Day 9 Recap:
Granted, the Starz Denver Film Festival in its entirety is a celebration in their honor, but we at the Denver Film Society literally toasted the talents who make all this possible during the Independent Filmmakers' Reception at the Postmodern last night, where the Lillet flowed like the chocolate atop the made-to-order treats from Crêpes 'n Crêpes. We didn't just put them in the spotlight, however-we also put a few of them on the spot during the Indie Film Roulette panel, as festival moderator Robert Denerstein challenged guests from Passenger Side, Big River Man, Children of Invention, and Miss Ohio to negotiate what-if scenarios that illustrated the complexities of taking a film from the drawing board to the silver screen. ---

Ruth Tobias

Saturday Film Pick:
Gigante

Saturday, Nov 21st @ 9:15pm
Starz FilmCenter

The centerpiece of Uruguayan filmmaker Adrián Biniez's quiet drama is your classic Everyman - trapped in a dead-end job and an oversized body, lonely but unable to define his own yearnings. Jara (Horacio Camandule) spends his nights as a security guard on the graveyard shift at a Montevideo supermarket in stoic silence - eating pastries, doing crossword puzzles, and watching the confines of his world go by on a bank of TV monitors.

Something stirs in Jara, though, when he catches sight of a cleaning woman (Leonor Svarcas) in the fluorescent glare of the empty supermarket floor. Too shy to speak, he begins following the woman after work, decoding her secrets while continuing to deny his own. Will the gentle giant ever summon the courage to approach her?

Set against the dreary background of economic recession and distinguished by Camandule's heart-wrenching performance, this nearly silent one-way love story - which the director himself considers "a subversion of the classic ... romantic comedy" - earned three awards at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival, including the Silver Bear, and was nominated for a Golden Bear. Biniez, who is also an actor, wrote, directed, and composed the music for this impressive debut.

PHOTO GALLERY

UL:  Miss Ohio producer, James Flynn at Indie Film Roulette (Sigri Strand)
UR:  Board Chair David Charmatz and Jonathan Shair from Starz Entertainment (Carly Rose Moser)
LL:  Festival Director Britta Erickson, Passenger Side actor Joel Bissonnette and director Matt Bissonnette (Carly Rose Moser)
LR: Partnership Manager Ann Collier, Alfonso Santagata (Carly Rose Moser)