Taos Film Festival 2026

April 23–26, 2026, the inaugural Taos Film Festival shares over 100 independent filmmaking voices from New Mexico and around the world.

TaosFF presents narrative, documentary and experimental works in feature length and short-form. In addition to screenings, TaosFF connects artists and audiences through Q&As, talks, events and parties.

WildFlower Playhouse is one of the three primary locations to host official selections, the others including Taos Center for the Arts (TCA) and Harwood Museum of Art.

PRESENTED BY
Taos Center for the Arts (TCA)

58 FILMS SHOWING AT WILDFLOWER PLAYHOUSE

Thursday, April 23

Shorts Program: Finding Ourselves and Others
Thu, Apr 23, 1:45pm - 3:45pm
Stories probing the relationship between longing and belonging, remembrance and roots. The concept of home in a harsh world, where lives are upset by exile and grief, blends with dream-like escapes into selfhood.

Shorts Program: Taos by Taos Part I
Thu, Apr 23, 4pm - 5:45pm
A collage of local places, faces, and projects.

American Solitaire
Thu, Apr 23, 6pm - 7:35pm
Slinger came home from war. But the battle isn't over. AMERICAN SOLITAIRE stars Joshua Close (WAYWARD, FARGO) as a veteran unraveling in the aftermath of combat, adrift in a country that celebrates guns but has little language for the damage they leave behind. Written and directed by Aaron Davidman, the film is a raw, urgent portrait of one man's journey back to himself. The film examines the hidden costs of military service - PTSD, reintegration, and the psychological toll of combat - while confronting how masculinity, identity, and notions of safety have become entangled with America's relationship with firearms. At its heart, AMERICAN SOLITAIRE is about the cost of a culture that glorifies violence, creating space for viewers of all perspectives to question assumptions about strength, responsibility, and what it truly means to protect and heal.

Friday, April 24

Shorts Program: Z
Fri, Apr 24, 11am - 12:50pm
A contemplative tour of the deeper aspects of life. Experimental, poetic and a touch humorous, these shorts zoom in and out and in again.

Enongo w/ short film Love Notes
Fri, Apr 24, 3:10pm - 5:05pm
Enongo
"Enongo" is an award-winning, feature-length, animation-documentary hybrid and the inspiring story of rapper/producer/Ph.D. candidate, Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo, a.k.a., Sammus. With her autobiographical and afrofuturism-inspired music, Enongo tackles various subjects including (but certainly not limited to) mental health, growing up, and relationships. Through a combination of actuality and animation, "Enongo" tells a universally-relevant, intimate, empowering story of identity, artistic creation, and survival. Notably, "Enongo" is the first feature-length film of any genre in history to have an all-Black-women animation team.

Loves Notes
Lucy, a lonely cafe barista prone to daydreaming, must find the courage for the connection she has been longing for with her whistling patron, Pandora.

Tales From the Crypto
Fri, Apr 24, 5:15pm - 6:45pm
As the Covid pandemic upends the global economy, a young programmer, Ravi, turns to cryptocurrency trading during the emergence of Uniswap and "DeFi Summer” to save his parents’ farm in India. But in a world rife with scammers, ruggers and naysayers, he finds that trading is much more than he bargained for.

Santa Zeta
Fri, Apr 24, 7pm - 9pm
A super famous travel influencer, Santa Zeta, uses her social media as a cover to travel the world hunting pedophiles, obsessed with finding her little sister’s killer.

Saturday, April 25

Shorts Program: Kidhood
Sat, Apr 25, 11am - 1pm
Heart-warming and provocative stories told through kids’ eyes. Themes of self-acceptance, multiculturalism and bullying swirl through this collection, asking viewers to consider what makes us us.

Waves Won't Stop w/ short film Big, Small, Scared, At Ease
Sat, Apr 25, 1:15pm - 3pm
Waves Won’t Stop
An experimental documentary in which the narrator evokes his childhood memories of Cyprus, and his connection to an indelible friendship defined by separation. Through vivid recollections of their lost bond, he explores themes of longing, belonging, and on the enduring pull of his homeland that shaped them both. "Waves Won’t Stop" is an intimate look on a long journey of return.

Big, Small, Scared, At Ease
A distraught young woman recalls and shares her memories and dreams. An abstract stream-of-consciousness collage of image, color, and sound, intimately woven by threads of loss, growth, and rebirth.

Bouquet Days
Sat, Apr 25, 3:15pm - 4:50pm
Set during the harvest season in Auvergne, France, Bouquet Days follows the passions and pursuits of a new generation of winemakers as they navigate what are traditionally the most poignant and challenging days of their year. Their search for meaning in and outside of the vines becomes a meditation on the complexities of modern life, the fundamental human connections that bind us to each other, the passage of time, and our shared responsibility to the planet.

Dream Touch Believe w/ short film Wandering Horse
Sat, Apr 25, 5pm - 6:45pm
Dream Touch Believe
Dream Touch Believe features the inspiring story of Santa Clara Pueblo sculptor Michael Naranjo. As a young man Naranjo lost his eyesight in the Vietnam War, but not his vision. He fought past critics and a war injury to achieve his lifelong dream of becoming an acclaimed artist.

Wandering Horse
A wandering horse leads to a wandering mind through the extraterrestrial beauty of New Mexico. An experimental microfilm made while an artist-in-residence at The Parador, Santa Fe. Animation experiments including oil pastel palimpsest, replacement animation, compositing, and stop motion, contained within a diorama inspired by the many silly horses of New Mexico.

Raw Material
Sat, Apr 25, 7pm - 9pm
A young film director, Tamás is invited to a village to lead a summer art workshop for kids. He quickly discovers that the village is overrun with corruption and exploitation. He starts an investigation into the abusive mayor and exposes him by shooting a documentary. The mayor finds out about Tamás’ new mission, the locals turn against each other, and what began as an easygoing summer adventure, starts to threaten everyone involved. Martin Boross’ feature debut is a critical reflection on the filmmakers’ responsibility and harmful activism in an all-too-familiar microcosm of oppression.

Sunday, April 26

Shorts Program: Her Sight
Sun, Apr 26, 10:45am - 12:25pm
Stories centering women that unflinchingly explore grief, love and intuition.

This is Pike County w/ short film Mesa Rats
Sun, Apr 26, 12:45pm - 2:30pm
This is Pike County
Mounting pressures – including an unsolved family murder – test a close-knit rural community. Between the temptation to give up and the urge to hold on, the film lingers on what it means to come of age in a place left behind. “Haunting, quietly searing, hard to forget.” - Arlie Hochschild, Author, Strangers in Their Own Land

Mesa Rats
Around Christmas time on the outskirts of rural New Mexico lives Sparrow, an eleven year old child and her loving yet unpredictable mother, Genevieve. She is late again to pick Sparrow up from school but this time she brings a Christmas tree with her, something Sparrow always wanted but thought would be too normal for their family. Her excitement turns to anxiety over her Mother’s stability as she realizes that her mom’s ex-boyfriend Russel has re-entered the picture. We follow Sparrow as she searches for ways to prevent her mother from destroying herself, and their lives in the process.

Photographic Justice w/ short film Onlooker
Sun, Apr 26, 2:40pm - 4:15pm
Photographic Justice
Using his camera as a “weapon against injustice,” Chinese American photographer Corky Lee’s art is his activism. His unforgettable images of Asian American life empowered generations. This film’s intimate portrait reveals the triumphs and tragedies of the man behind the lens.

Onlooker
Onlooker is a meditation on presence in the city through the eyes of a professional bmx biker.

Daughter of the Light
Sun, Apr 26, 4:30pm - 6:10pm
13-year-old Metok Karpo lives in a Tibetan boarding school for orphans. Her divorced parents are alive, but have left her to be raised by her maternal grandparents. Her mother remarries but the new husband passes away shortly afterwards. Despite all odds, Metok embarks on a journey to find her father in her native grassland. Discovering his happy life with a new family, she is troubled by complex feelings she can only express through her imaginative drawings. As new waves of dating on smart phones sweeping through the area, traditional life and nomadic family values start to collapse. In Tibet, divorce is becoming a social problem, affecting more and more families. The film documents this adolescent’s quest for father and belonging, spotlighting a young girl living tenaciously in a society of radical transformation.

Doc Shorts Program: Touching The Land
Sun, Apr 26, 6:20pm - 8pm
A poetic journey through the varied relationships we forge with the land beneath our feet.