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What’s happening today

With “only” 20 screenings on the Denver Film Festival schedule today, we turn the spotlight onto local film storytellers. Tonight at 7 p.m. and Wednesday at 4:15 p.m., a program of six short narrative films by Colorado artists will be screened at the Sie FilmCenter. One example: “Judy, Judy, Judy,” directed by Jessica McGaugh, is a seven-minute look at one woman’s dance with hot flashes. Also featured are directors Emma Needell, Adam J. Graves, Emilie Upczak, Evan Wiley, Jacob Glazier and Bruce Tetsuya (90 minutes). The local documentary shorts slate will be screened at 7 p.m. Thursday and 2:15 p.m. Friday.

Screening of the day

Today’s “special presentation” is the British film “Living,” Oliver Hermanus’ adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 “Ikiru,” which in turn was inspired by the 1886 Russian novella “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” by Leo Tolstoy. Set in 1952 London, it follows a British diplomat (Bill Nighy) who is questioning the meaning of his existence. But when he receives some unexpected news, something happens to turn his his dull life into something wonderful. 7 p.m. at the Denver Botanic Gardens (102 minutes).

Wait … what just happened?

The 45th Denver Film Festival has been a crowning glory for Geoff Marslett, a tenure-bound film professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. Marslett’s masterful and wholly original labor of love “Quantum Cowboys” did more than charm two packed audiences this weekend. It introduced them to a entirely new storytelling form that is as distinctively Marslett as “The Grand Budapest Hotel” is distinctly Wes Andersen. His wildly entertaining time-traveling story of three drifters trekking across 1870s Arizona meaningfully employs every style of animation there is while also taking on big existential questions of physics and the malleability of memory. Plus, the casting is mind-exploding. Beyond many local names, you have indie-music icons John Doe (“X”) and gunslinging Neko Case as estranged lovers. Broadway legend Patrick Page, who played Scar when the very first national touring production of “The Lion King” launched in Denver. A completely dialed-in David Arquette. Lily Gladstone, who, in her next film, is working alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Danish New Wave cinema icon  Anna Karina died at 79, shortly after filming. Speaking of quantum physics, “there is not another film on the planet that could ever bring together a cast like that,” said Marslett, who is looking for distribution — and planning two sequels.

Off the beaten path

A timely choice this afternoon would be “Klondike,” the story of a Ukrainian family living on the border of Russia in 2014 — another time of intense turmoil and loss. When their village is captured by armed forces, they find themselves at the center of an international incident. 5 p.m. at the AMC, 826 Albion St. (100 minutes).

Quote of the day

“Battleground,” part of the festival’s “Women+Film” slate, is a timely documentary told from the perspective of three women who lead formidable anti-abortion organizations.

“If we continue to demonize people who have different opinions, that is dangerous because if you just label them as extremist or crazy, then you are not paying attention to the threat that they pose to our rights and to our democracy. I think this film creates an opportunity for a wider middle. At our L.A. premiere, we had anti- and pro-choice people there, and it was the most civil conversation I have seen around the issue — ever. We have to stop making content that only reinforces what we already believe. We have to make content that can bring people together, and I think this film does.” – “Battleground” Executive Producer Nicole Shipley.

Breaking news about that Tattered Cover restaurant

Sắp Sửa, a Vietnamese restaurant that had been reported to be opening “somewhere” in Cherry Creek, will instead bow in the somewhat cursed restaurant space that once served as the grand entrance into the long-gone Bonfils Memorial Theatre at 2550 East Colfax Ave. Anthony and Anna Nguyen provided free cookies to festival visitors this weekend. The most recent failed tenant in that space was a restaurant called The Goods.

Information and tickets

Go to denverfilm.org

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