ShortFest film festival crowds to bring business to Palm Springs

The largest short film festival in North America is coming to town Tuesday — Palm Springs International ShortFest.

“We have everything — 330 short films, so you have dramas, animation, the gamut, everything,” said ShortFest Festival Director Lili Rodriguez.

The festival will screen films made in dozens of countries across the globe.

In addition to hundreds of filmmakers and industry professionals, more than 22,000 movie-goers are expected to attend the event.

“It’s a very full schedule,” said Jianna Martin, a writer and director whose short film is featured this year. “You don’t really wanna miss a day.”

With summer normally slow for Palm Springs businesses, the festival has business owners and employees seeing green.

“It has slowed down, yes,” said Jenluc Hoffer, manager of Real Italian Deli in Palm Springs. “Hopefully the festival will bring more people for the weekend.”

“Over the past few years during that festival, we certainly saw more people in town coming and it’s going to be the same this year again,” Hoffer said.

Some residents agreed that it would be good to have festival-goers in town.

“We love the real Italian deli and we love having people come nad experience this beautiful place that we live in,” said Palm Springs resident Heather Bolton.

“Hopefully they’re all going to be hungry people and come here and have a bite to eat,” Hoffer said. “We’ll be ready for them!”