Previous Festivals: 2004

Laura Linney and Topher Grace in p.s.

Strindberg and Helium

In 2004, some of the most challenging indie films to date were on the schedule. Primer, made on a shoestring and the unexpected Grand Prize winner at that year's Sundance Festival, proved to be equally exciting and maddening - to many in the audience, perhaps the most controversial film to date at WFF. Down to the Bone featured a magnificent central performance by Vera Farmiga as an upstate New York mother with a drug habit, and The 24th Day proved taut and electrifying even though almost all the action took place in one apartment. Directed by Jessica Sharzer, previously represented at WFF with her short The Wormhole and Run, Catch, Kiss screenplay, Speak was a powerful rendition of the young adult novel, and Imaginary Witness a gripping dissection of Hollywood's evasion of the Holocaust.

Other films which delighted the audience were Word Wars, p.s. (starring Laura Linney and Topher Grace), Eulogy (with a gem of a comic performance by Hank Azaria), Lonely Place (featuring a superb Tess Harper), and A Touch of Greatness, which moved many to tears with its vivid evocation of a great teacher. Shorts were more popular than ever, with News for the Church, The Date, Bananas, Plastic Migration, Spin, Tackle Box, and Everyone Is a Beatle especially memorable. The animated Strindberg and Helium proved so popular that it was rescreened the second weekend by popular demand... and later went on to play at WFF's off-season events in New York, L.A., and Boston. A new "Artist's Choice” evening was inaugurated by special guest Alec Baldwin, whose razor-sharp sense of humor and eloquence on subjects ranging across the spectrum from the perils of novice directors to the Iraq war to Sponge Bob delighted fans at the annual Gala.