“I got to get a job to pay child support, but to get a job I have to have a driver’s license. And to get a driver’s license, I still need to pay child support.” So says Bambi, the hero of filmmaker Malik Vitthal’s touching street tale Imperial Dreams. He’s explaining to a DMV worker the absurdity of his current, impossible dilemma passed down to him by bureaucrats in a big building far, far away. Played by Attack the Block‘s John Boyega, Bambi’s spent over two years in jail and just been released to find his young son, Day, growing up virtually unsupervised in the slums of Los Angeles. While in prison, he discovered a passion for creative writing and plans to use pencil and paper to get he and his son out of the hood and on to a brighter future. There’s been some progress–one of his short stories got published in a magazine–but with his past so deeply-rooted in gangland, chances of escape are slim and none.

Director Mark Vitthal’s feature debut has been making noise on the festival circuit since Sundance, and there’s merit to the excitement. The story of a reformed former thug fighting to escape the gangster life is an American staple, revisited frequently in recent years on the indie scene, but Vitthal and co-writer Ismet Mrcic’s riff is an elegant one, as is their version of the inner-city milieu. The film is strikingly tender, with Bambi’s love and devotion for his son (and to a lesser extent, his art) informing every scene. Bambi’s toughness is never in question, but as an anti-hero, he’s of the gentler variety.

The most imminent threat to Bambi’s dream of a clean future is his thug uncle Shrimp (Glenn Plummer), who Day’s been under the care of while Bambi was in prison. Upon Bambi’s release, Shrimp provides he and Day with food and a place to live, but with a catch: If Bambi wants to stay under his uncle’s roof, he’s going to have to do jobs for him again, returning to the gangster life that bought him a ticket to prison in the first place. This, along with his child support woes and Day’s mother (Keke Palmer) being locked up herself, puts Bambi smack dab in the middle of an inescapable living nightmare.

He’s willing to fight for his future, though. He doesn’t succumb to Shrimp’s offers of gangster relapse, leaving with Day and living out of his ratty car parked in a project parking lot. He keeps hope alive with his writing, candid confessions of his trails on the street we see him recite to his son under the christmas lights he’s lined the inside of their car-home with. Boyega is terrific in these father-son moments; he’ll fill your heart and then break it. These are desperate times for Bambi, and Boyega conveys the urgency of his situation with every movement, his face a window to his internal struggle.

Vitthal’s portrayal of criminal life is respectful, with no characters being over-simplified or stereotyped. Yes, there are gunfights and nighttime alleyway foot chases, but more than any other gang movie in recent memory, Imperial Dreams sidesteps cliches and carves out a place of its own next to the best films in the genre. Vitthal’s imagery is dreamlike, which is perfectly appropriate; this isn’t a film about hood life so much as it is about the spirit of those who dream of overcoming it.

The 37th annual Mill Valley Film Festival is upon us, a festival with a reputation of showcasing future Academy Awards Best Picture winners (12 years a Slave, Argo, The Artist), but we’ve decided to highlight some of our most anticipated indies at the festival because, well, that’s sort of our schtick. There are dozens of independent films in the lineup worth your attention (check out the full program here), but these are ten that have got us excited to drive across the Golden Gate, plop ourselves down in one of Marin County’s beautiful arthouses, and enjoy the indie goodness.

Like Sunday, Like Rain 

Frank Whaley is more often known as an actor than a director – I will forever picture him as the fast-talking slacker in the ’80s film Career Opportunities – but his fourth feature film follows the themes his previous films seem to like explore, namely the struggle of being a young artist with the weight of responsibility pushing in. Like Sunday, Like Rain features Leighton Meester as a struggling musician suddenly assigned legal guardianship of a 12 year old boy – who happens to be a musical prodigy. Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong plays her boyfriend, and Debra Messing plays the boy’s mother. Questionable casting choices, but the premise is indie-intriguing and ripe with dramatic opportunity.

10,000 KM 

Carlos Marques-Marcet’s first feature film has already received plenty of glowing reviews. His take on long-distance relationships, the technology involved, and the difficulty of maintaining closeness so far away is both timely and challenging. The film revolves around Alex (Natalia Tena) and Sergi (David Verdaguer), a couple in Madrid trying to decide how their future together will play out as Alex’s career as a photographer has not yet taken off and they contemplate having a baby. When Alex is offered a career-breaking opportunity in L.A. they decide to try and make it a year apart while she pursues her dream. This new development in their relationship, and the simultaneously helpful, yet prohibitive nature of online communication, sounds like it could make for a very intriguing drama.

St. Vincent 

Bill Murray. Let’s be honest that’s reason number one we want to see this hilarious looking film about a cantankerous man who is enlisted to help look after his neighbor’s precocious kid. Melissa McCarthy is the frazzled mother forced to work long hours and thus depend on the least dependable person available. Jaeden Lieberher is Oliver, the child Vincent forms an unlikely friendship with as he takes him on questionable adventures in babysitting. While the melting-heart premise of a gruff older person befriending a kid has been juiced dry, Bill Murray may be the only actor who is pretty much guaranteed to breathe some life into it. And with the onslaught of drama saturating fall films AND film festivals, we’re sure to be grateful for the break in monotony.

What We Do In The Shadows 

Much of our anticipation for this film stems from an undying love for the short-lived HBO comedy show Flight of the Conchords. Two of the film’s stars, Jemaine Clement and Rhys Darby, star in What We Do In The Shadows. Secondly, it’s a docu-styled vampire comedy. Yes there are too many vampire movies, yes there are too many faux-documentaries, but maybe the cocktail mixing them both will be an avenue to hilarity. The general premise of the film is that a house of vampires living together in New Zealand grant access (and safety) to a team of documentarists hoping to capture an annual masquerade ball in New Zealand attended by every manner of mythical monster, including werewolves, warlocks, and of course vampires. The four vampires are Viago (Taika Waititi), Vladislav (Jemaine Clement), Deacon (Jonathan Brugh) a younger more rock-n-roll vampire, and Petyr (Ben Fransham) an older, scarier sort of vampire. It sounds ridiculous, and if it has even an ounce of the humor and charm we’ve come to expect from Clement and his gang, it should be a lot of fun.

Two Days, One Night

In Two Days, One Night, the Dardenne brothers, with their flawless technique and bare-bones storytelling, have teamed with Marion Cotillard, a mainstream star who can do anything, but shines brightest in roles that allow her to get her hands dirty. It’s a match made in heaven, really. If that isn’t exciting enough, the film’s outfitted with a boldly simple plot: Cotillard plays Sandra, an emotionally troubled factory worker who’s set to be terminated unless she can convince her co-workers to vote her back onboard and consequently forego their bonuses before the weekend is over. For the Dardennes, simple is better, and for Cotillard, simple material means open range to bare her soul and act her ass off.

After the Fall

Formerly titled Things People Do, After the Fall premiered at the Berlin Film Festival to favorable reviews and premiered in the U.S. at SXSW. Playing out like a condensed, less intense version of Breaking Bad, the film focuses on Bill Scanlon (Wes Bentley), an insurance sales man who loses his job and decides to become a robber rather than admit his situation to his wife. Word is that first time director Saar Klein has a quiet focused energy that sustains the film’s tension without too much need for action or violence. Clearly a skill he picked up as an Oscar-nominated film editor. Since we’ve been missing Breaking Bad pretty…well…badly, this nuanced suburban good-guy-gone-rogue tale sounds like it should hit the spot.

Imperial Dreams

Big things are on the horizon for British breakout John Boyega (Attack the Block), but before we get too excited about him leading the charge in next year’s Star Wars sequel, another performance of his deserves our undivided attention. In director Malik Vitthal’s Imperial Dreams, Boyega plays a reformed thug who, after discovering a passion for writing in jail, devotes his life to getting he and his 4-year-old son out of the hood and on to a brighter future where drugs and violence won’t find them. Vitthal and Boyega explore the sensitive side of street life, an approach that made Sundance audiences drum up a good amount of buzz, buzz which is likely to continue on as it passes through Mill Valley.

How I Came to Hate Math

In all of academics, few subjects strike fear in the hearts of men and women like mathematics. Long division, sines, cosines, complex numbers–it’s petrifying stuff (especially for lowly film critics like yours truly). But French filmmaker Olivier Peyon offers us a chance to re-familiarize ourselves with the art of numbers in his free-form, comprehensive doc, How I Came to Hate Math. From addressing the biggest misconceptions and myths about math; to chronicling its history; to explaining how it’s in its advanced forms a creative field; to exploring how a mathematician’s mind works, the film is dead-set on setting the record straight once and for all about everyone’s least favorite school subject. I’m open to have our minds changed about math, and though chances of that are slim (math was the bane of my existence for years), what’s more likely is that I’ll be treated to an entertaining, thought-provoking doc. That’s more than enough for me.

Soul of a Banquet

Culinary icon Cecilia Chiang had a huge impact on San Francisco food culture in the ’60s when she introduced the Bay Area to authentic Northern Chinese cuisine at her legendary Mandarin Restaurant. Over 50 years later, her influence reverberates throughout the city, and with the heartwarming homage Soul of a Banquet, filmmaker Wayne Wang chronicles the celebrity chef’s life and career while filming Cecilia in her element, cooking an epic meal for friend and fellow S.F. icon, Alice Waters. Food porn surely awaits, which is always a good thing, and there are sure to be some stories of culinary adventures woven in there as well. Just make sure you don’t watch on an empty stomach.

Living is Easy With Eyes Closed

Part of the festival’s “Viva El Cine” focus, Living is Easy with Eyes Closed is an uplifting road movie that comes to us from Spanish director David Trueba. Set in Spain in the mid-’60s just after the explosion of Beatlemania, the film follows a school teacher named Antonio (Javier Cámara) who teams picks up a runaway teen and a pregnant young woman on his way to meet his idol, John Lennon, who’s reportedly filming a movie in Almería. For those with a taste for adventure and whimsy, Trueba’s film will charm and delight–On the merry trio’s odyssey down the winding roads of Spain they find laughs, thrills, and romance. And strawberries. And fields. Together.