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Left (Links) - Something slightly sinister seems to be happening in Dexter’s life, but he has no idea what it is; in fact, he’s just starting to realize it’s happening at all. Dexter is an employee at LinX. He has a girlfriend Stella who stays over on Thursdays, and is owner of some happy mice. In short, Dexter has a nicely ordered life. However, something in Dexter’s world is not right. As the ever less subtle peculiarities manifest themselves, Dexter finds himself caught in a confusing world of increasingly incomprehensible Kafkaesque occurrences: half his world goes missing—and there are Stellas everywhere he looks. Half surreal nightmare and half something else entirely, this quirky and compassionate film of a man coming face to face with impossible possibilities and struggling to rebuild his broken world is a fascinating excursion into… ah, but that would be telling.

Passenger Side - Putting the odd in odyssey... The last thing Michael expected on his birthday was a telephone call from his estranged, drug-addicted brother, Tobey. But Tobey has not called with a celebratory birthday wish for Michael. Instead, as Michael discovers, Tobey’s car is broken, and he has called to beg that his brother drive him on various, apparently legitimate, vital errands. As Bruce Springsteen has astutely noted, “a man who turns his back on his family just ain’t no good,” and so Michael puts off his romantic birthday plans and, along with his brother, embarks on a sketchy, winding, day-long odyssey through Los Angeles County. But as the day wears on, it becomes clear that this drive will lead them to some very unexpected destinations. Touted by LA Weekly as “a thinking man’s Judd Apatow flick,” Passenger Side marks the festival return of director Matthew Bissonette (Who Loves the Sun, Cinequest 2007). A superb concoction of comedy and drama with an excellent cast, Passenger Side was noted in Canada’s Top Ten Films of 2009.

The Ferrari Dino Girl (Holka Ferrari Dino) - On August 20th, 1968, invading Soviet and Warsaw Pact tanks rolled through the streets of Prague, and Jan Němec was in the streets, filming. Determined that the world see what was happening, he and a couple of friends – including the titular Ferrari Dino Girl – smuggled his precious footage out of the country. Forty years later, he tells the tale. One of the Czech New Wave’s most maverick directors, Němec’s Diamonds of the Night (1964) and A Report on the Party and the Guests (1966) – two of the movement’s most memorable and daring films –still astound viewers today. Since leaving Czechoslovakia, he has not stopped making fascinating personal films that defy easy categorization. Now returned to the Czech Republic, his latest film, a “strangely direct and authentic document of one of the century’s key events,” (Peter Hames, London IFF) is among his best. It is safe to say you have probably never seen another quite like it.