Evansville has stretched a red carpet — metaphorically speaking — straight to the aisles of Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre and the Academy Awards.
When director Sam Davis stepped onstage March 15 to accept his Oscar for Live Action Short Film in a historic tie, the Victory International Film Festival had helped him get there. The local festival’s jury awarded Davis its Grand Prize and Best Director awards in September 2025 for “The Singers,” his powerful story of an impromptu singing contest in a dive bar. The hardware won in Evansville was among 35 awards that “The Singers” earned at 50 film festivals on its way to the 98th Academy Awards. “I didn’t know that was a thing — to tie — but we’re happy to be up here,” Davis said while accepting the Oscar.
Called an “emotionally resonant sledgehammer” by critics, the film’s win flashed Victory’s power to support Oscar-worthy films. But there is more to its story. “The Victory festival also provides an avenue for local filmmakers to exhibit their work,” says Tim Black, President and CEO of festival partner WNIN. “Public media can assist in bringing this cultural opportunity to our community.”
Emmy Award-winning director Jakob Bilinski is one of those filmmakers. “I’m a firm believer in bringing the things you want to experience to you, rather than going somewhere else for them,” says Bilinski, whose two Emmys for “The American Dream Car Show” were earned in 2019 via the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ Ohio Valley Chapter. “Victory has spent years doing that, creating a genuine draw with its mix of international and locally made films. They bring filmmakers and community together on a grand scale.”
Now in its seventh year, the festival has become a fixture in a cultural firmament already stacked with stars. Festival Director Matthew Ulm is excited to support the area’s film community. “It’s great to see Evansville-, Tri-State-, and Hoosier-made films growing stronger since we started,” he says. “We’re getting more submitted, and their quality has increased dramatically.”
Take the dystopian thriller “Wet Bulb Temperature.” Its world premiere was at the 2025 Victory festival, where it won Best Narrative Film and Best Hoosier Film for director Joe Atkinson. “Premiering it where I live was special,” says Atkinson, who has led the University of Evansville’s NewsLab since February after serving two years as Mayor Stephanie Terry’s Communications Director. “We had a full crowd in the auditorium and a great post-screening Q&A. I enjoyed the experience of watching my film with an audience.”
Ulm says providing Atkinson and others a quality venue and audience helps them share their passion for filmmaking. It also is a key reason Victory and other smaller film festivals are resurgent after the pandemic. Data tracked online festival platform Eventive shows more than 4,800 indie festivals operating now, with ticket sales at all-time highs. Virtual screening, streaming, and online film-submission platforms like FilmFreeway add to that growth.
Ambitious local filmmakers are driving Victory’s expansion. Ulm, plus photographer and filmmaker Jordan Barclay and an enthusiastic team of volunteers, have built its buzz, audience, and global engagement.
Ulm, who has served as director since 2023, has ties to Evansville’s film scene that go back a decade to the Alhambra Film Festival. When the theater building’s 2017 sale ended the festival, Ulm and friends moved out of the Haynie’s Corner Arts District and pivoted to the Victory Theatre, which opened in 1921 and screened the first sound film in the city in 1928. The group held the first Victory festival in 2019, raising funds to help restore the theater’s marquee in 2023. Early success helped the festival become a nonprofit in 2022.
“With the Victory, we found a great home and a chance to contribute to the cultural vibe Downtown,” Ulm says. “Being on Main Street also gave us access to screening venues like WNIN. Here, you can see great independent films that expose you to other cultures, get a bite to eat, and stop in the shops.”
After several years of growth, Ulm bolted a turbocharger onto the festival in 2025 in the form of Barclay. The new Artistic Director has gone all-in to help. He arrived fresh off a successful festival run with his short documentary, “Sack Races with Knives: The Curious Art of Kevin Titzer.” It was selected by 22 festivals and won seven awards, culminating with Best Documentary at Victory in 2024. “I saw what worked and didn’t at those festivals and took mental notes,” Barclay says. “I saw things we could improve to make the Victory festival not just stronger, but special.”
Ulm credits Barclay for elevating Victory’s game. “Jordan brought a lot of energy and ideas to us, and I can’t thank him enough for his hard work,” Ulm says. “He helped us to our best year yet in terms of the quality of films screened and how we can scale the festival in the future. We’re building momentum.”
Some of that push comes from Barclay’s launch of new festival branding, an upgraded social media footprint, and additional film categories such as Best Horror Film and Best Music Video.
These steps have not only attracted Oscar-caliber films like “The Singers,” they also curated a richer assortment of high-quality, award-winning global films from top festivals including Tribeca in New York City; South by Southwest in Austin, Texas; and Sundance, formerly in Park City, Utah, but moving to Boulder, Colorado in 2027. Even Grammy Award-winning performers are submitting their music videos now.
Overall, submissions nearly doubled in 2025 and are on track to grow significantly this year. By early June, submissions to the 2026 festival had come from 50 countries. Barclay engaged local graphic designer Aaron Tanner to develop the new branding. No stranger to pop culture, his limited-run coffee table books on rock bands The Pixies and Butthole Surfers can be seen at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.
“Our goal was growing the festival by reaching talent from outside the region,” Tanner says. “The new logomark is an abstract letter ‘V’ that doubles as a spotlight, a symbol associated with movie premieres.”
The rebrand launched last year on global festival hub FilmFreeway as well as Victory’s website and social media accounts. Bold and contemporary, it achieved its goal. “We immediately saw a different tier of filmmakers submitting their work,” Barclay says. “It’s taken the festival to the next level. In 2025, we set records for film submissions and ticket sales, and we’re already on track to exceed that pace this year.”
Maintaining that will take continued support from its theater partners. Victory Theatre — a movie theater from 1921 to 1979 before becoming a night club and, now, a concert venue — makes nearly 2,000 seats available to the festival. It also hosts the closing awards ceremony. Farther down Main Street, WNIN has supplied its 48-seat Old National Public Theatre and support staff from the beginning. “We’re glad to help the festival succeed by providing this support and promoting it to the audience most likely to be interested,” WNIN’s Black says.
Showplace Entertainment has been there from the start, too, screening festival films and hosting an opening night red-carpet event. It also replays screenings of festival award-winners at Showplace Cinemas East on East Morgan Avenue. “Movies are meant to be seen in a theatre setting, so we’re glad to donate to the festival for this to happen,” says Mick Stieler, President of Showplace Entertainment.
Bilinski’s feature film “Compression” won Victory’s 2024 Grand Prize. WNIN hosted its sold-out screening. “The lobby was packed with people who couldn’t get in, crowded around a monitor to watch the film,” Bilinski says. A follow-up “Victory Lap” screening at Showplace East sold out, too. “Seeing ‘Compression’ welcomed on such a grand scale in my hometown to packed, cheering audiences, that was the biggest gift I could’ve received,” Bilinski says. “It toured cities throughout 2024, with Evansville the final stop on its festival run. It definitely felt like a homecoming.”
Volunteers are the festival’s behind-the-scenes engine. Many of its all-volunteer staff are filmmakers too, including Ulm, Barclay, and Technical Director Josh Weiland. Lynn Kinkade and more than a dozen screeners do more heavy lifting by reviewing every film submitted.
Beyond using a 10-criteria rating system, “I also weigh intangibles, such as how a film makes me feel, and what its attraction might be,” says Kinkade, a longtime festival supporter who has acted in two short films. “I might recommend a film with a lower technical score but a deep feeling of satisfaction.”
From the screeners’ picks, a jury makes the official selections of the films that will be shown and compete for awards. “The caliber of films Victory brings in today far exceeds where they started, and their credibility among filmmakers has gone way up,” Atkinson says. “Securing participants from other states — and even other countries — is significant, because that wasn’t always so. They’ve struck a good balance between local and national films.”
Credibility earned, Ulm and Barclay keep reaching. One ambition: to become an Academy Award-qualifying festival that can help its winners get to the Oscars. The qualifying festivals closest to Evansville are the Indy Shorts International Film Festival in Indianapolis and the Nashville Film Festival in Tennessee. “This has been our goal from the start,” Ulm says. “It’s why we try to curate the best films from around the world.”
Award-winning Victory festival participation already strengthens the case for Oscar-worthy films shown here, as it did for “The Singers” in 2025. When the film got its Oscar nod on Jan. 22, the celebratory billboards placed around Los Angeles and in New York’s Times Square included its Victory Grand Prize. “Their win was huge for us,” Barclay says. “It legitimized the festival and encouraged other serious filmmakers to submit.”
He notes that becoming an Oscar-qualifying festival is a rigorous, multi-year process. “We’re now in our seventh year, which meets the Academy’s application threshold,” he said. “And we expect our submissions to reach eligibility in our tenth year, so we need to keep growing before we apply.”
That means more exciting filmgoing in the meantime. “The films coming in this year will blow you away,” Barclay says. “They’re full of emotion and talent. They’re like catching lightning in a bottle, then waiting to release it in September.”
WHEN YOU GO
2026 Victory International Film Festival
Sept. 10-12
Victory Theatre and supporting venues
