What: Fresh Coast Film Festival, Traverse City edition
When: April 30 - May 3, 2026
Where: Venues throughout T.C.
More info here.
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At this year's Fresh Coast Film Festival, IPR's "Points North" podcast premiered a film made in partnership with the Boardman Review and Detroit PBS.
Marquette's popular Fresh Coast Film Festival is coming to Traverse City.
An offshoot of the festival will hit venues like the Alluvion, Silver Spruce Brewing, the City Opera House and more, from April 30 to May 3, 2026.
The Traverse City weekend was announced Saturday at the festival which is underway in Marquette and, like its parent event, will feature films, panels and outdoor experiences for attendees.
"I'm real excited to showcase (the film festival) in front of a brand new audience ... just see how people react to it," festival cofounder Bugsy Sailor told IPR. "I'm excited to get down to Traverse and put on this event but also just be an attendee and take it in from a new audience."
Sailor's role with the festival is branding and marketing. He owns a clothing store called the Upper Peninsula Supply Co., on Washington Street — the main retail drag through town.
He's been telling Marquette's story for a long time, too, including through his daily sunrise photos, which earned him a mention on CBS Sunday Morning.
The Fresh Coast Film Festival's other two cofounders are filmmaker Aaron Peterson and Bill Thompson, of "Down Wind Sports," a Marquette store focused on the outdoors.
The Fresh Coast Film Festival focuses on documentaries that tell stories about the outdoors. But Sailor says the genre does not limit the content.
"We've seen it all — from conservation efforts on bees and bats to skiing and surfing the Great Lakes," Sailor said.
The broader theme, he says, is the resilience of the Great Lakes region, "especially in the U.P."
"I think that's true across a lot of the Midwest ... and we want to make sure those stories are told," he said. "A theme that has been through every festival at Fresh Coast is that at some point, we all have this need to return to nature — back to the water, back to the simplicity of things."
The film festival's arrival will come almost exactly three years after the Traverse City Film Festival announced it was abandoning its traditional format, eschewing the glitz of a high-profile weeklong event for weekly screenings at the State Theater.
Editor's note: IPR partners with the Fresh Coast Film Festival's Marquette event, and will do so again when the film festival comes to Traverse City.
