The Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival (commonly abbreviated as "HRIFF") is a film festival with a special focus on independent films. It is held annually in Hollywood at the New Beverly Cinema and other screening venues. Past winners included Gérard Depardieu, Peter O'Toole, Frances Fisher and Tinto Brass. Other notable winners / attendants in the past years include Jon Polito, John Heard, Rick Shapiro, Hilary Duff, Danny Masterson and Tyler Blackburn.
The festival was established in 2003 with a focus on independent films. It is a competitive event, annually screening films in competition and awarding the best films in its program in various categories during a red-carpet award show.
Each year, as part of its award-show, the festival awards the "Award of Excellence" to one or multiple people whose work in film is considered highly influential, and whose work is shown in the festival. In recent years the recipients were:
2011 - Gérard Depardieu, "for his work in Grenouille d'hiver"2012 - Tinto Brass, "for innovations in cinematic language from his films in the 1960s and 1970s".2012 - Frances Fisher, "for exceptional contributions to the art of acting, of a consistently distinguished career"2013 - Peter O'Toole, "for exceptional contributions to art of acting in a consistently distinguished career"2015 - Hugo Niebeling, for "artistic innovation".The Act of Killing, which received the "Best Picture" award at the 2013 event was nominated for an Academy Award in 2014.Bridegroom, for which director Linda Bloodworth-Thomason won "Best Director" at the 2013 event, was crowd-funded using kickstarter and broke the record for the most highly funded film on kickstarter in 2012.Dog It Down, which received the "Best Short Film" award at the 2012 event was Executive Produced by Kevin Connolly and aired on PBS to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of Pearl Harbor.2012, the festival did a retrospective on the early, experimental films by Tinto Brass. It included the world premieres of restored versions of Nerosubianco as well as Dropout (1970 film) and La Vacanza, both starring Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero.2012, Uwe Boll premiered his film Assault on Wall Street at the festival, attending it in person together with principal cast members.2012, the festival premiered the newly restored HD version of Manos: The Hands of Fate. Cast-Member Jackey Raye Neyman-Jones attended the event.2015, the festival does a retrospective of Hugo Niebeling's films.LA Weekly added the 2012 festival on its weekly "Movie To-Do list."Tinto Brass: "I am very honored of receiving the award at [...] Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival, and it makes me really joyful."Alexander Tuschinski: "One of the best festivals you can think of!"Hello! Hollywood, a Chinese TV-show broadcast in 45 statios in China dedicated an episode to the festival
