The El Paso Film Festival’s winners included two standout films about hardworking Americans: Director Pete Muller’s documentary Bucks Harbor, about hardscrabble life in coastal Maine, and Jared Sprouse’s Party USA, a twisty tale of violence at a patriotic party store. Party USA also won the Grand Jury Prize.
The festival celebrated filmmakers from the borderlands and beyond. One highlight was a showing of local films at the historic Plaza Theatre, in which the entire, massive stage was taken up by El Paso filmmakers.
Another highlight was Sandra Adair, Richard Linklater’s longtime collaborator, recounting her astonishing work on Boyhood. She received the festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Festival founder and creative director Carlos F. Corral and executive director Andrea Calleros led an energetic, inspired, skillfully curated lineup of films that emphasized stories of borders of all kinds — physical, cultural, emotional.
The El Paso Film & Creative Industries Commission at Visit El Paso coordinated a series of insightful morning panels to coincide with the festival, guided by creative industries manager April Sanchez, whose kindness and attention to detail made attendees feel at home.
El Paso has a tight-knit film community where people pitch in to help each other make great work, which has earned it repeated placement on our list of the Best Places to Live and Work as a Moviemaker.
The friendships among local filmmakers is obvious in festival Q&As, where the same names came up repeatedly: Besides running the festival and making his own films, Corral is a hands-on sound expert who often helps filmmakers perfect their sound. Charles Horak leads Rio Bravo Outpost, which specializes in film production and post. Tower Productions is a prolific local production house that just celebrated its 10th anniversary; and president Carlos De La Torre presided over several informative talks.
El Paso filmmaker Valeria Contreras, whose lovely short “Oranges” recalled a more innocent era along the border, is both an ambassador and embodiment of the creative, collaborative and growing local scene.
Filmmaker Lucky McKee, meanwhile, is the glue for many endeavors, and introduced some of the key players in Joel Veach’s American Muscle, a spellbinding desert noir that played Saturday night. Veach earned the festival’s Director Award.
And the festival welcomed back Drew Mayer-Oakes, the former El Paso film commissioner whose accomplishments included helping bring Best Picture winner One Battle After Another to El Paso. He is now the film commissioner of Corpus Christi.
The full list of winners is below.
El Paso Film Festival Winners 2026
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Sandra Adair, ACE
GRAND JURY PRIZE
Jared Sprouse, Party USA
SPECIAL JURY PRIZE
Efraín Mojica, Rebecca Zweig, Jaripeo
DIRECTOR AWARD
Joel Veach, American Muscle
PRODUCER AWARD
Maxime Bernard, The Mechanics of Borders
BEST FEATURE FILM (Documentary)
Pete Muller, Bucks Harbor
BEST FEATURE FILM (Narrative)
Jared Sprouse, Party USA
BEST SHORT FILM (Narrative)
Nicky Rudolph Calloway, “I Am A Gentleman”
BEST SHORT FILM (Documentary)
Nathan Truesdell, “A Derailment”
BEST SHORT FILM (Animated)
Tshay Meade, “Tell Me When You Get Home”
ANIMATION ARDOR
Presented To
Camillo Sancisi, “Everblind”
El PASO FILMMAKER AWARD
David Velez, Brandon Rivera: “EP Project”
Main image: El Paso filmmakers fill the stage at El Paso’s historic Plaza Theatre. MovieMaker.
