Maryland Film Festival Blog

Maryland Film Festival continued unveiling the lineup for its 16th annual festival today, announcing 12 more feature films in addition to the 10 announced last week. Among the titles announced today are SXSW buzz films Fort Tilden, Evolution of a Criminal, and The Mend; the latest from Oscar-nominated documentarians Joe Berlinger and Marshall Curry; cutting-edge films made in Greece, South Korea, Taiwan, and Nepal; and the premiere of Maryland-made Lovecraftian horror film Call Girl of Cthulhu.

Lineup announcements will continue this week and next, including more than 20 additional emerging feature films, several revival screenings, and a favorite film selected and hosted by legendary filmmaker John Waters.

The 12 feature films announced today for MFF 2014 are:

CALL GIRL OF CTHULHU (Chris LaMartina) Baltimore-based D.I.Y. horror helmer Chris LaMartina’s latest tells the Lovecraft-inspired story of a virginal artist who falls in love with a call girl that turns out to be the chosen bride of the alien god Cthulhu.

EVOLUTION OF A CRIMINAL (Darius Clark Monroe) In this gripping blend of documentary, true-crime, and personal essay, a filmmaker confronts his past, dissecting the circumstances that led him to commit a bank robbery as a young man, and his journey since that act. Executive-produced by Spike Lee.

FORT TILDEN (Sarah-Violet Bliss, Charles Rogers) Winner of the grand jury award for narrative feature at SXSW 2014, this satire of Brooklyn hipsters making their way to a day at the beach takes on Samuel Beckett-esque barbs as ordering coffee and locking a bicycle become almost insoluble dilemmas.

THE HIP-HOP FELLOW (Kenneth Price) The points of intersection between hip-hop culture and academia are explored in this documentary following Grammy Award winning producer 9th Wonder’s tenure at Harvard University. Interviewees include Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Kendrick Lamar, Young Guru, Phonte, and DJ Premier.

MANAKAMANA (Stephanie Spray, Pacho Velez) This new feature from Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab (Leviathan, Sweetgrass) offers immersive access to an ancient journey now taken in a modern cable car, as viewers ride along in real-time with pilgrims and tourists bound for Nepal’s Manakamana temple.

THE MEND (John Magary) Shades of Cassavetes’ Husbands and Mike Leigh color this revelatory mix of comedy and drama, as estranged brothers (Josh Lucas and Stephen Plunkett) reconnect at a moment of crisis and embrace increasingly wild and impulsive behavior.

MOEBIUS (Kim Ki-duk) South Korean maverick Kim Ki-duk returns with perhaps his most shocking and darkly humorous exploration yet of the connections between pleasure, penance, spirituality, and the human impulse for violence.

POINT AND SHOOT (Marshall Curry) When Baltimore native Matthew VanDyke traveled to Libya to join the rebels who were taking up arms against Gaddafi, his experiences became international news. His stranger-than-fiction story is told by the director of MFF documentaries Street Fight, Racing Dreams, and If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front.

SEPTEMBER (Penny Panayotopoulou) After a seemingly solitary woman’s beloved dog passes away, she becomes overwhelmed by her loneliness. In her search to ease the pain of losing her best friend, she unexpectedly connects with a sympathetic family that lives in her neighborhood. This expertly crafted and warmly human film from Greek director Penny Panayotopoulou signals her triumphant return after a decade-plus hiatus from filmmaking.

STRAY DOGS (Tsai Ming-liang) The first digitally shot feature from master director Tsai (whose films I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone and Walker screened within the festival) continues his unique 25-year collaboration with lead Lee Kang-sheng, this time situating him as the homeless guardian to two young children in Taipei.

WATER LIKE STONE (Zack Godshall, Michael Pasquier) A documentary portrait of Leeville, Louisiana, a fishing village among the fastest-disappearing wetlands in the United States—and the unforgettable characters who call it home.

WHITEY: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA V. JAMES J. BULGER (Joe Berlinger) This documentary dissects legend from fact in investigating the story of Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger, uncovering a web of corruption in the process. From the director of Crude and co-director of Brother’s Keeper, Some Kind of Monster, and the Paradise Lost trilogy.