Maine International Film Festival: Highlights of the First Seven Days
Looking for entertainment and enrichment in July? Look no further than the 27th annual Maine International Film Festival! Organized by the Maine Film Center, MIFF will present over 100 films (features + shorts) over ten days, July 12 – 21. You’ll be able to see a wide range of new independent films from Maine and beyond, both fiction and nonfiction. The festival will also present achievement awards to two internationally renowned movie directors.
This year will be MIFF’s sophomore season in the Maine Film Center’s new home on the second floor of the Paul J. Schupf Art Center at 93 Main Street in Waterville. All festival screenings will take place in the Maine Film Center’s three screening rooms and in the Waterville Opera House, which is linked to the Schupf Center by an enclosed skywalk.
Highlights for the festival’s first seven days include premiere screenings of four Maine-themed feature films and presentations of Lifetime and Midlife Achievement Awards to directors Jos Stelling and Mary Harron, respectively. (We’ll talk about MIFF’s closing weekend next week.) Except where otherwise noted, these screenings take place in the Waterville Opera House and start at 7:00 p.m.
The festival opens at 6:30 on Friday, July 12, at the Waterville Opera House with the Maine premiere of Every Little Thing, a lyrical documentary about a woman living in the hills above Los Angeles whose calling is to rescue injured and abandoned hummingbirds. Following the screening, you can stroll down to Head of Falls to hear Portland septet Rustic Overtones perform at the first Waterville Rocks concert of 2024.
The next night, at 7:00, you’ll be able to watch the world premiere of the first of four Maine feature films. Lost on a Mountain in Maine is a dramatization of the endearing and enduring true tale of 12-year-old Donn Fendler, who was lost for nine days in the wilderness of Mt. Katahdin, Maine’s highest peak, in 1939. (Unlike most festival feature films, Lost on a Mountain in Maine will be shown only once, so be sure not to miss it!)
Although Fendler’s story of survival is much known and much loved in Maine, Lost on a Mountain in Maine is the only one of the four Maine movies not to be filmed in the Pine Tree State. Still, besides the story itself, the film has other strong Maine connections: Waterville native Ryan Cook and fellow Central Mainer Derek Desmond are producers on the film — they also co-directed a documentary, Finding Donn Fendler: Lost on a Mountain in Maine 72 Years Later, which screened to acclaim at MIFF in 2011 — and Camden native Caitlin FitzGerald (The Trial of the Chicago 7, It’s Complicated, and Masters of Sex) stars as Donn Fendler’s mother.
On Sunday, you can see the U.S. premiere of the festival’s first made-in-Maine feature, Carlo…and His Merry Band of Artists. This documentary explores the life and legacy of Bowdoinham artist and art activist Carlo Pittore (1943‑2005). His story is revealed through casual conversation around a picnic table by some of his closest friends and artistic colleagues, including Central Mainers Natasha Mayers, Herb Hartman, Abby Shahn, Pam Smith, and Kathy Bradford.
On Monday, MIFF takes a break from screening Maine features to present its Lifetime Achievement Award to Dutch director Jos Stelling, who will turn 79 during this year’s festival. This will actually be Stelling’s second Lifetime award; his first was in 1999. According to MIFF Programming Director Ken Eisen, Stelling’s “absolutely unique directorial style has graced theaters and festivals from Cannes to Venice with a pioneering blend of humor, imagery, and surrealism.”
Although many of Stelling’s distinctive films were shown at the former Railroad Square Cinema, MIFF’s former home, only one Stelling film will be shown at this year’s festival, Natasja’s Dance. In this North American premiere of what Stelling claims will be his final opus, a former ballerina persuades a lonely man to travel with her to her native Russia.
A day later, Canadian director Mary Harron, who is just seven and a half years younger than Stelling, will receive MIFF’s Midlife Achievement Award. According to a MIFF press release, Harron’s “storied career in film and television has yielded a catalogue of compelling stories that challenge their viewers with psychologically complex, often unsettling characters, but offer tremendous reward in their clever visuals, wit, and genuine human insight.”
The award presentation will accompany a screening of her latest film, Daliland (2022), in which Ben Kingsley portrays iconoclastic painter Salvador Dali. MIFF will also present her Charlie Says (2018), in which a graduate student tries to deprogram three imprisoned female followers of Charles Manson; The Moth Diaries (2011), in which a sinister, new student who might be a vampire upsets a longtime friendship at a cloistered girls’ boarding school; and social satire and cult classic American Psycho (2000), in which Christian Bale leads a dual life as a hard-charging investment banker by day and a murderous psychopath by night.
On Wednesday, MIFF’s Centerpiece Film will be the New England premiere of The Ghost Trap. According to a MIFF press release, “Gorgeously shot on Maine’s stunning coastal seawaters and based on the novel by K. Stephens, the film follows a young lobsterman whose happy life is threatening to fall apart as his loving girlfriend suffers a debilitating head injury and a rival lobstering crew grows increasingly hostile.”
The fourth Maine feature, The Ruse, will have its world premiere on Thursday at 4:00. In this suspenseful tale, a young caregiver moves into a isolated and possibly haunted coastal cottage to look after an elderly woman. Our heroine soon comes to fear for her life, as she is confronted with the mystery of her predecessor’s disappearance, sinister neighbors, and supernatural occurrences. Starring legendary horror actress Veronica Cartwright (Alien, The Birds, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers), the film was shot entirely in the Maine coastal town of Blue Hill.
As in the past, MIFF will offer two types of passes this year. For $250, you can buy a Full Festival Pass, which will admit you to as many movies as you can attend., and for half that price, you can buy a 10-Pass, which is good for ten admissions, one or two people per screening. You can also buy individual tickets for $14 each.
New this year, pass holders can reserve seats for specific screenings. You can reserve a seat on the MIFF website, by phone at 873‑7000, or in person at the box office for any screening until three hours before it starts. Just be sure to show up to the screening at least 15 minutes early, or your reservation may be forfeit. Reservations are strongly encouraged, as MIFF screenings can sell out, especially those scheduled for the two smallest screening rooms, Cinema 2 (43 seats) and Cinema 3 (22 seats).
You can buy passes and tickets either online or in person at the festival box office on the first floor of the Schupf Center. You can find the complete schedule for the festival and descriptions of the films on the MIFF website and in the the festival’s glossy, 68-page program book, which is available at the Schupf Center and various other locations in Central Maine.
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