Edmonton, Alberta–Day One for me at the film festival here. I planned on going to see some Dutch experimental films tonight at 9:45 pm, but after seeing Anvil! The Story of Anvil, I just wanted to savor the movie for a while longer.

Everybody has a dream when they’re young, whether it’s to be the great American novelist, a great film director…or a headlining heavy metal band. The members of Anvil got that wish in the mid 1980s, when they played the massive stadium concerts with the other top metal bands.

Director Sascha Gervasi was a 15 year old fan in the mid 1980s when he barged into Anvil’s dressing room in London, and subsequently became a roadie for the band. Flash forward years later, and Gervasi had garnered a level of success in Hollywood, and he checked in on his old friends in Anvil. Thus began a three-year filming process, as the band, who never made it big, continued to rock on and pursue their dream.

For anyone who ever wondered what would have happened if they had sent that novel to yet another publisher or not quit film school, this documentary is about what happens when your dream doesn’t pan out the way you thought it would…but you continue to live it anyway. After its 15 minutes of fame in the mid-1980s, Anvil dropped off the map while the other popular metal bands of that era made their millions.

The film is told through the perspectives of the band’s two core members, Steve “Lips” Kudlow (lead singer/lead guitars) and Robb Reiner (drummer) who met and began to play music when they were 14.Lips

According to band members, people have compared the film to This is Spinal Tap and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. For me, the film was clearly not a mockumentary, although it has its painfully funny moments, and it’s about 180-degrees away from Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, which shows in agonizing detail the perils of so-called success. I think “Anvil! The Story of Anvil” is much closer in theme to Babette’s Feast, and if that comparison tantalizes you enough to see the film, I’ve done my job. For those of you who haven’t seen “Babette’s Feast,” go out and rent it. And then, when “Anvil! The Story of Anvil” opens up in U.S. theatres (in March 2009 I’m told), go see that too.

I saw two other movies today, both of them quirky and lovely. Big Story in a Small City was made in Armenia and that fact alone made me curious to see it. The director Gor Kirakosian did a great job with his actors in this high-energy, tragicomedy farce about a man who dies in a freak accident and narrates the film from the great beyond. He’s “on view” in the family apartment prior to the funeral when one cousin realizes the man in the coffin isn’t really the father, but a stranger who looks very similar except for the prison tattoos and a nasty looking scar. Trying to find out who the body is and where it belongs sends the son and his two sidekicks on a comic trip that zigzags across Yerevan. I don’t know if this film will make it U.S. theatres or Netflix, but it’s worth a look.

The other film I saw today was Spanish director Gerardo Oliveres’ The Great Match (La Gran Final), whose premise is that some fans will go to great lengths to see the 2002 World Cup final between Germany and Brazil. The making of this movie must have been a logistical nightmare since it follows Mongolian nomads in the austere steppes, a group of Tuareg traders on caravan through the Sahara and a group of Indians in the Amazon jungle. The actors are all local non-professionals speaking the local language, and they all get caught up in screwball difficulties to make the dream of watching the game come true. It’s a paean to the universality of the love of soccer, except for the handful of women who profess scorn for a game of “men running around in their underwear,” as the wise old Mongolian grandmother says, “It’s a game for morons.”

Tomorrow I plan to see two movies from one of my favorite filmmakers: Canadian Deepa Mehta, as well as many other films I can squeeze it.