Patrick Bresnan (Grand Jury Award winner for The Rabbit Hunt, FFF 2017; Naked Gardens, FFF 2023) turns his camera on Sarasota, where New College of Florida, the state’s honors college, becomes the center of a much bigger story about who gets to teach, learn, and speak freely. Through the voices of students, professors, and organizers living it in real time, the film traces how quiet policy changes can snowball into something much larger, self-censorship, surveillance, and the slow erosion of trust. Told through vérité footage, archival news, and deeply personal interviews, it captures fear and courage sitting side by side, communities figuring out what to hold onto and what they’re willing to fight for. This isn’t a film interested in taking sides. It’s interested in what gets lost when fear replaces curiosity, and what that might mean for all of us, not just for one campus.

Join us Saturday for First They Came for My College at Subtropic Film Festival 2026. Screening begins at 5:30 PM @ Lake Worth Playhouse, 713 Lake Avenue, Lake Worth Beach, FL 33460. The 105-minute feature will be followed by a 15-minute Q&A.

Note: Weekend Pass holders already have access to this screening and do not need to purchase a separate ticket.

Important Seating Information: We recommend arriving at least 15 minutes before your screening to allow time for parking, check-in, and seating. Seating is guaranteed until 5 minutes after the scheduled start time. To ensure full audiences and minimize empty seats, any unoccupied seats may be released to guests waiting in the rush line beginning 5 minutes after showtime. If your seat has been released, admission cannot be guaranteed.

Junkie follows Stevie Chapman through 72 chaotic hours of trying to get it right, one more time. She’s run from rehab again, and this time she’s chasing something bigger than an escape, a chance to make things right with the son she’s spent years pushing away. Writer-director William Means doesn’t flinch from the mess of it. And Rocky Shay, a real-life recovering addict, brings Stevie to life with a rawness that feels less like acting and more like truth. Funny, heartbreaking, sometimes both in the same breath. Underneath the chaos, this is a story about a mother and son trying to find their way back to each other. About dignity. About how hope survives even when everything else falls apart.

Join us Saturday night for Junkie at Subtropic Film Festival 2026. Screening begins at 8:15 PM @ Lake Worth Playhouse, 713 Lake Avenue, Lake Worth Beach, FL 33460. The 105-minute feature will be followed by a 15-minute Q&A.

Note: Weekend Pass holders already have access to this screening and do not need to purchase a separate ticket.

Important Seating Information: We recommend arriving at least 15 minutes before your screening to allow time for parking, check-in, and seating. Seating is guaranteed until 5 minutes after the scheduled start time. To ensure full audiences and minimize empty seats, any unoccupied seats may be released to guests waiting in the rush line beginning 5 minutes after showtime. If your seat has been released, admission cannot be guaranteed.

DAY PASS: Get access to ONE full day of film screenings, workshops, panels ++community. (includes screenings at the Lake Worth Playhouse and access to parties)

*price will increase closer to festival - does not include Norton Opening Night

Important Seating Information: We recommend arriving at least 15 minutes before your screening to allow time for parking, check-in, and seating. Seating is guaranteed until 5 minutes after the scheduled start time. To ensure full audiences and minimize empty seats, any unoccupied seats may be released to guests waiting in the rush line beginning 5 minutes after showtime. If your seat has been released, admission cannot be guaranteed.

WEEKEND PASS (2 days, Saturday and Sunday): Get access to TWO full days of film screenings, workshops, panels ++community. (includes screenings at the Lake Worth Playhouse and access to parties)

*price will increase closer to festival - does not include Norton Opening Night

Important Seating Information: We recommend arriving at least 15 minutes before your screening to allow time for parking, check-in, and seating. Seating is guaranteed until 5 minutes after the scheduled start time. To ensure full audiences and minimize empty seats, any unoccupied seats may be released to guests waiting in the rush line beginning 5 minutes after showtime. If your seat has been released, admission cannot be guaranteed.

Join us for Opening Night - Subtropic Film Festival 2026!

Five stories, five very different storytellers, one truth: this land holds more than most people ever stop to notice. Sacred ground, buried history, the water beneath our feet, the roots we grow from and the ones we're still finding. This is Florida telling its own story, in its own voice, exactly the way it should. Join us for our Opening Night screening at The Norton on Friday. Nov. 6 at 7PM. 

Film lineup: 

ALLIGATOR ALTAR (dir. Leslie Ramos)

SAME WATER (dir. Martine Granby)

[WATER] ACKNOWLEDGEMENT (dir. Josh Corson)

THE FLOWERKEEPER (dir. Nora Long)

HARAJUKU, FL (dir. Andres Gimenez)

*this ticket gives access to the Norton Museum of Art and after party

@Norton Museum, 1450 S Dixie Hwy, West Palm Beach, FL 33401

Important Seating Information: We recommend arriving at least 15 minutes before your screening to allow time for parking, check-in, and seating. Seating is guaranteed until 5 minutes after the scheduled start time. To ensure full audiences and minimize empty seats, any unoccupied seats may be released to guests waiting in the rush line beginning 5 minutes after showtime. If your seat has been released, admission cannot be guaranteed.

Jit Life: Stories about growing up in South Florida, where identity gets tested before you're ready and the world doesn't wait for you to catch up. Jit Life sits in that in-between, pressure and dreaming, grief and ambition, the noise and the thing underneath it. Sat. Nov 7 @ 1PM at AFFLUX STUDIOS.

UNTITLED WIP

JIT

SHADE

PEGASUS

HOTEL EVERNIA

@Afflux Studios, 2060 S Congress Ave, Palm Springs, FL 33406

Note: Weekend Pass holders already have access to this screening and do not need to purchase a separate ticket.

Sacred and Strange: A collection of stories that live in the space between ritual and reality. These are films about initiation, transformation, and the moments that mark us before we fully understand why. Sacred and Strange sits with the discomfort of becoming, the rites we inherit, invent, and endure on the way to who we are meant to be. Sat. Nov 7 @ 2PM at AFFLUX STUDIOS.

RELIGION

EUKARYOTIC

INITIATION

UNDERGROUND RIVER

SEPTEMBER, ALL OVER

@Afflux Studios, 2060 S Congress Ave, Palm Springs, FL 33406

Note: Weekend Pass holders already have access to this screening and do not need to purchase a separate ticket.

FROGTOWN (The Norton/ Sat. Nov. 7 at 2pm)

dir. Costa Karalis | USA | Documentary/Fantasy

An adult woman sets out to prove the swamp creature she met as a child was real, and Frogtown follows her all the way down that rabbit hole, blurring fact and fiction so completely you'll stop trying to tell the difference. Shot in Marianna, a tiny Panhandle town of about 3,000 people, the film interviewed over 60 real residents, many of whom appear as themselves, dreamers, believers, storytellers, the kind of people most films forget to look at twice.

Director Costa Karalis was raised near Clearwater, Florida, and it shows. This isn't the postcard Florida of beaches and neon, it's the swamp-and-cypress Florida further north, the one that rarely gets its own movie. 

Frogtown Awards: Frogtown won Best Florida Feature and the Audience Award at the Florida Film Festival, where it also had its World Premiere, before selling out its Atlanta Film Festival debut.

@Norton Museum, 1450 S Dixie Hwy, West Palm Beach, FL 33401

Important Seating Information: We recommend arriving at least 15 minutes before your screening to allow time for parking, check-in, and seating. Seating is guaranteed until 5 minutes after the scheduled start time. To ensure full audiences and minimize empty seats, any unoccupied seats may be released to guests waiting in the rush line beginning 5 minutes after showtime. If your seat has been released, admission cannot be guaranteed.

Wait, What?: Some things don't need context. This is one of those blocks. Grief, chaos, a little horror, a little comedy, none of it plays by the rules. This block doesn't explain itself. It doesn't need to. You'll know what you saw. You just won't know how to say it out loud. Sat. Nov 7 @ 3PM at AFFLUX STUDIOS.

VALERIO'S DAY OUT

THE HOLLYWOOD CORBIN DEVOTIONAL HOUR

OYSTER ROCKEFELLER

CORPO REALITY

LANCE LIZARDI

SUGAR WAX

THE UNDYING PAIN OF EXISTENCE

@Afflux Studios, 2060 S Congress Ave, Palm Springs, FL 33406

Note: Weekend Pass holders already have access to this screening and do not need to purchase a separate ticket.

Everything Is Normal Here: Down here, strange isn't a departure from normal, it is normal. Nothing surprises anyone for very long. This block moves through that particular Florida logic, where myth, absurdity, and the everyday all sit at the same table without blinking. Sat. Nov 7 @ 4PM at AFFLUX STUDIOS.

FLORIDA MONSTER

THE JOY OF PERSONIFICATION

OCHLOCKONEE SPLIT

XING

CURANDERAS

MANATEES STRIKE BACK

@Afflux Studios, 2060 S Congress Ave, Palm Springs, FL 33406

Note: Weekend Pass holders already have access to this screening and do not need to purchase a separate ticket.

Something's Off : The kind of unease that doesn't announce itself. It just sits wrong, a little too quiet, a little too long, until you realize you've been holding your breath. Some of it's funny. All of it lingers. Sat. Nov 7 @ 4:15PM at AFFLUX STUDIOS.

HEATED

LATIN LOVER

SHE'LL COME BACK

CALL IT A NIGHT

@Afflux Studios, 2060 S Congress Ave, Palm Springs, FL 33406

Note: Weekend Pass holders already have access to this screening and do not need to purchase a separate ticket.

Light Breaks Through: The moment things start turning toward good. Warmth after struggle, connection after loneliness, peace after the fight to find it. This block holds onto hope without pretending the hard part didn't happen first. Sun. Nov 8 @ 12PM at AFFLUX STUDIOS.

IS YOUR SHADE OF BLUE THE SAME AS MINE

WATER STATE

THE LIGHT

SHOW DRAWN (2026)

THE CALM UNDER THE WATER

@Afflux Studios, 2060 S Congress Ave, Palm Springs, FL 33406

Note: Weekend Pass holders already have access to this screening and do not need to purchase a separate ticket.

Touch Soil: A block of films that remind us of home and ground us in our shared experiences. Locally made in Florida by Floridians. Sun. Nov 8 @ 1PM at AFFLUX STUDIOS.

DEAR ONE

SEEN=LOVED,

FROM SURVIVING TO THRIVING

A DREAM WE ONCE SHARED

FLAWDA BOY

HER SOIL IS HER FORTUNE

@Afflux Studios, 2060 S Congress Ave, Palm Springs, FL 33406

Note: Weekend Pass holders already have access to this screening and do not need to purchase a separate ticket.

THE MOTHS AND THE FLAME  (AFFLUX STUDIOS/ Sun. Nov 8 at 1PM)
dir. Kevin Contento | 97 min | Documentary

Over the course of a year, Kevin Contento follows a group of young men in Pahokee, men he's known since childhood, as they step into fatherhood alongside him. What unfolds isn't a film about struggle, it's a film about presence. Kitchens, laundromats, birthdays, the quiet, unremarkable work of showing up every day, all shot in golden light that treats Pahokee's sugar cane fields like sacred ground.

The film takes its title from Farid ud-Din Attar's Sufi parable, whose message is that real understanding doesn't come from talking or thinking, but from total devotion, and that idea sits at the center of everything here. This is a film that quietly, deliberately, contradicts the myth of the absent Black father, and does it not through argument, but through attention.

Contento was born in Plantation, Florida, and has spent years building trust and returning to Pahokee, this is his second feature set there. The Moths and the Flame had its World Premiere at the Berlinale Forum, scored by legendary hip hop producer 4th Disciple

@Afflux Studios, 2060 S Congress Ave, Palm Springs, FL 33406

Note: Weekend Pass holders already have access to this screening and do not need to purchase a separate ticket.

Subtropic Kids: The next wave, high school and college filmmakers finding their voice before the world tells them what it should sound like. Afterlives and second chances, faith and identity, a lovesick mantis, an outlaw with an unusual job. Wildly different films, same fearless energy. This is where you catch someone before everyone else does. Sun. Nov 8 @ 2PM at AFFLUX STUDIOS.

INTERIM

CONFESSIONS OF THE FACELESS YOUTH

THE EXPERTS

PRAYING FOR LOVE

NO DUST SETTLES BEHIND-SIXTO SUAREZ

@Afflux Studios, 2060 S Congress Ave, Palm Springs, FL 33406

Note: Weekend Pass holders already have access to this screening and do not need to purchase a separate ticket.

HONEYJOON (The Norton/ Sun. Nov 8 at 2pm)

dir. Lilian T. Mehrel | USA/Portugal | 75 min

Lela and her daughter June head to the Azores to mark one year since losing the man who used to hold their whole family together, and immediately disagree on everything about how to do it. How to grieve. What to wear. Whether the hot, philosophical tour guide is a distraction or exactly what they need. Grief gets funny before it gets healing, and Honeyjoon knows that better than almost anything we've seen this year.

Written and directed by Miami native Lilian T. Mehrel in her debut feature, funded through Tribeca's $1 million Untold Stories Award, this is a mother-daughter story that refuses to pick a lane, laughter into grief into something that actually looks like healing. One of our own, telling a story this good.

Honeyjoon Awards: HONEYJOON premiered at Tribeca and 50 festivals, won the Tribeca AT&T Untold Stories Award for $1million, and multiple audience and jury awards for Best Feature. 

@Norton Museum, 1450 S Dixie Hwy, West Palm Beach, FL 33401

Important Seating Information: We recommend arriving at least 15 minutes before your screening to allow time for parking, check-in, and seating. Seating is guaranteed until 5 minutes after the scheduled start time. To ensure full audiences and minimize empty seats, any unoccupied seats may be released to guests waiting in the rush line beginning 5 minutes after showtime. If your seat has been released, admission cannot be guaranteed.

Relics: Three stories about what we hold onto and why. A console, a station, a floor, none of them just objects, all of them still holding the people who loved them. Relics is about the things that refuse to become obsolete simply because the world moved on without asking. Sun. Nov 8 @ 3PM at AFFLUX STUDIOS.

THE LAST CONSOLE
IN THE DARK

THE FLOOR REMEMBERS

@Afflux Studios, 2060 S Congress Ave, Palm Springs, FL 33406

Note: Weekend Pass holders already have access to this screening and do not need to purchase a separate ticket.

TROPICAL PARK + PANGEA (AFFLUX STUDIOS/ Sun. Nov 8 at 3PM)
dir. Hansel Porras Garcia (Tropical Park) / dir. Mimi Davila (Pangea)

TROPICAL PARK (85 min)
Frank and Fanny are Cuban siblings who haven't been in the same room in years, until Fanny, newly arrived in Miami and recently transitioned, gets in a car with her conservative brother for a driving lesson. What follows is 85 minutes, one unbroken take, in the backseat of a car winding through Miami, as two people who love each other and fundamentally disagree about almost everything try to find their way back to some kind of understanding.

Shot without a traditional script, actors Lola Bosch and Ariel Texidó improvised the entire film from a short treatment, and it shows in every unguarded moment. Director Hansel Porras Garcia based the film on real memories of learning to drive with their own father in the parking lot of Tropical Park, a Miami community center. Winner of the Knight Made in MIA Award for Porras Garcia's debut Febrero, Tropical Park premiered at Miami Film Festival before playing MoMI's First Look and Film Fest Knox.

PANGEA (short)
Rita shows up at her ex-lover Echo's door in New York, and over 24 hours, old wounds reopen alongside old desire. Shot in black and white on grainy film stock, Pangea sits inside the mess of two Latina women who've never fully belonged anywhere, not fully Black, not fully white, not fully anywhere, and finds something like home in each other anyway, however briefly.

Written, directed by, and starring Mimi Davila, who was raised in Miami, Pangea has played the festival circuit including Palm Springs International ShortFest and Maryland Film Festival.

Paired together, these two films sit in the same emotional register, people who share history, identity, and love, but not always agreement, forced into close quarters to face it head-on.

@Afflux Studios, 2060 S Congress Ave, Palm Springs, FL 33406

Note: Weekend Pass holders already have access to this screening and do not need to purchase a separate ticket.

Love You, Still: This block moves through the closest relationships we have, and how love can hold on even when it gets complicated, when someone's changing, growing distant, running out of time, or being loved harder than they're being understood. It doesn't ask to be easy. It just asks to stay. Sun. Nov 8 @ 4:15PM at AFFLUX STUDIOS.

I LOVE YOU SO MUCH BUT YOU ARE SO DIFFICULT

PLAYAS

CORRE HACIA ADENTRO

SHUGA MANGO

@Afflux Studios, 2060 S Congress Ave, Palm Springs, FL 33406

Note: Weekend Pass holders already have access to this screening and do not need to purchase a separate ticket.

What They Took: Some things are taken all at once. Others disappear slowly, a name, a border, a sense of safety, a version of home you didn't know you'd lose. This block sits with what's gone and what still has to be carried forward anyway. Sun. Nov 8 @ 5PM at AFFLUX STUDIOS.

PLASTER SAINTS

THEY TOOK HIM

COLADA

MIAMI BOY

TESORO

@Afflux Studios, 2060 S Congress Ave, Palm Springs, FL 33406

Note: Weekend Pass holders already have access to this screening and do not need to purchase a separate ticket.