FilmFest KC

The 13th-annual event presents more than 40 movies from Friday, September 8, through Thursday, September 14, at the Screenland, 1656 Washington. For details or to purchase tickets ($8 apiece or $45 for a festival pass), see www.filmkc.org or call 816 -421-2900. Capsule reviews of select FilmFest movies and current releases appear below as space allows. Writers are Michael Atkinson (M.A.), Bill Gallo (B.G.), Melissa Levine (M.L.), Jean Oppenheimer (J.O.), Rob Nelson (R.N.), Gregg Rickman (G.R.), Jim Ridley (J.R.), R. Emmet Sweeney (R.E.S.), Luke Y. Thompson (L.Y.T.) and Robert Wilonsky (R.W.). After Innocence As scientific advances have made forensic DNA matching a reality, a new field has emerged in criminal justice: exoneration. In some cases, preserved biological evidence has allowed innocent inmates, who have served time for decades, to walk free. And then what? That's the question posed by this piercing and intelligent documentary by director Jessica Sanders. Unlike criminals who are released on parole, exonerees receive no assistance from the system that wrongfully imprisoned them. Not surprisingly, they struggle. One gets the sense that the seven men profiled here are faring better than their cohorts, and yet they're still plagued with difficulties: finding work, being accepted by their communities, establishing intimate relationships with other people, re-entering a world that has left them behind. Their stories are harrowing and infuriating, and Sanders does a fine, sometimes hopeful job of bringing us into that experience. (M.L.)

The Bridesmaid Given his dogged fascination with psychopathic crime intersecting with bourgeois lives, it's a surprise to find that The Bridesmaid is only Claude Chabrol's second adaptation of a Ruth Rendell novel (after La Cérémonie). It is, in any case, a psychodrama of typically brisk efficiency and relaxed gallows humor. The semi-functioning family at the center is sketched in — responsible son (with incestuous lurkings), high-spirited single mom (Aurore Clément), bickering sisters — before we meet the titular catalyst at a family wedding: Senta (Laura Smet), a sensuous but off-putting seductress with a mysterious past. Smet, all eyelashes and butterscotch skin, is the film's prize; she doesn't act out the character's slowly revealed pathologies so much as keep them barely contained behind her mesmerizing stare. Chabrol's visual storytelling remains as no-nonsense as his genre expertise. (M.A.)

The Edukators Peter (Stipe Erceg) and Jan (Daniel Brühl) case the neighborhoods of the well-to-do, figure out what kind of alarm systems are in place, then disable them in order to break in and ... rearrange the furniture in creative ways. It's their form of anti-capitalist protest, and it works well until a woman inevitably comes between them. Unlike in, say, Fight Club, director Hans Weingartner does not hedge his bets on the notion of whether anarchy is any better than societal conformity — his heart is with the Edukators, period. (L.Y.T.)

Free Zone Natalie Portman has cruised by on her looks on several occasions, but co-writer and director Amos Gitai ruins that possibility right off the bat here with a 10-minute static close-up of her crying until the eyeliner runs down her face, to the tune of a mournful, insanely catchy Hebrew song about cycles of destruction. Portman plays Rebecca, a young American in Israel who leaves her fiancé after learning the truth about his past. She's so desperate to leave the country that she tags along with a Jewish cab driver (Hana Laszlo) driving to the Free Zone — an area straddling the borders of Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia where used cars and other things are sold — to collect on a debt for the driver's wounded husband. Shot mostly in close-ups, it's a fascinating road movie with an absurdist allegorical finale. (L.Y.T.)

Games of Love and Chance Thanks to a win at the French Oscars, this 2003 film about Muslim-French teenagers in the suburban Paris projects is now getting a lot of attention — and an international release. That's fortunate for us, even if the relentless verbal aggression and awkwardly translated slang are wearying at times. The plot centers on Krimo (Osman Elkharraz), a shy boy with a crush on Lydia (Sara Forestier), the only blonde (and non-Arab, it seems) girl in the neighborhood. Worried that Krimo's ex-girlfriend still wants him, Lydia won't say whether she's interested. (In French, the film is known by the superior name of L'Esquive, or The Dodging.) While he waits for an answer, Krimo attempts to win Lydia by starring opposite her in their class play. Not much happens, and there's a lot of yelling. Still, there is tenderness hidden in the cracks, and Games is a very real portrait of urban teenage experience. (M.L.)

The Holy Girl In this drama from Argentina's Lucrecia Martel (La Ciénaga), Amalia, a teenager living in her family's decrepit resort hotel, is groped by a fortyish visiting doctor during a street concert. Stimulated by her sexually experienced friend and her own increasingly feverish religiosity, the sullen girl makes "saving" the doctor her avocation. Meanwhile, her attractive mother resists the temptation to seduce him herself. Martel's tendency to eschew wide or establishing shots leaves her camera hovering at the backs of her characters' necks or reclining next to them, evoking an intimacy that blends sensuality with the nearness of the divine. Half-heard murmurings and girlish gossip, as well as preparations for a physicians' conference demonstration, build tension in this story of the sacred and corrupting implications of the laying on of hands. (F.L.)