I don’t even really like cats, and yet here I am, slightly hungover on a Saturday morning, shoving popcorn in my face at one of New York’s finest cinemas watching hundreds of kitty videos back to back to back on the big screen. Welcome to Cat Video Fest , which is less a festival than a film — well, a 73-minute medley of cat videos compiled from around the world and screened in more than a hundred movie theaters across the U.S.
and Canada, to be exact. The event has grown steadily for the past few years. Its 2024 edition, held Aug.
3 and 4, netted $280,000, doubling its 2023 gross and raising nearly $30,000 for local animal shelters and welfare organizations. Due to the film’s success, nearly half of Cat Video Fest’s theatrical partners (including Manhattan’s IFC Center, where I saw it) have added dates. Cat Video Fest is headed by Will Braden, who helped curate the event with the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis before taking over in 2016.
Running the fest independently, Braden says he spends a third of the year collecting clips, getting clearance from content creators and keeping track of the videos on an Excel sheet; a third of the year editing the film together; and a third of the year coordinating with distributor Oscilloscope Labs and doing press. “It’s my full-time job. My business cards say I watch cat videos,” Braden tells Variety .
“Though I will say my wife is a first-grade public school teacher, and she makes a little bit more than me per year..