical space that, if you can, we highly recommend it. It's really hard to translate and describe until you are in there at the SIFF Uptown. All of the films are amazing, so you can't go wrong with whatever program you decide to check out.

SMF: With that in mind, what do you want audiences to take away from this year's NFFTY? When the dust is settled, what do you hope people are talking about?

KK: That's an incredible question. Gosh. Personally, I want them to come and experience the films with us. Come laugh with us, cry with us, and get scared with us in the theater. It's such a broad range of emotion this year. There really is something special to come and see. Like you said, we have that broad age range, and it shows. The diversity of film is incredible. The nicest of cultural experiences are here: LGBTQ spaces, kids of all ages, all backgrounds, all races, all genders. I'm in awe.

AW: It's just good storytelling and the future of film. If you want to hear the voices and see the stories of the next generation, this is where you find them. Join us!