NBFF Executive Director, Gregg Schwenk, said of the festival, "We've always focused on diverse, strong filmmaking, and we're most proud of how we've been embraced, not just by our audience, but by the filmmaking community."

Newport Beach, with its pristine beaches and thriving art scene, is a popular vacation destination on the Southern California coast and its proximity to Hollywood enables a lot of distributors, sales agents, and industry buyers for film and TV to attend the festival scouting for talent and pick up deals to fill their distribution pipelines.

"This year, the theme is the Power of Ideas," Schwenk told the Variety, a leading US entertainment media. "And we have an exceptionally strong lineup of features, with a record number of US premieres and filmmakers at the festival."