The first ever SilverDocs Film Festival opened at the AFI / Silver Theatre on June 18, 2003 and played to capacity crowds for the next four days. An estimated 10,000 people came to see 63 screenings of documentary films. The festival proved more popular than planners had ever imagined and was a hit with both the audience and the filmmakers who came to have their films shown. One of the themes was sports. Festival planners stated that this was "a first" for documentary film festival scheduling, was hugely popular with Silver Spring residents, and may become a regular feature of SilverDocs.

Arch Campbell, movie critic and entertainment reporter for NBC4, interviews comedian Dick Smothers at the opening of the SilverDocs Film Festival on June 18, 2003. Smothers was on hand to participate in a panel discussing how Charlie Chaplin's films impacted the evolution of comedy in the United States. Opening night at SilverDocs featured a film on Chaplin entitled Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin, produced by Richard Schickel. Smothers entertained the audience during the panel discussion at the screening of the film and had plenty to say about government censorship of the media. His highly celebrated comedy show The Smothers Brothers was cancelled by CBS at the height of its popularity in 1970 because of the show's political content.

Film star Geraldine Chaplin, daughter of film director Charlie Chaplin, visits Silver Spring and signs autographs for movie buffs at the opening of SilverDocs, a film festival celebrating documentary films sponsored by the American Film Institute and Discovery Communications. The five-day festival which drew capacity crowds, included the screening of a film about Chaplin's famous father, Charlie. Geraldine made her own film debut in a film directed by her father entitled Limelight in 1952. She went on to have a successful career as an actress. She was nominated for a New York Film Critics Circle Best Actress Award in 1965 for her role in Doctor Zhivago.

SilverDocs Film Festival Director Nina Gilden Seavey addresses the crowd at the screening of Tight on the Spiral: An Evening with NFL Films, presented at the SilverDocs Film Festival on June 20, 2003. Steve Sabol, NFL Films President, and David Maraniss, the author of When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi, introduced the shorts and provided colorful background material during the showing of a series of documentaries produced by NFL Films. The Emmy-winning Seavey is a Takoma Park native and documentary filmmaker in her own right.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at the AFI Silver Theatre on Saturday night June 21, 2003. Donald Baer, Senior Executive Vice President for Strategy and Development at Discovery Communications said, "If Madeleine Albright will come to Silver Spring to see a movie, anything is possible in this town." Albright came to view "Berga: Soldiers of Another War," a documentary produced by the late Charles Guggenheim. Guggenheim, a documentary film pioneer and celebrated local artist, won four Academy Awards for his work before he died in October last year. He was honored during the SilverDocs film festival and a Charles Guggenheim Symposium will be held each year at the festival in the future. Berga, the last film Guggenheim made, documents the atrocities committed by the Nazis against captured POW's, some of whom were members of Guggenheim's own Army unit, the 106th. The American soldiers taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge refused to reveal which soldiers were Jewish and so many were sent to work in concentration camps. Albright, who was born in Prague, lost three of her grandparents in concentration camps during WWII.