Barb Bretz

"Queen of Chess" is screening in the Premieres section.

"Give me the Ball" is screening in the Premieres section.

"Wicker" is screening in the Premieres section.

"The Invite" is screening in the Premieres section.

"Everybody to Kenmure Street" is screening in the World Cinema Documentary category.

"One in a Million" is screening in the World Cinema Documentary category.

"Birds of War" is screening in the World Cinema Documentary category.

"Tuner" is screening in the Spotlight Category.

Director Abby Ellis discusses the film "The Lake," which follows three individuals fighting to save a dying lake. They see what’s coming — poisoned air, a collapsing ecosystem, a community on the brink — and they throw themselves into the everyday, often mundane work of trying to stop it. As they push against bureaucracy, apathy and the ticking clock of a crisis decades in the making, something eerie and heartbreaking lingers at the edges: the dust rising in the background, a reminder of what will be lost if they fail.

Filmmakers Janay Boulos and Abd Alkader Habak discuss their film "Birds of War," which tells the love story of a London-based Lebanese journalist and a Syrian activist and cameraman through 13 years of personal archives across revolutions, war and exile.