CINEPHILES AND CASUAL VIEWERS, UNITE! The Eau Claire International Fest Festival is almost here! (Submitted photos)

Year three of the Eau Claire International Film Fest is rapidly approaching, and with a special feature highlight, films made from coast to coast and overseas, plus regional and local work, it promises to be everything you could want and more. Mark your calendars for the festival, which runs Friday, Oct. 6-Sunday, Oct. 8, at the UW-Eau Claire Davies Center’s Woodland Theater (77 Roosevelt Ave., Eau Claire).

Friday’s showings kick off at 5pm with the Illinois-made animated film, Who Is It?, following a group of criminals after they realize one of their own has seemingly turned on them. The whodunit comedy is about 1.5 hours and will be followed by a slacker/stoner double-feature, the 37-minute Get Some, and the special screening of The Telemarketer which premiered back in 2018 at this very film festival.

Lexicon, directed by Bloomer-native Kyra Arendt.

Saturday invites you to roll out of bed before noon and head to Sleepover, a Minnesota-made short of a sixth-graders’ game of Truth or Dare going terribly wrong, showing at 11am. At 11:30am, Free Lunch also follows middle schoolers and details the start of a young-love romance and partly pays homage to noir film, thanks to the main character’s own love of writing hard-boiled detective stories and movies. From 1-5pm, more than two dozen shorts will be screened, offering an incredible range of film styles, stories, and themes to be shown from places as near as Hudson, Wisconsin, and as far as Taiwan and Columbia.

An adaptation from Eugene O’Neill’s classic play, The Hairy Ape, will show at 6pm with a Hollywood-themed double feature to round out the night. Chuck will play at 7:30pm, taking viewers along main character Chuck’s final hurrah as a struggling actor, and his last performance before taking a final bow. 

At 8pm, actor Jim Hoffmaster’s personal and professional journey to becoming a flourishing Hollywood star is put under the magnifying glass in Acting Like Nothing is Wrong, which reveals his heart-warming and heart-rending story of his unstable upbringing through foster care and abuse before pursuing acting.

Footloose meets Mean Girls in the Sunday opener, Breaking Legs, a California-made film ready to reel you into its high school setting and dance team-centered conflict, slated for 10:15am. From noon-1pm two Wisconsin-made works will grace the big screen back to back, beginning with AngstXiety, a film that launches into the odd and overwhelming feeling of living in the digital age, filmed in May 2023, which was Mental Health Awareness month. At 12:45pm will be a showing of First Person, 10 stories told in a 25-minute film, with Appleton locales as the scenic background.

Bloomer native Kyra Arendt’s film, Lexicon, is perhaps the Sunday afternoon highlight, slated for 1:15pm with a one-hour and 40-minute run time. The film follows its main character, a young woman, while interviewing for a job at Merriam-Webster, reflecting on the relationship that defined the last year of her life.

Road Back to Glory, directed by Jacob Phillips.

Chris Herriges, the festival director, said Arendt’s movie is surprisingly well-made, and well-acted, reading as a comedy/drama.

The final film on this year’s schedule, Road Back to Glory, follows the UW-Stout Women’s Basketball team and Coach Hannah Iverson on their history-making 2022-23 season, achieving what the program hadn’t in 16 years: reclaiming the top of the WIAC Conference.

If it wasn’t already obvious, this year’s Eau Claire International Film Festival is not one you want to miss. Parking is free all weekend long in the lot directly behind Davis Center. Woodland Theater is located on the third floor of Davies Center in room 328.

All UWEC students get free admission to the full festival by showing their student IDs. Tickets are $8-$11 per individual film showing, $15-18 for a one-day pass, and $35 for an all-festival pass. Tickets are available at the door and online.

See the Eau Claire International Film Festival’s full schedule and purchase tickets online. UW-Eau Claire’s Davies Center is located at 77 Roosevelt Ave., Eau Claire.