By Emily Christensen

In its third year, the Salt City Film Festival is migrating south. On Saturday, September 26, the Hutchinson-based fest will screen 26 short films in multiple genres and two feature-length documentaries at the Boulevard Theatres in Wichita’s Old Town district. 

The festival is designed to give viewers a break from politics, said founding director Bobby Obermite. Its through-line is the uplifting or humorous nature of many of the films.

“Our goal was to bring people in and for them to laugh and smile and want to go back to the theater,” he said. “The whole purpose of movie theaters going back 100 years ago was to get a break from the stresses of life … we wanted it to feel like that again. Come here and escape with us for a little bit.” 

Festival passes are $20 for the full day of programming, which starts at 10 a.m. and concludes with an awards ceremony at 9 p.m. The schedule is organized into five blocks, tickets for which are $10 for adults and $5 for students and children. 

The day begins with three programs of short films, some of which contain mature content. While most of the program is on the lighter side, Obermite said organizers also want to give a platform to young Kansas filmmakers who tackle serious subjects. 

Two family-friendly programs begin at 5:45 p.m. and include feature-length films. In an afternoon session, Wichita documentary filmmaker Lester Rowe will share some of his work and discuss his career. He and Obermite met about 10 years ago at the Doc Sunback Film Festival in Mulvane, Kansas. 

“The value of any film festival is networking. Not in a surface way, but going out there and actually building community with some of the filmmakers you meet,” Rowe said.

He plans to share some of his own work that people haven’t seen, including a trailer for a project he’s working on now.

Both evening programs are anchored by feel-good documentaries about popular Kansas phenomena. “4 Days in June” documents Salina’s Smoky Hill River Festival, and “Take Me to Mars” is a biopic of Tanganika Wildlife Park’s social-media famous pygmy hippo. 

 A team from Salina agency Fili Creative spent five years working on “4 Days in June.” The film premiered at the Stiefel Theatre in Salina in July, not long after the festival’s 50th anniversary. 

“4 Days in June is about 60,000 people coming together and not worrying about religion and politics and the economy and all that stuff,” Obermite said. “They're having fun and they're dancing and they're doing art.”

The film is a collaboration with the city of Salina’s Division of Arts and Humanities, which runs the annual festival. 

“I challenged them to not tell a story about what we did, but that deeper spirit and magic that happens at the event,” said Brad Anderson, the director of the division, during a panel discussion that followed the film's Salina premiere. "It's hard to explain, but it's what draws all of you back every year."

The film follows Anderson and a handful of other festival characters as they enact and enjoy the celebration that draws more attendees than the total population of Salina. 

Not long after his birth, a pygmy hippo at Tanganyika Wildlife Park stubbornly refused to get out of the pool. The caught-on-video moment drew tens of social-media views, and Mars the hippo transformed into a star. Soon a film crew was following him around to document a year of his life. 

The inclusion of “Take Me to Mars” was something of a happy accident. The filmmakers missed the festival’s submission deadline, but they reached out at the same time that Obermite had to scratch one of the longer films from the program. 

“It's just kind of weird how you start to get really stressed, and then the stars align, and then you find a film that fits the core message even better,” he said.

Moving the festival wasn’t necessarily part of the plan, either. But rising rental prices for Hutchinson’s Fox Theatre prompted organizers to seek another venue. The switch-up has Obermite thinking about taking the event on the road, even touring in the vein of the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival, which has screened selections on seven continents.

It’s likely that Salt City will travel that far afield, though. The majority of the films in the festival are made in Kansas or states that border it. 

“The filmmakers in the middle of America right now have access to equipment like they never had and access to software that they never had,” said Obermite, who leads the media and film production program at Hutchinson Community College. “They don't need a lot of money to go out and put together a beautiful story.”

The Details

Salt City Film Festival
September 26, 2026, at Boulevard Theatres at Old Town, 353 N. Mead St. in Wichita

The festival begins at 10 a.m. Saturday morning and concludes after a 9 p.m. awards ceremony. Festivalgoers may choose to attend one of five programs (which vary in length from 75 minutes to two and a half hours) or stick around for the whole day. 

Festival passes are $20. Tickets to individual programs are $10 for adults, $5 for children and students. Tickets are available for purchase at the theater on the day of the festival. 

Learn more on the Salt City Film Festival website. 

Salt City isn’t the only film festival playing at the Boulevard Old Town. The cineplex in Old Town Square will screen many of the selections for the Tallgrass Film Festival, which takes place October 15-18.

Emily Christensen is one of the co-founders of The SHOUT. She is a past fellow of the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and a recipient of an Arts Writing Grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation. Send her a message: emily@shoutwichita.com. 

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