Having a difficult time making sense of the dozens of films and events at the Hamptons International Film Festival? While the big films, such as the festival opener “Truth,” sell themselves, the quieter ones can be harder to parse. Star staffers took a look at a sampling; here are some reviews to sort out a few deserving films that might be overlooked in the rush to get the splashier tickets.

“The Champions”

Darcy Dennett

East Hampton, Saturday, 1:30 p.m.; Sag Harbor, Monday, 11 a.m.

“The Champions” is no ordinary story about a boy and his dog. In this debut documentary from Darcy Dennett, the boy is Michael Vick, a star professional football player, and the dogs are the pit bull terriers that Mr. Vick trained to fight, until he was busted in 2007 for running an illegal dogfighting operation.

Ms. Dennett, whose film is the win- ner of the 2015 Zelda Penzel “Giving Voice to the Voiceless” Award in the festival’s Compassion, Justice, and Animal Rights program, documents not one but three powerful stories.

The film follows the recovery and rehabilitation of the dogs themselves, including many that were able to lead lives as close to normal as can be hoped for, following their adoption by loving families. Parallel to the healing storyline is a tale of advocacy, in which breed dis- crimination threatens the lives of thousands of pit bulls nationwide that languish in shelters for years at a time or are euthanized simply because they are pit bulls. And then there’s the matter of Mr. Vick himself, the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback who served 18 months in prison, returned to the N.F.L. to play for the Philadelphia Eagles, picked up new endorsements, and claimed to have repaid his debt to society, but who refused to speak with a journalist who had adopted one of the victimized dogs.

“The Champions” features interviews with the dogs’ caretakers, animal welfare experts, and others with direct insight into Mr. Vick’s conspiracy conviction related to dog-fighting. And while the dogs can’t speak for themselves, in many cases Ms. Dennett is able to capture what certainly looks like absolute joy on their faces while being filmed in their new homes.

The film is certain to evoke feelings, whether it’s frustration with breed discrimination or Mr. Vick’s rebound to athletic stardom or pride inspired by the kind people who helped the dogs recover. Ms. Dennett’s gentle but direct and detailed storytelling makes for an inspirational narrative filled with hope, not just for the former fight dogs but also for the breed at large. — CHRISTINE SAMPSON

“Embrace of the Serpent”

Ciro Guerra

East Hampton, Saturday 8 p.m., and Sunday 3:15 p.m. 

Like the 1986 film “The Mission” and the 1985 historical novel “Black Robe,” “Embrace of the Serpent,” Colombia’s submission for the Academy Awards and a Hamptons International Film Festival competition film, starkly presents the horror that colonialism vis- ited upon indigenous people. Here, the setting is the Amazonian region of South America during the rubber boom of the early 20th century, as well as the brief second boom brought on by World War II. Inspired by the experi- ences of the German explorer and eth- nologist Theodor Koch Grunberg and the American biologist Richard Evans Schultes, as described in their diaries, “Embrace of the Serpent” is a sad yet powerful illustration of Europeans’ ca- pacity for arrogance and cruelty.

Karamakate, a shaman carrying the traditions, mythology, and knowledge of his people, has retreated deep into the rainforest following the near-eradication of his tribe. Forty years apart, he experiences lengthy, close, and combative relationships with two German scientists, both in search of a rare and sacred plant.

Their common humanity notwith- standing, the shaman and the explorers could not be more foreign to one another. The former owns virtually nothing but is in complete harmony with his jungle home and in full possession of the wisdom to maintain nature’s balance. The latter, encumbered by material goods, hail from an industrial, conquering civilization in the act of feeding its insatiable thirst for power and expansion.

Each a symbol of his culture, their conflicts mirror the clashing of civilizations occurring around them. The rubber barons have murdered or enslaved the indigenous population, while Christian missionaries, self-appointed saviors of the natives, stamp out their language, wisdom, and culture and impose their own, by force as necessary.

In this, his third film, the director Ciro Guerra has opted for black-and-white cinematography. In the colorless landscape that remains, it is as though the lushness of the vast rainforest has been drained of all life and vibrancy, a parallel to the shattered lives of its subjugated inhabitants. The river, too, is often forebodingly threatening as it snakes through the gloomy topography.

With “Embrace of the Serpent,” Mr. Guerra has resurrected an ancient civilization, albeit one in the midst of violent destruction. — CHRISTOPHER WALSH

“Fell”

Kasimir Burgess

East Hampton, today, 4 p.m.; Southampton, Saturday, 12:15 p.m.

The plot of “Fell,” the first feature by the Australian filmmaker Kasimir Burgess, can be reduced to a sentence. A girl is accidentally run over by a truck, the driver leaves the scene, and the father sets out to hunt down his daughter’s killer. Which is like saying “Ulysses” is about a guy who spends a day walking around Dublin.

Most of the story takes place in Australia’s Victorian Alps, a region of extraordinary beauty and heedless despoliation. Within the first eight minutes, we encounter Chris and his daughter enjoying an idyll in the woods, and a nearby logging site, where chainsaws and heavy machinery are clear-cutting ancient trees.

After Chris’s daughter is killed by a logging truck, the film follows his gradual shedding of the trappings of his urban life for the existence of a mountain man, living in a cabin in the woods and joining the same logging crew as the girl’s killer.

While Chris settles into the new job, the killer, Luke, is seen recording a loving message for his own daughter from a prison cell. When he tries to rejoin the loggers, halfway through the film, it is clear that he is not warmly welcomed, but only after he screams “I’ve done my time!” does Chris realize Luke is the man he’s seeking.

During the second half of the film, Chris not only works with Luke, he also shadows him, and his stealthy observation of Luke’s every move ratchets up the suspense to an almost unbearable level.

Dramatic shifts from silence to noise, from stillness to motion, from long shot to close-up, from the tense to the idyllic, are underpinned by Chris’s silence and his gradual transformation into the man he set out to hunt. At the same time, his prey is revealed to be more complicated than he first seemed. Chris’s transformation brings to mind “Heart of Darkness,” for it is as much a psychological journey as a physical one.

Matt Nable as Chris and Daniel Henshall as Luke give compelling, nuancedperformances as haunted men in a story told more by image and expression than by words. The visual and sound editing and the breathtaking cinematography capture the stark beauty of the landscape and the violent means by which it — and the lives of men — can be changed forever. — MARK SEGAL

“The Great Alone”

Greg Kohns

East Hampton, Saturday, 2:15 p.m., and Sunday, 10:30 a.m.

“More people have summated Mount Everest than have successfully completed the Iditarod.”

So intones the voiceover near the beginning of “The Great Alone” — or would have, if there had been a voiceover, which, mercifully, there wasn’t through the entire documentary, but here rather a single stark sentence in black type against a vast, and I mean vast, field of windswept Alaskan wastes. Far in the distance, into the all-encompassing whiteness, our hero, Lance Mackey, and his team of sled dogs gradually disappear. You wouldn’t be surprised if you never heard from him again.

It’s just one of a number of stunning images in Greg Kohs’s film, which follows Mr. Mackey’s 2013 attempt at his 12th Iditarod, the “last great race,” traversing 1,049 miles from Anchorage to Nome. We come to learn that he has not only won previously, but did so four times in a row starting in 2007, a feat almost certain to go unmatched.

So this is a comeback story. As is Mr. Mackey’s entire life, for that matter — back from alcohol and drug abuse, back from pointless youthful rebellion, back from wasting time and money, back from a softball-size tumor in his throat that nearly killed him. (About that last setback: He’s from hard-bitten stock, and sure enough midrace we see him tear the filter off a butt and light up.)

But it is also a bitterness-turned-to-emulation tale of a father and a son, his dad being Dick Mackey, winner of the 1978 Iditarod in dramatic, one-second ahead fashion, his 8-year-old son looking on as he collapses at the finish line, his eyes betraying the same haunted stare his son’s would before too long, as if he’d beheld eternity.

Then again, no, it was merely frozen and godforsaken terrain seemingly without end, dotted with the occasional village little more than a shantytown. What a travelogue. - BAYLIS GREENE

“In Transit”

Albert Maysles

East Hampton, tomorrow, 12:15 p.m.; Southampton, Sunday, 3 p.m.

When Albert Maysles turns his trained documentarian’s eye toward the people aboard Amtrak’s Empire Builder long-distance train, he stitches together scenes that take us, like railway stops along the way, into a landscape that is, perhaps, the universal subject matter: people and their lives, and the things that change them.

Outside, as the train makes its three day trip between Seattle and Chicago, are the snow-covered mountains, the plains, the oil fields, the lights of one metropolitan area after another as the train pulls into its next stop. Inside, through a series of quiet observations and conversations along with comments made directly to the camera, a wide range of human experiences are revealed.

While understanding what’s going on in some of the conversations and exchanges is not always easy, repeated visits to a handful of riders help us connect and begin to see and care about them — the tough, hopeful, sweet, battered, and very real people, each of whom has a story worth telling.

The repeated shots of a sleeper car hallway, the rhythmic sound of the train on the tracks, interspersed announcements by conductors over the train’s public address system — all of these take the viewer into the confined, anonymous-yet-intimate feel of the train, with its unique opportunities for reflection and connection.

While those looking for more, some kind of upshot or denouement, may feel unsatisfied by this film, viewers who settle in, like riders making their private-yet-public worlds in the space of two seats on the Amtrak train, will be quite moved by its insights into its subjects. — JOANNE PILGRIM

“Missing People”

David Shapiro

East Hampton, tomorrow, 2 p.m. and Saturday, 7 p.m.

“Missing People” is a dark and moving documentary that plays with viewers’ expectations. The subject of this festival competition film is Martina Batan and her search, in middle age, forclosure on a tragic incident in her young life, the murder of her 14-year-old brother in 1978.

Shot in both New York City and New Orleans, the film follows both Ms. Batan’s journey of discovery and the story of the Ferdinand family, who have lost one of their relatives to a premature death, and, in Hurricane Katrina, most of their possessions.

The link between them is Ms. Batan’s obsessive collection of artworks by Roy Ferdinand, a self-taught New Orleans artist whose subject matter is based on violent crimes reported in the city. She meets with his family, hoping to learn more about him, while hiring a private detective to research her brother’s killing.

Ferdinand’s family is welcoming but cautious, not sure of Ms. Batan’s motives. But over time and several visits she earns their trust and affection. At the same time, her own story, including her successful career as a gallery director, comes out.

Although there is closure in the film, it comes as its own tragedy, raising the question of whether unraveling the mysteries of the past is worth the cost.

When should memories, and the totemistic worship of objects of memorabilia, be put aside? — JENNIFER LANDES

“Take Me to the River”

Matt Sobel

East Hampton, tomorrow, 1:45 p.m. and Saturday, 6 p.m.

“In the end . . . the real story isn’t on the screen, it’s unfolding inside of the heads of everyone in the audience,” Matt Sobel, the director of “Take Me to the River,” said in an online Q & A with the Hamptons International Film Festival. His quiet and unsettling feature-film debut, one of the competition films, raises more questions than it answers, and those questions are likely to keep rolling around in your brain for days.

Ryder, a gay teenager from California, is in Nebraska for a big maternal family reunion, and no, his mother has not told the family that he is gay, urging him not to make an issue of his sexuality on their brief visit with her relatives. It’s not about you, his parents tell him. From that first lie-by-omission to just about everything that happens afterward, that couldn’t be more true. Even when Ryder is at the center of the drama, it’s not really about him.

There is much that sets him apart from his conservative relatives who have never been far from the old family farm, and it’s clear they don’t know what to make of him. He’s an outcast amongthem, even though they don’t know the central truth of his young life. The only one who seeks him out is his 9-year-old cousin Molly, who seems far more sure of herself than he does, but may be too young to understand her own actions. A bizarre but unexplained incident between them puts Ryder at the center of a drama neither he nor the audience can quite comprehend, and tangles him in a psychological web with his mother’smercurial brother.

What happened? Was someone hurt? Who was responsible? Did anything happen at all? Will there be retribution or reconciliation, and if so, for what? The audience, just like Ryder, his parents, and most everyone else in the film, is left guessing.

That unknown is emblematic of all the unspoken truths in “Take Me to the River,” and brings with it an uncomfortable sense of foreboding that permeates the film. The message, perhaps, is that truth cannot exist in any real way without trust.

The cast strikes just the right tone in this ambiguous tale. Logan Miller as Ryder and Ursula Parker as Molly are spot on, and Josh Hamilton brings a disturbing duality to his role as the uncle. — CARISSA KATZ

“When I Live My Life Over Again"

Robert Edwards

Guild Hall, tomorrow, 1 p.m.; Sag Harbor, Saturday, 5 p.m.

In “When I Live My Life Over Again,” Christopher Walken plays an aging singer just famous enough and wealthy enough to live full time in what he terms “the slums of the Hamptons‚“ or what locals might call up in the woods.

As his daughter Jude drives east from New York City, flashes of Queens, midisland, and then familiar South Fork landmarks come into view. The filmmaker paints with a broad brush, showing East Hampton scenes, then Southampton scenes, and then back to East Hampton again, obviously favoringthis flow of imagery to exact verisimilitude.

Jude, also a singer, played by Amber Heard, is having a mid-career crisis. She leaves the city to sort things out in her father’s house, a move she immediately regrets when the rest of her family presents< itself in all of its disdain. Her stepmother, played by Ann Magnuson, treats her like a servant and Corinne, her sister, is condescending and perfect with a husband and son.

Jude’s pink hair marks her as a misguided rebel. Her affair with a married man, who happens to be her analyst, seems hackneyed but works as a short-hand guide to her troubling choices. Although she pegs her problems to life in the city, it is clear that a new or temporary life in the Hamptons is not going to do her any favors either.

Still, she finds some space to grow and learns some valuable lessons, from her father’s mistakes as well as his successes. Whether she will ultimately profit from them is uncertain, but she does leave his house with a sense of hope and a better understanding of how far her talent could take her if she was just a bit more disciplined and a lot less scared. — JENNIFER LANDES

The fifth annual Sag Harbor American Music Festival will bring an eclectic mix of rootsy American sounds to that village this weekend.

These sounds — jazz, country, rock ’n’ roll, blues, and more — will fill the air from the Old Whalers Church to Long Wharf and at venues including the Whaling Museum, the American Hotel, and various restaurants, shops, and galleries. The complete schedule and tickets for the headline events are at sagharbomusic.org.

Those planning to attend the festival can get in the mood tonight at 7:30 with “Legends of American Music,” a film hosted by Joe Lauro, at Bay Street Theater. Tickets are $15.

The Fairfield Four, launched in 1921 atNashville’s Fairfield Baptist Church, will make their first-ever appearance on Long Island when they perform tomorrow at 8 p.m. at the Old Whalers Church. The Grammy-winning group had become a quartet by the 1940s and, while its original members are deceased, the National Endowment for the Arts has designated the Fairfield Four as National Heritage Fellows. They have performed or recorded with artists including John Fogerty, Dolly Parton, and Amy Grant, and appeared in the film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”

“They are known as masters of traditional African-American a capella gospel,” Kelly Connaughton Dodds, the festival’s president and co-artistic director, said of the Fairfield Four. “A capella gospel has influenced all kinds of American music. For our fifth anniversary, we feel it was a special opportunity for us to present them. For many, it will be a once-in-a-lifetime performance.” Tickets for the Fairfield Four are $25 and $45.

Free performances will begin at 11 a.m. on Saturday and conclude at 9 p.m. That night at 9, the HillBenders will perform “The Who’s Tommy, a Bluegrass Opry” at Bay Street Theater. Chosen by Rolling Stone magazine as one of its top picks from the 2015 South by Southwest Music, Film, and Interactive Festival in Austin, Tex., the Springfield, Mo., group plays the Who’s groundbreaking rock opera in its entirety, a 75-minute “Whograss” performance including video accompaniment and audience participation. Tickets are $25.

A gospel brunch featuring the Ron Crichlow Ensemble will complete the festival on Sunday from noon to 2 p.m. at Harlow East restaurant. Tickets include a prix fixe menu.

The festival will also feature the work of the artist Maryann Lucas, who lives and works in Sag Harbor. “She suggested, and offered to paint for us, musicians in various locations in Sag Harbor,” Ms. Connaughton Dodds said. In each of the festival’s five years, Ms. Lucas has created a painting featuring musicians at a prominent location in the village, which is raffled to benefit the festival. “Additional funds we raise help in our donations to local music programs and other things throughout the year,” Ms. Connaughton Dodds said. “She’s wonderful.”

New at Tripoli East Hampton

“Lingua Franca,” an exhibition of new paintings by Melanie Moczarski, will open at the Tripoli Gallery in East Hampton on Saturday, with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m., and continue through Nov. 16.

Working with acrylic-on-polyester film, Ms. Moczarski uses a consistent palette to create compositions whose organic and curvilinear lines and overlapping forms seem to breathe and move. “I see each painting as an X-ray or trace of sorts, of the forces at play, from the subtle to the gross,” said the artist, who lives and works in Brooklyn.

Movie Posters at Arts Center

“Lights, Camera, Action! 50 Years of Film in Posters” is on view through Nov. 22 at the Southampton Arts Center. The exhibition consists of more than 75 film favorites from the 1950s through the 1990s, Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Philip Cheng to Sign Books

Philip Cheng, a Bridgehampton photographer whose book “Still: The East End Photographs” has just been published by Jovis, will sign copies at Barnes & Noble at 82nd Street and Broadway tomorrow at 7 p.m. and at BookHampton in East Hampton on Sunday afternoon at 4.

Forty five at Ashawagh

“Contact,” an exhibition of the work of 45 artists organized by Ellen Dooley, will be on view at Ashawagh Hall in Springs Saturday and Sunday from 10

a.m. to 5 p.m. A reception will take place Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m.

The artists were asked to present their versions of “contact,” which the invitation defined, in part, as “a coming together or touching . . . visual observa•tion . . . a person who might be of use, a connection . . . a connection between two conductors that permits a flow of current or heat . . . a contact print . . . to communicate with.” Works will include painting, sculpture, photography, and mixed media.

“Material Matters” at S.C.C.

“Material Matters,” a group exhibition, will open Tuesday at the Southampton Cultural Center and continue through Nov. 17. A reception will be held on Oct. 10 from 4 to 6 p.m.

The show, which has been organized by Arlene Bujese, the center’s curator-in-residence, will include hanging wire sculpture, abstract assemblage, metal construction, translucent abstract forms suspended from the ceiling, collage, clay related to both figuration and abstract forms, handmade art books, narrative embroidery, and drawing.

The participating artists are Monica Banks, Patricia Feiwel, David Geiser, Alice Hope, Carol Hunt, Setha Low, Christa Maiwald, Barry McCallion, Jeff Muhs, Gregory Thorpe, Pamela Topham, and Sarah Jaffe Turnbull.

On view at the center through Satur•day is the 2015 annual Juried Art Exhibition, judged this year by Christina Mossaides Strassfield, curator at Guild Hall. First prize was awarded to John Capello of Sag Harbor for his stone sculpture. Ruth Nasca of East Hampton won second prize for her “Movie Poster Painting.”

Four at Monika Olko

A group exhibition of work by Brett Loving, Malu Tan, Tara Bach, and Dean Johnson is on view at the Monika Olko Gallery in Sag Harbor through Oct. 31. A reception will be held Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.

Mr. Loving uses machinery and custom-designed brushes and tools to push and pull color in the creation of vibrant abstract paintings. Ms. Tan’s paintings take their inspiration from nature but range from impressionistically figurative to abstractions reminiscent of Mark Rothko.

Ms. Bach has worked representationally in painting, sculpture, and works on paper, but has recently been captivated by abstraction, producing canvases alive with swirling color. Mr. Johnson, who has cited Frank Stella as an inspiration, fashions mixed-media pieces from plexi-resin panels, pigmented ink, encaustic wax, film, oil paint, and lights.

Groudas Sculpture in Sag

An exhibition of sculpture by Nick and Nancy Groudas is now on view at the AMG Gallery for the Arts in Sag Harbor and will continue through Oct. 12. The couple has been making sculpture, furniture, and assemblages since marrying in 1997.

Their work is created using salvaged steel collected throughout New York State from old car parts, vintage farm machinery, and old bicycles, and combined with antique lumber, barn wood, tools, and other found objects. The couple refers to their work as “industrial evolution,” as it reclaims and repurposes discarded and often obsolete materials.

“Summer Works” at Grenning

The Grenning Gallery in Sag Harbor will present “Summer Works,” a group exhibition, from Saturday through Nov. 15. A reception will be held Saturday from 5:30 to 7 p.m. The show’s title refers to the gallery’s traditional fall show of plein air landscapes painted by its artists during the summer, but this year many of the painters found inspiration in their studios.

Participating artists are Marc Dalessio, Ben Fenske, Edwina Lucas, Maryann Lucas, John Morfis, Ramiro, Nelson White, and Christian White. The show will also include smaller works from the estate of James Britton, who worked in Sag Harbor during the 1920s.

Drone Photography Workshop

Dell Cullum, a wildlife expert and contributing photographer to The Star, will conduct a drone photography work-shop at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton on Oct. 17 from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Moving through the LongHouse grounds, Mr. Cullum will demonstrate how to capture sweeping vistas and zoom in for bird’s-eye views from breathtaking heights, and everyone “will have an opportunity to experience flying.” The cost is $40, $30 for members. No equipment is required.

The Met: Live in HD series will kick off its 2015-16 season at Guild Hall on Saturday at 1 p.m. with “Il Trovatore,” Verdi’s four-act tragedy. Its notoriously complicated plot includes revenge, mistaken identity, rivalry between suitors, suicide, and execution, all pulled together by its “absolutely glorious” music, according to WQXR-FM radio’s “Opera in Brief.”

The production stars Anna Netrebko as Leonora, the heroine who sacrifices her life, Yonghoon Lee as Manrico, the ill-fated troubadour, Dmitri Hvorostovsky as his rival, and Dolora Zajick as the gypsy with the troubled past. Tickets are $22, $20 for members, $15 for students. All Met opera screenings will now have reserved seating.

Prior to the telecast, from 11:30 to 12:30, Victoria Bond, a composer and conductor, and Barbara Zinn Krieger, a librettist, will present a program on composing in the 21st century that will include a preview of Ms. Bond’s original opera about Clara Schumann, with scenes performed by Meredith Mecum and Benjamin Bloomfield, the two lead singers, as Clara and Robert Schumann. Tickets for the presentation, which will include a celebratory reception, are $50.

Montauk Library Group members are eligible for $15 tickets to Guild Hall’s Met: Live in HD programs through December. Members must sign up and pay at the library’s circula- tion desk no later than the Sunday prior to the opera. Tickets will be distributed at Guild Hall 30 minutes before each program.

The Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival will honor Stanley Nelson with its Career Achievement Award at this year’s festival, which will take place at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor from Dec. 3 through Dec. 6.

Mr. Nelson’s films have earned five Primetime Emmys, two awards from the Sundance Film Festival, two Peabodys, and he is a MacArthur Foundation Fellow. While his films have explored a wide range of topics, he has been especially drawn to stories of the civil rights movement. His film “Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution” will be shown at this year’s festival.

The Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center will hold a benefit gospel concert, “Songs of Solomon,” on Oct. 10 at 4 p.m. at the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church. Tickets are $30 for general admission, $50 for reserved seating, and $100 for reserved seats and a reception with wine, beer, and a raw bar. Tickets can be purchased at bhccrc.org or by calling 537-0616, and all proceeds will benefit the center.

Guild Hall’s JDTLab will present a free staged reading of “Air Rites,” a play by Richard Brockman, on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. The production, directed by Mirra Bank and with music by Heather Christian, tells the story of the dream, the realization, and the destruction of New York’s Pennsylvania Station, one of the country’s great public buildings. The story is told through the lives of the family that built it, the family that destroyed it, and the family of a boy whose passion for trains imagined it.

Dr. Brockman, a psychiatrist and playwright, and Ms. Bank, a filmmaker, share houses in East Hampton and New York City.

The Hamptons International Film Festival has partnered this year with the United Nations and the International Organization for Migration to bring short films made by students around the world to the East Hampton screen.

Students from schools across the East End will view the films, which focus on the themes of migration, diversity, and social inclusion, at the end of next week, providing fodder for discussion and ongoing school activities that will help local youngsters under- stand and grapple with those issues.

The films, in many languages but subtitled in English, are among the winners selected by an international jury in the Plural + Youth Video Festival sponsored by the U.N.’s Alliance of Civilizations along with the migration organization.

The tie-in with the U.N. program was championed by Kim Brizzolara, a member of the film festival board, and was organized by Linda Biscardi, another H.I.F.F. board member and a retired East Hampton teacher who has, for every year of the festival, devised a way to mine its offerings for rich educational experiences for local students.

Diversity, acceptance, tolerance, human rights, identity and gender issues -- all of these are front and center both globally among nations and in each community, school, and classroom. After seeing how children worldwide have examined these things, the aim is to have local students make their own films around the same issues.

From the 28 winning short student films in the U.N. video contest, Ms. Biscardi created an hourlong program for seventh and eighth-grade students. The 19 films were made in various countries by students of all ages and center on a variety of topics that dovetail with the curricular themes of tolerance, inclusion, immigration, and self-esteem. Back in the classroom, the films will serve as “a springboard for discussion, reading, and writing,” Ms. Biscardi said.

Teachers and administrators at local schools were provided with copies of the films and a classroom guide prepared by Ms. Biscardi with a sample curriculum and list of discussion questions to highlight and expand on the issues touched on in the films.

For instance, one film shows the ramifications of stereotyping; the subject of immigration and “welcoming new people” is the theme of another. Another, she said, addresses the topic of “never giving up on your dreams; setting goals, no matter what obstacles are in your way.”

The curriculum guides are open-ended, so that teachers can design their own activities, tailoring them to their students and tying them in to their studies or particular situations in their schools.

Student response “is always colored by what they’ve experienced in life,” Ms. Biscardi said. Viewing the films showing how children all over the world respond to the various issues is “a way to broaden their perspectives.”

Three international students who made the film “3 Things You Should Know About My Hijab” for the U.N. film contest — Sarah Champagne, Hodan Hujaleh, and Kayf Abdulqadir, a Muslim girl — are coming to speak to local students.

The H.I.F.F. program on Friday, Oct. 9, will be for 296 high school juniors and seniors selected by their school administrators and teachers as leaders -- student government representatives, scholar-athletes, and the like — in recognition of “youth as powerful agents for social change,” according to program materials. It will include a screening of 10 films followed by a panel discussion and question-and-answer session. As of early this week, students from the Ross, East Hampton, and Pierson High Schools were slated to participate.

Panelists will include Jordi Torrent of the U.N.’s media and literary division, the film contest’s co-sponsor, and additional student filmmakers who entered the contest, including Siarrah Kane, who made “She Who Is.”

Her film, said Ms. Biscardi, “exposes stereotypes about how women are labeled.” It is a film that “encourages all young women to have a voice and be strong, and to not cave in to society’s unfair labeling of females.” Ms. Biscardi chose it to present, she said, because “I wanted that message to get out to the young girls in the audience, that this is a topic to get out to leaders in your school.”

Elizabeth Reveiz, the director of English language learning and the bilingual program at East Hampton High School and an advocate for immigrants, will also be a panelist, discussing “migration, diversity, and social inclusion,” Ms. Biscardi said. That is “another topic important to our community” because of the growing immigrant population, “and also a topic that is so current in the news.” It is “something that these juniors and seniors will need to know about as they go on to college or the armed forces, or wherever they go.”

Ms. Biscardi, who retired from teaching in 2008 after 35 years as an East Hampton English teacher in grades 7 through 12 and chairwoman of the English department, has designed and implemented at least one, and sometimes as many as five, educational programs tied to the film festival for every one of its 23 years.

She got involved as a board member at the festival’s inception. As an educator, she thought, “We have an international film festival in our backyard — how can I utilize that great resource in kids’ lives?”

The annual programs were designed “to bring the festival back into the classroom — [to be] not just a day of film,” but a way to use the festival to enhance students’ education.

The annual projects often took the title of a particular festival film that provided the theme for student activities. For “Seeds of Peace,” based on a documentary about a camp program that brings together children of different ethnicities or nationalities that are in conflict with one another, Palestinian and Israeli youngsters were invited to East Hampton to interact with local students.

“Not in Our Town,” a documentary about the response of Billings, Mont., residents to an incident of anti-Semitism (even non-Jews put menorahs in their windows), spurred the inception of East Hampton Town’s Anti-Bias Task Force, Ms. Biscardi said.

One year, Ms. Biscardi’s students wrote to the director Steven Spielberg about the work of his Shoah Foundation documenting experiences of the Holocaust and were invited to attend the premiere of “Schindler’s List.”

Local music educators got involved when “Music of the Heart,” a movie in which Meryl Streep starred as Roberta Guaspari, a teacher who got students in a Harlem school involved in playing stringed instruments, was screened. Ms. Guaspari attended and was greeted with a performance by violin players from many East End schools.

When “Colors Straight Up,” a documentary about inner-city Los Angeles students involved in studying Shakespeare, was shown, East Hampton students became their pen pals; when “Hoop Dreams” came out, varsity and junior varsity coaches viewed the film with their teams.

And so on, for every year. There was a “Children’s Lives” project piggybacking on the “Men’s Lives” documentary about East End baymen. It featured local kids whose parents fished. In other years, students made their own silent film and a film about the film festival itself.

“The Bully Project,” screened three years ago, stands out for her in the list, Ms. Biscardi said. “It was a small film that just became a nationwide movement in schools, and our district was one of the first to be involved.”

Lee Hirsch, the documentarian who made it, had the parents of a child who was “bullied to death” come to East Hampton. “Administrators, teachers, and children were crying,” said Ms. Biscardi. Anti-bullying programs prompted by that film are still ongoing in local schools.

“Whenever I see a film, I try to see how that film can touch a kid’s life in some way  — how I can use that film in education,” Ms. Biscardi said. “Children learn visually very, very well, and that can stay with them — those stories. It is an incredibly rich tool for education.”

The teacher is now seeing some of her students’ names in the credits of film festival films. “It’s what I had imagined,” she said. “I don’t know that our community or the film festival knows how much it has impacted kids’ lives.”

Download the 2015 Hamptons International Film Festival program guide as a PDF.

Another film from the 2013 documentary festival, “The Only Real Game,” directed by Mirra Bank of East Hampton, is now available for download from iTunes, Amazon.com, and the film’s website. “The Only Real Game” is about the importance of baseball to the people of Manipur, a remote and troubled corner of India beset by civil wars, martial law, drugs, and H.I.V./AIDS. It follows Major League Baseball Envoy Program coaches who travel there to help the residents develop their skills.

The Choral Society of the Hamptons will hold auditions for its next concert on Monday, by appointment, at the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church. Rehearsals are usually held on Mondays from 7:30 to 10 p.m.

The concert will take place on Dec. 6 and will feature Ottorino Respighi’s “Laud to the Nativity” and other festive works, in two performances. More information is available at the choral society’s website or by calling 204-9402.