Ebertfest May Be Celebrating Its ‘Last Dance,’ but ‘It’s Not the End’ of the Beloved Festival

About 25 years ago, “Ebert & Roeper” held its “Film Festival at Sea,” a Disney Cruise that featured film critics Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper hosting a film festival aboard a four-day trip to the Bahamas (an insane sentence to write in 2026).

Attending that inaugural festival was then-teenage Jeff Horowitz who, after that cruise, would make an annual father-son trip to Ebertfest, Ebert’s terrestrial film festival in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. When Ebert’s widow Chaz Ebert announced last year that Ebertfest was on indefinite hiatus and might not return, Horowitz and his law firm Century Law Firm stepped up as one of several community sponsors who sought to help Ebertfest return.

“You’ve given us so much all these years. We’d like to do something for you,” Chaz Ebert told IndieWire about the support from Horowitz and other donors.

This week, Ebertfest is coming back for one last festival: “The Last Dance,” as they’re calling it in a nod to the Chicago Bulls docuseries of the same name. The festival runs April 17-18, just two days instead of its usual four. But it will return to its home at the Virginia Theater at the University of Illinois, where it has taken place since 1999.

The festival lost its funding last year, but Chaz Ebert and festival director Nate Kohn found that it had enough support from devoted attendees to return for a final go around. Chaz said that, as of last week, over 1,000 passes have been sold to the festival.

Chaz and Kohn have put together a lineup that includes some festival favorites like “Get Out” and the Buster Keaton silent classic “The General,” as well as some newer titles like “Bob Trevino Likes It” and “Nuremberg,” and a few local favorites like “Chili Finger” that was shot in the area, plus the world premiere of “The Last Movie Critic,” a documentary about Roger as centered around Ebertfest from Urbana director Luke Boyce.

“It’s like a homecoming. It’s really nice,” Chaz Ebert said as she reflected on 27 years that have gone by in the “blink of an eye.”

‘The American President’©Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

This year’s edition also has some special events. The festival will host a tribute to the late Rob Reiner with a screening of “The American President.” Reiner was meant to attend he festival last year but had to cancel; now, they’ll honor his memory. Ebertfest is also staging a play originally performed in Chicago that’s about “Siskel & Ebert,” which Chaz said features a performance by an actor who does an uncanny rendition of her husband.

Part of what makes the festival unique is the community that has been coming to it religiously for years, absent any premieres or red carpets, and many of them film writer acolytes of Roger who met or were invited after first engaging with Roger through his blog.

Boyce, who has been attending the festival since 2011 and working with his production company each year to capture the highlights of the festival, said he’s never experienced another film festival quite like this one. “I would talk to people and they’d be like, ‘Yeah, I don’t even care what they play, I’m coming, because I just know that whatever Roger picks, I’m gonna love,'” Boyce said. “Over time, Roger built this family environment.”

Sony Pictures Classics co-head Michael Barker has been coming to the festival since its early days and, ahead of bringing SPC’s “Nuremberg” this year, he remembered the times when he’d be quite literally be sharing the dorms at the U of I Student Union with people like Werner Herzog, Ava DuVernay, and Bertrand Tarvernier while attending the festival.

He recalled in 2013 after Roger’s death, Tilda Swinton led a dance party through the crowd to a Barry White song. And he even rememebered Roger organizing the university marching band to perform for director and U of I alum Ang Lee after a screening of “Hulk.”

“He always created this very exceptional forum in which you could share ideas and talk about movies you loved. That festival has always been a cinephile’s dream,” Barker said. “And the thing is, Chaz, in a way, humanized Roger. Chaz really elevated the themes of humanity that are in these films and in the discussions of these films over the years, and she has preserved Roger’s legacy with his festival in a very meaningful way.”

Tracie Laymon, the writer and director of “Bob Trevino Likes It,” has never been to Ebertfest before but considers Roger a major influence and is thrilled at the bittersweet feeling of being part of the last festival. Though her film has won several awards at various film festivals, she said the Golden Thumb that she’ll be presented is the only one she intends to keep on her desk.

“Even though it’s the last year, it’s especially an honor to be the last year, because I feel like it’s a symbol of carrying the torch, of all the films that align with Roger’s values and his family’s values,” Laymon said. “Us filmmakers that get to come this last year, I feel like it’s a promise to keep that going. It may be the Last Dance, but it’s not the end.”