Heading into the home stretch, we at SDFF 31 are really picking up speed--and you, our loyal audience members, are doing a fantastic job of hanging on and spurring us onward! On Thursday alone, seven screenings sold out completely: Fire Under the Snow, Witch Hunt, Love and Other Crimes, The Lost Coast, The Great Buck Howard, a double feature of La Americana and The Border Wall, and last but not least Black Sea--whose director, Federico Bondi, was fêted during a private reception hosted by the Anna & John J. Sie Foundation (which also inaugurated the Maria and Tommaso Maglione Italian Filmmaker Award that Bondi was the first to receive).

Meanwhile, Denver-area students have also been coming along for the wild ride that is the festival. Every day this week, UC Denver Live! has sponsored free afternoon showings of festival films for undergraduates, followed by Q&A sessions with the filmmakers themselves; this morning, the Starz FilmCenter also welcomed local middle-school and high-school students to a screening of Mark Becker and Jennifer Grausman's stirring documentary about budding young chefs, Pressure Cooker, which appears on the regular festival schedule this evening and tomorrow afternoon. For an education of a whole different sort, however, thrillseeking filmgoers should hold out until midnight for Watching Hour screenings of Surveillance--starring this year's Cassavetes Award recipient, Bill Pullman--and Donkey Punch.

- Ruth Tobias