Lineup for 27th Annual Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival Announced (Nov 1-11, 2018)

ST. LOUIS - Oct. 9, 2018 - PRLog -- The 27th Annual Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival (SLIFF) — held Nov. 1-11 — provides St. Louis filmgoers with the opportunity to view the finest in world cinema: international films, documentaries, American indies, and shorts that can only be seen on the big screen at the festival. SLIFF will screen 413 films: 88 narrative features, 77 documentary features, and 248 shorts. The fest also will feature 14 special-event programs, including our closing-night awards presentation. This year's festival has 63 countries represented.

SLIFF will present our usual array of fest buzz films and Oscar contenders, including "3 Faces," "Ash Is Purest White," "Ben Is Back," "Boy Erased," "Capernaum," "The Captain," "The Chaperone," "Cold War," "Destroyer," "Diane," "Dogman," "Everybody Knows," "The Front Runner," "Green Book," "If Beale Street Could Talk," "The Image Book," "Little Woods," "Long Day's Journey Into Night," "Mapplethorpe," "Non-Fiction," "Shoplifters," "Support the Girls," "Transit," "Vox Lux," "Widows," "Wildlife," and "Zama."

The festival will honor seven significant film figures with our annual awards:

• Joe Edwards and John Goodman with Lifetime Achievement Awards
• Jason Reitman with a Contemporary Cinema Award
• Jim Finn, Jane Gillooly, and Karyn Kusama with Charles Guggenheim Cinema St. Louis Awards
• Melanie Mayron with a Women in Film Award.

The festival will kick off  on Thursday, Nov. 1, with the local premiere of "Destroyer," directed by former St. Louisan Karyn Kusama, who will attend the screening. A 6:30 PM reception precedes the film and features complimentary Urban Chestnut beers, Broadside Winery wines, and cocktails.

As part of the fest's ongoing response to the Ferguson uprising, SLIFF again will feature a major stream of programming entitled Race in America: The Black Experience and offer a third edition of Mean Streets: Viewing the Divided City Through the Lens of Film and Television, which addresses the persistent issue of segregation.

The fest schedule, ticket and venue information, and a complete list of films (with descriptions) are available at the Cinema St. Louis Web site (cinemastlouis.org).

For more information, the public should visit http://www.cinemastlouis.org/about-festival or call 314-289-4150.