Excitement for the Cleveland International Film Festival has numbed my toes

Opening night at the Cleveland Film Festival is hours away.  Even if you didn't get your ticket for tonight's event yet, don't forget about "Stand-by" seating. The folks at the CIFF have left some of the seats unsold so pass holders, media, and on-site ticket purchases have seating. The catch is that if people with tickets don't show up AT LEAST 15 minutes before the show begins, those waiting on stand-by are allowed to fill in the rest of the seats. So while the rest of the festival still has many tickets at various time slots available, don't at all hold back on looking into the films with stand-by seating only because there's a fair chance you may still get in.

Here's some additions to my list of films I'm uber excited about:

Accident: A man who organizes carefully planned assassinations to look like accidents. As a fan of Asian cinema in general, I am looking forward to some twisted, almost unthinkable scenarios in this one. It also looks gorgeous with it's plethora of eerily dark shots.

A Brand New Life: Having but a smidge of a taste of Korean film, I look forward to this being a great appetizer. A young girl, inexplicably delivered to an orphanage by her otherwise wonderful father, struggles with the pangs of abandonment and self-actualization among her fellow orphans. 

Forgetting Dad: In the famed words of Neo, "Whoa." This documentary looks at the life of an amnesiac father and asks hard questions about who he is to those he no longer remembers. Told in his own words and through interviews with family members, the film is aimed not only at the ethereal questions of identity and personality, but at the practical "how"s and "why"s that arise. Sure to be a water festival for your eyes - bring tissues.

The Desert of Forbidden Art: The true story of a man's mission to amass a collection of forbidden Soviet art between the years 1950 and 1984. The film explores the astounding 40,000 works of the collection as well as the man and the mission behind their survival.

If you see me there (the one with the AkronLife press pass and a carefully receding hairline), please say hi and let me know what you think of the films and the festival at large. I'll be there without relent.

-WT