The last film we caught at the festival was The Visitor, written and directed by Tom McCarthy, best known for his 2003 Sundance darling The Station Agent. Like the previous film, McCarthy's sophomore piece is a well-crafted work about how people from disparate backgrounds can come together and form an unconventional family. Walter Vale, an uptight widower and bored college econ professor, has totally shut down and withdrawn from everything in his life, but when he heads to NYC for a conference, he finds a young Muslim couple, Tarek and Zaineb, living in his usually-empty apartment. He takes pity on them and lets them stay, and a friendship develops--until Tarek becomes a victim of racial profiling and is sent to an immigrant detention center, and Walter decides to take responsibility for his new friends. The Visitor is such a quintessential indie picture: the cast, led by Richard Jenkins, is strong, the writing is elegant, and the cinematography is simple yet effective. Most importantly, the film doesn't beat you over the head with immigration issues or over-the-top commentary on the war on terror. The messages here are nuanced, and conveyed more through subtle camerawork than bloviated speechifying. Thank god. more ›