The (seemingly) best stuff from the Carmel International Film Festival.

Carmel International Film Festival, now in its sixth year, is positioning itself as a filmmakers’ film festival. Filmmakers get credentials that give them access to amenities like luncheons, panels and parties. They are put in proximity with monied society folks who can help with future projects. They get to screen their film and field Q&As.

But what if you’re a filmgoer? What’s in it for you? Well, the films, of course.

And CIFF has about 50 full-length narrative and documentary films, and about 50 shorts. There is no organizing theme, so your viewing experience can range mightily, depending on what you see. So how to navigate them all? Choose the winners from the filler? You can read the synopses and view the trailers and read the press. That’s what I did. Then I applied three film festival criteria.

1) Just because a movie is low budget or independently produced doesn’t mean that it’s worth seeing. For example, Catch Hell comes “from the producers of Saw,” which is a phrase that should scare people more than the actual Saw films.

2) Big stars don’t equal big quality. Hilary Swank plays a young woman suffering with ALS in the sentimental-looking You’re Not You, but in the documentaries Imber’s Left Hand and Patient, degenerative diseases wield power and fright because they’re real. (Dr. Jeff Piehler, the man with inoperable cancer in Patient, is coming to the screening 6pm Friday at Carmel High School Performing Arts.)

3) One of the best things about film festivals are that they are live and interactive, so if the filmmaker is going to be present at the screening for conversation, the film gets bonus points.

(Watch for an expanded story on the powerful documentary The American Nurse, screening 6:30pm Saturday at Carmel High School Performing Arts, on the Weekly’s Arts & Culture blog, mcweekly.com/culture.)

Here is a curated list of 10 of the most seemingly promising films, in the chronological order in which they will be screened, based on as much scrutiny as not seeing the film would allow (again, 50 features and 50 shorts). In short, I could be wrong. That’s always been the most, well, exciting part of this festival – the not knowing. Good luck.

Short films | Various times and locations

There are six screenings of short films in blocks of six or so that run from one hour to an hour and a half. They come from all over the place and they go all over the place, from a quirky-looking piece about dating, cheesemaking and possible crime, to a couple of Big Sur-situated numbers, to foreign language pieces, to animated shorts, to burgeoning student work. Some have provocative titles like There is No God and We All Die Alone and The Pink Helmut Posse. And it doesn’t get much more indie than this.

Finding Hillywood | Noon Friday at Carmel High School Performing Arts

This is a film about filmmaking, but it’s not some hipster exercise in meta cleverness. It’s about the power contained in film. It follows Ayuub Kasasa Mago and his friends and colleagues (directors, producers, actors, promoters, writers, activists) who are building Rwanda’s film industry, using the medium to show fellow citizens themselves and each other. “Thousands of people show up to watch films in stadiums next to mass graves and locations where horrible crimes took place,” the synopsis tells us. Film as an agent of truth, as a deliverer of mass healing. And there seems to be a touch of Werner Herzog’s The Burden of Dreams.

Nightcrawler | 7pm Friday at Lighthouse Cinemas

In this dark movie, Jake Gyllenhaal stars as an overly ambitious, and psychologically disturbed, freelance crime videographer who crosses over the line to get the gruesome footage craved by a TV news producer (played by Rene Russo) and, presumably, their viewers. It’s a voyage into the dark world of Los Angeles mayhem, lit up by the glare of street lights, sirens and camera lights. And you can see it before its Oct. 31 theatrical release. Ever since Donnie Darko, we just can’t quit you, Jake.

Well Now You’re Here, There’s No Way Back | 8pm Friday at Sunset Center’s Adobe Theater

It’s also known as the Quiet Riot documentary. And it seems to be a work of depth into a heavy metal band that gave identity to so many metalheads and headbangers. It seems to be a progeny of the 2004 Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster and an episode of VH-1’s Behind the Music, telling the tale of Quiet Riot drummer Frankie Banali and his fight to keep the band going despite obstacles, like lead singer Kevin DuBrow dying in 2007. First-time director Regina Russell and Banali will be at the screening.

Whiplash | 9:30pm Friday at Lighthouse Cinemas

If you’ve just watched Nightcrawler at Lighthouse Cinemas, stay put because more intensity is coming in this Sundance-winning film that follows it. It stars young Miles Teller (Divergent, The Spectacular Now) as an ambitious drummer pushed to his breaking point, and maybe beyond, by his music school’s sadistic drumming teacher, played by J.K. Simmons (Oz, Law & Order). Its direction looks pretty dang confident, and its subject – performer pushed toward greatness – reminds me of Black Swan. Try not to think of the Next Generation Jazz Festival Band as you watch. It’s set for theatrical release the day before CIFF gets to it.

DamNation | 10am Saturday at Carmel High School Performing Arts

With local happenings on the Sam Clemente Dam removal and Carmel River mitigation front, this film is as timely to our region as a stopwatch. It’s an exploration of the movement to remove dams in order to restore watersheds, fish populations and the natural course of rivers. DamNation’s trailer and photos tout awesome shots of these majestic constructs, embedded in beautiful natural surroundings. Still, the filmmaker is bent on making the case that many of the country’s 80,000 dams (2 percent of which produce electricity) are obsolete or damaging.

The Salinas Project | 2pm Saturday at Carmel High School Performing Arts

“All you hear about Salinas is crime, gangs and murders,” one young man says. This documentary goes deeper into the lives of a few of its young Salinas subjects who, previously, might only be sketched out in remote statistics and narrow coverage in the media (even KSBW, ironically, gets called out). It shows young people working against stereotypes and the expectations of failure, bearing unfair hardships, and growing into more resilient adults. The filmmakers aren’t from here (and local filmmakers have illuminated this subject before), but they can lend a fresh outsiders’ perspective. Cast and crew will be there for the screening.

Force Majeure | 8:30pm Saturday at Sunset Center

The family ski vacation does a face-plant in this Swedish film that looks as clean and snowswept as Fargo and boasts a plot device that turns on the same hinge as Gael Garcia Bernahl’s The Loneliest Planet. A family takes a holiday to the French Alps for some skiing, but while they’re out on the resort balcony, enjoying the view with other well-to-do guests, a near avalanche scares the father so much he “runs from the table,” leaving behind his two kids and wife. The avalanche doesn’t reach the resort, but now the family must contend with the father’s cowardly and revelatory act.

Revenge of the Green Dragons | 10pm Saturday at Lighthouse Cinemas

It’s been a while since a hyped-up, adrenal, Asian gangster flick has been released in the States. This one is about two young Chinese immigrant brothers who arrive in the unfettered and desperate New York City of the 1980s, who seek their fortune by joining the powerful Chinatown gang The Green Dragons. But when a love affair pits brothers against each other, and hard-nosed cops start sniffing around, there’s Big Trouble in Little China. Seriously. It looks like it would fit quite nicely in a multiplex among 20-year-olds, but it’s based on a true story and is executive produced by Martin Scorsese.

The Starfish Throwers | 5pm Sunday at Carmel High School Performing Arts

This documentary looks simple and powerful enough to break your heart. It’s told in three parts, each illuminating its bigger subject, human hunger. Narayanan Krishnan, of India, quits a promising career as a chef and devotes his talents to cooking for homeless men marginalized by the caste system. Nine-year-old Katie Stagliano created Katie’s Krops, a nonprofit of 73 gardens cultivated to end hunger. Mr. Law, a retired school teacher with health problems, enlists many, including kids, to make the more than 1,000 sandwiches that he delivers each night to hungry people in Minneapolis. Once you’re done drying your tears – of happiness, it’s said – director Jesse Roesler will take your questions.

THE CARMEL INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL happens 5:30-late on Thursday, 10am-late Friday and Saturday, and 10am-7pm Sunday at various locations throughout Carmel and Pacific Grove. $10/film; $50/555 day pass; $95/all-access film pass; $195/essential credential; $495-$5,375/package. 625-3700, CarmelFilmFest.com.