Double Take
In 7 years, Independent Film Festival of Boston has garnered respect, acclaim - and company
"500 Days of Summer," "Unmistaken Child," and "Summer Hours" are just a few of our critics' choices.
The success of the Independent Film Festival of Boston can be gauged by an interesting fact: It's attracting imitators. In just seven years, the little festival that could has become the major game in town, and it's perhaps not happenstance that the similar-sounding Boston International Film Festival has moved its dates from June to April 17-26, overlapping with the IFFB (April 22-28) and reportedly confusing more than a few filmmakers submitting work.
Where the International (or BIFF) unspools as a relatively unfiltered forum for cinematic hopefuls and unknowns (many of them worthy), the Independent (or IFFB) is a professionally curated festival with a mission to bring local audiences the next wave of important work. IFFB heads Jason Redmond and Adam Roffman do the rounds of other festivals and cherry-pick the best, but they also keep the door open for new work from area filmmakers and beyond.
This year's IFFB runs from April 22 through 28 and plays primarily at the Somerville Theatre and the Brattle, with a few stops at the ICA and the Coolidge. The slate includes films that made a splash at this year's Sundance, like "The Missing Person," a post-9/11 detective noir starring recent Oscar nominee Michael Shannon, and Geralyn Pezanoski's documentary "Mine," about pets and lawsuits in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
This year's Independent Film Festival of Boston may be most notable, though, for the number of New England stories it brings to the screen, from the pained coming-of-age saga "Children of Invention," partly shot around director Tze Chun's childhood home in Canton, to "Luckey," about the quadriplegic sculptor who built the climbing structure at the Boston Children's Museum. Boston is graced with a lot of film festivals, but this is the one that tries hardest to bring it all back home.
