CineForge Co-op:

2026 Columbus Filmmakers Grant Winners

By Paul Rowe

Every industry analyst will tell you that 2026 is the rise (or the return, for you history buffs) of the independent film – of investing in new, creative voices.  Five Columbus creators, all 2026 Local Filmmaker Grant Program winners, have entered the chat. 

The genres they work in span horror, comedy-thriller, drama, and crime. Ask any of them why they put themselves through the arduous journey of making a film, and the common theme is very similar: they can’t stop.

Zack Collins, Philmwurks, The Haze

Zack Collins spent more than two decades as a lawyer and judge watching stories arrive toward their tail end. By the time someone reached his courtroom, the damage was done.

“Filmmaking lets me start at the beginning of a story instead of cleaning up somebody’s mess on the back end,” Collins said.

The Haze is a horror-slasher short with a high body count, masked killer, and terrified coed –  but wait, what’s on the surface isn’t the point, says Collins. The film is really about a young woman reckoning with her own legacy and the cost of institutional silence. The subject matter is hazing, and Collins is acutely aware of the responsibility that comes with it.

“The thing that scares me isn’t a bad review,” he said. “It’s the possibility that a person who’s been hurt by hazing watches it and feels used instead of feeling seen.”

What gets him out of bed is the chance to tell a story he hasn’t seen on screen before. At the center of The Haze is Bennie Butler, a figure in a cracked bone-white mask whose story unfolds within the Black Greek community, a setting rarely explored in horror. The response from that community, before a single frame has been been shot, has already lit a fire under the project.

The film wouldn’t exist, Collins says, without his producing partner Paul Rowe, Cinematographer Trey Walker of Mud Films, and a local businessman named Kevin Adams, who handed Collins the keys to his cabin.

When The Haze screens, Collins wants the audience to leave unsettled in the way only good horror can: with an anxious checking of the back seat before driving home. Underneath the horror, he wants something else – he wants people to feel represented. And he wants them to know this story was built right here, by people from Columbus, and can stand next to anything a studio makes.

Payton King & Rebecca Gossett, Glasseye Productions, Give & Take

Give & Take started from a simple, nagging anxiety: what if something happened to your partner while you were waiting in the car?

“What would you be willing to do to save someone you love?” King said. “Our film taps into that anxiety while featuring characters who are, frankly, completely out of their element.”

The short film is a love story, a comedy, and a thriller all at once. Gossett, who handles much of the stunt work, admits she goes to bed most nights rethinking the choreography.

“They’ve got to be cool, fun, and of course safe,” she said of the stunts. “They hit a lot of notes.”

For Gossett, the highlight of her experience is working with the cast. She has worked with these actors before and knows they make the material sharper, funnier, more alive. “The best actors are smart people,” she said, “and these guys are some of the smartest, wittiest people I know.”

The local thread runs through everything. Their primary location is Columbus Bound, a local independent bookstore, which has been generous with its space. Gossett also credits the Springer Theatre, where working there put the right collaborators in her orbit at the right time. “I need good players on my team,” she said. “Well, we’ve got the best.”

King’s hope for the audience is modest: “If they leave having enjoyed their time with these characters as much as we have, that’s a win for us.”

Princess Gooden, PFLG Entertainment,  Princess

Princess Gooden has been carrying these characters around since she was a kid. They had nowhere to live but in her head. Now they’re getting out.

“It’s never felt like work,” she said. “I see it as a blessing I get to do, versus something being done to me.”

Princess is about every girl who was handed a definition of herself and then handed a life that didn’t match. “[It’s for] the girl who got the crown and none of the castle,” Gooden said. 

What keeps her up is the fear of not doing the story justice, not having enough resources to let it land the way it deserves. What gets her up is the community that’s already behind her, making it clear the weight isn’t hers alone to carry. That community is specific. The people of Piney Grove, Waverly Hall, and the Bridge of Columbus, Inc. They treat the film like it belongs to them. 

When it screens, Gooden says she won’t be looking for applause. She’ll be watching faces. “I want them to walk out lighter than they walked in,” she said. “I want some healing to happen in there. I want them talking – not the kind of talk that stops in the parking lot, but the kind that follows them home.”

Paul Rowe, Last Caress Productions, Die Alone

Paul Rowe’s film features a contract killer with two faces: one a lie, one the truth, the two so intertwined that separating them is nearly impossible. Rowe describes the film itself the same way: a road trip movie with a fun candy shell, dark comedy sprinkles, and a thought-provoking center.

Rowe has been making films long enough with his team to have built what he calls ‘callouses.’ 

“It’s a daily grind, every day, consistently for a long period of time,” he said. “You’re putting one foot in front of the other for a year or more on a single project when you’re a filmmaker.”

His larger goal is bigger than any one project: growing a film community in Columbus and the Valley that can produce films and attract them. Every project is a brick.

He credits Andy Carpenter, a friend, writer, filmmaker, as someone who embodies the kind of collaborative care and bond the community runs on.

When the lights come up at the premiere, Rowe borrows a line he loves from Nicole Kidman’s AMC Theaters intro: “We come to this place for magic.” That’s what he wants the audience to walk away having felt.

Kane Kettering, Collapse

Collapse is a film set in a dystopic post-governmental corporate-run world where anything and everything is for sale. Allegiances and safety are fleeting as competing agendas complicate even the simplest of goals. 

Action! 

Independent filmmaking runs on the belief that the story matters, that the timing is right, and that the community around you is worth building something for. The 2026 grant recipients are proof that Columbus has all three. 

These local filmmakers, and the many that applied, as well as FilmColumbusGA grant program is a signal that a film community is alive, thriving, and is very much taking part in the next great wave of independent film.