DETROIT — This year's Windsor International Film Festival is packing a punch, and not just the right hook Sydney Sweeney is throwing in her new boxing drama "Christy."

The 11-day film fest is showing 231 movies, a record for the 21-year-old festival, emanating from 50 countries around the globe. That lineup includes a number of buzzworthy titles and Oscar contenders, including many of the top picks for the best international film Oscar.

Among them are Joachim Trier's "Sentimental Value" (favored in several other top Oscar races as well, including best picture, best director, best actress, best supporting actress, best supporting actor and best original screenplay), Jafar Panahi's "It Was Just an Accident" (a potential best picture and best director candidate), Kleber Mendonça Filho's "The Secret Agent" (featuring a highly touted lead performance by Wagner Moura which could land him in the best actor race), Park Chan-wook's "No Other Choice" (eyed in the best adapted screenplay field) and Mascha Schilinski's "Sound of Falling."

Additionally, there's Mary Bronstein's "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You," for which Rose Byrne is kicking around as a potential best actress nominee, and "Christy," featuring Sweeney's celebrated star turn as former professional boxer Christy Martin. Other noteworthy selections in the lineup include new movies from Richard Linklater ("Nouvelle Vague"), Jim Jarmusch ("Father Mother Sister Brother"), Edward Berger ("Ballad of a Small Player," starring Colin Farrell), Óliver Laxe ("Sirāt"), Hikari ("Rental Family," starring Brendan Fraser) and Luca Guadagnino (whose "After the Hunt" will close the fest).

Vincent Georgie, WIFF's executive director and chief programmer, says his team really swung for the fences in terms of this year's programming.

"I think it's our strongest lineup in terms of international contenders and Oscar contenders, for sure," says Georgie, who has been with the fest for 17 years. "When I look back at our programming, there's been some pretty robust years, but certainly I would say even in the last two years, three years, the festival has exploded."

Some 50,000 film fans are expected to attend this year's WIFF, which unfolds across four theaters in three downtown Windsor venues, all within walking distance of one another. From the Capitol Theatre — which houses two of the festival's auditoriums, the 600-seat Pentastar Theatre and the 200-seat Kelly Theatre — to the Armouries, home to the fest's smallest theater, it's about a seven-minute walk. In between the two venues is the Chrysler Theatre, which seats around 1,100.

Georgie says about 65% of the festival's attendees come from Ontario, 20% from the rest of Canada, 12% from the U.S. and the remaining 3% from outside North America. There's a renewed effort to engage film fans from Detroit at this year's fest, and WIFF is hosting two screenings at Campus Martius in downtown Detroit on Thursday and Friday, part of a collaboration with the Downtown Detroit Partnership.

It's all part of the growth of the festival, which just two years ago, in 2023, boasted a roster of 50 fewer films.

Georgie and his programming team have been putting this year's lineup together for months, with the initial round of invites going out in March. He typically attends the Sundance, Cannes, Telluride and Toronto film festivals, scouring for films to add to the WIFF lineup.

Georgie says WIFF festivalgoers are a ready-to-binge crowd, and last year's All Access passholders watched an average of 45 films over the course of the fest.

"People are watching seven or eight films a day, which we love," says Georgie, whose sweet spot while in programming mode is five or six movies a day. "That's the point of a festival. A festival is you're trying out all sorts of different things, like a buffet. People tend to get to WIFF, hunker down, grab their hotel and then just blow through a bunch of films, which excites us very much."

Georgie is a lifelong film fan who grew up between Montréal and Toronto and studied film marketing in his master's and PhD studies. He came to Windsor to teach business at the University of Windsor in 2009 and was immediately asked to join the ranks of the film festival, which continues to grow under his tutelage. The fest also offers a $25,000 purse for best Canadian film, one of the richest cash prizes for filmmakers in Canada.

The key to building a successful film festival lineup, he says, is finding the right mixture of crowd pleasers, thought-provoking titles, and movies you might not see anywhere else. As long as you get those things, he says, everything else works itself out.

"If you nail the programming," he says, "the festival is going to be great."

21st annual Windsor International Film Festival

Thursday-Nov. 2

Downtown Windsor

Tickets $19 per screening, or $360 for a festival pass

Tickets, schedule at windsorfilmfestival.com

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