Tropfest Short Film Festival Expanding to Las Vegas

Tropfest, the world’s largest short film festival, is celebrating its 20th anniversary by heading to Vegas.

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The popular Australia-based festival is set to announce a collaboration with the Cosmopolitan resort in Las Vegas to host a weekend-long event this summer. Tropfest Las Vegas is the latest expansion of the festival, which has held events in New York and Arabia. 

The Vegas festival, which will kick off June 1 with parties and screening events showcasing the best Tropfest films of the past two decades, also will include a panel of film industry professionals and celebrities who will judge the top 12 films and declare a winner.  

Musical performances also will take place throughout the weekend, among them the New York-based pop/rock artist L.P. The events will take place on the Boulevard pool deck at the Cosmopolitan, where films will be shown on its 65-foot marquee.

Tropfest’s national broadcast partner, Starz Cinema, will film all of the weekend’s events for broadcast.

Although the festival events are free to the public, packages and VIP tickets go on sale Feb. 24. VIP tickets for the weekend cost $200 and allow access to premium viewing areas and reserved areas for VIP ticket holders, celebrity judges and filmmakers.

Dozens of Australian actors, directors and writers have participated in Tropfest, including Sam Worthington (Avatar), Alister Grierson (director ofSanctum) and Jason Gann (Wilfred).

“Tropfest put me on the Australian map and opened doors as an actor, writer, and producer. Now I’m an executive producer and star of a TV series in Hollywood,” Gann said in a statement. “Were it not for Tropfest recognizing our short, I wouldn’t be still wearing a dog suit ten years later!”

The festival has grown from an audience of 200 people when it began 20 years ago to more than 150,000 attending last year’s Australian event.