Every year the IFFR places several directors in the spotlight, by tagging them as ‘Filmmaker in Focus’. This year the honor goes to three directors, knowing American director Robert Breer, Russian Svetlana Proskurina and the Japanese director Kobayashi Masahiro. These directors have extensive oeuvres that deserve more international promotion.

The first official day of the festival is filled with four films. I started with the Brazilian Tiger nominee Still Urangutans, followed with my first Kobayashi film ever, Bootleg Film. Then there was the musical/documentary of Talking Heads frontman, True Stories. Last on the list was the documentary The Reinactors about the impersonators on Hollywood Blvd. who try to make a living by having their pictures taken with tourists. (more…)

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It's late, I'm whipped, and the fun starts all over again tomorrow at 8:30 a.m., so here's a brief precis of my day's screening.

"Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?" -- Okay, that was Wednesday night, actually. This is director-provocateur Morgan Spurlock's follow-up to "Supersize Me," and it's hard not to label it sophomore slump. Spurlock -- a sort of younger, bouncier Michael Moore -- takes off on a tour of Middle East hotspots, ostensibly to search for Osama and collect the reward (and save the world for his unborn child). The film's real agenda is to show us that average Muslims are much like you and I when it comes to wishing for an end to violence. Fine and okey-dokey, but such idealism has to be focused if it wants to avoid seeming merely naive, and "Where in the World" is literally all over the map. Plus, I wearied of the director's "Global Politics for Dummies" schtick long before he did. There are some laughs and a few insights, but mostly I found myself wanting a good policy wonk to put things in perspective.

"Baghead" -- The first Mumblecore slasher film? Well, sorta, but not really. Mark and Jay Duplass ("The Puffy Chair") come through with a hilarious little tale about four struggling L.A. actors who go to a cabin in the woods to write a script and either invent a vicious killer with a paper bag over his head or actually will him into being. The bros' comic instinct for the ways people delude themselves is getting sharper and sharper and, against all odds, "Baghead" delivers some real scares.

"Puujee" -- I know I'll probably never talk you into seeing this beautifully spare documentary about a six-year-old Mongolian girl rancher (in photo above) -- if it even gets released in this country -- but it took me to the far side of the planet and left me both enchanted and emotionally wrung dry.

"Man on Wire" -- Being the story of Philippe Petit, the French aerialist and wirewalker who snuck into Manhattan's World Trade Center in 1974 and crossed from one tower to another on a thin cable. Eight times. Using interviews with Petit and all the members of his team, the movie's a eulogy for the twin towers and proof that daredevilry can be poetry. An unexpectedly affecting experience.