Slamdance Film Festival 2009

When down-on-his-luck Sam Bailey takes a wrong turn on a remote country road, he ends up with more than a little dirt to wash off his shoes after a miserable farmwife’s hope for a better life becomes his worst nightmare. After Sam’s greedy Russian wife discovers his deadly secret, she ups the ante with her own crazy plot - playing with Sam's life to cover her bet. An offbeat dark comedy with overtones of film noir and western genres, The Ante tells the story of a man’s absurd gamble to save his innocence. Three desperate people who bet everything they have in a brainless high-stakes game of loser-loses-all. One of the most incompetent heroes you’ll ever see, and two women you hope you’ll never encounter in a story where you’re as equally struck by the characters’ bad choices as you are by the stunning visuals. I laughed a lot at this film, and most of those chuckles were the kind where I nodded as I laughed – because I got it, and I know the filmmakers got it, but I was positive that no one in their created world got it. Awesome. - Drea Clark, Executive Director/Chair of Feature Narrative Programming

An artist who's pretentiously unclear.

"The angels who proclaim love will extinguish the fire," screams the mentally ill patient in Dr. Frick's ward. Maybe Frick should listen up, for in the following days, the angels of love will be busy enticing a variety of men and women to play with fire. Sarah, trying to get her life in order, breaks up with her coke-snorting boyfriend and falls in love with Ben. Dr. Frick himself, married and the father of a terminally ill child, succumbs to the charms of a strong, self-assured woman. With her, Frick finds a welcome relief from his all-consuming role as dedicated caretaker of his daughter and his patients. Each of them is on the verge of a major change, ready to head off in a new direction and take the risk of burning themselves on love. A stroke of fate can push you into a surprising new direction at any second...

In this experimental music video – one of five others Mike Mills completed for Blonde Redhead – Mills explores one component of music videos: movement. Miranda July poses once every second.

An unexpectedly sexy, animated take on male-female relations.

A meditative experimental documentary about loss in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. This black and white film about death and, perhaps, the potential for rebirth is gentle with its authorial hand, and allows the truly powerful images and events of Hurricane Katrina and the film devastate you on their own. - Sam Roberts, Director of Film Competitions

An anonymous narrator is tortured by a vague feeling that he has encountered the different girls he passes on the street earlier in his life. The inherent sadness and loneliness of the nerdy, unreliable narrator is an obvious subtext. But eventually you start to wonder about the reasons the beautiful women he approaches welcome this stalker-ish relationship. Featuring a fantastic aside on the ins and outs of dating potential mail-order brides from Russia. - Paul Sbrizzi, Gallery Host, Co-Chair Shorts Programming

Beneath the gritty London skyline, eight haunted people meet and fall apart while trying to find redemption in one another. Jim is throwing watermelons from his office roof, testing the effect for a possible suicide. During one of his experiments he sees Sammy on an adjacent rooftop, about to jump herself. Dean is an artist unable to fulfill the potential of his creativity. He needs a muse - and who better than Gina, the experimental prostitute who lives next door. Olly is lost in a world of sexual confusion; forced to look after his deaf-mute brother Chris for the day, Olly discovers that not only does Chris have gay feelings too, but is more comfortable with them than he is. But no one has a darker story than Pete, who is being stalked by Carol, a woman looking for her son – a man Pete knew from his violent drug days. They begin a treacherous journey to find an almost forgotten suitcase. Connections are made or missed and longed-for families brought together for a moment of hope, in this beautifully shot, sumptuously art designed and poignantly introspective story. So very pretty and so very crushing and so very smart and so very moving. City Rats manages to feel period and contemporary, introspective and full of the grand gesture. Rich with poetic visuals and aching performances that allow for those poignant moments between characters; I kept referencing a similarity to Dickens due to the grit and emotional tenacity, but this film embraces an ensemble narrative in a manner all its own, with each character and each story presented in a style both delicate and complex. - Drea Clark, Executive Director/Chair of Feature Narrative Programming