With the proliferation of online streaming services, it’s hard enough to convince people to venture out to see a movie, and in sea of film festivals it’s easy to get overwhelmed. But the programmers of the Canberra International Film Festival hope its new grassroots focus, with the nine-day event bookended by ACT features, will give it the edge. Returning to its former home at the National Film and Sound Archive’s Arc Cinema after a lacklustre 2014, when the festival lost $50,000, the new board and Canberra-based programmers hope the shorter festival from November 5 to 15 will bounce back after several years of declining audiences. Canberra International Film Festival programmers Olivier Krischer, Andrew Pike, Alice Taylor and Cris Kennedy have picked a mix of films spanning the Indigenous, Australian, Asian and documentary genres to screen in November.

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