The NXNE festival will feature films not focused on music for the first time this year, in an effort to broaden the overall offerings at the festival.

Since the festival’s inception 20 years ago NXNE has continually expanded to offer more than music and now features films, comedy, art and programming focused on technology and innovation. The expansion of the film program was part of overall desire to make the festival more all-encompassing of the entire entertainment field, said Cameron Carpenter, film programming manager with NXNE.

This year’s lineup includes several Canadian projects, including Brendan McCarney’s Born to Ruin and Dave Brown and Daniel Williams’s Luck’s Hard. Non-music focused films set to screen during the festival include the silent film La Voz De Los Silenciados and William J. Stribling’s Lies I Told My Little Sister.

The festival will screen about 30 films in all this year, Carpenter said. He received about 500 submissions for this year’s festival, compared to the approximately 150 submissions he’s received in previous years.

While he said the festival lineup will likely always include several music-focused films, he does hope the expanded festival can help promote up-and-coming Canadian filmmakers.

“A great film is a great film, but we like to feature Canadian talents as well,” Carpenter told Playback Daily, noting that six of the 10 feature films to screen in the festival are Canadian. While the festival will gauge the audience’s reaction to the expanded film offerings, Carpenter said he believes the festival will feature films from across multiple genres in the future.

“I think now that we have opened the floodgates…I think it will be all-encompassing again next year,” Carpenter said.