WILLOUGHBY, Ohio — It may feel like another lifetime, but it was only a few years ago that the Cleveland International Film Festival was, as Associate Director Patrick Shepherd says, "bursting at the seams" at Tower City Cinemas. The roughly 250-seat auditoriums — with their rough 30-year-old seats — regularly were packed, especially during festival weekends.
In the years leading up to and including 2019, the annual celebration of cinema — produced by the Ohio City-based nonprofit of the same name — drew about 100,000, usually a little more.
Cue the deep-voiced narrator: And then something happened.
