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"That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives." This is where we live, all of us, on this pale blue dot floating in the Milky Way. Jason Reitman's latest film, Men, Women & Children adapted from Chad Kultgen's novel of the same name, is framed within the context of Carl Sagan's timeless quote called "Pale Blue Dot" and the Voyager spacecrafts that we launched in 1977. Men, Women & Children is Reitman's most sensitive work yet, a deeply moving, sensual film about all of us on this planet. I've been a fan of Reitman for a longtime, and still love his early work, but he seems to keep getting more mature with every film he makes. In Reitman's Men, Women & Children he addresses a tough subject to approach with...

The 2013 St. Louis International Film Festival concluded Sunday night with a party at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis. Sliff announced the audience-choice and juried-competition awards.

Now in its 22nd year, the Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival is one of the largest international film festivals in the Midwest. This year’s festival was held Nov. 14-24, 2013.

2013 Sliff Film Awards

Best of Fest Audience Choice Awards

Best Documentary Feature: “Harlem Street Singer” directed by Simeon Hutner

Best International Narrative Feature: “Philomena” directed by Stephen Frears

Best Narrative Feature: “One Chance” directed by David Frankel

New Filmmakers Forum Award

“This Is Where We Live” directed by Marc Menchaca and Josh Barrett ($500 cash prize)

St. Louis Film Critics Association Joe Pollack Awards Best Documentary Feature: “Blood Brother” directed by Steve Hoover Special Jury Mention, Documentary Feature: “The Pleasures of Being Out of Step” directed by David Lewis

Best Narrative Feature: “Key...

Often threatening sentimentality yet never quite sinking into it, Josh Barrett and Marc Menchaca's This Is Where We Live benefits from the good taste of the filmmakers, whose appetite for understatement ensures that the picture maintains dramatic effectiveness and only rarely lurches into histrionics.

Menchaca stars as Noah, an out-of-work handyman in Texas hill country hired as an aide to August (Tobias Segal), a young man with cerebral palsy. An unlikely friendship ensues, but rather than mining TV-movie sappiness, the filmmakers employ a strategy of even-handed observation, presenting a comprehensive portrait of Noah's work (taking August to the bathroom, bathing him), not just simply highlighting the pleasant moments (like an exhilarating scene where Noah takes August...

Homeland star and San Angelo native Marc Menchaca and Josh Barrett teamed up for their writing and directorial debut, This Is Where We Live, an intimate look at a family wrought with physical and emotional troubles. The duo were in attendance for the movie's north Texas premiere at the Dallas International Film Festival last week. During the post-screening Q&A, the filmmakers revealed that although the story is fictional, one of the main characters was inspired by Menchaca's close friend Thomas, who has cerebral palsy.

This Is Where We Live brings viewers into a small-town family's home, where every member of the Sutton family suffers, Diane (C.K. McFarland) ignores her own health issues to meet the demands of her full-time job as a stocker at the local supermarket and to take care of her son August (Tobias Segal), who suffers from cerebral palsy. Her husband Bob (Ron Hayden) is in...

This is one of the rare moments in one’s life when jury duty calls…. you emphatically say, yes. Yours truly is headed to the 2013 edition of the SXSW Film Festival as one-third of jury for the fest’s Narrative Feature Competition. On this site, we heart film festivals for their uniqueness, quirks, rebel attitude, flamboyancy, spirit and how the top fests all individually contribute in shaping up a given year in film – and the cornerstone signs are that when you’re running a quality fest is when you look back at the previous editions and take inventory of the gem discoveries that were offered.

As film critics we can’t help but continually rank, sort, classify the films we see… so this juror gig doesn’t come across as unfamiliar terrain, but its definitively a privileged position when you care about film and the filmmakers the way we all...

While the SXSW Film Festival sometimes earns headlines for the genre fare that makes waves with the audiences that flock to Austin each year, it's a place where strong dramas and unique stories can also unspool. And this year filmmakers Josh Barrett and Marc Menchaca are hoping their feature effort "This Is Where We Live" will resonate in the Narrative Feature competition slot. If Menchaca's name or face seem familiar to you (he also takes a role in 'Tiwwl') you may recognize him as Lauder Wakefield, the disabled, alcoholic vet who went up against Brody in the second season of "Homeland." But here he has a wholly different part as Noah, a small-town handyman who becomes a caregiver to August, a young man with cerebral palsy (Tobias Segal). It's not the most likely of pairs, but as you'll see in this exclusive clip, August's sister Laney (Frankie Shaw), shows how they can better connect.

South by Southwest (SXSW) is just one of many film festivals, we here at Sound On Sight cover yearly. The fest, which takes place every spring in Austin, Texas, began in 1987, and has continued to grow in size every year. The fest announced the first wave of films back in early January, and the lineup included some highly anticipated films such as The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, Evil Dead, Downloaded and Spring Breakers. Now the full lineup has been announced, and it just might be one of the best lineups the festival has ever programmed.

SXSW takes place March 8-16 in Austin Texas. Here are just some of the films we are excited about.

Narrative Feature Competition – This year’s 8 films were selected from 1,191 submissions. Each film is a World Premiere.

Awful Nice

Director/Screenwriter: Todd Sklar, Screenwriter: Alex Rennie

Estranged brothers Jim and Dave must travel to Branson together when...

Some of the best films of the 2012/2013 calender year from Richard Linklater, Harmony Korine, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Andrew Bujalski, Jeff Nichols, David Gordon Green, Shane Carruth and Joshua Oppenheimer are among the headliner names for the 2013 edition of the South by Southwest Film Festival. With a little over 100 plus film line-up (a whopping 2000+ titles were submitted), almost 70 are world premieres: there is the highly anticipated sophomore film (that has been on our radar since it first went into production) with M. Blash’s (The Wait), Joe Swanberg who makes SXSW his second home will premiere Drinking Buddies, veteran indie filmmaker John Sayles saddles in with Go For Sisters, and rounding out the Narrative Spotlight section we’ve got The Bounceback from Bryan Poyser, Loves Her Gun from Geoff Marslett along with titles we thought might break into Park City, but found an Austin home instead with Jacob Vaughan’s Milo and...

Now in its 20th year, the South By Southwest Film Conference and Festival is set to invade Austin, Texas between March 8-16. The fest’s organisers have sent out the list of movies that will feature and it includes some doozies, with screenings of Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing, Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, not to mention the world premiere of both Evil Dead and the new Steve Carell/Jim Carrey magician comedy The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.With 69 world premieres among the 109 movies showing, including 68 from first-time filmmakers, the festival is known for finding hidden gems and giving other movies a welcome boost.The narrative feature competition this year includes Todd Sklar’s Awful Nice, Carlos Puga’s Burma, Improvement Club from Dayna Hanson, Licks directed by Jonathan Singer-Vine, Chris Eska’s The Retrieval, Short Term 12 from Destin Daniel Cretton, Ruben Amar’s Swim Little Fish Swim...