New Orleans Film Festival Spotlights Music Documentaries, Led by World-Premiere Victory

The 2026 New Orleans Film Festival featured 150 films, including a 15-strong block of music documentaries. The opening-night selection and world premiere, Victory, was directed by Paris-based American filmmaker and musician Ben Chace. The film follows rhythm-and-blues and gospel icon Irma Thomas, who was 83 during filming in 2024, as she records her first gospel album in thirty years. Shot partly at Esplanade Studios and at a gospel concert at St. Luke's Episcopal Church, the documentary captures Thomas reflecting on her faith and on a musical tradition whose pioneers are largely gone. Chace also frames the city of New Orleans as one of Thomas' supporting characters, weaving in her guest appearance with the Rolling Stones at Jazz Fest and her headline concert at St. Luke's.

Dew Drop Inn: Resistance and Resilience, directed by New Orleans filmmaker Michael Murphy, chronicles the post-World War II history of the Dew Drop Inn and its owner Frank Painia. The venue was listed in the Negro Motorist Green-Book from 1936 to 1966 and was a focal point of the civil rights movement during the Jim Crow era. Footage of the venue's 2024 reopening adds contemporary resonance to the film. Archival accounts from Earl Palmer, Art Neville, Allen Toussaint and Cosimo Matassa, along with testimony from Painia's grandson Ken Jackson, fill in the historical gaps.

Other music documentaries on the schedule include Last Night at the Palm Court, about the traditional jazz venue on Decatur Street; Maestro, a years-in-the-making portrait of high school band director Wilbert Rawlins Jr.; and King of the Chitlin Circuit, profiling 92-year-old blues star Bobby Rush. Online screenings continue through November 1.