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Winners of the Spring 2026 New Jersey Film Festival Competition Announced!

by Al Nigrin
published 2026-02-16

The Competition component of the Spring 2026 New Jersey Film Festival has just concluded! Overall, we had a good festival this year.  We had a few screenings that were very well attended and a bunch with lower turnouts but that happens every festival for a variety of reasons.  The in-person show attendance was about the same as our Festival last year, but the online viewership is what has kept us afloat financially since COVID broke in 2020. All the Official Selection works of the Spring 2026 New Jersey Film Festival were selected by a panel of judges including media professionals, journalists, students, and academics. These judges selected the 33 finalists which were publicly screened at our Festival. The finalists were selected from over 600 works submitted by filmmakers from around the world. In addition, the judges chose the Prize Winners in conjunction with the Festival Director. Here below are the winners of the Festival. 




 

New Release Review - "Send Help"

by Eric Hillis, TheMovieWaffler.com
published 2026-02-15

With Send Help, screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift have taken the basic setup of Lina Wertmuller's Swept Away (and its awful Madonna-starring, Guy Ritchie directed remake) and given it a gender swap. Here it's a lowly female employee who finds herself stranded on a desert island with her male boss. Much of Send Help explores the same class and sexual tensions as Wertmuller's film, but with Sam Raimi in the director's chair we know things are going to get a little crazy at some point. And, boy, do they!



Top 15 Most Read Stories At New Jersey Stage from February 8-15, 2026

Here's a look at the top 15 most read articles published on New Jersey Stage from Febuary 8-15, 2026. Each week we publish at least 70 articles, including original columns and features, promoting events and covering arts news taking place throughout the state and nearby areas like Philadelphia and New York City. This week's top 15 includes articles from 8 counties (Atlantic, Bergen, Cumberland, Hudson, Mercer, Middlesex, Monmouth, and Ocean).



By popular demand Freeing Juanita returns to the 2026 New Jersey Film Festival on Friday, February 20!

by Yuri Kim
published 2026-02-15

Freeing Juanita, directed by Sebastián Lasaosa Rogers, is not the kind of documentary you watch and walk away from unchanged. It stays with you long after the credits roll. At its heart, this is a film about one woman, wrongfully imprisoned. But as you watch it unfold, you realize it’s also about so much more: a broken immigration system, the erasure of Indigenous voices, and the extraordinary strength of family and community.



New Release Review - "The Secret Agent"

by Eric Hillis, TheMovieWaffler.com
published 2026-02-14

With Summer of Sam, Spike Lee suggested that in 1977 there was nowhere crazier than New York. With The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho asks Lee to hold his beer. If you thought '77 NYC was something, wait till you experience the Brazil of that year. In opening text, Mendonça Filho describes that era in his nation's troubled history as "a time of great mischief," and The Secret Agent is a gleefully mischievous movie. Like several recent high profile South American films, including last year's Brazilian drama I'm Still Here, it is concerned with the corruption that was rife under the military dictatorship. But just as Lee did for the bankruptcy era Big Apple, Mendonça Filho displays a fond nostalgia for the energy that can be created by dangerous times. There is much in The Secret Agent that is shocking, and it reminds us of the evil that is allowed to flourish in corrupt societies, but it's also heart-poundingly thrilling.