When there is threat of snow in Seattle, people stay home. Unfortunately for the 2002 Women in Cinema film festival, the city was dusted with snow during the fest's big weekend. Luckily, this didn't keep a sell-out crowd from packing the Cinerama for the Rose Troche's warmly-embraced The Safety of Objects (it helped that director Troche attended, and worked the audience like a stand-up comedian). But the rest of the week, the fest's main home, the much-smaller Harvard Exit theater, suffered a bit in attendance from the hibernating movie fans. This was unfortunate, as WIC had one of its strongest lineups in years.

WIC scored some buzzed-about films on the fest circuit, including Troche's opening night film, as well as Jill Sprecher's ensemble drama 13 Conversations About One Thing, the crowd-pleasing Danish Dogme romantic comedy Italian for Beginners, and the dream-like Kiwi coming-of-age film Rain. I enjoyed all of these films, which in the hit-and-miss world of film festivals, is a pretty darn good track record. There was also a bizarre Australian road movie The Goddess of 1967, and the flawed but fascinating documentary The Mark of Caïn, about the symbolism of Russian prison tattoos. That was accompanied by a gorgeous pseudo-documentary (or short film essay) called Salt, about the salt mining and transport industry in Russia—one of those films that will most likely (and unfortunately) only ever been seen by festival audiences.

But the joy of a film fest is discovering a kick-ass film that you've never heard of, one that blows you away. The Argentinian film La Ciénaga, the feature film debut by director Lucrecia Martel, is both icky and mesmerizing, like peeking through a fence at your most grotesque drunken neighbors. A portrait of an unraveling bourgeois family, the film is darkly funny, disturbing, and surprisingly affecting. Though not for all tastes (a chunk of the audience fled as soon as the credits rolled), this film has stuck in my head, and I hope that it will someday get find an audience.

Here's a list of what Moviepie managed to catch at Women in Cinema, with a red arrow next to our recommendations:

13 Conversations About One Thing (USA) La Ciénaga (Argentina / Spain / France)    The Goddess of 1967 (Australia) Italian for Beginners (Denmark)

The Mark of Cain (USA) Rain (New Zealand) The Safety of Objects (USA)