With exams around the corner, my friend Keelin and I struggled deciding if we should attend an International Film Festival at the local Lumiere Theater in town. After a few grimacing faces we eventually decided that of course we should attend and were immediately validated with our decision to live outside of our textbooks.

I love the parallells that often arise between home and foreign places. One of the most difficult things for me to miss back in Columbia, MO is the annual True/False Film Festival at Ragtag Cinema.

Here’s an excerpt from my beloved True/False Film Festival:

True/False began as a foolhardy lark back in 2003, an exercise in youthful exuberance. We figured that our downtown could use a festival linking venues like an old-time movie palace, a vintage vaudeville theater, and our small storefront cinema. We couldn’t have foreseen the significance and responsibilities the fest would accrue. If we had, our dauntless souls would have no doubt been daunted.

In time, we learned that T/F could play a role in encouraging and congealing a community of nonfiction filmmakers around the world interested in making innovative work. We witnessed the fest becoming a focal point for a wide variety of creative energies in art and music.

But the most astonishing aspect has been watching our fellow mid-Missourians step in, lift a hammer (real or figurative), and build some facet of the fest to their dream specifications. We may have mapped out the house and poured the concrete, but each year we’ll turn a corner and discover a new room, or a skylight that wasn’t there before.

In our tenth year, we salute those with the devil-may-care DIY spirit that has made True/False so much more than we ever imagined. In T/F’s 2013 poster “The Collective Architecture of the Impossible,” a neighborhood rises up, with one idiosyncratic structure perched atop another. This is how the festival has developed—the blueprints we drew attracting more and more layers, transforming our doodled sketch into a full-blown painting.

We are deeply indebted to two communities: Columbia, Missouri, the hardest working town in the U.S. (or at least that’s what some magazine said), where dozens of people come home from their day job and contribute to making the fest run. And to an idealistic, loosely knit network of filmmakers dedicated to pushing nonfiction forward. We couldn’t be more proud to be a part of both. Happy tenth year, everyone, and thanks for making the impossible a living, breathing thing that we all can share together. Whether it’s the shared pleasures of a darkened cinema, parading through the downtown streets en masse, or huddled together debating ideas late into the night, True/False is and will always be a collective structure.

And here’s an excerpt from the Lumiere Theater event that I attended:

Made in Europe, the platform for European and Euregional film talent in Maastricht, works together with the Go Short International Short Film Festival Nijmegen. Whereas the theme of the Nijmegen festival will be short movies, the Maastricht festival will offer a broad programme with a selection of the best short movies, Euregional productions and master classes, meet & greets with film makers and the one and only Made in Europe after party on the 15th and 16th of March.

In addition to the presentation of the best current European short movies, spread over a number of units, Made in Europe will highlight meet & greets with different film makers from all over Europe. The exchange of knowledge and experience is an important aspect of the talent programme of Made in Europe.

This is why there will be a master class programme, specifically aimed at short films for professionals and students of various educational backgrounds. There will also be attention for new, Euregional short films. Made in Europe shows a selection of the short movies that were also screened in Nijmegen.

The Maastricht edition is a new step for Go Short to put the short movie in the spotlight in the whole of the Netherlands. Go Short collects the best new European short films in all genres: from cartoon films to documentary films, from fiction to art films. The only requirement is that the film is no longer than 40 minutes, but the majority of the films are shorter.
After the festival, Go Short will tour throughout the Netherlands with the Best of Go Short tour. This selection of festival highlights will be screened in cinema clubs throughout throughout the Netherlands starting from the end of March.

The theaters, separated by an ocean and thousands of miles, have a similar ambiance, crowd and overall goal of sharing good films. Attending the film festival in Maastricht filled me with a similar love for the cinema that I feel back at Ragtag in Columbia. It amazes me that two places that developed entirely independent from each other can both exist to create the same content feeling and have so many parallel features.

The short films shown at the festival were divided into four different categories: Drive, The Life of Others, Animation Bonanza, and Going Dutch. We opted to see ‘The Life of Others’ category. Films in this category included…

THE FUSE: OR HOW I BURNED SIMON BOLIVAR; Igor Drjaca – this documentary follows how a young boy attempts to avoid a poor mark on a school assignment in 1990’s Sarajevo, may have contributed to a civil way.

SILENT; L Rezan Yesilbas – 1984. Zeynep lives in Diyarbakir with their three children. She seems to be in daily routine and is going to visit her husband in prison.

A SOCIETY; Jens Asur – In an enclosed space eleven strangers are on a journey into the unknown. They are forced to confront each other’s prejudices in order to establish a temporary and functioning society.

OUTSIDE COMFORT; Andreas J. Riiser – Mona is a married woman with children who goes on a personal journey under the radar in her own city without telling anyone.