Foreign films look good at Sundance '07

PARK CITY — Though some festivalgoers seem to be finding this year's Sundance Film Festival a little heavier and more depressing than usual, I frankly haven't noticed because I have been experiencing what seems, so far, to be an even better festival than usual.

Most of the foreign films I've screened up to this point have not only pleased rather than disappointed me, they have also offered some pleasant surprises — not the least of which is the amount of first-rate acting on the part of children.

• One I can highly recommend is the French film "Blame It on Fidel," and much of my enthusiasm derives from the amazing performance by 7-year-old Nina Kervel.

Set in the turbulent early 1970s, when such leaders as Chile's Allende and Spain's Franco were in the news almost daily, the film concerns a little girl whose parents decide to devote themselves to full-time radical activism. When both her Spanish father and French mother insist she not be required to take a divinity class at school, young Anna herself rebels, and her inner turmoil and search for understanding dominate this engrossing and well-acted film.

• Other remarkable and memorable performances come from the two young male leads of the highly original British film "The Son of Rambow." Set in the early '80s, when technology had just opened the doors for even young people to make their own movies with home videocameras, these two very disparate personalities from the same school suddenly get the idea to collaborate, with themselves as both filmmakers and stars, on an imaginative sequel to the first Sylvester Stallone film in the "Rambo" series, which they've viewed from a pirated copy.

• Also fine and very touching, with still another excellent performance from a child, is "La Misma Luna (The Same Moon)," from Mexico, in which a little boy in Mexico and his mother, who is working illegally in the United States, each separately try to reunite.

• Even the documentary "On a Tightrope" features endearing real children who, in the vast expanses of northern China, inhabited by 8 million Muslim Uighurs, are taught the 2,000-year-old tradition of tightrope walking. A Norwegian/Canadian production, but spoken in Uighur with subtitles, it will be the happy faces of the "stars" of this mind-opening film that will stay in your memory for a long, long time.