Newport & The Great Folk Dream is a film about music and its unifying power across cultures and generations. In the early 1960s, established folk artists and young newcomers met on the fields of Newport Folk Festival, an event that would become the blueprint for countless pop and rock festivals to follow. Yet the film reaches far beyond music alone. The social upheavals of the time, the rise of youth counterculture and the intensifying civil rights movement all made their presence felt on the festival grounds.

Emblematic was the controversial introduction of electric instruments into the folk scene, most famously by Bob Dylan, a moment that also plays a key role in A Complete Unknown, in which Timothée Chalamet portrays the rebellious Dylan shaking the Newport stage to its core. Although set sixty years ago, the filmmakers underline the film’s contemporary resonance, hoping it will inspire more music, more understanding and more courage.