The Newport Beach Film Festival, Southern California’s largest cinema event, marked its 25th anniversary this month, drawing around 50,000 attendees who came to see over 100 film screenings and premieres across five venues, including the newly reopened The Lido Theater.
The newly refurbished theater, now managed by River Jetty Restaurant Group, brought the festival’s venue lineup back up to five theaters for the first time since 2019. The Lido also took back its regular spot as the host of the festival’s closing night film and reception.
The festival continues to rebuild attendance to its pre-pandemic peak of 58,000 with new collaborations, such as this year’s partnership with StyleWeekOC. The joint effort spotlighted the intersection of film and fashion, with filmmakers, celebrities and costume designers such as Carol Burnett and Bob Mackie coming together at Fashion Island for discussions during the event, which ran from Oct. 17-24.
“Fashion Island has been a steadfast supporter of the Newport Beach Film Festival since the very beginning,” Todd Quartararo, who co-founded the event along with Gregg Schwenk, told the Business Journal.
“Given that both events were planning to take place around the same time of year, we thought it would be a great idea to combine them and our shared audiences.”
“The partnership just made sense,” he added.