MUMBAI: The Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) will open on 1 October at the Camden Opera House.

The festival opens at the Opera House with the New England premiere of AJ Schnack‘s latest documentary, Convention a collaborative effort from eight different documentarians covering every aspect of the 2008 Democratic National Convention, from a week beforehand all the way through President Obama‘s acceptance speech at Mile High Stadium in Denver, and closes there on Sunday, October 4, with acclaimed documentarian Robert Stone‘s Earth Days, which traces the origins of the environmental movement through the eyes of nine Americans who propelled it from its post-war beginnings in the 1950s to 1970‘s first Earth Day, and to its status as a political force in the U.S. today.

Sandwiched in between are films on global ecological sustainability, films made in Maine or with a Maine connection, and films that Fowlie describes as exploring the experiences of kids who are trying to understand the situation they‘re in and somehow transcend it, as portrayed in, among other films, Because We Were Born, Racing Dreams, and October Country which according to Fowlie, "is one of the most gorgeous films I‘ve ever seen."

The first festival had only 15 films while this year there‘ll be 25 feature films and many shorts.