Monday morning I woke up hazily, unhappily staggering toward a realization that I must return to real life after my nine-day vacation of standing (which sometimes turned into sitting) in long lines, driving between venues, listening to filmmakers and actors, eating a ridiculously insane amount of cranberry raisinets, and, yes, watching movies.
And the movies, on the whole, were superb. As a group, this was among the strongest roster of films I've seen in my nearly decade of attending the Florida Film Festival. The quality, neither, did focus itself in one area. Some years the shorts are great, while the narrative features lack. Other years, the documentaries clearly outshine the shorts. But this year, I could have easily picked favorites among shorts, narratives, documentaries, domestic, and international.
So here I go with some recommendations. Most may never get released at a theater near you. Some may not even get a DVD release. But these are among my favorites, so try your best to seek some of them out.
