The Indelibles

Previews based on pool of advance screeners provided by AFF staff. See full schedule of films, and keep in mind that the festival includes a screenwriters' conference running from Thursday, Oct. 20, through Sunday, Oct. 23. We would be remiss if we didn't mention some of this year's big-name attendees: Harold Ramis, Claire Danes, Jason Schwartzman, Jessica Bendinger, Judd Apatow, Shane Black, and many more. In addition, Mike Judge will receive the Outstanding Television Writer Award.

Backseat

W: Josh Alexander; D: Bruce Van Dusen; with Will Janowitz, Rob Bogue, Josh Alexander, Aubrey Dollar

Ben (Bogue) and Colton (Alexander) may not be the sharpest guys in New York, but they're trying to make their lives work and figure out how to enjoy themselves along the way. Ben, who is in his early 30s, has made a career out of looking for work, and Colton endlessly goes to acting auditions. Now, these buddies are on a three-day road trip to Montreal on a mission to meet Donald Sutherland. Who knows why? Toss in a faithless girlfriend, a brick of cocaine, a tightly wound cousin, a stripper, and a guy who communicates only through the Web and you have some of the ingredients that give narrative spice to Backseat. But the heart and the pleasure of this movie reside in the conversations and in the moments in which nothing happens, or in the off-kilter way that things happen when they do happen. Co-star and screenwriter Alexander has delightfully tapped into the realities that lie just this side of absurdity. – Marjorie Baumgarten

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Backseat screens as part of the Narrative Competition on Saturday, Oct. 22, 8:30pm at the Stephen F. Austin, and Wednesday, Oct. 26, 9:30pm at the Dobie.

Bruce & Me

D: Oren Siedler

Oren Siedler grew up splitting her time between an idyllic life with her mother in Australia, where she lived at a Buddhist retreat, and harrowing summers with her outlaw father in America, where she learned, among other things, how to open fake bank accounts and to remember the right alias during run-ins with police. With Bruce & Me, after years of distancing herself from her criminal upbringing, Siedler returns to the States and chronicles her attempt to reconnect with her dad and come to terms with her childhood. The result is surprisingly familiar – a new twist on the universal themes inherent in adult children wrangling with their aging parents – and is, as such, rewarding and refreshingly funny to watch. Siedler turns what could've been a grating narcissistic exercise into a touching portrait of an aging idealist – sociopath though he may be – and manages with her straightforward, unapologetically personal style to capture all the exasperation, joy, grief, and absurdity of the parent-child struggle. – Nora Ankrum

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Bruce & Me screens on Saturday, Oct. 22, 2:30pm at the Dobie, and Thursday, Oct. 27, 7pm at the Arbor.

Clear Cut: The Story of Philomath, Oregon

D: Peter Richardson

A private company's power over a public school runs a close-knit town through the sawmill. The Clemens Foundation, fueled by an old-money lumber empire, provided full college scholarships to the small town's high school grads for decades; on Mr. Clemens' death, his conservative offspring, realizing the power of their position, demand concessions for continued support. First, is the firing of Philomath's superintendent, who drew the foundation's wrath for a litany of largely imagined infractions, including a perceived anti-logging bias, and "political correctness" run amok. It's the culture war writ small, as Philmath's self-appointed moral stewards threaten to cut the scholarships to preserve their sepia-toned, imaginary values of yore, only achieving division. Director/editor Peter Richardson lets the people of Philomath tell their story in interviews, supplementing them with archival audio; minimalist, haunting piano work; and gorgeous cinematography of the rustic enclave. – Wells Dunbar

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Clear Cut screens as part of the Documentary Competition on Saturday, Oct. 22, 5pm, and Monday, Oct. 24, 7pm, at the Hideout.

Dirt

D: Jeff Bowden

Forget those NASCAR dads and their homoerotic Jeff Gordon fixation: the dirt-track stock-car racers who are the subject of Jeff Bowden's mesmerizing documentary would devour them for breakfast and use their femurs for gearshifts and their marrow for lube. Following the 2002 season of Mesquite's Devil's Bowl Speedway, Bowden's film is a stunningly down-and-dirty epic with more stripped-down, blood-and-thunder melodrama than the Iliad, replete with an oversized cast of characters that run the gamut from outrageous (defending champ Thomas Weeks) to sublime (female racer Gayla Jones, resplendent in her hot pink firesuit). Between the white-knuckle sequences of all that mangled Detroit iron haul-assing around on track, there are heady glimmers of a gritty, grimy, and achingly real Americana off of it. "Ain't nothin' better than the smell of a greasy corny-dog and burnt rubber and fuel smellin' and smoke," enthuses one racer, and by the end of Bowden's film, you'd have to be roadkill not to agree. – Marc Savlov

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Dirt screens as part of the Documentary Competition on Friday, Oct. 21, 9:45pm at the Arbor, and Wednesday, Oct. 26, 7:15pm at the IMAX.

Favela Rising

D: Jeff Zimbalist, Matt Mochary

Between 1987 and 2001, 3,937 children were murdered in Rio de Janeiro, victims not only of drug dealers' bullets, but also of a culture of permanent marginalization that for decades has forced them and their families to exist as subsistence dwellers in the horrific favelas – or slums – that ring Brazil's metropolitan crown jewel. Out of this almost incomprehensible maelstrom of senseless death and degradation, where violence has become as much a staple of daily living as air and water, came Anderson Sa, a former child of the favela who pulled off a genuine miracle smack-dab in the center of hell on earth. A musician gifted with both a powerful voice and keen intellect, his movement to use the newborn music of AfroReggae to unite the people of the favelas – drug dealers, victims, and an initially resistant police force as well – Sa is a blessing and a revolutionary to the people of Rio's slums. Zimbalist and Mochary's astonishing film documents Sa's rise with gritty, powerful grace, interviewing not just the musician-cum-miracle-worker, but also the embattled citizenry. Out of this cacophony of dread emerges, beyond all odds, the percussive thrum of hope in a hopeless place. Highly recommended. – Marc Savlov

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Favela Rising screens as part of the Documentary Competition on Saturday, Oct. 22, 9pm at the Arbor, and Thursday, Oct. 27, 7pm at the Dobie.

Frozen

W-D: Juliet McKoen; with Shirley Henderson, Roshan Seth, Ger Ryan, Richard Armitage, Jamie Sives

McKoen, in her first feature-length film, presents Kath (Henderson), who, after losing her sister mysteriously two years ago, finds herself haunted by visions of the afterlife. The gray landscape of Morecambe Bay, England, replete with metallic structures and lonesome landscapes, creates an icy backdrop where visions seem therapeutic, like mirages in a desert, both giving hope and leading her further into obsession. In this case, Kath's search for closure sings the sirens' song that lures her away from the well-intentioned advances of her therapist (Seth) and toward conspiring forces surrounding her sister's disappearance. Frozen dances among genres (thriller, ghost story, murder mystery) and cuts from the stark clarity of Kath's fantasies to snowy, pixelated footage with deft editing. Henderson just as seamlessly morphs from the Kath who shrinks from reality to the hard-nosed Kath desperate for answers without seeming schizophrenic. – James Renovitch

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Frozen screens on Thursday, Oct. 20, 9:15pm at the Arbor, and Sunday, Oct. 23, 7:10pm at the IMAX.

Her Name Is Carla

W-D: Jay Anania; with Mina Badie, Max Beesley, Julian Sands, Julianne Nicholson

"Who are you, and what do you want?" ask Bill (Sands) and Carla (Nicholson) of the mysterious couple (Beesley and Badie) they've unwisely invited into their seaside home in this minimalist gothic. As the visitors seduce, confuse, and refuse to leave, the film plunges through a reasonably effective fog of psychosexual menace until it comes time to answer those questions. Nicholson's magnetic opacity in the title role ultimately holds together Her Name Is Carla, with personal mystery that suggests a messy life, beneath the recursive hermeticism of a plot intent on mirroring stories told within the story. It's a kind of thing that begs for the black-hearted cruelty of an Ian McEwan pulling the strings or the formal playfulness and whimsy of an Italo Calvino putting together the puzzle, but Her Name Is Carla resolves into something too warmly sentimental for the former, while proceeding too solemnly for the latter. Nevertheless, its nervy performances get under the skin of the four-character universe and put flesh on its bones, suggesting Anania is an attentive observer capable of more humanely intricate games than the one he's given himself to play here. – Spencer Parsons

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Her Name Is Carla screens as part of the Narrative Competition on Thursday, Oct. 20, 9:30pm at the Dobie and Sunday, Oct. 23, 8:30pm at the Arbor.

Life on the Ledge

W-D: Lewis Helfer; with Tovah Feldshuh, Melissa Sagemiller, Mark Blum, Lewis Helfer

If, in the end, we're merely the sum composite of our influences – our personalities and predispositions the result of the mixing that occurs when outside forces join hands to have their way with us – then it's safe to say that Helfer has spent the better part of his life watching Woody Allen movies. Manhattan and Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters, etc., etc. All of them, and many times over – probably to the exclusion of other activities. It's written all over his directorial debut, Life on the Ledge. The neurotic Jewish humor, the New York sensibility, the nervous conversational quirks and tics: They're all here. Fair enough, though. One could find worse ways to spend one's time. Dropping bombs, say, or watching car races on television. Besides, Life on the Ledge might be derivative, but it's also funny at times, and as its protagonist, multi-instrumentalist Helfer is an engaging presence. Not Woody Allen engaging, mind you, but engaging all the same. – Josh Rosenblatt

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Life on the Ledge screens as part of the Narrative Competition on Saturday, Oct. 22, 7:15pm at the Dobie, and Tuesday, Oct. 25, 9pm at the Hideout.

Muskrat Lovely

D: Amy Nicholson

A warped picture postcard of small-town America, Muskrat Lovely focuses on Dorchester Co., Maryland's National Outdoor Show, and its two main draws: the Miss Outdoors pageant, and a muskrat-skinning contest. Nicholson seemingly wishes to address the pageant's objectification through juxtaposing it with the skinning competition; the latter, gleefully documented in all its furry, gory glory, is eventually treated as an afterthought, while Nicholson's portrait of the beauty competition is frozen by a sense of humor bracing as a Chesapeake Bay breeze. In introducing us to the high school contestants, Nicholson's interviews, while funny, seemingly strain to document the hayseed sensibilities of the would-be queens; the same goes for her pageant footage. When you find yourself rooting for the contestant who's skill is – you guessed it – muskrat skinning, the wood-paneled, taxidermied gaucheness overpowers the warmth and humor inherent in such a combination. – Wells Dunbar

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Muskrat Lovely screens as part of the Documentary Competition on Thursday, Oct. 20, 8pm, and Sunday, Oct. 23, 2pm at the Hideout.

The Outdoorsmen: Blood, Sweat, & Beers

D: Scott Allen Perry

Beer-drinking and hatchet-throwing. That's all you need to know about The Outdoorsmen, a documentary about what Robert Bly's navel-gazing Wildman outings could have been with a blue-collar imagination. Thirtysomething former high school jocks from rural Washington State compete in a brutal Ironman-esque contest with brewsky-chugging thrown into all events. Ample beer bellies attest to the competition's 15-year history. Director Perry (no relation to filmmaker Scott Perry of Austin) scores on the doc basics: Find a good subject and treat it as seriously as you can. The result is a compelling film with intriguing characters. The film's flaw is that of its subjects: No one is willing to think deeply about why they're really in the woods. Whatever. Pass me a cold one. – Joe O'Connell

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The Outdoorsmen screens as part of the Documentary Competition on Thursday, Oct. 20, 9:30pm at the Hideout, and Tuesday, Oct. 25, 9:30pm at the IMAX.

Runaway

W: Bill True; D: Tim McCann; with Terry Kinney, Robin Tunney, Peter Gerety, Aaron Stanford

Somewhere in the boondocks, a young drifter (Stanford) lands a job as a clerk in a convenience store. He reveals little of himself to his boss (Gerety), not even a phone number where he can be reached. A friendship with his appealing co-worker (Tunney) remains tentative, because he responds to every gesture of intimacy with confusing backtracking. He lives in a nearby motel and comes home from each shift to his cooped-up little brother, whom he forbids to leave the room. We learn that he has kidnapped his brother to save the boy from certain molestation by their father, which is what happened to him before he grew too old and useless to the old man. Terrific performances keep us interested in the eventual fates of these characters, while the smart script by True and deft filmmaking by McCann (Revolution #9) keep us guessing about the outcome until the end. – Marjorie Baumgarten

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Runaway screens as part of the Narrative Competition on Saturday, Oct. 22, 6:30pm at the Stephen F. Austin, and Thursday, Oct. 27, 9pm at the Arbor.

Severance

W-D: Troy Miller; with Jules Loth, Bryan Kent, Todd Tatom, Brian Hecker, Lauren Zinn, Troy Miller

Think of Severance as Play It Again, Sam for the Austin tech-bust era. Miller was laid off by Human Code in 2001 and used his severance check to make a movie in Austin about a guy who gets laid off from a high tech company and uses his severance check to ... become a film-noirish private detective à la Humphrey Bogart. Oh, and Miller made himself the star and shot the whole thing in cool black-and-white Super-16 film. The result is a confident, pretty, and goofy film that, despite a slightly flabby script, proves to be a charmer. Give much credit to the Austin improv comedy troupe Heroes of Comedy (the folks behind Star Trekkin'), who make up much of the cast, and a cool big-band soundtrack composed by Pat Murray. Severance and Miller epitomize the spirit of independent Austin filmmaking, and the comedy's world premiere deserves a standing-room-only audience. – Joe O'Connell

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Severance screens as part of the Austin Showcase on Thursday, Oct. 20, 7pm, and Sunday, Oct. 23, 4:30pm at the Arbor.

The Special: The Story of an American Anthem

D: Mike Majoros, Bestor Cram

In the same manner The Aristocrats uses a single joke to examine the artists and artistry of stand-up comedy, The Special delves into the culture of bluegrass – the fiddle in particular – with this sweet documentary on the beloved tune "Orange Blossom Special." Since its first recording in 1939 by author Ervin Rouse and his brother Gordon, the song has been bringing down the house world 'round with its tribute to the titular luxury train while showcasing the virtuosity and improvisational abilities of its performers. Lesser-known artists as well as bluegrass and country stars Vassar Clements, Del McCoury, and Johnny Cash share their renditions and their thoughts on what the song means to them and, more importantly it would seem, their audiences. For bluegrass lovers from Idaho to Auckland, the "Orange Blossom Special" brings back the charms and the excitement of the steam engine rolling through town, horn tootin', bell ringing. – Mark Fagan

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The Special screens as part of the Documentary Competition on Saturday, Oct. 22, 7pm at the Arbor, and Thursday, Oct. 27, 8pm at the Hideout.

Stomp! Shout! Scream!

W-D: Jay Edwards; with Claire Bronson, Mary Kraft, Cynthia Evans, Jonathan Green

Edwards' loving homage to the short-lived beach-party-by-way-of-horror-film genre of the mid-Sixties does it better than American International Pictures ever did, with canny nods along the way to Them, Jaws, The Horror of Party Beach, and Roger Corman's own B-movie update Humanoids From the Deep. The arrival of an all-girl garage rock band in the quaint seaside community of Merriville Island coincides with a sudden rash of sandy mayhem that may be the result of the dreaded skunk-ape, which leaves behind a hideous odor to match its rampant carnage. On the trail of the beast are a trio of semicompetent cops ("It just don't make no sense – what kind of a homicidal maniac would do something like this?") and the requisite smart guy from the local college, who's final utterances remind us to forget about the skies, already, what we really need to be watching are the tides. It's nearly as much fun as an episode of Hullabaloo, snappy bouffants, earnest braniacs, hippy-hippy-shake, and all. – Marc Savlov

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Stomp! Shout! Scream! screens as part of the Narrative Competition on Friday, Oct. 21, 10:15pm, and Tuesday, Oct. 25, 9:30pm at the Dobie.

Walking the Line

D: Landon Van Soest, Jeremy Levine

Are these guys out to protect America from an invasion of illegal aliens flooding in from Mexico to reclaim the American Southwest, or are they just looking for a reason to don camouflage and play "vigilantes and Mexicans" in the desert? Who's to know? In Van Soest and Levine's finely crafted documentary on the Minutemen-precursor group Ranch Rescue, figures from both sides of the "line" get the opportunity to share their intense feelings on this problem, which isn't going away any time soon. While the Ranch Rescue crew feel it is their responsibility to protect our borders and U.S. citizens' property rights, the majority of the illegals are simply looking for a way to support their families and will risk their lives to do so. Throw in the Mexican military, some drug runners, an Indian tribe, and the requisite obese vigilante nicknamed "Tiny," and you've got a modern-day border war. – Mark Fagan

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Walking the Line screens as part of the Documentary Competition on Thursday, Oct. 20, 7:45pm at the Dobie, and Wednesday, Oct. 26, 7pm at the Arbor.

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SOME SHORTS

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Azadi

W-D: Anthony Maras

Amir is a former teacher now selling rugs in his native Kabul and teaching on the side while always keeping an eye peeled for the brutal Taliban. When he escapes with his asthmatic son to Australia, they discover an equally cruel life in the Woomera Detention Centre. Beautifully shot and seamlessly acted, "Azadi" offers a stark view of our durability in the worst of times, à la Solzhenitsyn's take on Russian gulags. – Joe O'Connell

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"Azadi" screens as part of Shorts Program 5 on Friday, Oct. 21, 7:45pm, and Wednesday, Oct. 26, 7:10pm at the Dobie.

Boy-Next-Door

W: Stephen Garvey; D: Travis Davis; with Davis, Richard Moll

"Date after date, job after job, I'm the perfect candidate," says sad-sack Calvin (Davis) to his suicidal goldfish. "But nobody wants me." The very funny "Boy-Next-Door," bearing an accomplished, commercial sheen, shows him at the rejection crossroads, sick of things but all but unable to change them. In doing so, it teeters between subtle and outrageous, emerging as 15 minutes of original and entertaining work. Having Richard Moll (Night Court's enduring Bull) co-starring as a registered sex offender helps. – Shawn Badgley

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"Boy-Next-Door" screens as part of Shorts Program 1 on Thursday, Oct. 20, 9:45pm at the Stephen F. Austin, and Sunday, Oct. 23, 9:15pm at the Hideout.

The Braggart

W: Domenica Ruta; D: David Andalman; with Anna Friedman

"The Braggart" is a droll and sad little picture about a schoolgirl who tells tales to make up for the lack of attention she gets at home. Friedman is charming as the neglected Mona, a girl so inured to loneliness she faces the darkest turn of events with a deadpan resignation. – Josh Rosenblatt

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"The Braggart" screens as part of Shorts Program 5 on Friday, Oct. 21, 7:45pm, and Wednesday, Oct. 26, 7:10pm at the Dobie.

Holiday

W-D: Marcel Sawicki; with Olin Gutowski, Maja Szymczyk, Grzegorz Artman

A subdued study of alienation set against corridors, alleyways, and staircases, this Polish product stars Gutowski as Pawel, has returned from the States with his tail between his legs. Having dropped out of school, he comes "home" to a house-sitting gig and a summons from the army to get ready for Iraq. Meanwhile, an abandoned relationship with Agata (Szymczyk) remains so and brings no comfort. A naturalistic effort from Sawicki; if its palpable chill hasn't seeped into the viewer's bones by its final scene, then its final image will finish the job. – Shawn Badgley

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"Holiday" screens as part of Shorts Program 3 on Saturday, Oct. 22, 7:10pm, and Wednesday, Oct. 26, 7pm, at the Hideout.