L’Affaire Farewell at the Alexandria Film Fest. (publicity photo)

The all-volunteer Alexandria Film Festival is only in its fourth year, but already it has evolved from a mishmash of hyper-local and big-budget Hollywood fare to a more focused program consisting of 40 independent films —  an even split of features and shorts, and every genre "except horror," says Patti North, the director of programming. The four-day festival also has outgrown its original home, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office building, and will screen films in six venues this year, including the Old Town Theater, AMC Hoffman Center, and the Torpedo Factory, the site of tonight's free opening party.

The Alexandria Commission for the Arts launched the festival in 2007, with North taking the lead. "I was always trying to get us to focus more on digital art, what's happening, and I knew that under our radar there was all sorts of filmmaking going on that we found out about in a a roundabout way," she says. "We'd hear about it at cocktail parties or something. And I wanted to bring it above the radar. I guess I made myself enough of a pain in the butt that they said, 'OK, well you do it.'"

This year's slate includes films from as near as Alexandria and as far as Taiwan and Belgium. There are documentaries about urban chickens, a theologian known as the "Angel of Death," and a Las Vegas ballot initiative to legalize pot. On the drama side, there are movies about an Israeli-Palestinian love affair, slavery in India, and an adaptation of the novel The River Why.

Here, based on their trailers and descriptions, are the feature-length films most worth seeing (see this schedule for showtimes, locations, and tickets):

DOCUMENTARY

Examined Life

A parade of great thinkers, including Cornel West, Martha Nussbaum, and Slavoj Žižek.

Faubourg Tremé

The untold history of black New Orleans.

Grass Roots

A look at the 2006 battle in Las Vegas over Proposition 7, a ballot initiative asking voters to legalize marijuana.

Griefwalker

A portrait of Stephen Jenkinson, the "Angel of Death."

Race to Nowhere

Riding Waiting for Superman's draft, this film explores our overworked schoolchildren.

Mad City Chickens

A tongue-in-cheek look at urban chickens.

DRAMA

Fred and Vinnie

Character actor Fred Stoller makes a comedy about being a character actor.

L’Affaire Farewell

An espionage film, based on a true story, about a disenchanted KGB officer who passes Soviet secrets to a French civil engineer working in Moscow.

The River Why

I'd watch anything with Matt Saracen in it.

Jaffa

A young Palestinian man impregnates an Israeli woman. Things become complicated, for obvious reasons.