Driftless is a feature-length drama about Nova Abbey, a park ranger at work during a state government shutdown on a busy 4th of July weekend, protecting the park from the people and the people from each other.
It's 1999 and the Middleview Ducks high school basketball team are about to play the most low-stakes game of their lives. As the team prepares for another certain loss, the dramas around the game become more of a focus than the score. Pot-smoking, existentialism, radical theatre kid protests, and a dog on the loose, all unfold before, during, and after the high school basketball game.
*Comedy*
A tough lady trucker trains her wimpy best friend to compete in the National Ladies Arm Wrestling Championship.
Faced with a split custody break up, a family's older daughter kidnaps her hostile younger sister to embark on a journey to reconnect before they part.
In this biting satire, an aspiring teenage comedian joins a theatre group and is cast to play a school shooter. Will this "funny man" be able to pull off such a heavy role? A film that satirizes the way buzz culture feeds national tragedies and reckons with the way social media shapes our engagement of violence and comedy.
Héctor, a man in his fifties with a good job and a family, is in the middle of a midlife crisis. His twin brother Rafael is his total opposite: a relaxed and eccentric life long partier who refuses to settle down. What if Héctor could be Rafael without anyone knowing? What would it do to him and those around him?
*Biography*
In 1970s New York, photographer Martha Cooper captured some of the first images of graffiti at a time when the city had declared war on it. Decades later, Cooper has become influential to the global movement of street artists.
A Mother struggling with mental illness and financial strain mentions her plan to impulsively move across the country, again. Her Son learns with each question that he, alone, has literally one-shot to save his mother from a potentially deadly setback. We witness the true story of two complex minds fighting to find love, and their loved one, in the darkness.
Donna has recently been convicted of Driving while Impaired and is ordered to perform community service at the local animal shelter. When an elderly dog is scheduled to be euthanized, Donna decides to take the dog home and quickly realizes his companionship can ease her loneliness. In a futile attempt to fill the emptiness she feels, Donna begins to take home more and more animals and she is soon in over her head.
Socially out of touch Eddie is obsessed with old school pinball. When he's not fantasizing about 1970s pinball champs he's working as a repair man. After discovering a mysterious old pinball table, Eddie starts a quest to repair it and learn of the game's origins. As his focus deepens and his desire to fix the machine turns into paranoid obsession, he seeks out help to uncover the game's secrets. Is this the greatest game ever made?
Three women at different stages of life - Suzy Hotrod, Evilicious, and Captain Smack Sparrow - struggle to balance their lives in New York City with the dedication and stamina needed to maintain their place on the world's best roller derby team.
*Music Focused Documentary*
Story of trailblazing American rock singer-songwriter Suzi Quatro, who helped redefine the role of women in rock 'n' roll when she broke out in 1973.
*Suspense/Drama*
A woman returns to her estranged family, and reconnects with a former lover. When the robbery they plan goes awry, she must choose between abandoning her family again or taking responsibility for the chaos she's created.
Wayne, a struggling method actor, inherits the city's last porno cinema from his estranged father, Al. Seeing this as an unconventional opportunity to reconcile their relationship, Wayne absorbs himself in the underworld of the pornography business. While running the cinema Wayne meets a cast of characters. Each character acts as a piece of a puzzle in helping Wayne rediscover the father he barely knew. But the old cinema turns out to be much more than Wayne anticipated.
Will, the estranged son of a conman, was left holding the bag, literally. His shady Russian neighbor, Roman, asked him to hold a million-dollar stamp collection, then swiftly disappears. Driven by fear and the desire to "do the right thing," Will goes on the hunt for Roman with the intention of returning the valuable goods. But when a significant piece of the collection goes missing, the filmmakers are forced to reexamine Will's capacity for honesty.
Unlucky at love, Josie joins a lesbian soccer league in hopes of meeting more single women. She hits the jackpot in Emma and in a brief musical montage, the two fall in love and get married. When Emma's cancer takes a turn for the worse, she presents her new wife with a deathbed order: find someone new while Emma is still around to approve of her choice. Can a story with heart, humor, and a dying spouse have a happy ending?
A deep dig into the crates of the vinyl record resurgence to discover what an old technology says about our relationship to music and each other in a divided time in America.
Vinyl Nation & Panel Discussion
Following the screening of Vinyl Nation listen to the conversation as director & producer Kevin Smokler joins Jay Glysz of Lightning Licks Vinyl Preservation Society, Jim Gleason of Radio Wasteland (Midland), and Jordan Pries of Electric Kitsch (Bay City) in a panel discussion guided by Peter Rose-Barry, festival programmer.