To begin with, there are no words for how wonderful and gracious filmmaker Brook Silva-Braga is. His film, A Map For Saturday, is such a "Dark Horse" that IMDB doesn't even have an entry for it, or for him, yet. (And it really should!) A spectacular documentary about his personal journey around the world as a backpacker over the course of a year, the film electrified audiences and was so popular that a fourth showing was added to the schedule at the last minute.

Brook, himself, became very close with the Festival staff during his visit with us, to the point where, after he'd gone home, he decided to come back and spend the rest of the week with us. Gracious and a perfect gentleman, Brook definitely epitomizes everything we love about our guests, and as far as we're concerned, he's family now.

Robin Lindsey, director of Deadpan Valentine, is another person who epitomizes the real quality of our stars. Polite, unassuming, and friendly, he's both charming and articulate and a delight to talk to. I encountered him twice in the hospitality suite, and both times he was extraordinarily gracious about sharing a table and discussing the films, including his. He seemed genuinely delighted that I'd seen and enjoyed his movie, and wanted me to give him a full account of our wild adventures with the missing movie last weekend, exclaiming "that's a movie! I want to see that movie!" about it. He participated in one of today's Confessions of the Filmmaker panels, and I've rarely met someone so easy-going and genuine.

As a fellow John Hughes movie fan, I was delighted to get the chance to participate in the Q&A with Russell Marleau and Lisa Schahet, the director and producer of The Curiosity of Chance. The film is a great blast from the past, with some very modern twists, and some extraordinary talent. Both Russell and Lisa were open and friendly and genuine people, enthusiastic about their film and happy to share lots of details about its inception, development, and production. We're definitely hoping to see more out of them in the years to come, and more visits from them, as well.

On a personal level, meeting Jeff Rosenberg, the director of Relative Obscurity was absolutely delightful. "Hey, it's the blogger!" he said when he spotted me. Apparently he and all of his crew -- including actor Eric Martig and editor Spencer Houck, who also joined us -- have been reading the blog religiously, which is really wonderful to hear. Everyone in the project was remarkable, charming and accessible and friendly. We all know we'll see many more great things out of them in the years to come, and they'll always be favorite guests here.

There aren't words enough to say how much we adore all of the members of Team Darius. Their movie, Darius Goes West, was one of the Festival's major hits and we are all expecting it to break out and do massive mainstream box office. The message is incredible and so important, and every member of the Team impressed us with their genuine commitment to the film, their friend Darius, and raising disability awareness every way possible.

On their first panel discussion, they delighted people by calling Darius to tell him about the Festival, and they left him a group voice-mail full of well-wishes. Then, the next day, they spoke again to a packed theater of high school students participating in the FilmSlam program. Both they and the movie had the students so energized that the Q&A kept going until almost three hours had passed and we had to get the theater ready for the next film!

Although they'd only been booked to attend the first few days, several of Team Darius, including Director Logan Smalley, decided that they loved the Festival, its energy, enthusiasm, and people so much, that they were going to stick around! Their presence has been completely delightful for all of us, as have the emails we've received from everyone who loved the film so much they couldn't keep quiet about it.

And that's only a very small handful of our amazing guests! I wish I had room and time to give every single one of them a shout-out. I wish I had pictures on hand of Kazi's remarkable performance after The Hip Hop Project and I would have loved to have had a chance to interview all of the delightful, intelligent, interesting filmmakers we had on hand. Hopefully next year, when we do it all again, we'll be able to tell you even more wonderful stories about the extraordinary people behind the films we show.

Because we love them so much, just as much as we love our members and our patrons. They, like you, embody the spirit of the Cleveland International Film Festival.