Snakebite Film Festival will leave you laughing, thinking at same time

Nine films.

Four days.

Two galas.

One "infamous" wine tour.

Add it all up, and the result is the thought-provoking, sometimes hilarious and always inclusive Snakebite Film Festival, which will take place Jan. 30 to Feb. 2, 2025, at Penticton's Landmark Cinemas and Cleland Community Theatre.

Carl Meadows created the film festival in 2017 when he moved to Penticton from Vancouver. It started out with one film, and eight years later it has become a full-fledged cinematic extravaganza. Its theme is “If you don’t recoil, you are probably dead.”

“We want to show films that are diverse, that are not mainstream,” Meadows says. “We want to make sure they kind of give people a reaction, and if you don’t recoil you’re probably dead. And that was it. That’s how it started.”

Under the leadership of Charlie Utz, the festival’s selection committee focuses on films that tackle themes of diversity and inclusion, with a particular emphasis on projects filmed in the region. One of this year's films includes a tale of adolescence filmed in Penticton called Wild Goat Surf, and there are also stories of local significance, like the harrowing tale of a residential school survivor in the film Sugarcane.

The festival also features the unique Snakebite 5-Day Film Challenge, which is held in collaboration with the Okanagan Society of Independent Filmmaking. Local directors are given a few guidelines and five days in January to come with a short film, and the creations are shown during the festival. There will be a grand prize winner, a people’s choice award and a total of $3,000 in cash prizes given to the cream of the crop.

The event will kick off on Jan. 30 with a Mamma Mia! singalong, followed by the ABBA Cadabra gala at The Hub restaurant. It will be a night of great entertainment, dinner, drinks and $500 cash to whoever shows up wearing the best Mamma Mia!-themed costume.

The second gala is already sold out, but the festival’s wine tour still has spots available. Meadows said last year the tour’s participants were singing Doris Day and had an absolute blast while getting out and enjoying some of the Okanagan’s finest wines.

Penticton Lakeside Resort & Conference Centre is offering special rates for festival-goers this year, and Meadows is hoping to have several food trucks for patrons to enjoy. There will also be talk-back sessions, and restaurant sponsors, like The Hub, will have special seating areas for festival-goers to discuss the films they just watched.

The goal is to create a carnival-like environment that encourages lively discussion and interaction among attendees, some of whom are coming from places like Albuquerque, N.M., and Tulsa, Okla.

“When people are watching a film, sitting as a collective, watching and experiencing emotions in a very large scale, you can’t describe how it feels,” Meadows says. “It’s really powerful.”

Film lovers can take in all nine shows, including the 5-Day Film Challenge and a yet-to-be-announced finale, for just $65.

“You can’t beat that,” Meadows says.

More information about Snakebite Film Festival can be found on its website here.

This article is written by or on behalf of the sponsoring client and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.