2023 LIFF Was Exhausting and Exhilarating by Rick Mellerup

I’ve been covering the Lighthouse International Film Festival for several years, but I was totally unprepared for this year’s event. It was so much bigger, so much better, so much everything than ever before.

My first hint that the 2023 LIFF was going to be something special came on Wednesday evening when I drove over to Beach Haven from my home in Tuckerton to take in director Jack Sholder’s “12 Days of Terror,” a made-for-TV movie from 2004 that recounted – with some made-for-TV movie tricks such as adding a love triangle – the notorious 1916 shark attacks on the Jersey Shore.

It was a wasted trip. The venue, the LBI Historical Museum, was full. People were being turned away, even me with an all access pass. The managing director of the festival told me, “Rick, you should have gotten here earlier.”

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