Cleveland International Film Festival 2019

[Rickrock]

The Cleveland International Film Festival starts on 3/27 and runs through 4/7. They will be showing 211 feature films and 237 short films. I sometimes post a homepage about it here, but cannot find a homepage with all of the detail, only ones with specific objectives, but you can look it up on the internet. They used to have a 10% cinema feature for LBGT films but must have dropped that segment this year although there are a few films with LBGT involved. I hope to go to some of the movies this year as I have in the last many years.

 

[Rickrock]

It took me a few days, but I went through the captions for the above films and picked what I thought I might be interested in seeing. I originally picked 37 to consider and cut it to 31 and then to 25 and then 19 and finally to 18 and decided to not cut anymore. I have bought my 18 tickets for the festival. None of the ones I want to see were on stand-by yet.

 

[Rickrock]

You can get more information about the film festival at clevelandfilm.org.

Here is a list of the films I have tickets for:

Thurs 3/28
A Faithful Man at 2:05 PM
Watermark at 4:15 PM
Comedy Program 1 at 9:35 PM
Fri 3/29
Benjamin at 1:15 PM at the Capital Theatre
The Pursuit at 7:40 PM
Sat 3/29
The Footballest at 5:00 PM
You Can Choose Your Family at 9:30 PM
Sun 3/31
The City That Sold America at 2:25 PM
100 Things at 4:45 PM
Mon 4/1
The Dive at 4:10 PM
Trust Machine: The Story of Blockchain at 6:45 PM
Tues 4/2
The Troubleshooter at 6:20 PM
Wed 4/3
Soyalism at 2:25 PM
Family Program 3 at 4:25 PM
Thurs 4/4
Program 11 at 2:10 PM
Fri 4/5
Greener Grass at 4:20 PM
Sat 4/6
Simple Wedding at 9:35 AM
A Fortunate Man at 8:15 PM
Sun 4/7
no movies that I am seeing
All are at Tower City Cinemas downtown except the one noted. Comedy Program 1, Family program 3, and Program 11 are all collections of 8 to 10 shorts.

 

[Rickrock]

I have seen five films so far and two were really good and three were okay, but not special and it would have been okay if I had missed them.

I recommend A Faithful Man which is a French movie, but the dialog was short so I was able to keep up with reading the lines. It was about a man living with his girlfriend and she tells him she is expecting with a mutual friend. She marries the other guy and he losses contact and then the other man dies and he reconnects with her, her child, and the other man's sister and it is about their developing relationships. The son is a big part of it.

I also recommend The Pursuit which is about developing economies and capitalism and socialism and really brings up some good points.

Nine more films to see.

 

[Rickrock]

Well, now I have seen 12. Six more to go. The Footballest was in Spanish and I had trouble keeping up with the printed words, but it had kids in it and was good. You Can Choose Your Family was about a young guy finding out that his father had a second wife and kids and was also good. The others were okay or mildly good so far.

 

[Rickrock]

The film festival has closed. They had 105,000 people attend in the 12 days. I'm sure that I counted as 18 because I saw 18 films. They have had over 100,000 people attend for the last 5 years. Spectators could vote for winning film prizes and using the system of poor, fair, good, and excellent I voted 7 excellent, 8 good, 3 fair, and no poor. Next year's festival will be from March 25 to April 5, 2020.