SAVANNAH, Ga. — The SCAD Savannah Film Festival reaches its final day Saturday, Oct. 31, and for the restaurants and shops around Broughton Street in downtown Savannah, the week has been one of the busiest of the fall.
The Savannah College of Art and Design festival is billed as the largest film festival run by a university anywhere in the country. Over its weeklong run it draws close to 75,000 people into the downtown core, and every one of them is a possible customer for a lunch counter, bar or boutique within walking distance of the screenings.
Business owners near the venues say they feel it. One downtown taproom booked its entire upstairs room for the cast and crew of The Mosquito Bowl, an upcoming Netflix film that came to town for the festival.
Leopold’s Ice Cream, the longtime Broughton Street parlor that sits beside the Trustees Theater and faces the red carpet, has had one of its more memorable weeks. Dame Helen Mirren, who accepted the festival’s 2026 Legend of Entertainment Award on opening weekend, made a point of visiting the shop in person this time. She has said she knows owner Stratton Leopold and has only been to Savannah once before, back in the late 1980s.
The shop also leaned into the moment with a limited flavor it calls Moo-Vie Night, which blends vanilla ice cream with caramel popcorn.
Mirren, who won an Oscar for playing Queen Elizabeth in the 2006 film The Queen, used her visit to tell students and young creatives that hard work and how they treat collaborators matter as much as talent.
Once the closing night screenings end, the crowds will thin out quickly. For downtown merchants, the festival remains one of the biggest single weeks on the calendar, coming each fall just as the city’s holiday shopping season begins to build.
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