July 16^th: Featuring three very different films directed by women. We’ve got a directionless bartender taking a life changing modeling job, a teen coming to terms with her sexuality and her father’s addiction, and a jilted middle school theater teacher enacting an increasingly dark and absurd revenge plot.

In Transit (2025):

Director: Jaclyn Bethany
Screenwriter: Alex Sarrigeorgiou
Producers: C.C. Kellogg, Jaclyn Bethany, Alex Sarrigeorgiou, Tara Sheffer, Sarah Keyes, Jordan Hart
Starring: Alex Sarrigeorgiou, Jennifer Ehle, François Arnaud

The Plot: Bartender Lucy (Alex Sarrigeorgiou) is drifting through life in small-town Maine. When she agrees to model for a talented painter in the midst of an existential crisis (Jennifer Ehle), the women develop a complex relationship that changes things more than either expects.

In Transit is a gentle, thoughtful film. Director Jaclyn Bethany, working from a script by star Alex Sarrigeorgiou, focuses on the interior lives of her characters. Both Lucy and the painter Ilse are full-realized human beings, with sometimes contradictory desires that even they don’t always understand. The fact that these inner wants are always clear to the audience is a testament both to the script and to the performances. Sarrigeorgiou and Ehle are both excellent here, conveying as much through body language and active listening as through dialogue.

This was the first Maine-made film I saw at the festival. Bethany captures the dreary chill of a Maine winter without losing the beauty of the season and the landscape. It’s a nuanced approach that carries through to other aspects of the film. Lucy’s life is in a rut, but her job and boyfriend are still appealing. I appreciate the fact that Lucy’s boyfriend is a decent enough guy with his own professional dissatisfaction. It adds to the depth and emotional realism of the film that her relationships outside of the defining one with the artist feel lived-in as well (it’s also the first of two very different performances by François Arnaud I saw at the festival). I’m sure that Sarrigeorgiou has a long acting career ahead of her, but I hope she continues to write as well.

Shown with: The Art of Inflation (2025):

Director: Brett Wietecha
Screenwriter: Brett Wietecha, Tim Hedberg
Producers: Tim Hedberg, Diego Bustamante
Starring: Ice Glide Zapata Rivero, Holy Glide Zapata Rivero, Gabriela Diaz

The Plot: Two brothers, the older and more pragmatic Diego (Holy Glide Zapata Rivero) and the mute dreamer Andres (Ice Glide Zapata Rivero) are working at a militia-run cocoa plantation while saving up enough money to escape from Venezuela’s economic collapse. Andres falls for a local girl and the brothers fight over his desire to take her with them. With danger getting closer, can they all get out?

The title of the short film refers to the origami art Andres makes out of the devalued paper money lying around. The Art of Inflation is well-directed and well-acted, but the character dynamics feel a little threadbare. The story is mostly a framework for the film’s scathing depiction of Venezuela’s corruption and the director’s sympathy for the plight of poor workers like the brothers. It’s certainly engaging, but possibly would have been more effective as a documentary.

I will say it was an odd tonal pairing with In Transit.

Caity (2026):

Director: Lindsay Calleran
Screenwriter: Lindsay Calleran
Producers: Lindsay Calleran, Mary Elizabeth Monda, Malcolm Thorndike Nicholson, Susanne Scheel
Starring: Chiara Aurelia, Morgan Spector, Zach Cherry, Michelle Mao

The Plot: Every year, teenager Caity (Chiara Aurelia) helps run her family’s haunted house. This October brings challenges in the form of her newly sober father Paul’s (Morgan Spector) ongoing struggles with addiction, as well as Caity’s own developing substance abuse and questions regarding her burgeoning sexuality. Will she follow in her father’s footsteps? What does that even mean?

Caity is an offbeat and observant coming-of-age story with well-drawn characters. The titular character and her family feel realistically messy, grounded despite the slightly outlandish setting (although it was filmed at a real haunted house attraction, so maybe not that outlandish). Linday Calleran’s script is especially perceptive when it comes to Caity’s relationship with her father, which starts out blindly devotional and ends up in a place of tempered understanding as Paul’s alcoholism resurfaces in his youngest.

The film is slightly over-edited—flourishes like a repeated frame-within-a-frame technique are more distracting than anything else—but for the most part the scrappy visual style and pop punk soundtrack bring a youthful vitality that’s matched by Aurelia’s performance. Caity is insecure and often abrasive, yet she shares some of her father’s charisma and warmth. Aurelia ably carries the film.

Caity has a deft touch with heavy subject matter. It’s clearly written by someone with a lot of sympathy for addicts and the people who just don’t know how to take care of them anymore. The film made me laugh out loud plenty of times, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t also tear up almost as often.

The Musical (2026):

Director: Giselle Bonilla
Screenwriter: Alexander Heller
Producers: Jordan Backhus, Findlay Brown, Alexander Heller, Greg Lauritano, Rob Lowe
Starring: Will Brill, Rob Lowe, Gillian Jacobs

The Plot: Failed playwright and middle school teacher Doug (Will Brill) swears revenge when he learns that his ex-girlfriend, art teacher Abigail (Gillian Jacobs), has started dating the gratingly perfect Principal Brady (Rob Lowe). Doug’s scheme? Pretend to rehearse a production of West Side Story while secretly directing the middle-school cast in a play of his own…all in order to ruin the school’s chances of winning the Blue Ribbon of Excellence.

If you can, I would recommend going into The Musical cold. Doug’s revenge plot is a thing to behold.

But if you insist, I can write about it some more: The Musical is a caustic, darkly absurd comedy about a caustic, darkly absurd man. Doug carries a sense of general grievance and unearned self-importance typical of the frustrated writer. First-time director Giselle Bonilla conveys Doug’s simmering resentment through intense voiceovers accompanied by dramatic lighting and a sinister synth-heavy soundtrack. Will Brill’s performance walks a tightrope, always remaining watchable as this deluded, bitter man becomes increasingly hard to like. In the end, you almost have to admire his dedication.

The Musical reminds me a little of the odd Seth Rogen-starring black comedy Observe and Report from 2009. The latter is a much darker film, but there’s a certain kinship between way the abrasive, pathetic protagonists win over the audience with incredulous laughter. Observe and Report director Jody Hill has also directed episodes of the TV shows Eastbound & Down, Vice Principals, and The Righteous Gemstones. I feel like The Musical would pair well with any of those.

This film definitely won’t be for everybody, but I expect that it will find a cult following. “Oh, the one where the kids put on a musical about _____?”