The Atheist Film Festival, created in 2009, is world’s first film festival dedicated to showcasing feature films, documentaries, shorts and animated cinema created especially for the secular community. Whether you’re an atheist, agnostic, skeptic, secular humanist, heathen, heretic, bright or just a fan of fresh, offbeat cinema that celebrates and encourages reason, critical thinking and freedom of inquiry both inside and outside of the movie theater, the Atheist Film Festival is for you.
Our Founders
Dave Fitzgerald
Dave Fitzgerald, in addition to being the current director of the Atheist Film Festival, is the coordinator of Evolutionpalooza!, San Francisco Atheists’ annual Darwin Day celebration—as well as a writer, speaker and historical researcher. He is on the Speaker’s Bureau of both the Secular Student Alliance and Center for Inquiry, and is the author of Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All. Dave lives in San Francisco with his girlfriend Dana and their cats.
Hank Pellissier
Writer, performer, futurist, teacher, commentator and veteran producer Hank Hyena, a.k.a. Hank Pellissier, has organized over 150 wide-ranging film and performance events around the globe, including the San Francisco DADA Fest, the Hyena Comedy Institute, Street Utopia and both the Buddhist and Muslim Performance Festivals. But his desire to do something for his own community led to the creation of the Atheist Film Festival. He lives and works in San Francisco with his wife and daughters, and is also a frequent online contributor to a variety of magazines and newspapers including the New York Times (San Francisco edition), Salon.com, SFGate.com, World Future Society, and the SF Bay Guardian.
Veronica Chater
Veronica Chater is the author of Waiting for the Apocalypse: A Memoir of Faith and Family (WW Norton & Co., 2009), the story of her ultra-conservative Catholic upbringing and subsequent philosophical evolution. Widely published in both fiction and non-fiction, she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, is a winner of Opium’s Literary Death Match in San Francisco, and has written for This American Life. Veronica lives in Berkeley, California with her husband, documentary filmmaker John Chater, their three sons, and her macaw Gideon. Keep an eye out for her upcoming novel The Holy Fires of Ipswich.
