A new St. Louis film festival is pairing environmental storytelling with short rib sliders, craft beer and live music. The Mound City Film Festival returns Saturday, Nov. 7, at Atomic by Jamo with a full day of films, food, art and outdoor activities celebrating the region and its relationship with the natural world.
Running from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., the festival expands beyond traditional screenings with a four-course tasting menu, live music, environmental art and outdoor activations.
“When we started planning the festival’s second year, we wanted to expand the experience and shine a light on all the incredible talent we have right here in the St. Louis region,” said Charles Whitt, co-founder of Mound City Film Festival. “We saw a natural intersection between film, art, food, music and our enjoyment of the outdoors.”
The film program opens with Plastic Earth, a feature-length documentary examining the global plastic crisis, followed by a virtual Q&A with filmmaker Janice Overbeck. The Mound City Stories section brings the focus closer to home with films about regional landscapes, conservation and community, including The Trail State, Intervention, Navigating the Mississippi, Veterans Outdoor Therapy / Gold Star Peak Climb and Restoring Shortleaf Pine Forests. A regional filmmakers panel moderated by Kate Grumke of St. Louis Public Radio follows the screenings.
The lineup also includes For the Love of the Region – The Life and Art of Bryan Haynes, celebrating the St. Louis artist, and Climate in Motion, a collection of short films exploring environmental change and resilience. The evening concludes with Beyond the Edge, a two-hour Mountainfilm program featuring stories of adventure and exploration.
But the movies are only one course in the day’s experience.
Food and beverage are central to the festival’s design, with Atomic Eats and Chef Eric Prophete and his team, including Chef Jamal, creating a four-course tasting menu in partnership with 4 Hands Brewing Company. Each course offers three beverage pairings: a beer, a specialty cocktail or a hard seltzer.
The menu starts with caprese salad paired with Raspberry Peach Prussia, a gin-and-tonic cocktail featuring fresh lime and basil or Tiger’s Blood hard seltzer. Fried pickles with chipotle aioli follow, accompanied by City Wide APA, a cranberry-ginger mule or Sparkler hard seltzer.
Short rib sliders bring a heartier course, with Oktoberfest, a rye-and-ginger cocktail made with Withered Oak Small Batch Rye or Pineapple Express hard seltzer. Chocolate mousse and whipped cream close the meal, with Chocolate Milk Stout, a blackberry gin and tonic made with 1220 Spirits Blue Morpho Gin or Thriller hard seltzer rounding out the options.
The pairings give guests room to experiment while showcasing the range of 4 Hands’ beverage portfolio, from its beers to spirits and cocktails. For Chris Trunk of 4 Hands Brewing Company, the menu completes the festival’s larger vision.
“We saw the food and beverage program as the final piece that brings the entire festival experience full circle,” Trunk said. “People are coming to enjoy great films, art, music and the outdoors, and we wanted to give them another way to experience the day through food and drink.”
Beyond the menu, the festival will feature live music from Neil C. Luke, Lo Stone and Atomic Junction, along with four DJ sets, including performances by CRSTL.FM DJs. An environmental art exhibition curated with Third Degree Glass Factory will include live flame-glass demonstrations by Ariel Danza and Lendy Middendorf, as well as indoor work by Steven Walden, Kenya Mitchell and Danielle Gorin. An Artists + Environment panel, outdoor vendors, community partners and climbing-related activities round out the programming.
The festival’s environmental focus extends beyond the films and artwork. Presenting sponsor SWADE Cannabis is also part of the effort to encourage attendees to consider the region’s natural resources and the importance of protecting them.
Brandon Cavanagh of SWADE hopes visitors leave with a renewed appreciation for the area’s outdoor opportunities, from hiking and kayaking to the rivers that have shaped the region’s history and communities.
“Our rivers are central to that story,” Cavanagh said, pointing to the Missouri, Mississippi and Meramec rivers and their tributaries. “Protecting those waterways and the land surrounding them matters, not just for the environment, but for the quality of life we want to preserve for future generations.”
For Whitt, the goal is to make those conversations accessible without sacrificing the fun of a full day out. Food and agriculture, he said, are part of the environmental conversation, too, connecting what people grow and eat with how they care for the planet.
At 7:30 p.m., the festival shifts into its final act with Mountainfilm in the Garage. Until then, guests can move between screenings, music, art, food and drinks, building their own itinerary from the day’s offerings.
The result is a festival that treats environmental storytelling as something to experience from multiple angles, not just something watched on a screen. Guests might arrive for a documentary, discover a local artist, try a new beer pairing or catch a band, leaving with a broader picture of the region and the people working to preserve it.
“We want to celebrate the talent in our community while reminding people that protecting the places we love can be inspiring, creative and fun,” Whitt said.
The Mound City Film Festival takes place Saturday, Nov. 7, from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. at Atomic by Jamo. For more information and the full schedule, visit moundcityfilm.com.
