Run To This Film Festival About Running
Burning River Film Festival celebrates running with short films.
“There will be plenty of mud and creek-crossing for everybody to have fun,” says festival founder Jessica Croisant.
Croisant started Burning River in 2016. A longtime member of Northeast Ohio’s vibrant trail running scene, she found herself watching YouTube videos of runners to quiet her nerves ahead of big races. Croisant turned her prerun ritual into a one-day festival, which drew about 200 people to watch short films such as a documentary about running the 2016 Mohican 100, a 100-mile dash through the forests of Loudonville, Ohio. It’s all about building a community, she says.
“We had people bring their whole family, kids were there, people’s grandmas were there,” says Croisant. “It’s to show them, This is what I do, this is what I love.”
This year, Croisant is expecting 250 people to see a slate that includes a film about this year’s Mohican 100, as well a trio of films by Sean “Run Bum” Blanton about races he organizes such as the Georgia Death Race, a 64-mile slog between two state parks, and Quest for the Crest, a North Carolina run with about 14,000 feet of elevation gain that Croisant defeated last year.
“There’s going to be people in the theater who don’t realize that they’re in the movie, like the one at Mohican,” says Croisant. “It’ll be kind of cool, like, Oh, my God I’m in the movie, because of how local [the festival] is.”
