Alfred and Jakobine

Documentary • 4:30 PM • Delta College Planetarium • Sunday, Sept. 28th

The only other screening of this film is slated for Washington, D.C., so catch it here in Bay City!  Hearts of all ages will fall in love with Alfred & Jakobine, the story of Alfred Hobbs, 84, who drives across America in an ancient London taxi to find the once love of his life, whom he left 40 years earlier. In the 1950s, they two of them made a four-year, global road trip in that very taxi. Through original footage from their trip in the ‘50s combined with current interviews, Alfred and Jakobine is a beautifully crafted love letter to four decades of heartache, two unforgettable characters and one extraordinary past.

Arlo & Julie

Narrative • 8:15 PM • State Theatre • Thursday, Sept. 25th

Nominated for HHM Jury Awards Best Lead Actor (Alex Dobrenko), Best Lead Actress (Ashley Spillers) and Best Soundtrack. In this quirky comedy, Arlo (Alex Dobrenko), a software engineer by day and aspiring historian by night, and Julie (HHM 2013 film Loves Her Gun’s Ashley Spillers), a waitress with an art degree, become obsessed with trying to find the meaning behind the jigsaw puzzle pieces that arrive daily by post. The audience will try to put the pieces together right alongside these characters as they eventually disconnect from reality and jeopardize their fragile relationship.

The Bachelor Weekend

Narrative • 8:30 PM • State Theater • Saturday, Sept. 27^th & 12 PM • State Theatre • Sunday, Sept. 28th

Nominated for HHM Jury Award Best Film Feature

A bachelor party weekend takes some unexpected detours in this hilarious and heartfelt Irish comedy, about a foppish groom-to-be (Hugh O'Conor) who reluctantly agrees to go on a camping trip before his nuptials. But when his fiancée’s alpha-male brother, nicknamed "The Machine," unexpectedly turns up, all concepts of masculinity are challenged—and a leisurely weekend in the great outdoors takes a turn for the worse.

Bad Hair

Narrative, Foreign Film • 11:30 AM • State Theatre • Saturday, Sept. 27th

It’s time for the yearbook picture, and all nine-year-old Junior can think about is having it taken with long, ironed hair like a fashionable pop singer instead of the stubborn curly hair he was born with. His obsession with straightening it elicits a tidal wave of homophobic panic in his mother, and the more he tries to make his mother love him, the more she rejects him.

Beneath the Harvest Sky

Narrative • 8:00 PM • Delta College Planetarium • Saturday, Sept. 27^th & 12 PM Delta College Planetarium • Sunday, Sept. 28th

Nominated for HHM Jury Awards Best Lead Actor (Emory Cohen), Best Supporting Male (Aidan Gillen), Best Screenplay, Best Soundtrack and Best Feature Film

Casper (Emory Cohen) and Dominic (Callan McAuliffe) are fiercely loyal to one another, as they come of age in a small farming town in Maine. During harvest break, Casper is drawn into smuggling drugs across the Canadian border with his outlaw father, Clayton (Aidan Gillen). Meanwhile, Dominic works his final potato harvest, hoping to earn the money he needs to buy a car and take them away from their small town existence. But with Casper’s life unraveling before their eyes, their friendship and loyalty are put to the test.

Der Samurai

Narrative, Foreign Film • 10:15 PM • Masonic Temple • Friday, Sept. 26th

Dark fairy tales and dream logic influences the German film Der Samurai. Something strange is happening in the woods outside a small German village. A stranger—a wiry young man with savage eyes, clad in a woman’s dress and wielding a samurai sword—ravages the village, leaving destruction wherever he goes. Jakob, a young policeman, is unexplainably drawn to the stranger, and the stranger knows it. He hopelessly struggles to contain his mysterious provoker and is led throughout the nocturnal woods. Has the encounter awoken something hidden within Jakob? A truly odd and thrilling, not-quite-horror film.

Doomsdays

Narrative • 8:30 PM • Masonic Temple • Friday, Sept. 26th

Nominated for HHM Jury Award Best Supporting Actor (Brian Charles Johnson)

In this pre-apocalyptic comedy, two deliberate vagabonds—one a self-professed pirate named Dirty Fred, the other a peak oil fanatic named Bruho—eke out a marginal, madcap existence by looting off-season vacation homes in the Catskill Mountains. Their commitment to the lifestyle is challenged, however, when they admit a runaway boy and an aimless young woman to their ranks.

An Honest Liar

Documentary • 1:30 PM • Masonic Temple • Saturday, Sept. 27th

Michigan Premiere. Featuring the world-famous magician, escape artist, and world-renowned enemy of deception James ‘The Amazing’ Randi, An Honest Liar questions truth and reveals that no matter how smart or well-educated you are, you can be deceived. The film brings to life Randi’s intricate investigations that publicly exposed psychics, faith healers, and con-artists with quasi-religious fervor. To con the con men, Randi created fictional characters, fake psychics, and even turned his partner of 25 years, the artist Jose Alvarez, into a sham guru named Carlos. But when a shocking revelation in Randi’s personal life is discovered, it isn’t clear whether Randi is still the deceiver—or the deceived.

Like the Water

Narrative • 8:30 PM • Delta College Planetarium • Saturday, Sept. 27th

Nominated for HHM Jury Award Best Lead Actress (Caitlin FitzGerald)

Like the Water follows Charlie (It’s Complicated’s and Masters of Sex’s Caitlin FitzGerald), a young journalist, as she returns to her hometown of Camden, Maine to write the eulogy for her best friend, Katherine. Charlie's assignment unearths deep feelings of guilt at not having been a better friend, which only fuel her long-standing resentment toward Katherine's girlfriend. On the eve of the memorial they are forced to confrontation, and Charlie goes too far. She must learn to pick up the pieces when words are not enough.

Metalhead

Narrative • 3:30 PM • State Theatre • Sat. Sept. 27 & 12 PM • Masonic Temple • Sunday, Sept. 28th

Nominated for HHM Jury Award Best Lead Actress (Thora Bjorg Helga), Best Supporting Male (Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson), Best Supporting Actress (Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir), Best Screenplay, Best Soundtrack and Best Feature Film

As Black Sabbath records their first album and marks the birth of Heavy Metal, Hera Karlsdottir is born on the cowshed floor at her parents’ farm in rural Iceland. The years of her youth are carefree until her older brother tragically dies in a farming accident. Blaming herself for his death, in her grief she finds solace in the dark music of Heavy Metal and dreams of becoming a rock star. She is a rebellious, misunderstood delinquent in her early twenties who can't help but get into trouble. When her childhood friend returns intent on marrying her and a young priest moves to the farming community, she begins to realize that she must find her own voice and stop running away from her whole life.

Patrick’s Day

Narrative • 4:00 PM • Masonic Temple • Friday, Sept. 26^th & 4:30 PM • State Theatre • Sunday, Sept. 28th

Midwest Premiere, Nominated for HHM Jury Awards Lead Actor (Moe Dunford), Best Lead Actress (Kerry Fox), Best Screenplay, Best Soundtrack and Best Feature Film. Patrick is a warm, open, twenty-six year old virgin schizophrenic. Pills and his mother’s protection mean he is no threat to himself or anyone else; until he falls in love. The object of his desire, Karen, a suicidal flight attendant, has no idea that the intimacy she shares with Patrick might just reintroduce her to living. Patrick’s obsessive mother Maura doesn’t realize her misguided love might be more dangerous than hate. A provocative and heart-breaking love story about the right to intimacy for everyone, Patrick’s Day proves, when it comes to love, we are all more than a little crazy.

Vino Veritas

Narrative • 6:00 PM • Masonic Temple • Friday, Sept. 26^th & 3:30 PM • Delta College Planetarium • Saturday, Sept. 27th

Nominated for HHM Jury Awards Best Lead Actress (Carrie Preston), Best Screenplay and Best Feature Film. The lives of two suburban couples—Claire (True Blood’s Carrie Preston) and Ridley (The Matrix Reloaded’s Bernard White), and Lauren (Heather Raffo) and Phil (Brian Hutchison)—unravel forever under the influence of a Peruvian wine brewed from the toxic skin of blue dart tree frogs, which reduces all inhibitions to nothing and causes the drinkers to reveal all truth. By turns brutally funny, wickedly honest, and unashamedly human, the film explodes personal and cultural taboos and lays bare the horror and beauty beneath our carefully composed public personas.

Wild Canaries

1:30 PM • State Theater • Saturday, Sept. 27th

Nominated for HHM Jury Awards Best Lead Actor (Lawrence Michael Levine) and Best Supporting Actress (Alia Shawkat). When their elderly neighbor suddenly drops dead, a newly engaged couple investigates signs of foul play. Though Noah (writer/director Lawrence Michael Levine) sees nothing unusual about the old woman's death, Barri (HHM 2013 film Supporting Characters’s Sophia Takal) suspects foul play and sets out to investigate, enlisting her roommate Jean (Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat) to join her on a reconnaissance mission to trail a possible suspect. Wild Canaries is a freshly comedic take on classic film noir and screwball comedy.

Yakona

Documentary • 2:00 PM • State Theatre • Sunday, Sept. 28th

Yakona, a Native American word meaning “water rising,” courses through the changes of the San Marcos River from prehistoric times to the modern era from an interesting point of view—that of the river. Yakona is a non-traditional documentary and a breathtaking visual journey from the source to the sea, through the changing seasons, and across time. It interprets the river’s time and memory and documents this relationship between the natural world and humankind.

Shorts Program 1 • State Theater • 6 PM • Friday, Sept. 26th

The Professor

An action-packed satire about a radical ex-Media Studies Professor and her gang of followers who kidnap famous news anchor Thomas Brookstone and force him to read “The Real News” live. As the treatment of Brookstone becomes increasingly violent, the Professor’s most trusted student, George, starts to doubt her revolutionary cause.

The Crumb of It

Nominated for HHM Jury Award Best Short Film

When her new boyfriend, a successful pastry chef, makes a special treat for her birthday, May doggedly attempts to conquer her long-held, irrational phobia of cake.

The Telegram Man

Nominated for HHM Jury Award Best Short Film

A man from a close-knit farming community in Australia just wants to live a simple life, but the mere sight of him fills the townsfolk with dread.

Breaking Chains

A short film about hope and survival as a young woman fights to survive the harsh realities of human trafficking in the United States.

The Gunfighter

Nominated for HHM Jury Award Best Short Film

It’s just another period western—until the narration messes with the characters’ plans, and it turns into a comedy.

Shorts Program 2 • Masonic Temple • 3:30 PM • Saturday, Sept. 27th

Into the Silent Sea

Nominated for HHM Jury Award Best Short Film

Alexander, a lone cosmonaut, is adrift in orbit around Earth. He has lost communications and life-support systems are dwindling fast. But when a radio engineer in Italy discovers a voice amidst the empty static, an intense connection is made across vast distances and under desperate circumstances.

SPONGE

The mundane comes to life through the perspective of sponge-boy's musical imagination, complete with snowball fights, marching bands, choreography and other magical elements all set against the brick-laned backdrop of Amsterdam.

Moritz und der Waldschract (Moritz and the Woodwose)

Moritz is caught between the worlds of life and death as he struggles with the illness of his little brother, but when he wanders into the nearby forest he encounters an ancient being who offers him a macabre bargain.

Helburger in Paradise

A young New Yorker stealthily returns to her suburban hometown to attend her friend's funeral and make good on a bizarre promise. All that stands in her way is an obsessively moralistic cab driver.

Insomniacs

Two unluckily characters in a flat complex in London end up bonding when they find out they have one important thing in common—neither of them can sleep.

Johnny’s Speakeasy

Get an inside look at Ann Arbor's oldest underground music venue and all the amazing talent to grace its stage.

Shorts Paired With Other Films

Directors on Directing

To be screened in front of OJ: The Musical

Pontificating film directors, dancing nuns, sweet little girls and puppy dogs. Who could ask for anything more? Three successful film directors explain the real secrets to success.

WIND

To be screened in front of Like the Water

WIND is an animated short about the daily life of people living in a windy area who seem helplessly exposed to the weather. The inhabitants have learned to deal with their difficult living conditions—but suddenly, the air is calm.

The Zombie’s Trip

To be screened in front of Der Samurai

After a sudden turn of events, a zombie is suddenly brought from the world of fiction into the world of reality.

Blue

To be screened in front of Alfred & Jakobine

A fearful balloon must learn to put his fragile life in the hands of an unlikely friend.

Special Panel Discussions

MAINSTREAM & INDEPENDENT FILMS •

Separate Worlds or Interdependent?

Friday • September 26 • 4:00 PM • YWCA Bay City

Panelists discuss how the process of mainstream and independent filmmaking interconnect. FREE TO THE PUBLIC.

MUSIC IN FILM

Saturday • September 27 • 2:00 PM • Delta College Planetarium

This discussion ties the worlds of music and film together, focusing on different levels of licensing music for film and how to connect filmmakers and bans. Geoff Marslett, director of the 2013 HHM Film ‘Loves Her Gun’ will be moderating both Friday & Saturday panels.

For more panel discussions go to hhmfest.com

Also, don’t forget to check out the dates & times of the following featured profiled films on Pages 7 and 10 of this supplement: Before I Disappear • BFF’s • FOREV • OJ: The Musical • Universal Language

Go to HHMfest.com for additional information and tickets.