But watch he does, starting some time in June and continuing through January. He also has contracts with about a dozen movie lovers from film festival staffs in Los Angeles and San Francisco who help sift through the offerings, along with volunteer readers who help analyze the 2,000-plus screenplays submitted for the screenwriting competition.

“I consider my role as a kind of stewardship,” said Kieran, 38, who arrived last year as the new programming director for the film fest. “Somebody is giving us their hard work, their time, their labor of love, something that might have taken years of their lives to make. My job is giving each of those 7,000-plus films appropriate consideration.”

Credit: Atlanta Film Festival

Credit: Atlanta Film Festival

The festival, like most cultural events, is still recovering from the pandemic but expects 27,000 in-person attendees at the four venues showing films April 20-30; thousands more will be watching the films online.

Among the appearances by writers, actors and filmmakers planned for the event is a visit from Indigo Girls Amy Ray and Emily Saliers at the screening of a documentary about their 40-year career, “It’s Only Life After All” (1 p.m., Sunday, April 23, $12, Carter Presidential Center, Cecil Day Chapel).

Also making an appearance at the festival is fantasy author George R.R. Martin (”Game of Thrones”), executive producer of the eerie sci-fi western short, ”Night of the Cooters,” directed by superb character actor Vincent D’Onofrio (8 p.m., Saturday, April 22, Rialto, ticketing to be announced).

“Almost all of our programs will be online and virtually available this year,” said Kieran. He’s happy for the expanded access to the festival that the virtual programming provides, but he stresses that there are benefits to in-person attendance — such as the opportunity to interact with someone like Martin — that a virtual experience can’t match.

“There is something special about being in a packed house for a film,” he said. “It’s our natural affinity for being in crowds and having the same experience together.”

Credit: Atlanta Film Festival

Credit: Atlanta Film Festival

Home base for the festival will be the classic Plaza Theatre, on Ponce De Leon at North Highland Avenue, where three screens will be “pumping out movies all day long.”

Audiences for late-night and edgier films will find them at Dad’s Garage Theatre in the Old Fourth Ward. Special presentations will take place at the 833-seat Rialto Center for the Arts downtown and at the Carter Center, which will host a return showing of the Jimmy Carter documentary “Carterland” (7:30 p.m. Friday, April 21, $12, Carter Presidential Center). The Carter doc debuted at the 2021 fest.

About a quarter of the festival’s films were made by Georgia artists and about half were directed by women or non-binary filmmakers. Half of the filmmakers are Black, indigenous or people of color, percentages that are dramatically higher than the representation usually found in mainstream films.

Credit: Petter Ringbom

Credit: Petter Ringbom

Among the films of particular interest to Georgians is the Indigo Girls documentary, which not only captures a remarkable musical partnership between two creators who first met in a Decatur elementary school but also provides an indelible portrait of Atlanta’s music and LGBTQ scene in the 1980s and ‘90s.

“It’s Only Life After All” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, but director Alexandria Bombach said coming to Atlanta will be “like a homecoming” for the movie. “This is where this film is supposed to be shown,” she said. “This is the community that means so much to them, and it means the world to me.”

Another Georgia-centric tale is “Ship Happens,” the chronicle of the Golden Ray, the 656-foot cargo ship with 4,100 new automobiles on board that foundered in the St. Simons Sound in 2019 and rested there on its side like a beached kraken (6:30 p.m., Saturday, April 22, $12,Plaza Theatre).

When filmmaker Jordan Bellamy relocated to the Georgia shore to document the removal, he expected the process to be completed in two months. Two years after it crashed, the hulk was still there.

In terms of commitment to a project, “we threw out a line and caught a much bigger fish than we anticipated,” said Bellamy. “We had to re-arrange our lives to kind of be there.”

Like Bombach, Bellamy (and his fellow filmmaker Josh Gilligan) will be among the artists attending the festival and participating in panel discussions. Bellamy said that after spending two years with the residents of St. Simons, he is excited that the movie will premiere in Atlanta and that many of the principal characters from the documentary will be able to attend.

The Nashville resident isn’t just a presenter at the festival, he’s a fan. “I’m going to hunker down and see every film I can,” he said.

Credit: Atlanta Film Festival

Credit: Atlanta Film Festival

The opening night film is a feature from British television writer Nida Manzoor called “Polite Society,” an action-comedy about a young British Pakistani woman, Rhia Khan, who must save her older sister Lena from an impending wedding (7 p.m., Friday, April 21, $50, Plaza Theatre).

In addition to giving audiences the opportunity to see cinematic work they won’t find elsewhere in theaters or streaming online, the festival is a great boon to the independent filmmakers around the country and the world, said Kieran.

“On a basic level, having a film in front of an appreciative audience composed of complete strangers is vital for any artist, and it’s (an opportunity) hard to get for filmmakers,” Kieran said.

“That’s the kind of oxygen filmmakers really need.”

Festival highlights

The fest will screen 40 feature-length films, 84 short films and 27 “creative media” selections. Among the offerings are:

“Judy Blume Forever,” a documentary on the legendary author of books for children and adolescents, whose work is often denounced by conservatives because of its candid treatment of puberty and sex (7:30 p.m., Thursday, April 20, $12, Carter Presidential Center).

“Quantum Cowboys,” a live-action and animated western featuring live musical performances by Neko Case, John Doe, Howe Gelb and Xixa. According to the film fest, “There’s gunfights, horses, cacti and time travel, too!” (3:15 p.m., Saturday, April 22, $12, Plaza Theatre).

“Still: A Michael J. Fox Film,” which uses Fox’s own words and archival footage to tell the story of “an undersized kid from a Canadian army base” who rises to stardom in the 1980s and then is diagnosed with Parkinson’s at age 29 (4 p.m. Saturday, April 22, Rialto, ticketing to be announced).

”Hundreds of Beavers,” a “19th-century slapstick epic,” detailing a drunken applejack salesman’s efforts to become North America’s greatest fur trapper (6:45 p.m., Tuesday, April 25, $12, Dads Garage Theatre).

“This World is Not My Own,” an artful account of the life of visionary self-taught Georgia artist Nellie Mae Rowe; the movie was created with the use of intricate sets and motion-capture technology (6:45 p.m., Tuesday, April 25, ticketing to be announced).

“The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster,” in which a teenage anti-hero goes on a desperate quest to cure death (10 p.m., Tuesday, April 25, Dad’s Garage Theatre, badge only, single tickets to be announced).

“Master Gardener,” by writer/director Paul Schrader (“Taxi Driver”), a feature about the “meticulous horticulturalist” at Gracewood Gardens, who must take on the owner’s troubled great-niece as an apprentice (9:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 26, $12, Plaza Theatre).

FESTIVAL PREVIEW

Atlanta Film Festival & Creative Conference. Presented by the Atlanta Film Society. April 20-30. $12, general admission single ticket. $75-$375, all-access badge. Plaza Theatre, 1049 Ponce De Leon Ave N.E., Atlanta; Dad’s Garage Theatre, 569 Ezzard St. S.E., Atlanta; Rialto Center for the Arts, 80 Forsyth St. N.W., Atlanta; and Carter Center, 453 John Lewis Freedom Pkwy. N.E., Atlanta. 470-216-0170, atlantafilmfestival.com.