These True/False festival films promise to bring us together for the sake of stories

Each year, the True/False Film Fest programs nonfiction fare that reaches into nearly every kind of true story.

These documentaries reveal the common ground we stand on and shows how our stories, while distinct, meet one another in great emotions and small details.

Some of the most promising titles at this year's fest, ahead Feb. 29-March 3, fall into loose groups and along lines where the narratives on camera resemble lives being lived outside the frame. Here's a glance at a few of these approaching stories.

Art's healing properties

True/False films often exist like looping testimonies, art which doubles back to show how art itself heals generational wounds or fosters moments of clarity. Several of this year's titles seem to bear this sort of reflexive generosity.

Rachel Elizabeth Seed's "A Photographic Memory" is both a visual essay on family and a film interested in image-making itself; to more fully understand her mother, the director draws on insights from the likes of legendary photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson and Gordon Parks.

"Allo La France," from director Floriane Devigne, bears witness to ways art breeds discovery; billed as a type of road movie, the film moves through France to identify a standing remnant of photo booths. This premise suggests an experience that can only happen while creating something, but also that these cultural artifacts hold particular significance.

A repertory screening of Yasujirō Ozu's 1953 classic "Tokyo Story" might not immediately speak to the restoring power of art; but, selected as it is by this year's True Vision Award winner Michaël Andrianaly, the film's presence underscores ways we continue to locate ourselves in a longer continuum of human expression.

Character studies

Anyone who's seen a True/False film knows this: characters aren't just for fiction. Festival documentaries introduce us to real-life figures who, in many cases, are better than any a novelist or fiction filmmaker could dream. These characters, in part because of their true presence, stick with filmgoers.

Artist and activist Philly Abe is the focal point of Elizabeth Nichols' "Flying Lessons"; Screen Slate's Chris Shields once described Abe as "the embodied essence of the Lower East Side — a manic, wandering, striving, violently sincere soul in search of pleasure, danger, artistic catharsis, and ideally, a mingling of all three." If viewers observe even a percentage of that sensibility, the film will feel like a phenomenon.

Just as with their previous film "Boys State," no doubt some of the young women — and this time, young women from Missouri — in directors Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine's "Girls State" will stand out to viewers, showing what sort of leaders they are growing into at the yearly civic exercise for students.

"Seeking Mavis Beacon," from director Jazmin Jones, promises a type of intellectual and cultural adventure as the film searches for its lead, the real-life woman who embodied the once-ubiquitous typing program.

Director Lana Wilson knows good characters, having made films about Brooke Shields and Taylor Swift as well as punk-rock priests and abortion doctors. Wilson's "Look Into My Eyes" will add to the remarkable cast across her filmography, focusing on New York City psychics.

"This is Going to Be Big" lives with real-life characters — in this case, neurodiverse teenagers — preparing their roles in a musical; Thomas Charles Hyland's film looks to major in personality and intimate knowledge of its subjects.

Pursuits of the good life

Several films at this year's fest suggest a beautiful grasping for a life beyond one's own station. "A Band of Dreamers and a Judge," directed by Hesam Eslami, is described as a sort of treasure hunt through northern Iran and an excavation of Eslami's statement that "Diggers are dreamers."

Andrianaly's latest, "Gwetto," spends its time with undocumented car wash workers, considering what more is available to them; the fest describes it as "a beautifully rendered hang out doc (that) shines with Andrianaly’s empathetic and intimate approach."

Subjects you oughta know

With apologies to Alanis Morrissette, these True/False titles promise an insider's unbroken gaze at issues we really ought to know more about — and the stories forming in and around them. These films, whether quietly and implicitly or otherwise, will demand our engagement.

Among them, "Spermwold" from director Lance Oppenheim, will usher viewers through one facet of the big, deeply personal business of fertility. Two veteran True/False directors, Stephen Maing and Brett Story, team up for "Union," a crucial look at American labor through the fight — and there is no better word for it than a fight — to unionize at Amazon.

Films that are never really just one thing or another

To be fair, few True/False films fall neatly into one category or another. "Yintah," for example, promises a rich character study and a "you oughta know" approach. Directed by Michael Toledano, Jennifer Wickham and Brenda Michell, the film will look through the eyes of indigenous leaders as they seek to guard and honor their land in light of Canada's craving for more gas and oil.

And "I Like It Here" seems both to revolve around a true character and offer comment on the generative powers of art; director and subject Ralph Arlyck looks long, and with longing, at the end of life and what makes it sweet. The film allows him a more dedicated moment, and a clearer vision of himself and those he loves.

For a look at the full True/False lineup, and remaining pass options, visit https://truefalse.org/.

Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731. He's on Twitter/X @aarikdanielsen.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: These True/False films promise to show common ground in our stories