The top filmmaking team at this year’s A3F 72 Hour Short Film Challenge will be recognized for their creative filmmaking and storytelling abilities at a Feb. 27 premiere event.

Beginning on Valentine’s Day, dozens of amateur filmmakers, part-time creatives and inspired newcomers will gather their teams for three days of movie making magic as the Almost Famous Film Festival (A3F) 72 Hour Short Film Challenge returns for its 20th year. The kickoff date is appropriate, given that the festival is built on love – the love of film, the creative process involved and the sense of camaraderie and community that it fosters.

It all began in 2004 when brothers Jae and Kai Staats entered another timed film challenge in the Valley. Their takeaway after the screening event: “We can do this better.”

“The next year, we launched our own challenge, the Almost Famous Film Festival,” Jae Staats recalled, “and held it downtown at the iconic Icehouse. It was really organic. In 2006, it just exploded. We went from 26 teams to over 60 teams and we ended up at the AMC theater downtown.”

Staats’ background is in video editing he said, “Growing up, my brother and I would take any opportunity to make short films and home movies. Taking that idea that kind of pops into your brain and then collaborating with others and putting it onto the screen – it’s such a cool process. When you bring people together, you find locations, your actors, your crew members…it’s exciting to be in a house or at a park or a warehouse that you rented for the day and to yell ‘action’ and have it come together.”

A3F is not necessarily for those who aspire to go to LA, but rather an outlet for Arizona’s creative community, Staats said. “They are not writing the next script for Hollywood. They have day jobs. But once a year, maybe twice a year, they come out in full force and do this.”

One of those creatives is lifelong North Central resident Alex Delgadillo, who has participated in A3F on and off since 2008.

Delgadillo also enjoyed making videos with friends from a young age and took a film course in college. But he is a not a professional filmmaker – he’s in finance – and he keeps coming back to A3F “because it’s just fun.”

“Film is hard to do and it’s easy to put off,” he said. “Some people spend years working on a short, but when you’ve got this timeline and you have to produce something, and then you’ve got something that you can show people at the end of it…it’s really cool.”

Collaboration and meeting new people are other aspects that attract Delgadillo, and filming in the “small town within a big city” of North Central has brought neighbors together over the years, “There are always people that are willing to lend a hand,” he said.

Staats reiterates that a big focus of the event is having fun and telling great stories together, “You don’t have to be a master filmmaker. Even if you might not have the best camera or the best editing equipment, if you tell a good story, you could still do well.”

Open to all ages and abilities, registered teams will have 72 hours to make a short film based on a theme, line of dialogue and prop that will be revealed at 7p.m. on Friday, Feb. 14, during the kick-off party at Moon Pie: Pizza & Patio. Tickets for the public screening go on sale Feb. 1. Find details at https://thea3f.net/72hour_2025.html.