New/Next Film Festival

New/Next Film Festival is an independent film festival based in Baltimore, Maryland in 2023.

In May 2023, it was announced that Baltimore radio station WYPR, in partnership with former Maryland Film Festival director of programming Eric Allen Hatch, would hold the New/Next Film Festival in August 2023, taking place at The Charles Theatre. The festival was planned as a reaction to the news that Maryland Film Festival was not holding a 2023 event.

The first New/Next Film Festival was held August 18–20 in Baltimore's Charles Theatre. The inaugural edition of New/Next presented over 20 feature films. Among the features screened was the world premiere of the documentary Carpet Cowboys, directed by Noah Collier and Emily MacKenzie and executive produced by John Wilson. The festival also screened over 50 short films, including the U.S. premiere of work by Lael Rogers and world premieres of work by Harrison Atkins, Albert Birney, Marly Hernandez Cortes and Stephen Schuyler, Danielle Criqui, Pisie Hochheim and Tony Oswald, and Gillian Waldo.

Special guests at the 2023 festival included the band Beach House, who introduced a favorite film, Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar; filmmaker Sam Pollard, who presented both Spike Lee's Bamboozled, which he edited, and the documentary Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes, which he co-directed; and Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, who participated in a Q+A following a screening of The Body Politic, a documentary following Scott's approach to curbing the murder rate in Baltimore. The festival's opening night party featured performances by Baltimore club artists Dapper Dan Midas and TT the Artist.