2026 Three Rivers Film Festival at The Lindsay
November 6 – November 14
The Three Rivers Film Festival returns to The Lindsay with seven features, locally made shorts and a highly anticipated Pennsylvania premiere!
Film Pittsburgh has been running 3RFF since 1982, making it this region’s oldest and largest annual film festival. The 2026 iteration will continue spotlighting independent cinema from around the world from Wednesday, Nov. 4 through Sunday, Nov. 15.
3RFF takes place across multiple venues—including The Lindsay! Seven features will screen here between Friday, Nov. 6 and Sunday, Nov. 8, highlighted by the Keystone State premiere of locally filmed sports drama The Gymnast on Nov. 6 at 7 p.m.
There will also be a Shorts N’At block of short documentaries from Western Pennsylvania-based filmmakers on Saturday, Nov. 14, at 1 p.m. Fun fact: Josh Axelrod, The Lindsay’s Director of Communications, is judging this year’s 3RFF animated shorts competition.
This will be the sixth time that The Lindsay is participating in Three Rivers, which was recently crowned this region’s Best Film Festival in Pittsburgh Magazine‘s 2026 Best of the ‘Burgh readers’ poll.
Tickets are now on sale for all individual Three Rivers screenings, as well as full festival and other passes. You can purchase tickets online via Film Pittsburgh’s website, and at The Lindsay on the day of each screening. Please direct all ticketing-related questions to Film Pittsburgh via info@filmpittsburgh.org or 412-426-FILM (3456).
The Gymnast (Pennsylvania Premiere)
NR | 1h 24min | Drama
Director: Charlotte Glynn
Stars: Britney Wheeler, Ethan Embry, Margarita Levieva
Friday, Nov. 6 @ 7 P.M.
The Gymnast is the latest feature from writer, director and Western Pennsylvania native Charlotte Glynn. Monica (Britney Wheeler) is a 16-year-old Pittsburgher and elite gymnast living with her single father, Rich (Ethan Embry). When the young athlete suffers a potentially career-ending injury, their relationship suffers as they discover who they are without gymnastics.
The film also stars Margarita Levieva (Adventureland), Cotter Smith (Mindhunter) and Erika Krenn (Maxx: Son of the Damned). Production took place in late 2023 throughout this region, including at the Westinghouse Arts Academy in Wilmerding and other locations in McKeesport, Highland Park and Brookline.
“I had a dear friend who was a gymnast when we were teenagers,” Glynn tells Variety. “I watched her go through a similar experience. Your life can change just like that. … Deep into making The Gymnast, I realized it’s not just a sports movie. It talks about how we can lose something physical that we had been taking for granted.”
NOTE: Glynn will be at The Lindsay for an in-person Q&A following her film’s Pennsylvania premiere. The screening will be preceded by High Beam, a short film from writer-director Kaila Gutierrez about a a 9-year-old gymnast obsessively striving to make a gymnastics team.
Gentle By Birth
NR | 1h 40min | Documentary
Director: Doree Simon Hatfield
Saturday, Nov. 7 @ 12 P.M.
Gentle By Birth is a deeply personal documentary from Pittsburgh-based filmmaker Doree Simon Hatfield. After her 23-year-old brother dies of an overdose, Hatfield investigates the stigma she believes blocked his access to treatment and support.
Her search begins in her family’s living room and expands to harm reduction sites, music festivals and even the Pennsylvania Capitol. As her own misgivings about drugs dissolve, Hatfield makes a radical choice to try them herself—transforming the film from a dissection of her brother’s addiction into a provocative reckoning that threatens her family’s fragile healing.
Hatfield’s 2017 short documentary In Her Shoes: India won the 2020 Webby Award for Diversity and Inclusion. She co-directed the feature documentary 99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film, which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Her work has screened at Tribeca and Cannes, and she has also produced projects for Marvel and ESPN.
Jane Elliott Against the World
NR | 1h 39min | Documentary
Director: Judd Ehrlich
Stars: Jane Elliott, Oprah Winfrey, Peter Jennings
Saturday, Nov. 7 @ 3 P.M.
Jane Elliott Against the World documents the remarkable life and career of Jane Elliott, a rural Iowa schoolteacher who became a national voice against racism after leading the controversial 1968 “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” lesson in discrimination with her all-white third-grade class. Now nearly 90, she refuses to hold back amid today’s fights about race.
Director Judd Ehrlich’s film, which premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, “is an engaging portrait of a woman who walks the walk,” praises Awards Buzz. Elliott’s “firecracker energy makes the film breeze by,” declares RogerEbert.com.
“The film covers so much ground, as if trying to keep up with the speed at which she speaks and the dynamics of her ideas. … At 90 years old, Elliott is not backing down, and it’s welcome to witness someone speak so explicitly and loudly about truths most people in this country would choose to disregard.”
The Plea
NR | 2h 3min | Drama, Comedy
Directors: Dean Imperial, Zach LeBeau
Stars: Dean Imperial, Zach LeBeau, Millicent Simmonds,
Saturday, Nov. 7 @ 6 P.M.
The Plea follows 12 sharply divided jurors who are sequestered in a hotel to decide a controversial case about personhood. As deliberations spill beyond the conference room and into their private lives, deeply held beliefs, prejudices and unlikely connections emerge.
In this satirical comedy noir, a jury of our peers becomes a portrait of a divided America struggling to find common ground. The Plea had its world premiere at the Woodstock Film Festival in October 2025. Directors Dean Imperial and Zach LeBeau also star in the film and co-wrote the script alongside Scott Organ.
The cast also includes Gbenga Akinnagbe (The Social Reckoning) and Millicent Simmonds, a 23-year-old deaf actor best known for starring in the first two A Quiet Place films. You may have seen Simmonds around town after her family moved to the Pittsburgh area about six years ago from Bountiful, Utah.
NOTE: Imperial and LeBeau will be at The Lindsay for an in-person Q&A immediately following the screening.
Edie Arnold is a Loser
NR | 1h 13min | Comedy, Music
Directors: Kade Atwood, Megan Rico
Stars: Adi Madden Cabrera, Cherish Rodriguez, McKenna Tuckett
Sunday, Nov. 8 @ 12 P.M.
Edie Arnold is a Loser is an infectiously charming coming-of-age story that premiered at SXSW in March 2026. Edie is a timid dork who makes waves when she starts a punk band with her fellow “turds.” She instantly becomes an icon to the rest of the losers at her Catholic school while also annoying the hot girls, nuns and the horniest altar boy you’ve ever seen.
“Edie Arnold might be a loser, but Edie Arnold Is a Loser is a real winner,” proclaims Film Obsessive. Directors Kade Atwood and Megan Rico delivered a “sensational, hilarious buddy comedy that will make you want to embrace your inner loser,” raves Mashable.
“Film festivals are rich terrain for brilliant cinematic discoveries, and among the finest and funkiest finds of SXSW 2026 is Edie Arnold is a Loser. … It’s unapologetically outrageous, touching and really funny.”
Clarissa (Partially in Nigerian Pidgin w/ English Subtiles)
NR | 2h 14min | Drama
Directors: Arie Esiri, Chuko Esiri
Stars: Sophie Okonedo, David Oyelowo, Ayo Edibiri
Sunday, Nov. 8 @ 3 P.M.
Clarissa is a modern reimagining of Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway. In this version, society woman Clarissa prepares to host a party at her home in Lagos, Nigeria, where she will unexpectedly encounter once-close childhood friends. It stars Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda), David Oyelowo (Selma), Ayo Edibiri (The Bear) and Toheeb Jimoh (Ted Lasso).
“Sophie Okonedo is outstanding in this riveting reimagining” of a Virginia Woolf classic, applauds The Wrap. “Clarissa is a compelling interpretation of Mrs. Dalloway” that is both “sharp and stirring” cinema, compliments The Hollywood Reporter.
“Clarissa revels in the splintered language of memory. Jonathan Bloom’s gorgeous cinematography and Blair McClendon’s disciplined editing display an intuitive understanding of the source text, finding rhymes and echoes. … Kelsey Lu’s spectral score threads these images together, adding to the dreamy quality of the film.”
Hen (In Greek with English Subtitles)
NR | 1h 36min | Thriller, Drama
Director: György Pálfi
Stars: Yannis Kokiasmenos, Maria Diakopanayotou, Argyris Pandazaras
Sunday, Nov. 8 @ 6 P.M.
Hen is a plucky adventure starring…a chicken. Escaping from a farm, a hen finds refuge in the courtyard of a crumbling restaurant. There, she discovers love, confronts the pecking order and fights to protect her eggs from a greedy owner. Her droll yet touching quest for motherhood mirrors the messy compromises and silent struggles of human lives.
This “Chicken Run for intellectuals” is “a wild, surreal, harrowing and funny ride,” declares Empire. “In a feat of cinematic mystery and skill, György Pálfi coaxes a tour de force from his poultry cast in this parable of animal and human interrelations,” lauds The Guardian.
“It probably has to do with his light tonal touch and his ability to truly empathize with his avian heroine without resorting to anthropomorphic sentimentalism. This hen acts much like a real chicken in that she combines shrewd survival instincts and utter gormlessness to a winning degree.”
NOTE: This Hen screening will be preceded by The Zoo, director Mimi Chakarova’s short drama about a caged lion festering in anger and silence until an unlikely friend comes along to help tell his story.
Shorts N’At (Presented by WQED)
NR | 1h 33min | Documentary
Saturday, Nov. 14 @ 1 P.M.
Shorts N’At features seven documentary shorts made by Pittsburgh-area filmmakers. WQED executive producer Ryan Rust—who has shown multiple projects at The Lindsay, including this year’s Beneath the Sole—will lead a Q&A with his fellow filmmakers immediately following these screenings.
• Lenka and Phillip Collect Tongs (5min): Lenka and Phillip met at an artist’s residency in summer 2017, fell in love and began what became their longest-running collaboration to date: an ever-growing collection of tongs that fill the walls of their Pittsburgh studio and house. Directed by Jonn Herschend.
• Second Skin (10min): Printing and redesigning the clothes are one thing, but Lazy Coup’s pieces hold stories that are 30 years in the making. Directed by Elyse Bell.
• American Opera (31min): Acclaimed composer Laura Kaminsky and director Crystal Manich bring Time to Act—a new opera confronting the American epidemic of gun violence in schools—to its world premiere at the Pittsburgh Opera. Directed by David Altrogge, who Lindsay regulars may remember from Neat: The Story of Bourbon and Clemente.
• Story Drive: Voices Unveiled (15min): This hybrid documentary showcases real-life, anonymous LGBTQIA+ voicemails and adapts them into a cinematic experience contrasting personal, raw and at times emotional testimonies with otherworldly, whimsical and experimental animation. Directed by Marcelese Cooper.
• Sunny Days Ahead (12min): As artist and trash nabber Carye Bye prepares for her latest exhibition, she transforms the discarded objects she collects from Pittsburgh’s Woods Run corridor into works of art while helping restore an overlooked urban woodland. Directed by Anna Brewer.
• Evan’s Hill (3min): A Pittsburgh-based photographer explores the city’s Polish Hill neighborhood, examining place, creativity and personal connection. Directed by Gabby Valdivieso.
• Yoiaanisqatsi: A Pittsburgh Tone Poem (17min): This experimental odyssey draws inspiration from Godfrey Reggio’s 1982 art film Koyaanisqatsi to create a portrait of Pittsburgh in 2025. Directed by Willard Simmons.
