Cat Video Fest was shown in more than a hundred theaters in the United States, Canada, and Australia. This is a 73-minute potpourri, which is basically just a cut of videos with different cats set to nice music. Variety writes about it.

The event has grown steadily over the past few years. In 2024, the screening took place on August 3 and 4, and raised $280,000, double the amount raised in 2023, and raised nearly $30,000 for local animal shelters and charities. The film was so successful that almost half of the Cat Video Fest partner theaters scheduled additional screenings.

The Cat Video Fest is headed by Will Braden, who helped run the event before taking over in 2016. According to Braden, he spends a third of the year collecting clips, getting permissions from content creators, and tracking them in an Excel spreadsheet. Another third of the year is spent editing the movie together. The third third was spent coordinating with the distributor Oscilloscope Labs and doing promotion.

“It’s my full-time job. My business cards say I watch cat videos,” Braden tells. “Though I will say my wife is a first-grade public school teacher, and she makes a little bit more than me per year.”

In 2006, Braden graduated from the Seattle Film Institute, and this year he released part of his own series of short films, Henri, about a “depressed French existential cat.”

“I didn’t have this plan when I was in film school, but I definitely wasn’t thinking I was going to be the next Martin Scorsese,” Braden laughs. “As long as people laugh, and as long as we raise money for cats in need, then I’ll have the greatest job ever for as long as I want it.”

The best thing about Cat Video Fest is that it’s exactly what you think it is: 73 minutes of cat videos. There is no single narrative or even uniformity between the clips. Some have a vertical format, while others fill the entire screen. Some have captions and emojis scattered throughout the frame. Some are shot in high definition, some are not.

There are grumpy cats, feisty cats, helpful cats, affectionate cats, cats playing the piano or teasing dogs, cats jumping to the sounds of parkour from The Office, and many more different cats.