CatVideoFest Is Here! Watch All the Hilarious Cat Mayhem While Supporting Local Shelters

Cats are mischievous creatures, pawing, pouncing, knocking things off the table for no apparent reason. But one of their best attributes is their ability to delight an audience. It's no wonder cat lovers can scroll through silly cat videos for hours on end. But can you imagine watching 15,000 cat videos every year? And having that be your job?

Will Braden, the producer of CatVideoFest, an annual feature full of furry felines causing general cat mayhem, in 250 theaters nationwide August 2nd, has seen more cats wrestling with each other, getting things stuck on their head, and messily enjoying a tasty snack than most—probably than anyone.

It all started in 2012 when Braden submitted a video to the first incarnation of the fest at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis. His video won the Golden Kitty Award and his interest sparked. He continued to create more cat videos for the festival and in 2015, when the center moved on to other projects, he took over and it's been his full-time job to watch cat videos ever since.

CatVideoFest is a joyful compilation of cat videos from all corners of the internet from gifs, documentary style videos, animation, music videos, and everything in between. At first, much of Braden’s work was finding videos on YouTube. But as CatVideoFest grew in popularity, submissions began pouring in.

While Braden is based in Seattle, In 2019, Oscilloscope Laboratories, an independent film company and distributor, began distributing the fest to theaters nationwide. That first year working with Oscilloscope, no longer a one man team, Braden was able to really see the fest's potential for growth. “To have them be involved made it take off because they had the pedigree with independent theaters to say, ‘Trust us, it's fun.’ It has all this goodwill—independent theaters and CatVideoFest and local shelters and local communities. It's all the same people that support all of these things. It's a perfect sort of mix of having fun and doing some good at the same time.”

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With Oscilloscope handling the theatrical and community partnerships, he is now able to solely focus on making CatVideoFest better every year. It's a huge undertaking for Braden who finds the videos, edits, and even scores the film. “I think to myself, well if I'm going to do a montage of joking about orange cats having one brain cell, then I need music for that,” he laughs. 

He watches thousands of submissions and other videos he’s found, eventually cutting down to about 200. He categorizes the videos by drama, comedy, and action. Ultimately, Braden thinks about having a breadth of different types of videos and making sure it’s a great theatrical experience.

“I want it to feel really curated and they'll have some variety and some things that are interesting or touching,” he says. “Some things that are funny, that are weird and some things that are animated and music videos. I want people to really feel like it was a worthwhile experience, not just going to the theater and not seeing something they could just see on their phone.”

It’s one of the rare theatrical things that as Braden notes, aside from Taylor Swift, can appeal to both a six-year-old and a 60-year-old. And Braden has been able to see the fruits of his labor. This year’s CatVideoFest is slated to play at 250 theaters nationwide with an audience projection of over 129K; that’s more than double the initial 2019 theatrical audience. Braden says there a couple different reasons for this.

“People who see it tend to come back and see it again,” he says. “The idea that if you like something and you pretty much can be sure that it's going to come back a year from now at the same theater with all new cat videos, that just means that we have this built-in growth. People who are cat people and who like this kind of stuff, they become evangelists for it. And the same for shelters, the same for your local indie theater. It's the Venn diagram of people that want to support all these things. It becomes a very easy thing to sell to your friends. It's always a lot of fun and inoffensive to everybody and you can enjoy it unironically, and there's something wholesome about that.”

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Partnering with local shelters and animal nonprofits has always been in the DNA of CatVideoFest. As it has gotten bigger they’ve been able to donate more money to shelters —who will have presence at the screenings, some even will bring adoptable kittens from the area to the theater for adoption events. Since 2019, CatVideoFest has raised $170,000 for charity. 

As they’ve grown, Braden acknowledges that it would be easier if they just cut a check to ASPCA at the end of CatVideoFest, but having a homegrown, community based approach is exactly the same thing that made CatVideoFest popular in the first place. “It's absolutely essential that every time we're in any city or town that we feel like we are here for this community,” he says. “We're here and we're benefiting your local cat shelter or general welfare organization because they know what's best to help cats. What we need to raise money for cats in Chicago is different from how to raise money for cats in Tucson or New York.”

The remaining question for Braden is, does a cat video curator even have a favorite cat video after watching thousands and thousands of cat videos every year? Surprisingly, Braden doesn’t even hesitate. He mentions a video from 10 years ago, “ My Crazy Cat Max.” Its premise is incredibly simple: an orange cat jumps into a soda sleeve, surprising the owner—a cat video relic of yore, but that’s precisely why Braden still loves it so much. “It's so pure. It's so silly. You could never have planned it. To me, that encapsulates what's great about a cat. This woman is just like, let me film my cat through a cardboard box. And then all of a sudden it was comedy gold.” Spoken like a true cat video curator. 

CatVideoFest begins August 2nd and runs throughout the month. Check their website for a theater screening near you.