Christopher Escobar
Serving since 2011, Christopher Escobar has become the longest-serving and first minority Executive Director of the 46-year-old Atlanta Film Society, the media arts organization which has been named “Best Nonprofit” by Creative Loafing and produces the Academy Award-qualifying Atlanta Film Festival. ATLFF has been named “Best Spring Festival in Atlanta” by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, one of the “Top 25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World” by MovieMaker Magazine, and one of the “10 Best Film Festivals” by USA TODAY Reader’s Choice. Escobar has been named a “40 under 40” and “CFO of the Year” by the Atlanta Business Chronicle, named “Best of Atlanta” by Atlanta Magazine, and given 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, PBS, NBC, Fox News, NPR, The Wallstreet Journal, The Washington Post, CBS, and CNN.
Escobar 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. In 2017, he purchased the historic Plaza Theatre — Atlanta’s oldest and only independent cinema. Now, under Escobar’s leadership, the Plaza is committed to philanthropically supporting the Atlanta Film Society. Escobar 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 three amazing children.