In our annual tradition, a look at 30 posters you may or may not see at the fest itself.
One of my favorite parts of covering the Wisconsin Film Festival every year is tracking down the oftentimes stunning posters for the movies that will be screening across the week. When it comes to visual elements, the fest’s guide (both in print and online) defers to still images captured from the films themselves, and many of the selections sell themselves on their merits, thanks to the helpful descriptions written by the folks who constructed the lineup in the first place. It’s an understandable approach that has its own set of aesthetic pros and cons, but it’s worth taking a moment to highlight some of the more whimsical, daring, and witty promotional graphics—which you might not see until you’re at the theater on the day of the screenings, if you see them at all.
A handful of the films represented here are down to rush tickets already, but if you failed to lock in hot tickets like Sofia, Light From Light or Her Smell, among others, the art seen below might just inspire an overwhelming urge to get thee to the front of the rush ticket lines on the day of their respective screenings. Other entries, like Chained For Life, The Good Girls, Hail Satan? or Girls Always Happy, might be intriguing enough to warrant buying tickets based on their posters alone.
Here are the whopping 30 posters that really popped for me this year, whittled down from the stack that I was able to track down. There are still a ton of tickets that haven’t been bought up just yet, so click on the titles below to get to those specific films, or just head over to the Wisconsin Film Festival site proper to lock in a seat if anything jumps out at you here.
