50 films. 6 days. How Beaufort’s film festival became a ‘cultural phenomenon’
The Beaufort International Film Festival (BIFF) was launched two decades ago to jumpstart filmmaking in Beaufort, which was sputtering after racing to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s with films like “The Great Santini,” “The Big Chill” and “Forrest Gump.”
Since then, says Ron Tucker, a retired Marine who started BIFF with his wife, Rebecca, the festival “has become sort of a cultural phenomenon.”
At the 2026 festival, which runs Feb. 17-22 at the University of South Carolina Beaufort’s Center for the Arts, 805 Carteret St., 54 of the 554 entries, which set a record for submissions, will be shown daily. The films were submitted for screening from directors hailing from 50 countries, from Croatia to Mexico. About 100 filmmakers, from New York to Los Angeles to Charleston and Columbia, are expected to attend the festival. Immediately after the showings, they will answer questions from film fans who religiously turn out for the mid-winter movie binge-watch in a city that’s been a backdrop to dozens of films.
Tucker credits the record number of submissions for the venerable festival to the mild February weather in Beaufort, the intimate under-one-roof set-up at USCB and word of mouth.
“The filmmakers that have been coming the last 10 years fall in love with the festival and Beaufort,” Tucker says.
A sample of this year’s movie entries
Tickets are now on sale. Here’s a sampling of the entries:
- “Stronger Than You Think,” a documentary directed by Janice Molinari and Melissa Forman from Santa Monica, Calif. about Ali Truwit, a competitive swimmer who lost a foot and leg in a shark attack. The film chronicles her recovery as she trained to make the 2024 U.S. Paralympic team.
- “Swineheart” by Brad Bennett of Lynchburg, Va. about a man who underwent the first pig heart transplant.
- “Goody” by director Zoe Lubeck, of Columbia, about a young woman navigating life with undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder.
- “Bob’s Best Friends” by director Randy Kent, Los Angeles, about Bob, an actor with a speech disorder who finds a special connection with dogs.
- “Terry’s GI Dad” by director Jonathan Beamish of Kent, United Kingdom, about an 80-year-old British Royal Marines veteran and his quest to identify his African-American GI father who was stationed in Leicestershire during World War II. That journey brings him to South Carolina.
- “Summerville 70” by director David Boatwright of Charleston, about a day in the life of small South Carolina town in 1970.
Thousands flock to the Beaufort International Film Festival
Like snow birds, each February, some 10,000 people -- film directors from across world and film fans -- flock to the film-friendly and mild-wintered city sandwiched between larger and better known Charleston and Savannah. They squeeze shoulder-to-shoulder into the seats at the USCB Center for the Arts a stone’s throw from the Beaufort River, part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.
There they watch the 50 or so film entries over six days, from feature films, to documentaries to comedies. During the doldrums of winter, BIFF brings equal parts commerce and culture to the coastal community of 15,000, filling up local hotels in the name of art in a city better known for its summer water festival and fall shrimp feed.
The Feb. 17 opening ceremony will feature off-Broadway actress and playwright Jessica Sherr and her program, “Bette Davis Ain’t for Sissies,” which chronicles the actress’ badass climb to the top in the male-dominated studio system of the time.
“You wouldn’t normally have something like that in Beaufort if it weren’t for the film festival,” Tucker says.
Stars and behind-the-scenes players show up to BIFF
Some years, stars show up, like “Forrest Gump” actor Gary Sinise in 2025, and Vanna White of “Wheel of Fortune” fame,” in 2016.
But the low-key Lowcountry film festival has a reputation for recognizing behind-the-scenes players that might be well-known in Hollywood but strangers to most.
This year, for instance, character actor Grainger Hines, a Greenwood, S.C. native, will receive the Pat Conroy Lifetime Achievement Award. Hines isn’t a household name, but he has worked with some of the best in the business, including directors Stephen Spielberg and the Cohen Brothers, in a six-decade career in film, television and theater. You might recall Hines from a touching 2021 Chevrolet Christmas commercial titled “Holiday Ride” in which he played a widower who is surprised when his daughter restores a 1966 Chevrolet Impala convertible he once enjoyed with his wife.
“We look for those character actors or character people, those behind-the-scenes people, and that’s what we have in Grainger Hines,” Tucker says. “In 60 years, he’s done it all.”
The lifetime achievement award is named in honor of Conroy, the celebrated Beaufort author known for his books like “The Prince of Tides,” “The Great Santini” and “The Lords of Discipline,” which were later adapted to the screen. Conroy was an ardent backer of the film festival. It was his vivid descriptions of the city in his books that originally caught the attention of Hollywood, Tucker notes.
But the staying power of the festival has really been Beaufort and its sweeping marsh vistas, antebellum homes and quiet charm of the old south, not directors or actors, Tucker says. Tucker didn’t say the line first, but he doesn’t mind repeating it because he says it sums up the appeal of the festival: “The first star they meet is Beaufort.”
Two decades after it started, BIFF is the largest and oldest film festival in South Carolina.
Film festival spurs new generation of filmmakers
Filming for some 20 films or scenes had been shot in the Beaufort area up until 1999, but a drought followed, Tucker said.
“We had a good run and now the filmmakers were not coming anymore,” he said.
The film festival was created to spur a new generation of filmmakers to come to Beaufort.
“Stars Fell Over Alabama” was filmed in the city in 2019 and “The Final Run” in 2023.
Tucker says the way films are made today has changed. It’s not like it used to be when large cameras were needed to make a movie and a large cast and crew showed up. High-end digital cameras are often used now. In many cases, directors film portions of films or certain scenes in the area.
Recently, the state lowered the amount moviemakers can receive before incentives kick in from $1 million to $250,000, Tucker said. He’s hopeful that will kickstart film-making in the state. “That’s a lot more doable than a young film maker trying to raise $1 million to make a film,” he said.
How the Beaufort film festival came to be
Tucker had the idea to start a film festival in 2004. “She thought I was crazy,” he said of his wife, Rebecca.
At the time they were producing documentaries about the U.S. Marine Corps and filming graduation ceremonies at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, where Ron went to boot camp in 1971.
Three film festivals were run under the auspices of the local chamber of commerce beginning in 2004, with movies shown on 35mm protectors at a former movie theater on Lady’s Island. Then the Tuckers created the not-for-profit Beaufort Film Society and held the first Beaufort International Film Festival in 2007. In 2012, the festival was moved its current location at the 450-seat Center for the Arts at USCB. Today, the work of producing what is routinely listed as one of the top 100 film festivals in the world is year-round job and takes some 100 volunteers to pull it off each year.
After each festival, the Tuckers take a month off, “Then it’s back to the grind,” Ron Tucker says.
