This year's Wisconsin Film Festival gave new meaning to "weathering the storm." Moviegoers and volunteers alike endured erratically heavy rains from its opening through closing nights (April 9-16), and were forced to take further precautions as a hailstorm producing three-inch chunks of ice pelted the east and north sides of the city on April 14.

But that forecast didn't repel audiences, as an impressive 61 of the 120 screenings sold out across downtown Madison and at Flix Brewhouse, reports the fest's Director of Operations Ben Reiser. That includes an added second screening of Wisconsin filmmaker Nathan Deming's Winter Hymns, as well as an added third screening of Gabriel Mascaro's The Blue Trail at Flix during the week. "We also averaged 81% capacity for the entire Festival," Reiser writes in an email. The at-capacity screenings saw a nearly 20% bump from 2025, which had 39 screenings of 125 sell out.

Among the festival's biggest changes since its printed film guide dropped back on March 5 was a venue switch for F.W. Murnau's German Expressionist vampire classic Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922), presented with a live, experimental-leaning score by Midwest-based musicians Haley Fohr (Circuit des Yeux) and Alan Sparhawk (of Low). "[It was] originally scheduled for the intimate 170-seat theater at 4070 Vilas Hall. When it sold out quickly, we decided to move it to the Barrymore Theatre, where we ended up selling 684 tickets," Reiser confirms.

On the (predictably) rainy night, the 104-year-old film drew a significant Gen Z audience, who were spurred on by a few factors — the appeal of the musical collaboration between two indie darlings, a big-theater presentation of the oldest-surviving cinematic version of the Stoker source material, and lingering buzz from the 2024 adaptation by Robert Eggers that further heightens the original's chiaroscuro.

While some viewers snickered at the more exaggerated acting of the era, they acclimated after Nosferatu's initial act, when Max Schreck's bestial Count Orlok loomed large and Fohr and Sparhawk's score took a dramatically darker turn. The acoustic guitars and Fohr's blissfully sporadic vocalizations of the prologue segued into a more portentous industrial and gothic atmosphere in ambient drones, field recordings, glossy keyboard scales, and hand percussion nearing the film's tempestuous climax.

Despite the long, snaking lines for so many screenings, from canonized works like Nosferatu to films that just had their world premieres in March, the troupe of new and returning volunteers — the undersung logistical heroes of the fest — kept the show times on schedule. Only a subtitling mishap with the digital cinema package (DCP) projection on Wednesday afternoon at Flix affected part of Lucky Lu and delayed Yes that followed.

Two days prior, one of the long-time volunteer captains, Perry Haugen, was even so courteous to check in with audience members about potential sound-bleed issues, in reference to one of the day's first screenings that was adjacent to a theater showing the thunderously loud Faces of Death remake.

It wasn't just the volunteers who kept things rolling; moderators of the myriad of 30-minute Q&As stepped up this year in their preparedness and sharpness in engaging participating filmmakers and special guests. Current UW Cinematheque project assistant Josh Martin relayed respect and earnest interest for all six participants in the Sunday afternoon talk at the Chazen Museum after the eclectic program "Algorithmic Nudes and Other Experimental Shorts from Wisconsin's Own."

The year's graphic design theme, a continuous multicolored pastel ribbon, traces a "restless energy of the creative process — layered, imperfect, and in motion," according to Art Director Christina King. The maze-like intersections of the ribbon represent the overlap between standout narratives and documentaries in this year's lineup.

Here are a handful of highlights:

The weight of the world's humanitarian failures burrowed into the conscience of Romanian bailiff Orsolya (Eszter Tompa) in Radu Jude's Kontinental '25, a psychological drama that also functions as a late-stage capitalistic satire (and whose plot and title reference the great Europa '51 by Roberto Rossellini). Julia Loktev's 324-minute, five chapter documentary epic My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air In Moscow, now streaming on Mubi, chronicles a number of intrepid Russian journalists, largely young women, fighting censorship and castigation by their own government over a five-month span between the fall of 2021 and end of winter 2022.

American septuagenarian documentarian Ross McElwee, who appeared in person for the local premiere of his intimate diary film Remake, layers the shifts in his own artistic pursuits and profession with the development and tragic death of son Adrian. It further explores troubled youth through an archival montage of home movies. Canadian Sophy Romvari's much anticipated debut feature, Blue Heron, also tackles family autobiography and sibling strife through a fictional framework. The approach results in one of the most affectively edited films of the year, garnering comparisons to Charlotte Wells' critically acclaimed Aftersun (2022).

The dual world premieres of Nolan F. Anderson's 17-minute liturgical drama There Yawns The Valley and Darius Mackenzie's temporal environmental mystery And Then I Knew 'Twas Wind fully packed the fest's smallest theater at the Chazen on Sunday, and sparked many story-related questions from its generation-spanning audience (aptly, considering the cryptic allure of their titles). Mackenzie's feature, which slowly unfurls with a twentysomething couple from the beginning of a camping trip at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in Oregon, is startlingly impressive in its scope and technique considering the California-born director is most known here as an athlete on the Badgers tennis team between 2014 and 2018.

If that isn't enough to stir further intrigue in the film's own narrative puzzle, in the enlightening post-screening conversation with Reiser, Mackenzie said that one of his and director of photography Chase Pottinger’s goals was to “make the best night footage ever.” That high-bar aspiration mirrors the overarching commitment of all who have been involved in putting on the festival for each of its 28 years, come hell or high water — or, in this year's case, an onslaught of baseball-sized hailstones.

The 29th annual Wisconsin Film Festival is scheduled to run April 8-15, 2027.