Earth: One Amazing Day

(U.K./China)

Robert Redford narrates this festival opener, an irresistible BBC nature doc (and sequel to 2007’s Earth) that travels the globe over a single 24-hour period to reveal sights that include a momma zebra defending against a cheetah attack, the surprisingly robust dating habits of the sloth, and the insanely cute (and extremely rare) langur monkeys of China. As ever, it’s the photography here that’s the real star, although a bunch of back-scratching grizzly bears offer stiff competition. Parents can be assured that there’s predation but little in the way of death; One Amazing Day is more invested in a sense of wonder, as with the alien spectacle of some five million mayflies (life span: 24 hours) buzzing a small stretch of river, something that wouldn’t look out of place in Jodorowsky’s Dune.

Vancity, April 8 (4:30 p.m.), 11 (10 a.m.), and 14 (10 a.m.)

Village Rockstars

(India)

In a remote part of India’s northeastern state of Assam, young Dhunu spends her days climbing trees, rollicking around, and playing Styrofoam guitar in a fake band with the village boys. An enterprising way with betel nuts gets her a few steps closer to owning a real instrument, but puberty and the demands of tradition are closing in. Made by Rima Das with nonactors and virtually no crew (aside from a lot of other people also named Das), this is a not-to-be-missed charmer that seemingly arrives via miracle, paced as it is like rural life itself and conjured from little more than the land and the people on it. And you can’t tear your eyes away.

Vancity, April 13 (5:30 p.m.) and 14 (4 p.m.)

High Fantasy

(South Africa)

Dispensing instantly with the frivolity of its premise, Jenna Bass’s iPhone-shot faux doc closes R2R on a decidedly 14A note as four young adults—one white, three black—switch bodies during a remote desert camping trip, plunging them into the trauma of race and gender otherness. For one thing, they’re on land “owned” by the family of white girl Lexi, loading many of the barbs, stings, and uncomfortable realizations that inevitably follow. But as the single boy among them, it might be Thami who’s hit hardest, especially as he grasps, with some terror, that his new life as a woman means dealing with guys like him. It can’t quite sustain the premise to the very end, but this is a brutally smart and well-acted film.

Vancity, April 14 (7 p.m.)