"R.I.F.F." Returns With Slate of Films from Tennessee Storytellers!

Attendees of the 2025 Script-Com Screenwriters Conference settled in for the return of "R.I.F.F.", a program of trailers and short films made exclusively by members of the Tennessee Screenwriting Association.

The Renegade Independent Film Festival began in 2002, when TSA members decided to host their own film festival after several members' short films were rejected from the Nashville Film Festival that year. R.I.F.F. not only sold out the Belcourt Theatre and the Franklin Theatre (both of which were struggling financially at the time), the fest then went on to a performance at Western Kentucky University later that year. In 2003, "R.I.F.F. II" returned with a completely different slate of films, this time opened up to submissions from across the state and again sold out at the Belcourt. And then in 2024, R.I.F.F. III closed out the 2024 Script-Com conference at the NECAT Network studio with over an hour and a half of short film programming.

This year, RIFF IV included the following projects for a program of 75 minutes of content which was written, directed or produced by members of the TSA, including:

• "Lone Wolves" (trailer) produced by Heidi-Marie Ferren

• "Music City Mistletoe" (trailer) written and produced by Shantell Ogden

• "Memory of a Killer" (trailer) Fox Television series w/ episodes written by Heidi-Marie Ferren

• "The Gift" written by Jason K. Allen

• "The Bracelet" written and directed by Elvis Wilson

• "That Smell" written and produced by Jason K. Allen

• "Cubs In the Tub" written and produced by Amanda Ballard

• "Sweet Tooth" story by and produced by Zac Adams

• "Life on Planet Earth" written and directed by Sarah Marie Smith