Chris Escobar

Serving since 2011, Christopher Escobar is the longest serving and first minority Executive Director of the 44-year old Atlanta Film Society, the media arts organization named “Best Nonprofit” by Creative Loafing and producer of the Academy Award­-qualifying Atlanta Film Festival named “Best Spring Festival in Atlanta” by the Atlanta Journal­ Constitution and “Top 25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World” by MovieMaker Magazine and "10 Best Film Festival" by USAtoday two years running. He has been named a “40 under 40” and “CFO of the Year” by the Atlanta Business Chronicle, “Best of Atlanta” by Atlanta Magazine and the “Creativity & Arts Award for Community Impact Arts Administrator” from the Emory College Center for Creativity & Arts. Escobar has been featured in Vice, Variety, Slate Magazine, The New York Times, TIME, ABC, PBS, NPR, NBC, Fox News, NPR, The Wallstreet Journal, The Washington Post, CBS and CNN.

He has served on boards for Georgia Production Partnership, Plaza Theatre Foundation, Rialto Center for the Arts and Georgia State University’s College of the Arts. He has also served on grant review panels for Fulton County Arts & Culture, Georgia Council for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts many time. In 2017, he purchased the historic Plaza Theatre—Atlanta’s oldest and only independent cinema and converted the theatre from being a strategic partner of the ATLFS to making the theatre’s number one philanthropic priority. Christopher holds a B.A. in Film & Video as well as an M.A. in Moving Image Studies with a concentration in Production both from Georgia State University. He is lucky to be married to his lovely wife of over a decade, Nicole and they have two amazing children, Olivia and Aiden.