The 2026 annual Backyard Docs Film Festival, formerly known as the Rust Belt & Appalachia Documentary Film Festival, celebrates documentary films and filmmakers directly connected to our region. Backyard Docs Film Festival has become an annual celebration of non-fiction cinema.
Hansen Bursic, the festival director, said. “The festival started in [Executive Director and founder of the festival] Nick Childers’ backyard as a chance to support local documentary filmmakers, develop relationships, and build community. The festival soon outgrew Childers’ backyard and expanded to include workshops and discussions alongside feature and short documentary screenings for an entire weekend. This year’s festival will run from Thursday, September 24th to Sunday, September 27th.
On opening night of the festival, Thursday, September 24, Backyard Docs will stake a claim in the front yard with “My Neighbor’s Yard.” Lesbian filmmaker Kara Grace Miller’s documentary focuses its attention on divisive political signs in a Harrisburg neighborhood on the way to the state’s capital. It will screen with a feature, “Bulldogs,” Noah Dixon and Ori Segev’s film about the aftereffects of the 2023 East Palestine, Ohio train derailment.
This year, during the short doc’s program at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, September 26, the festival will screen Drew Dickler’s “Big Bass,” which will explore the profound and ultimately positive effect that an out lesbian gym teacher had on the filmmaker in her most formative years. It all started with a private conversation and a toy fish.
Dickler, a Brooklyn-based documentary filmmaker and producer, best known as the co‑founder of Deep Dive Films, an award‑winning production company that creates commercials and feature documentaries, said, “I was always encouraging my filmmakers to be more vulnerable, and I realized I wasn’t doing the same thing. I used my vulnerabilities as a prompt for a personal narrative short that became ‘Big Bass.’”
She said, “I went to GFS [Germantown Friends School, located in the historic Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia] and I recalled this memory I had with Phys. Ed. teacher and athletics coach, Cheryl [Bruttomesso] sitting on the steps in front of the Cary Building, discussing my troubles fitting in with the girls in her class. I vividly recalled passing a large plastic fish back and forth between us as we spoke.”
The memory and the alleged plastic fish [smaller than she had remembered] became the subject of “Big Bass,” where Dickler learned that Bruttomesso was still teaching at GFS and went back for a visit. Dickler remembers being intimidated by Bruttomesso, an out lesbian schoolteacher, and was afraid Bruttomesso knew her “secret.”
Dickler said, “The film is a tribute to Queer Elders, those who bravely paved the way for the rest of us.”
Dickler is currently working on a variety of projects. She is producing What Will I Become?,” a 2026 feature documentary directed by Lexie Bean and Logan Rozos, focusing on the lives of two trans boys—Blake Brockington and Kyler Prescott—who died by suicide, and the broader experiences of the transmasculine community. Dickler, an avid baseball player sidelined by a devastating ankle injury, is also producing “The Grass Ceiling,” an intergenerational story about women and baseball inspired by Pittsburgh’s own “A League of Their Own.”
Bursic said, “Everything we do at Backyard Docs is a labor of love. We love bringing people together and supporting each other. We work in this region, and we know the challenges of making films in our region. It’s a filmmaker-forward festival.”
Bursic, who identifies as a queer man, said, “The festival is growing, and we are proud of our work, building intentional spaces. We have filmmakers who have never been to Pittsburgh, who come here and change their perspective about Pittsburgh. They learn that Pittsburgh audiences are special.”
The Backyard Docs Festival runs from Thursday, September 24 to Sunday, September 27. The documentaries will screen at the Harris Theater, 809 Liberty Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15222.