For a long time, the Pacific Northwest had a strange relationship with its own image on screen. Moviemakers would set stories here, featuring rain-soaked streets, Douglas firs, and that flat gray winter light that makes everything look like the establishing shot of a thoughtful independent movie. Then they would go shoot them in Vancouver, B.C. because the crews were there and the incentives were better and honestly it just kind of worked. Locals developed a game: is that actually Seattle, or is that a parking garage in Burnaby?
It was always a parking garage in Burnaby.
That’s starting to change. And we think it’s worth paying attention to.
In 2022, Washington state more than quadrupled its annual movie incentive funding, moving from $3.5 million to $15 million. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a state saying, out loud, that they would like movies to be made here now. Updates in 2025 expanded things further by pulling in commercial productions too, because apparently Washington decided it was done deferring to British Columbia about all of this.
The results have been slow but real. Train Dreams, the Denis Johnson novella adaptation starring William H. Macy, was originally being developed for production in Europe. Then the moviemakers visited Washington and discovered it looked exactly like the place where the story is set. Since it is the place where the story is set, they made the somewhat startling creative choice to just movie it there. It hit Netflix in late 2025 to strong reviews. Patient, serious, and visually careful, it is the kind of movie people still bring up a decade later. It is not the George Clooney movie; it is the other kind. That’s what Washington is going after, and it turns out that’s a real lane.
Oregon’s been quieter about it, but the creative infrastructure is real. It’s been building for decades in the way important things in Oregon tend to build, with no fanfare in the rain until suddenly it exists.
The coast is its own story. Astoria and the surrounding area have shown up in some genuinely enduring movies like The Goonies, Kindergarten Cop, and Free Willy. This is mostly because the landscape does extraordinary things on camera without being asked. The cliffs, the river, and the light all behave like they have been scouted. They haven’t been scouted; they are just like this.
What’s been missing is an ecosystem. Trained crew. A local culture that takes its own stories seriously. Someone willing to connect the dots between education, exhibition, and actual support for the people making things here. We think that’s a gap worth filling. (We also think we know who should fill it, and we’re working up to that.)
Across the region, a real network of festivals has been building something. Seattle’s Local Sightings has been running for 28 years through Northwest Movie Forum, and smaller festivals celebrating shorts, animation, and experimental work have been doing the same at a more intimate scale. At their best, these events aren’t just screenings. They introduce moviemakers to each other. They make work visible that might otherwise live on a hard drive and a wish.
Astoria Picture Show is going to be part of this. The festival, the Film School with Clatsop Community College, and the future project support piece are all aimed at the same thing. They are creating conditions where someone with a story to tell about this place can actually tell it and find people willing to show up and watch.
The Pacific Northwest has been standing in for everywhere else for long enough. It’s a genuinely interesting place with genuinely interesting people living genuinely interesting lives in it.
Someone should make some movies about that.
Learn more about our Festival or Film School — or get in touch directly.
