MIFF By the Sea Returns to Bar Harbor This September

Maine's biggest film festival is coming back to the coast. MIFF By the Sea — a Bar Harbor spinoff of the celebrated Maine International Film Festival — returns September 15–18, bringing a curated weekend of films from Maine and around the world to the 1932 Criterion Theatre and other venues across the island.

The format is intentionally intimate. Filmmakers introduce their work, stay for Q&A, and often linger at the theater bar afterward. It is one of the few festivals where the people who made the movies and the people who watched them end up in the same late-night chowder shop. Past years have featured documentaries shot in the Maine backwoods alongside fiction debuts from directors whose names audiences will be hearing again.

If you go: passes tend to sell out early for the opening-night gala at the Criterion. The festival pairs naturally with a September visit — the summer crowds are gone, the light has gone gold, and the lobster is still running. Book lodging a few months ahead.

Sources: Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce events, Acadia National Park events