Film festival brings some of year’s best movies to Knowlton

Some of the year ’s best movies are headed to the Eastern Townships this weekend for the inaugural Knowlton Film Festival.

Organized by film industry veteran Michèle Bazin, Théâtre Lac Brome general director Nicholas Pynes and former Gazette film critic John Griffin, the event brings 12 features and 20 short films to Théâtre Lac Brome, Thursday to Sunday.

Opening the festival Thursday at 7:15 p.m. is residential school system drama Indian Horse, directed by former Montrealer Stephen Campanelli (who has worked for almost 25 years as Clint Eastwood’s steady cam operator).

Townships regular Albert Nerenberg is a journalist, filmmaker, laughologist and hypnotherapist; those skills converge to varying degrees in his entertaining documentary You Are What You Act, about Hollywood action stars who find themselves in real-life dramas, Friday at 7 p.m.

Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet earned acclaim in Luca Guadagnino’s coming of age gay romance Call Me By Your Name. The film, for which James Ivory took the Oscar for best adapted screenplay, plays Friday at 9 p.m.

Quebec director Robin Aubert’s cinematically brilliant zombie romp Les affamés won best Canadian film at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. It screens Saturday at 9 p.m.

And to wrap things up, veteran French stars Juliette Binoche and Gérard Depardieu come together in Claire Denis’s Un beau soleil intérieur, Sunday at 1:30 p.m.

Films will be shown in their original language, with subtitles in Canada’s other official language when possible.