El Paso’s Love Letter to Film: Plaza Classic Film Festival Returns for 19th Year

There is a moment, right around sunset on a July evening in downtown El Paso, when you walk past the Plaza Theatre and hear the faint sound of an orchestra score drifting through the lobby doors. You stop. You look up at the marquee. And for just a second, it feels like the city itself is holding its breath, the way it does when something it loves is happening right in front of it.

That is the Plaza Classic Film Festival.

The World's Largest Classic Film Festival Calls El Paso Home

The 19th Annual Plaza Classic Film Festival takes place July 16 through 26, 2026 at the historic Plaza Theatre and surrounding venues in downtown El Paso, holding the distinction of being the world's largest festival dedicated to classic cinema.

Eleven days and more than 90 movies.

The PCFF was started by the El Paso Community Foundation in 2008 as a special project to bring movies back to the historic Plaza Theatre, a venue that opened in 1930, closed in the early 1980s, and was restored for $42 million in 2006 through a joint partnership between the City of El Paso and the Community Foundation. That first festival, originally called "The Movies Return to the Plaza Theatre," was the brainchild of EPCF President/CEO Eric Pearson and movie enthusiast Charles Horak. It was a smash hit. More than 25,000 people turned out to watch more than 60 movies.

Nearly two decades later, the PCFF has grown into something almost mythological. It now averages attendance of 40,000 people a year, and more than 600,000 people have attended across its first 18 editions. The festival carries an economic impact of $1.5 million annually, and about 20 percent of its audience travels from outside the El Paso/Juarez/Las Cruces radius, with the 2025 edition drawing guests from more than 100 cities and other parts of the world.

A Film Festival That Does Not Discriminate

What makes the Plaza Classic unlike anything else is not just the scale but the selection.

On any given day of the festival, you can watch a slapstick Charlie Chaplin silent film accompanied by live organ, a black-and-white Hitchcock thriller, a John Hughes 80s rom-com, and a modern Disney feature. Not in spite of each other. Because of each other. The PCFF does not rank films by prestige or genre. It does not crown one era of cinema superior to another. It simply loves movies, the way El Paso loves movies, without condition.

The programming, led by Program Director Doug Pullen and shaped by a diverse advisory committee of community volunteers and film fans, manages something genuinely rare: an eclectic selection built around loose themes that never feels random. It feels like a time capsule. A yearly collection of films as they exist in time, opened fresh each July, infinite and specific all at once. Think of it as the Criterion Closet if Mary Poppins packed it, and every film ever made was somehow inside.

The People Behind the Programming

The advisory committee that shapes each year's lineup is a reflection of the city itself. Community leaders, educators, journalists, filmmakers, and passionate cinephiles who represent the full breadth of El Paso's cultural identity. Members include EPCC Mass Communications Professor Lisa Elliott; former KVIA news anchor and Borderland Crimes podcaster Stephanie Valle, now Program Manager for EPCF's Puente News Collaborative; and Warner Bros. studio facilities staff member and TCM contributor Jack Fields.

It is worth noting, with full transparency and full pride, that your humble KISS El Paso morning co-host is also a member of that advisory committee. And yes, there is an episode of the official PCFF Podcast hosted by Stephanie Valle and Lisa Elliott where Grizz gets to talk about all of this, available now on Season 7.

When Special Guests Bring Film History Into the Room

Part of what has always made the Plaza Classic extraordinary is what happens before the movie starts. Over the years, the festival has brought in a remarkable roster of guests who do not just introduce films but unlock them, giving audiences a direct line to the people who made cinema history.

Guests over the years have included Al Pacino, El Paso natives Debbie Reynolds, F. Murray Abraham, and Germaine Franco of Encanto, Rita Moreno, Sissy Spacek, Richard Dreyfuss, Edward James Olmos, Eva Marie Saint, Kathleen Turner, Sam Elliott, Helen Hunt, Bruce Dern, Ali MacGraw, Mira Sorvino, Tippi Hedren, Chicano film icon Luis Valdez, and El Paso native documentary filmmaker Iliana Sosa, among many others.

Those conversations are not filler. They are the festival. There is something irreplaceable about sitting inside a 1930 atmospheric theater listening to the people who actually made the films you are about to watch. The PCFF has always understood that, and it has built something rare because of it.

The Night Everyone Danced at La Bamba

If you want to understand what the Plaza Classic Film Festival really is, consider what happened during 2025's screening of La Bamba.

Before the film, legendary filmmaker and playwright Luis Valdez, the director of La Bamba and widely regarded as the father of Chicano theater in the United States, sat onstage with PCFF Podcast host Stephanie Valle for a conversation in front of a packed house. The city had officially honored Valdez with his own day, and the room was full of that particular electricity that comes when a community recognizes one of its own. Valdez spoke about the passion and vulnerability that went into making La Bamba, about Ritchie Valens, about what the story meant and still means. Then the lights went down and the movie started.

When the moment finally came, when La Bamba the song hit and Ritchie Valens finally played it, the house lights came up inside the theater. It turned out there had been a technical issue with the lighting system but nobody in that room knew that. What they knew was that the lights were on, the music was playing, and something was asking them to be present. A good number of people got up, and they danced.

Right there, in the middle of the movie, inside the historic Plaza Theatre, people stood up and danced to La Bamba.

We found out later it was a lighting malfunction but in that moment, it was magic. It was the Plaza Classic Film Festival at its most essential: a room full of people who love movies, surrendering completely to what film can do when you give it the right space and the right audience.

READ MORE: LUIS VALDEZ HONORED AT PLAZA CLASSIC FILM FEST

Local Flavor: El Paso's Own Film Community Gets Its Stage

The PCFF has never forgotten who it is for. The festival has become a major showcase for regional filmmakers through its Local Flavor series, sponsored by the El Paso Film and Creative Industries Commission and the Texas Film Commission. It screens features, shorts, documentaries, and other projects, and its audience has tripled in recent years. El Paso has a real, working film industry and a growing community of storytellers. The Plaza Classic gives them a stage worthy of their work. This year,

The 2026 Local Flavor submissions are also free this year, no entry fee with a $1500 prize for 1st place!

READ MORE: LOCAL FLAVOR FREE TO ENTER AT PLAZA CLASSIC 2026

El Paso Has Always Been a Movie Town

This city does not need to borrow culture from somewhere else. El Paso has been part of film history since before most cities were having the conversation. Dozens of productions have been shot here. El Paso natives have won Academy Awards, shaped animation, scored films, written screenplays, and stood in front of Hollywood cameras. The PCFF is not an import. It is an expression.

This year also marks the 20th anniversary of the reopening of the Plaza Theatre after its restoration, which gives the 2026 edition extra weight. The building itself is a monument to what this city chooses to protect and celebrate. A 1930 atmospheric theater, rescued, restored, and handed back to the people, specifically so they could watch movies together in the dark and feel something.

READ MORE: EVERY MOVIE EVER MADE IN EL PASO, TEXAS

Get Your Tickets for Plaza Classic Film Festival 2026

The 19th Annual Plaza Classic Film Festival runs July 16 through 26, 2026, with tickets and passes and the full schedule available soon!

Come for one movie. Stay for eleven days. Let El Paso remind you why we fell in love with film in the first place.

READ MORE: HISTORIC FACTS ABOUT THE PLAZA THEATER