After seven hours in the St. Louis airport, I have returned from my long, wonderful weekend at the True/False Film Festival. Below, you’ll find a recap of the films I covered whilst in Columbia, MO. But first, I want to give a shout-out to Satin and Chenille.

Before each screening at True/False, “buskers” culled from all over the country take the stage to perform while the audience is filing in. At some of the larger True/False venues, the buskers sort of fade into the background, but at an intimate space like the new Little Ragtag, the performers really get a chance to take over the room. That’s where I saw Satin and Chenille, a girl and boy (I came late, so I’m not sure which one is Satin and which one is Chenille) who did a tongue-in-cheek set of standards and love songs before the Friday night screening of Carny.

“I hope you guys love each other as much as we love love songs,” said the boy, before they launched into an acoustic guitar-fueled version of “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” They followed that up with an epic, partially-accapella version on “I’ve Had The Time of My Life,” which turned into a mass sing-a-long. It was a great moment, and maybe an audience of 50 or so moviegoers united by a Dirty Dancing reference is a little thing compared to the achievement of such a well-curated program of films, but it’s also one of the many things that sets True/False apart from larger, more impersonal festivals, and it’s definitely a reason to go back next year.

Anyway. Check out a guide to my True/False reviews after the jump.

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On Friday, True/False seemed to explode all over the city of Columbia, beginning with the annual March into March parade through downtown’s main drag, and continuing through a night of packed screenings and parties. I ate buffet-style kangaroo carpaccio at an event called Reality Bites. I saw a live, partially acapella performance of “I’ve Had The Time Of My Life,” from Dirty Dancing. And I got a chance to confirm that the film that’s probably attracting the most “buzz” at this festival definitely deserves it.

Let’s start with that last one. Anna Broinowski’s Forbidden Lies tracks the almost too fascinating to be believed story of Norma Khouri, the author of Forbudden Love, a bestselling purported memoir about the honor killing of Kouri’s best friend Dalia, a Jordanian Muslim who fell in love with a Christian soldier. The book was published in 2003, (with the support of the Cheney family, who latched onto Forbidden Love as the right piece of anti-Arab propaganda at the right time, it was translated into 18 languages), and Kouri promptly became a literary rock star and a controversial spokeswoman for Muslim women’s rights. A year later, an Australian journalist published a story revealing that many details of Forbidden Love were plainly inaccurate and/or apparently made up.

Khouri, calling the book “not fact, not fiction, [but] faction” and comparing it to The Da Vinci Code, claimed she had altered specifics in order to protect her friend’s family, but maintained that Dalia’s honor killing was very real. In an effort to clear her name, Khouri tells Broinowski that if they go to Jordon together, she’ll prove it. The ensuing trip devolves into a magnificent farce, and it forms the core of a portrait of Khouri––who has the charisma of a movie star and the spin talent of a grade-A publicist––as a con woman too clumsy to evade detection, but somehow so charming and clever that even those who have been hurt by her lies and crimes feel compelled to defend her.

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True/False officially begins tonight, but as is tradition, the festival hosted a special preview screening last night for students at the University of Missouri. The film was …an Alternative to Slitting Your Wrist, and it was a perfect pick for the young crowd. 25 year-old Owen Lowery, who directed, edited and appears in nearly every frame of the autobiographical doc, doesn’t exactly break new thematic ground or wow with his filmmaking prowess, but that’s part of the point: super-accessible and unencumbered by the constraints of traditional cinematic language, Wrist is pure peer-to-peer catharsis.

The film follows Lowery from 24th birthday to 25th, as he attempts to conquer a list of 52 things that he’s always wanted to do, one for each week of the year. We learn early on that Lowery made the list whilst in a psych ward, where he was recovering from a suicide attempt. At first, Lowery milks some of the less-noble list items for comic relief: he gets shot with a taser, he gets but by a scorpion and, thankfully, we’re spared the footage of him “taking a dump on Mount Rushmore.” But the list eventually settles into a structuring gimmick that gives Lowery license to confront his real demons. It becomes apparent that the project isn’t really about the list at all, but about the personal traumas––childhood sexual abuse, his father’s drinking problem as well as his own––that led Lowery to his personal rock bottom.

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