Coronado's Film Festival Is Leaving the Hotel Del for the First Time in 11 Years

Every closing night of the Coronado Island Film Festival since 2016 has wrapped up on Hotel del Coronado grounds. This November, for the first time in the festival's eleven-year run, the closing celebration leaves the resort entirely for a bayfront reception at the Marriott Coronado Island Resort & Marina, with the downtown San Diego skyline standing in for the Victorian turrets locals have watched light up every fall for a decade. The festival's own description calls it something they've "never done before."

It isn't the only venue change this year, and it isn't even the bigger one. The Village Theatre on Orange Avenue, CIFF's home screen since the festival began, spent part of the spring closed for a change of operator that had nothing to do with the festival calendar. It reopened July 1 under UltraStar Cinemas. The eleventh Coronado Island Film Festival, running November 4 through 8, will be the first to screen its full lineup inside a theater that changed hands earlier this same year.

Eleven Years at the Same Address, Until This One

The closing-night reception has been a fixture of festival week since the beginning, close enough to walk from the Village Theatre after the final film. For 2026, the reception moves off Hotel del Coronado grounds to the Marriott's waterfront on Sunday, November 8, with the bay and the city skyline as the backdrop instead. It's a small logistical shift on paper, one reception venue for another, but it's the first time in the festival's history that the closing party has stepped outside the walls it was built around.

The opening night hasn't moved. The Leonard Maltin Industry Tribute Awards Gala, marking its own 11th anniversary this year, still opens the festival on Wednesday, November 4, inside the Garden and Crown Room at the Hotel del Coronado, with a sunset champagne reception on the Garden Terrace before the red carpet. Maltin has presided over the tributes since CIFF's first year in 2016. Past honorees include Chloé Zhao, Geena Davis, Richard Dreyfuss, and, last year, Delroy Lindo, who went on to an Academy Award nomination. The gala staying put while the closing night moves is its own quiet signal: the festival isn't relocating, it's expanding where it's willing to end the week.

The Screen Underneath the Festival Changed First

The Village Theatre's reopening in July matters more to festival week than a scheduling note, because it's the room where most of CIFF's actual screenings happen. UltraStar Cinemas, which has run theaters around San Diego for decades, took over operations and reopened the doors in time for summer blockbusters, including a live-action Moana and a new Spider-Man release. UltraStar representative Julie Bravo told the Coronado Times the company was committed to keeping the theater's character intact even as it added new concessions: a "Popcorn Pass" for repeat visits, icees, nachos, and plans to bring in beer and wine. "We are local," Bravo said. "We live here."

The announcement drew a mix of nostalgia and caution in the theater's own comment section, with longtime moviegoers recalling double features from decades past and at least one commenter hoping the new operator would keep the theater's "small town, community feel" intact. Whether that holds is something residents will judge for themselves over time, but the timing puts the question in front of them almost immediately: the first real test of the new Village Theatre under new management is a five-day film festival watched closely by the same people who grew up going there.

The theater's monthly Classic Movie Series bridged the gap. With the Village Theatre closed for part of the year, CIFF ran its summer fundraiser screenings elsewhere, including a Talladega Nights night tied to NASCAR San Diego Weekend and the annual Dirty Dancing screening on the beach at the Hotel del Coronado. The series returned to its usual home on August 26, once UltraStar had reopened the doors, with a screening of Midnight in Paris. Tickets were $15, doors opened early for a reception sponsored by Little Frenchie restaurant, with champagne donated by local residents Jim Runner and Banu Buriyeva. It was a small night, but it was the first sign that the Village Theatre and the festival were operating as the same room again.

What Festival Week Looks Like If You're Not Buying a Badge

Most of what makes festival week visible in Coronado doesn't require a ticket. The Avenue of the Stars, a run of sidewalk plaques down Orange Avenue honoring actors, directors, and writers with real ties to the island, from the silent-film era when Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin walked the same street to more recent names tied to Some Like It Hot and Top Gun: Maverick, is a public installation. It's there to walk past any day of the year, not just during festival week.

Festival week does add a few things that need a reservation or a badge:

• November 4, the Leonard Maltin Industry Tribute Awards Gala, Hotel del Coronado's Garden and Crown Room, badge holders and gala guests.
• November 7, a walking tasting event down Orange Avenue starting at The Bower Hotel, with stops at neighborhood restaurants and shops along the Avenue of the Stars, plus a complimentary tour of the Coronado Historical Association's D-Day tribute exhibit, reserved through a StarPass.
• Sometime during the week, a tribute screening of a restored Harold Lloyd film featuring his granddaughter, Suzanne Lloyd, alongside Leonard Maltin, with reservation details still to come.
• November 8, the closing celebration at the Marriott Coronado Island Resort & Marina, the new addition to the lineup.

The regular screenings run at the Village Theatre, now operating as UltraStar Cinema Coronado, alongside programming spread across other island venues that have hosted CIFF panels and screenings in past years, including the Spreckels Center.

The Village Theatre has reopened, and the closing celebration is at the Marriott; both are part of the festival’s November 4–8 run.

The Foley Group spends festival week the same way most of Coronado does, walking Orange Avenue, catching a film if the schedule allows, and keeping an eye on what's changing in the town we call home. If you're out for the Avenue of the Stars walk or catching a movie at the newly reopened Village Theatre, stop and say hello. Let's Connect.