To call dentist Bertram Pincus ([Ricky Gervais]) a "people person" is akin to labeling a couch potato a "go-getter." Bertram prefers to be left alone, stuffing wads of cotton in the mouths of his talkative patients to avoid conversation or sneaking past a colleague's new-baby celebration. A fluke reaction to a minor surgical procedure leaves Bertram dead for seven minutes. When he comes to, he is remarkably able to see and hear a myriad of ghosts wandering Manhattan.

The festival opens Oct. 4 with Giorgio Diritti's The Wind Blows Round (Il vento fa ilsuo giro). The film tells the story of a French goatherd and his family who arrive in the "spectacular Alpine locations" (according to Variety) of Italy's remote Occitanio region, arousing both welcome and misunderstanding. Some of the dialogue is in Occitane, related to Catalan.

Closing night, Nov. 15, features One Hundred Nails (Centochiodi), the latest-and, he says, last-fiction film by Ermanno Olmi (The Tree of Wooden Clogs), which The Lumière Reader's Joe Sheppard calls "an intellectual whodunit" that is "a lyrical celebration of nature and life." Cinematography is by Olmi's son Fabio Olmi.

Motion pictures