SOUTH HAVEN — Imagine having the opportunity to attend one of the top five film festivals in the world this summer.

Well, you do, and it won’t cost you an arm and a leg. All it takes is a short jaunt up the Blue Star Highway to South Haven sometime between June 12 and 15 for the Water Front Film Festival

“It’s been named among the top five film festivals in the world by the Screen Actors Guild. It’s up there with Cannes, Sundance, South by Southwest and Cinevegas,” said Patrick Revere, media spokesperson for the festival. “People don’t believe it when we tell them that, but that’s what we’re doing.”

How did a film festival in Michigan get to be rated alongside the likes of Cannes and Sundance?

According Hopwood DePree, a founder of the festival as well as an actor and filmmaker himself, it has to do with the atmosphere and the way that the festival treats its guests—whether they are filmmakers or audience members.

“It comes down to bringing the filmmakers together with the community. That’s the key,” DePree explained. “As far as the ratings go, it seems to come down to our focus on treating the guests well—celebrating the fact that they’ve achieved the making of a film, and connecting them with a really receptive audience.”

In terms of taking care of the audience, the organizers of the Water Front Film Festival have made sure that they provide an opportunity to view a variety of quality films in a setting where guests can enjoy a wide range of activities, all within walking distance.

“When this group of people sat down in 1998, they decided, ‘We want to have a laid-back Sundance,’ and it’s just a wonderful experience,” Revere said. “They do an amazing job of programming the movies, and when you wrap that up with such an idyllic setting, it’s a captivating experience.”

The founders—Hopwood, his two sisters Dana and Dori, Kori Eldean and Judy Smith—came up with the perfect recipe for a film festival by sampling a number of them for themselves.

“We were filmmakers ourselves, and we had made several films, taking them to film festivals all around the world for about 18 months, and we got to see what worked and what didn’t,” DePree recalled. “We really felt, ‘Wouldn’t West Michigan be a great location for a film festival, especially as a venue for independent films?’”

While the festival called Saugatuck “home” for its first 14 years, organizers decided to move the event to South Haven last year.

“This is our second year in South Haven,” Revere said. “We moved to increase the festival’s reach into southwest Michigan and Chicago. We’re looking toward creating a ‘middle coast’ film venue.”

Water Front’s success in Saugatuck led to more communities wanting to get involved, and that fit in well with the festival organizers’ long-term plans.

“We really feel that West Michigan is a wonderful place as a whole, and we wanted to showcase other communities as well,” DePree said. “We’d like it to grow into a year-round organization that takes place in many of the towns along the coast.”

The success of the film festival can also be seen in the number of submissions that the programming group receives for review each year.

“The programming group is a nationwide group made up of volunteers. They take over 500 submissions and whittle them down to just shy of 80 each year,” Revere explained.

A full schedule for this year’s films with synopses can be found at www.waterfrontfilm.org, and tickets can be purchased there as well.

“The thing that’s special about the festival is that you can come into town and scale it on an individual basis. You can spend $12 and a couple hours, or you can make a day or a weekend out of it,” Revere said. “We want to make it very useable.”

Another attractive aspect of the festival is the opportunity it provides for audience members to interact with filmmakers, actors and other people involved in making the films.

“Because we want the experience to be collaborative, we expect at least one representative from each feature film to be present,” Revere said. “Then, we have Q & A panels and workshops after each screening, and the filmmakers will take questions from the audience.”

As a world-class film festival that takes place so close to home in a setting as beautiful and accessible as South Haven, Water Front seems like the perfect choice for a weekend of early summer entertainment.

“It’s really a lot of fun,” DePree said. “Come down for opening night. We’ll have music on the beach, a beer garden, and an outdoor screening of a film on an inflatable screen at sunset. It’ll be a great way to kick off summer!”