The 2025 True/False Festival started in Columbia this week, welcoming back spectators from all over the world for a weekend of documentaries, music, and community. With the homecoming of the annual documentary festival, the Downtown Columbia Community is seeing an influx of visitors, with local businesses experiencing a boom in foot traffic as well as new customers.
Sabrina Garcia Rubio is the owner of Maude Vintage, a local vintage clothing store in Downtown Columbia. She said her business has benefitted from the visitors of the festival in the past and gladly welcomes their presence in her store
“We kind of treat it like our Christmas time because there's so many people in town who are excited to visit and explore. And it's a good overlap market with us. People search out vintage shops and they come and they're enthusiastic and ecstatic,” she said.
Rubio also prepares for the festival ahead of time such as creating displays dedicated to the festival as well as stocking up on clothing inventory in order to accommodate the additional customers that visit over the weekend.
Apart from the economic turn out, business owners also enjoy a sense of homecoming and the opportunity to meet a diverse set of people. Kyle Cook is the co-owner of Hitt Rexx, an independent record store in Downtown.
“The shop itself and this building itself is like one of the central hubs of the town in general, but especially during the fest. We will just see tens of thousands of people circulating this local block in five days.” Cook said.
With his store sharing space with Uprise Bakery and Ragtag Cinema, two designated venues for the festival activities, he enjoys being in the community to meet old and new visitors.
“Every year I see some of the same people,” Cook said. “One of the first people I saw last week, it was like, oh, this guy who's written for the New Yorker and The New York Times”
Jurzy Isakova has been working for Delysium Bakery for over a month. Isakova wasn’t as familiar with the festival, but became interested once she talked about it with another customer here for the festival.
“I wasn’t even aware of the festival until I asked someone what kind of cameras they had,” Isakova said. “He told me about the festival, and I thought, ‘Oh, that sounds really interesting.’”
The festival, which hosts over 40 films from all over the world, is set to run through Sunday.
