Here’s a briefing on several of the nine films that will show at this year’s Ozark Foothills FilmFest. In addition, 28 short films also will be screened.
I Learn America takes its place among the recent windfall of high school documentaries, following students at a Brooklyn public school that serves immigrants. We meet a charismatic Polish girl who dresses as a boy, a Guatemalan boy who lives for soccer and walked across the desert to join his mother, a Pakistani girl who dreams of college while cooking for men and a Myanmar refugee who speaks little English. “In America, difficult is everything,” he says.Noon Saturday, UACCB, 2005 White Drive, free
Medora, juxtaposes poverty against basketball in an Indiana town where addiction is rampant. Community pride rests on a 72-student high school that may close. The school’s basketball team is years into a losing streak; this film unobtrusively chronicles its quest to win a game while the players cope with homelessness, absent fathers and stints in juvenile detention. 7 p.m. Wednesday, Landers Theater, 332 E. Main St., $3-$5
Sweet Dreams features Rwandan women who perform in a drumming group (traditionally the purview of men) and, after learning about ice cream from an American visitor, decide to start their own shop. The women include orphans and widows from the April 1994 genocide, as well as wives and daughters of perpetrators. “What happened to you before, we don’t want to know,” says one drummer. They are survivors, willing to publicly process what they’ve been through. That and the superb performance footage make this documentary. It’s more than another spunky tale of personal and collective development in a low-income nation. 2:15 p.m. Saturday, UACCB, free
Landing somewhere between romantic comedy and drama, Detroit Unleaded offers laughs and cultural collisions - particularly that of Arabic matchmaking versus American “hook-up” culture and the disconnection between Sami and the neighborhood he spends his waking hours. 7:45 p.m.Saturday, UACCB, free
The Retrieval, about former slaves forced to work for a white bounty hunter, is powerful, sobering and well-crafted. Set against the backdrop of the Civil War, it’s a road epic that is nuanced and suspenseful. Teenage Will and his uncle must bring in Nate, a man with a price on his head. But Will grows to admire Nate and faces a difficult decision - does he lead Nate to certain death or risk his own life by coming clean? 6:30 p.m. Friday, UACCB $3-$5
Style, Pages 54 on 03/30/2014