Get ready to roll out the red carpet, because this year’s Film Festival is being held today at 6:30 p.m. at the Eagle Theater. There’s an optional donation fee of $5, but tickets are free.

The Film Festival is an annual event, organized by Film Analysis teachers Susana Herrera, Robert Barker and Sasha Jones. The goal is to showcase the best films produced by Film Analysis students, which have been in development over the course of almost an entire semester.

“Film is kind of an art form if you think about it, and just being able to engage with that was really interesting,” senior Nik Sapalaran said. “We learned about film techniques and then got to implement them when filming which was really cool. So that’s my favorite part — just the newfound appreciation for film.”

In the past, the Film Festival has been divided into category awards such as Best Picture and Best Cinematography awards. However, this year,  the program is taking a new approach to recognize students for their commitment and outstanding films produced. Rather than categorizing awards, they will instead be granted to the top three films, taking on a more holistic approach to judging. 

This year’s Film Festival Finalists are:

Yuval Amit with “Breath of a Songbird”

Gareth Cartier, Maxwell Lee and Timothy Tai-Ho, with “Homework Help Online”

Darrin Chang, Dominic Chang and Mark Tang with “Halfbaked”

Caitlynn Chock and Alexandra Ikegami with “Hopeless Romantic”

Liam Easley and Luka Wuthrich with “Word Man”

Maxwell Fung, Ishaan Dwivedi and Marvin Shang with “Homework Front”

Gustavo Galeno, Cristian Ordonez and AJ Salinas with “Knockout”

Emma Huang and Evan Sakash with “Love Struck”

Logan Kim with “Retrace”

Audrey Rechenmacher with “333”

Henry Yost with “White Lily”

The runner-up films are “Redwood” by Tyler Klemens and Hazel Oxford; “Sketching Success” by Rachel Bindiger and Clara Martin and “Paradise” by Arshia Aggarwal, Naomi Ichiriu and Emily Jeon. These films will be shown during intermission and grant students a chance to be recognized for their hard work, whether or not they made it to the film festival.

“Our students work really hard on the films they create,” Jones said. “It’s their senior project, so they’ve been working on these films all the way since November until now. That’s why I think it’s important that we get to celebrate all of the hard work that they’ve done and everything that they’ve accomplished.”