Yes, our first film up is sci-fi. I gotta be me. But not all of them will be!

It’s that time again! Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: since 1992 my hometown of Indianapolis has presented the Heartland International Film Festival, a multi-day, multi-theater celebration of cinema held every October. Local moviegoers have the opportunity see over a hundred new works in the realms of documentaries, narrative features, shorts, and animation made across multiple continents from myriad points of the human experience. Some participants stop in Indy on their grand tour of Hollywood’s festival circuit; some are local productions on shoestring budgets; and a wide spectrum of claims are staked in the innumerable niches between, projects with well-known actors screening alongside indies with enormous hearts.

After a few brief dalliances with the festival in the past, last year I dove in a bit deeper and caught six movies in all. The fates of those films have varied in the months since — The Promised Land went on to make the Oscar shortlist for Best International Feature; Fancy Dance is now on Apple+ and remains a must-see for fans of Reservation Dogs or Dark Winds; the even tinier Avenue of the Giants has yet to find a distributor and was still assiduously touring as of this past spring; and so on. I appreciated the chance to see new features before they’re released to the world-at-large, and without waiting for pro critics to weigh in first.

Heartland’s 33rd edition runs October 10-20, for which I’ve made plans to catch at least eight films in all (Lord willing). Longtime MCC readers know the rule: every film I see in theaters gets its own entry. We kick things off with one of this year’s science fiction contestants, which held its official World Premiere right here at Heartland: a small-scale science fiction drama called ReEntry.

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