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MIFF 2009 Program Guide
The full MIFF 2009 Film Line-Up will be announced in mid-late June. Please check back!
MIFF 2008 Program Guide
View the MIFF 2008 Film Line-Up:
John Turturro Films Showing at MIFF
 On Thursday, July 17, the Maine International Film Festival presented the 2008 Mid-Life Achievement Award to one of independent cinema's finest actors and directors, John Turturro, in a packed Waterville Opera House. Turturro is a Golden Globe Nominee, an Emmy Winner and a Cannes Film Festival Best Actor Award Winner. He has appeared in over 60 movies and has become a regular in the thought provoking films of Spike Lee, including his role as the highly agitated "Pino" in Do the Right Thing (1989), and as a confused boyfriend in Jungle Fever (1991)... Read more.
John Turturro films shown at MIFF 2008: Romance and Cigarettes | Do the Right
Thing | The Big Lebowski | Mac | Illuminata
Fireflies Youth Programming
 The Youth Film Program/Fireflies started with a wish to present films from around the world that would touch, inspire and delight children and young people. The program's film selections are based on these values:
* Films that are non-violent unless they offer a commentary on the violence shown;
* Films that show real experiences of kids;
* Films that show respect for different generations;
* Films that avoid stereotypes;
* Films that are highly creative, "good art;"
* Films that offer an authentic view of diverse cultures.
Learn more about the Fireflies Youth Films.
Special Events
 Special Preview Screening: Kaiulani Lee in person with A Sense of Wonder
When scientist Rachel Carson published her pioneering environmental book Silent Spring in 1962, the backlash from her critics thrust her into the center of a political maelstrom. Despite her private persona, her convictions about the risks posed by chemical pesticides forced her into the role of controversial public figure. Using many of Carson's own words, Kaiulani Lee embodies this extraordinary woman in A Sense of Wonder, set and shot (by no less a luminary than Oscar winning, legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler) on Southport Island on the Maine coast, principally around the actual cottage in which Carson lived and loved nature. Read more.
 Opening Night Film: Man on Wire
In 1974, Philippe Petit walked thousands of feet in the air without a net on a high-wire between New York City's World Trade Center's twin towers. The world and a 13 year old Winslow kid was in awe, fascinated, amazed. Philippe's performance is considered by some to be the "artistic crime of the century" and director James Marsh's movie plays like one of the greatest heist films of all time. Read more.
 Actress Isild Le Besco introduces A Tout de Suite and Charly
A Tout de Suite is an exceptionally perceptive film about what it's like to be 19 years old. Directed by Benoit Jacquot and based on a memoir by Elisabeth Fanger, it tells the story of a young woman who follows a romantic impulse that leads her into trouble. There's no decision involved in following this impulse. It's instinctive. Her capacity for caution has not yet been developed. The beauty of A Tout de Suite - aside from its being quite beautiful to look at, shot in a nostalgic black and white - is that it's neither romantic nor cynical. Read more.
 Charly. There are a lot of films about adolescents out there, and a lot about adolescents discovering sex. Bit almost none of them are truthful. Charly, Isild Le Besco's remarkable second film as a director, is indeed honest-and understated and poetic. Its central character is inarticulate 14-year-old Nicolas, who stumbles through life in a listless haze until a chance meeting leaves him with a pair of objects that will prompt what may be the first inspired step of his life. Read more.
 Director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun Presents Daratt
Chad, 2006. After a forty-year civil war, the radio announces the government has just amnestied the war criminals. Outraged by the news, Gumar Abatcha orders his grandson Atim, a sixteen-year-old youth, to take his father's own gun and find Nassara, the man who made him an orphan, and to execute him. Read more.
 Closing Night: A Man Named Pearl
The inspiring true story of self-taught topiary artist Pearl Fryar, who reacted to a racist remark, "Black people don't keep up their yards" by fashioning an extraordinary garden that has been featured in dozens of magazines, newspapers and television programs and is now a Preservation Project of the Garden Conservancy, a national nonprofit organization that preserves exceptional gardens. Read more.
Re-Discovery Films
 Three Films by Masaki Kobayashi
In a class with his contemporaries Akira Kurosawa and Kenji Mizoguchi-which is to say he's one of the greatest directors in history-Masaki Kobayashi has given us a cinema that's memorably gorgeous, strikingly exciting and profoundly moving. The three films in this retrospective- shown in sparkling new prints-date from his heyday, the 1960s and, though they depart from established genres (samurai films and horror films), they are the most unique and individual of visions, beautiful tapestries of both profound art and riveting storytelling.
Kwaidan (1965) | Harakiri (1962) | Samurai Rebellion (1967)
The Exiles
 Like last year's rediscovery, KILLER OF SHEEP, THE EXILES is a major event, a beautifully shot, cinema verite journey into a previously invisible culture in 1960s L.A. But here, the group is urbanized Native Americans, plains riders who now travel the streets near Bunker Hill, deprived of their land, deprived of their culture, yet resilient enough and inventive enough to reinvent their own world, albeit a less than perfect one. Read more.
Aida
 "Surging brilliantly beyond the confines of the stage - its glorious arias sung by the great operatic voices of our age - its powerful drama portrayed by a brilliant cast...AIDA is THE film event of the decade!" Five decades later, we still applaud the over- the-top-descriptive-hype of the film's 1954 press release. Read more.
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