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The annual Forum Film Festival offers you the unique opportunity to watch and discuss movies dealing with legal themes, with a box of popcorn in hand and surrounded by a large audience, most of whom are not lawyers, so you don’t need to know any legalese. Featuring an exciting mix of current blockbusters, classic favorites, documentaries, and independent movies over six nights, the Film Festival illuminates the legal system with all of its triumphs, failures, moral dilemmas, and dramatic moments.

Each movie is followed by a post-screening discussion with renowned artists, writers, public intellectuals, and members of the legal profession who have a particular connection to the film. Explore how the themes of justice and injustice continue to inspire the artistic imagination. Hear interesting stories and anecdotes. Get answers to your questions. And share your own ideas and viewpoints.

Additionally, the Forum invites filmmakers from across the globe to submit an original short film on a legal theme. The judges' top picks are shown, discussed, and celebrated at the FOLCS Awards Night during the Film Festival where the winning films receive the FOLCS Awards. The Short Film Competition offers aspiring filmmakers an opportunity to be viewed by renowned judges and the Forum's audience, which votes for the winner of the Audience Favorite Award—all taking place in New York City, the capital of culture.

Events / Film Festival Schedule / 2012

2012 Film Festival

Another year of fabulous guests, including Nobelist Elie Wiesel and distinguished actor John Turturro, and the first year of the FOLCS Awards Night, highlighted the 2012 Forum Film Festival. Wiesel and Turturro discussed The Truce, in which Turturro starred as Auschwitz survivor and memoirist Primo Levi. Opening night at HBO featured Episode 1 of the series John Adams with post-screening guests Kirk Ellis, who wrote the screenplay for the entire series, and Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Other films and discussions included The House I Live In, a documentary about America's failed War on Drugs with the filmmaker Eugene Jarecki, New Yorker film critic David Denby, and Fordham Law Professor Deborah Denno; Good Night, and Good Luck, a film that looked at the role Edward R. Murrow and CBS News played in exposing the demagoguery of the 1950s Red Scare, with David Strathairn, who portrayed Murrow in the film, 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon, and New York Times editor and columnist Sam Roberts; Clockers, about the racial tensions in the drug trade in Brooklyn, with the novelist and screenwriter Richard Price and novelist Rich Cohen; Duck Soup, with the legendary TV talk show host Dick Cavett.

The Film Festival came to a close with the first annual Forum Short Film Competition and the FOLCS Awards Night. The inaugural winning short film, which came from France, was My Piece of Happiness. It was directed and written by Carole Mathieu-Castelli and produced by Thierry Humbert.

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  • HBO Films
    John Adams, Part 1

    • Paul Giamatti - Award-winning Actor, including an Emmy for his role in John Adams, and Producer
    • Judge Denny Chin Federal Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
    • Kirk Ellis - Producer and Writer, including the John Adams miniseries
    • The Emmy Award–winning HBO miniseries starring Paul Giamatti follows the Founding Father through his life as a husband and actual father, and his career from the lawyer who defended the Redcoats after the Boston Massacre to an American Ambassador to France and England, and then on to becoming the second President of the United States.

  • The House I Live In

    • Eugene Jarecki Author and Filmmaker; credits include Why We Fight, Freakonomics and The House I Live In; winner of two Sundance Grand Jury Documentary Prizes
    • David Denby Film Critic for the New Yorker; Author of Great Books, Snark, and American Sucker
    • Deborah Denno Professor, Fordham Law School
    • This new documentary The House I Live In, directed by Eugene Jarecki, won the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival for its powerful examination of the effects of America’s “war on drugs” on all facets of American society and an ever-growing community of Americans.


  • The Truce

    • Elie Wiesel Author of numerous books including Night, Dawn, and, most recently, Hostage; Political Activist and Recipient of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize
    • John Turturro Emmy-winning Actor, Writer, and Director; credits include Do The Right Thing, Miller’s Crossing, Quiz Show, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and, The Truce
    • Based on Primo Levi’s memoir The Reawakening, this Francesco Rosi film depicts Levi’s journey home to Turin after having survived Auschwitz.

  • GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK

    • David Strathairn Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated Actor and Producer, credits include L.A. Confidential, The Bourne Ultimatum, and Good Night, and Good Luck
    • Bob Simon Emmy-winning TV Correspondent for CBS News' 60 Minutes
    • Sam Roberts New York Times Urban Affairs Correspondent, and Author of Who Are We Now and The Brother
    • Nominated for several Academy Awards, this drama directed by George Clooney is the story of the prime-time TV showdown between CBS’ Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare of the 1950s.

  • CLOCKERS

    • Richard Price Oscar-nominated Screenwriter and Novelist; credits include The Wanderers and Freedomland as well as screenplays Clockers and The Color of Money
    • >Rich Cohen New York Times bestselling Author and contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone
    • This Spike Lee thriller, based on the Richard Price novel of the same name, follows the investigation of the murder of a Brooklyn clocker (street drug dealer) and the detectives determined to uncover the story of his death.

  • DUCK SOUP

    • Dick Cavett Legendary Host of The Dick Cavett Show
    • This classic Marx Brothers film, just in time for this political season, where the dictator of Freedonia declares war on the nation of Sylvania over claims to the affections of Mrs. Teasdale, creating a slapstick farce where politics and international relations—and even a legal trial—are exposed for all of their pretense and absurdity.