The Raiders of the Lost Ark star has called the Berkshires home for four decades. Now, as BIFF marks its 20th anniversary with a landmark lineup and a European partnership, the festival is finally turning the spotlight to a best friend.
When the Berkshire International Film Festival (BIFF) opens its 20th anniversary season in Great Barrington next week, the celebration will have a very fitting face at the center of it: Karen Allen. The Hollywood star, theater veteran, indie film champion, longtime BIFF board of directors member, and owner of Karen Allen Fiber Arts in Great Barrington has lived here since the '80s, and says she's touched to be receiving BIFF's accolade in this seminal year.
Allen, most widely known to generations of moviegoers as Marion Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark, has been woven into the fabric of BIFF almost since its founding.
"There's just no one that should be honored more than Karen in our 20th year," says BIFF founder and artistic director Kelley Vickery. "She's not only a movie star, but she's really done amazing work in indie film and theater too. She's just incredible and the nicest person you will ever meet."
BIFF runs May 28–31 across Great Barrington and Lenox, presenting 31 documentaries, 29 narrative features, 29 short films, and a free kids' animated shorts program, with screenings and events at the Triplex Cinema, the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Lenox Town Hall, and area restaurants.
When BIFF launched, it showcased 40 independent film premieres over a single two-day weekend, the Mahaiwe hadn't yet opened, Deval Patrick was running for governor. Two decades later, the festival has doubled the number of films screened, tripled the number of screens, and drawn luminaries including Arthur Penn, Mike Nichols, Christopher Plummer, Kevin Bacon, Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach, Rachel Weisz, Martin Scorsese, and scores of other award-winning filmmakers.
Allen is characteristically gracious about the timing of her own honor. "I've been helping Kelley make the decision of who to honor for years," she says. "I helped Kelley in the second year when she wanted to bring Arthur Penn in to be honored, which I was thrilled about, because he was a friend and somebody I had worked with, and he lived in Stockbridge for years and years. So finding an honoree was actually my first involvement with BIFF."
Allen's connection to the Berkshires goes back further. She first came to the region around 1980 to work at the Berkshire Theater Festival and was infatuated with the landscape. An avid biker, she began her long practice of cycling bucolic back roads. Around that time she suffered a vocal cord injury while playing Helen Keller on Broadway (under the direction of the previously mentioned Arthur Penn himself) which led her to West Stockbridge to work with legendary vocal coach Kristin Linklater.
"That was when I really fell in love," she says. "That must have been around '84, and I just started looking for a place." She eventually purchased a home in Monterey in 1988, raising her son and driving him daily to the Steiner School. About a year and a half ago she made the move into Great Barrington proper, and she talks about it like a kid who's just gotten their first apartment in the big city.
"I'm right in town! So I can walk right out my door and be at the Triplex in about a minute, or walk over to the Co-op and pick up some milk," she says. "One of the things I love most about living here is that the performing arts are here to stay. Tanglewood is here to stay. Jacob's Pillow is here to stay. The theater festivals are here to stay, and we're very lucky to have that, and BIFF! BIFF is definitely here to stay."
As BIFF's honoree, Allen will be lavished with her due praise on Saturday, May 30, beginning with a dinner at 5pm at Lenox Town Hall, catered by The Old Inn on the Green. At 7 pm at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, she'll appear in conversation with production designer Kristi Zea, who was recently presented the Saint Augustine Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Award by Allen herself, before a screening of Starman (1984, dir. John Carpenter) at 8pm.
"We've shown Raiders here a couple of times recently," she explains. "But there's a lot of people that haven't seen Starman, so it's kind of fresh. It's a film that's got a special place in my heart. I loved working with Jeff [Bridges] and I enjoyed working with John Carpenter on a really different kind of movie for him. It's a sweet story, with a nice sense of promise that hangs in the air at the end."
She gets a bit wistful reflecting on the film's themes of creating a better world, given the current political climate. "If only the baby I was going to have at the end, part human, part something else [Bridges plays an alien near-perfect being in the body of her dead husband], would return with his innate wisdom that we are sorely lacking right now. I feel like there's something 'of the moment' about it. [Bridges' character] says the baby will be a great teacher. The way things are, I'm like, where is that baby? He'd be about 40 right now. We need it!"
For Allen, the soul of Starman, and all her approach to life and acting, comes down to something simple: authenticity. "That's what I think the job is, personally. Our job as actors is to make the characters authentic. I like it when I see something and I feel like, this is a real human being here."
While Karen Allen is grabbing the spotlight, the BIFF Filmmaker Summit, a slate of industry talks and workshops for filmmakers held the two days before the festival opens publicly, is doing the behind-the-scenes work of strengthening the future of independent film. Founded in 2012 with a grant from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, now in its 16th year, the Summit has grown into what Vickery and Allen both describe as an industry event unlike any other.
"It's the best thing that we do, honestly, something truly unique on the festival circuit," Vickery says. "We’re bringing in industry professionals, leadership from Magnolia, IndieWire, the heads of Submarine Entertainment, Oscar-nominated production designers, Oscar-winning documentary filmmakers. It's pretty incredible who comes to the summit."
Panel discussions, lectures, and breakout sessions with pros covering everything from development to distribution and financing to marketing are offered completely free to filmmakers whose work is in the festival.
"We give filmmakers a minute to themselves," Vickery says. "They've been on the circuit nonstop, and they have time to just take a breath, take a beat, and be with colleagues. Whether first-time filmmakers or veterans, it is amazing the conversations, and networking, and collaboration that come out of it."
Allen echoes that from years of taking part and watching it grow. "It's become quite the happening thing. News has really moved out into the ether that this is something special."
This year's festival carries a significant new international distinction: BIFF has been selected by the Delegation of the European Union to the United States as the inaugural American home base for the newly launched Transatlantic Rising Stars Project, a three-year initiative designed to deepen cultural connections between the EU and the United States. Selected EU filmmakers, each mid-career and bearing major European festival awards, will participate in the Filmmaker Summit and present their work in a dedicated European Filmmakers Showcase.
"It's unbelievable this is happening to us in our 20th year," Vickery says. "It says to us, 'You're a festival that puts your effort and money where your mouth is when it comes to taking care of filmmakers.'"
Allen sees it as a natural evolution. "This year, with the Europeans, should make for our most interesting summit yet."
"The job does not get easier," Vickery reflects. "Each year you're dealing with a whole new set of films and filmmakers. The structure and schedule of BIFF is tight, but within that structure is chaos."
She’s in a great mood though. This is her element. "It's really joyous to have built something that's still here 20 years later. We've seen a lot come and go, and it is very gratifying to still be here and still be as strong as we are."
The 20th Berkshire International Film Festival runs May 28–31, 2026 in Great Barrington and Lenox. The Filmmaker Summit takes place the two days prior. The Karen Allen Tribute Night is Saturday, May 30: dinner at 5 p.m. behind Lenox Town Hall, conversation with Kristi Zea at 7 p.m. at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, followed by a screening of Starman at 8 p.m. For tickets, passes, and the full program, visit biffma.org.
