One Team: The Story of The Lewiston High School Blue Devils from LHSOneTeamFilm on Vimeo.
LEWISTON — The Lewiston High School boys’ soccer team won its first state championship last November.
Next month, the story on how those athletes from six countries — Congo, Germany, Kenya, Somalia, Turkey and the U.S. — came together as “one team” will be featured in a documentary that should be one of the top attractions at the Emerge Film Festival.
“One Team: The Story of the Lewiston High School Blue Devils” is one of 38 features, documentaries and short films selected from more than 2,300 entrants for the third annual festival being held from Thursday, April 28, to Sunday, May 1, at various sites throughout Lewiston and Auburn.
“We’re pretty proud of it,” said Bates College Assistant Professor Jon Cavallero, a member of the programming committee. “We have a nice mix of films.”
The official selections include movies by Maine filmmakers, standouts from other festivals, foreign films, an animated feature film from Quebec, student films — including one made by a 9-year-old — and films featuring familiar faces from Hollywood.
The four-day festival includes 11 feature films, eight documentaries, nine shorts and 10 emerging filmmaker short films. Films made by graduates of Edward Little and Lewiston high schools and Bates College are included.
Besides accepting submissions, the festival also reached out to filmmakers at several of the top festivals, Cavallero said.
“We saw what was playing at other film festivals and went out and contacted some of those filmmakers,” Cavallero said. “They were very receptive to that. They’re excited to screen their films here in Lewiston-Auburn.”
Those solicitations produced entries from films that premiered at such prestigious events like Sundance, South by Southwest and the Toronto International Film Festival, Cavallero said.
But it is the film about the Lewiston boys’ soccer team that has already created a local and national buzz — including a CNN report — since a three-minute trailer was released shortly after the state championship game.
Filmmaker Ian Clough, a Lewiston High School graduate who is still shooting and editing his film, will screen a director’s cut of “One Team” on Friday night, April 29, at The Dolard & Priscilla Gendron Franco Center in Lewiston.
“We are thrilled to announce the first of many exciting moments for us to look forward to,” Clough wrote on the film’s Facebook page.
Highlighting Saturday’s daylong event is the feature film “Baby, Baby, Baby,” which won both the Jury and Audience Award for Comedy at the Austin Film Festival.
Directed by Brian Klugman, nephew of the late Jack Klugman and a recurring character on the TV show “Bones,” “Baby, Baby, Baby” stars Klugman and Adrianne Palicki (“Marvel’s Agent of Shield”) in a romantic drama about relationships. Hollywood stars who have small roles in the film include Bradley Cooper, Jessica Alba, William Shatner, Dennis Haysbert, Cloris Leachman and Kelsey Grammer.
Klugman and producers Robert Bauer and Cassidy Lunnen will attend the screening.
Emerge will kick things off Thursday with the Maine film “Neptune” at Community Little Theatre in Auburn. The film received much buzz at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival, a festival for smaller films held at the same location and time as Sundance, Cavallaro said. Director Derek Kimball is a graduate of Edward Little High School.
Sunday’s programming will feature the EFFy Award-winning films selected Saturday night at the awards show.
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