The Kansas International Film Festival is back

Since 2001, when it was known as Halfway to Hollywood, the Kansas International Film Festival has screened classics such as Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita and brought future Oscar contenders such as Black Swan to the Kansas City area months before they were scheduled to open here. Among this year’s slate of narrative and documentary features, the following are the ones we’re recommending. The major-studio releases coming to KIFF weren’t made available for review, but at least one features an unmissable cast in a story long overdue for the telling. All are at the Glenwood Arts Theatre (9575 Metcalf, in Overland Park). See kansasfilm.com for tickets and details.

A Trip to the Island

Canadian writer-director Hrant Alianak twists some familiar ingredients — regret, adultery, murder — beyond recognition in a picture that could be described as a deeply medicated Rashomon. A Trip to the Island features Alianak telling an actress the story he wants to film, with the story presented through several different vignettes, with different actors (including veteran thespian Nick Mancuso, TV’s Stingray) and peculiar variations. Thanks to some welcome humor and some gorgeous cinematography by Alex Dacev, Alianak manages to keep the meta here from becoming too pretentious.
(12:30 p.m. Saturday, October 11)

Queers in the Kingdom: Let Your Light Shine

In examining Wheaton College in Illinois and its prohibition against gays and lesbians, director Markie Hancock, who is scheduled to attend this screening, delivers a fascinating history of evangelical and fundamentalist Christian movements in this country, and Wheaton’s inadvertent role in thousands of students and alumni coming out of the closet. Several former students speak movingly about the isolation they felt.
(7:30 p.m. Saturday, October 11)

Fall to Rise

A principal ballerina (Katherine Crockett) tries to rebuild her life after an injury derails her career. Her depression is so crushing that she can’t bring herself to name her baby daughter. She finds help from a fellow dancer (Daphne Rubin-Vega), whose addiction ruined her career. Writer-director Jayce Bartok has a good eye for dance sequences and creates a modest but engaging tale.
(5:15 p.m. Monday, October 13)

Jingle Bell Rocks!

This film from Mitchell Kezin (also slated to attend) may be a little early for Noel, but it has the power to make the Scroogiest viewer find a new interest in holiday music. The film starts by acknowledging that much of the music set around the 25th of December is pretty awful. Some companies have made Christmas albums to hand out to employees for the holidays instead of bonuses. But he unearths a trove of terrific songs, including Miles Davis’ “Blue Xmas,” that transcend the usual schlock. Hearing Kezin recalling how Nat King Cole’s “The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot” helped him deal with an absentee father is worth the price of admission, and the animated sequences are charming.
(7:50 p.m. Friday, October 10)

The Imitation Game

Those looking for movies with more recognizable performers or brand-name directors might want to try Jason Reitman’s Men, Women & Children, starring Adam Sandler, or the new Jean-Marc Vallée (The Dallas Buyers Club) offering, Wild, which features Reese Witherspoon. But the most promising entry among studio pictures is The Imitation Game, which recounts how British mathematician Alan Turing helped crack the Nazis’ seemingly impenetrable Enigma code — enabling the Allies to win the war. Turing also developed the concepts that make possible both artificial intelligence and computers as we know them today. Fittingly, then, beloved Internet meme Benedict Cumberbatch, who actually looks like Turing, plays the part. The movie is a sad reminder of what Turing might have accomplished had he not been jailed for being gay.
(2:30 p.m. Sunday, October 12)

120 Days

Director Ted Roach follows an undocumented Mexican immigrant named Miguel Cortes who is struggling to find a way to stay in North Carolina after a routine traffic stop results in his deportation. Cortes has run afoul of a law targeting violent criminals, drug traffickers and repeat offenders; what the law got this time is a dance instructor who receives a government award while he’s appealing his deportation. Roach gets astonishingly close to Cortes and his family and reveals how arbitrarily the North Carolina law has been applied. The director is scheduled to be on hand for a Q&A session after the screening.
(5:15 p.m. Saturday, October 11)