Gulf Coast films will screen in many of the key spots of the Sunscreen Film Festival in St. Petersburg later this month. Sugar, a film series from actor-director Dylan McDermott, made in conjunction with a team of filmmakers at Ringling College of Art and Design, will be shown as a Spotlight selection at the festival, while Albion: The Enchanted Stallion, a film written and directed by Bradenton filmmaker Castille Landon, will serve as the festival’s Closing Night Film.

“I am excited to premiere my series Sugar at the Sunscreen Film Festival, and to return to Florida to premiere the series where I produced it with Ringling College and Semkhor Networks,” says McDermott, who will attend the festival with Sugar and with Opening Night film Blind, a Michael Mailer-directed drama starring Alec Baldwin, Demi Moore and McDermott.

Albion was a movie filmed partly in Bradenton as well as in Eastern Europe. Landon, a successful actress from the area who has also starred in independent films like Paradise, FL, and directed such talent as Burt Reynolds in And Then There Was Light in Palmetto. Albion was shot primarily in Bulgaria and stars such talent as Jennifer Morrison, Debra Messing and John Cleese. “The film is a fantasy film in the vein of The Wizard of Oz meets Game of Thrones, but for the entire family. It’s a story featuring a strong, young female lead and involves horses,” Landon told SRQ during filming.

In honor of the impending closure of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, the festival will also host a Retrospective Screening of Cecile B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show On Earth, which was filmed in Sarasota at the winter headquarters for the circus and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1953.

The Sunscreen Film Festival runs from April 27–30 in St. Petersburg.