The 2025 Summer League Film Festival made its return after debuting last year, this time boasting a significantly more impressive lineup than its inaugural edition.
On the first day alone, the festival showcased 11 film previews, each lasting between five and 25 minutes, followed by a 15- to 25-minute Q&A session hosted by Turner’s Matt Winer.
Basketball Stories: Bay Area Hoops kicked off the start of the festival, which featured stars like Stephen Curry, Damian Lillard, Jaylen Brown, Gary Payton, and Jason Kidd. Lillard and Payton spoke about the influence their East Bay roots had on their love for basketball growing up.
The film preview featured cameos from Bay Area legends like E-40, Too Short, former NBA veteran Antonio Davis, and other local Oakland legends. The “We Believe” Warriors segment was also featured, and the impact it had on the local community in the Bay Area, as well as the euphoria the community had when the Warriors won their first championship in 2015.
After the preview, directors Michela Gilmer and Jonathan Scott had a brief 10-minute Q&A session with Matt Winer. They discussed the process of finding Bay Area-based rappers and the difficulty of speaking with MC Hammer for their documentary.
The evening concluded with a 25-minute narrative feature of the 2023 biographical sports film, Sweetwater. Directed by Maratin Guigui, it follows Harlem Globetrotters sensation, Nat ‘Sweetwater’ Clifton (played by Everett Osborne), as he becomes the first African-American player to play in the NBA. The Knicks coach Joe Lapchick (Jeremy Piven) lobbied hard to get Sweetwater to join the Knicks to break barriers and become the first black player in the Association.
Sweetwater, an official selection of the 2025 Summer League Film Festival, also featured performances from Kevin Pollak, Cary Elwes, and Richard Dreyfuss. In an engaging 25-minute conversation with Winer, director Guigui, actor Osborne, and producer Dahlia Waingort Guigui, talked about how the film came into fruition, as well as the modern NBA influences Osborne took to portray a player from the 1950s.