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Indie Doubleheader is a new feature we're trying out, where I will give fest-length reviews to notable indie films playing the fest circuit. If you're a filmmaker with a film you'd like me to consider for this column, or a film lover who's seen a film you loved and you'd like to see us cover, drop me a line at kim (at) cinematical (dot) com.

Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)

What do corrupt politicians, tree bull frogs, plastic surgery and kidnapping have in common? In Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), director Jason Kohn skillfully weaves these seemingly disparate elements together into a cohesive tale of power and corruption, poverty and wealth in Sao Paulo, the capitol of the state of Sao Paulo. Opening on a money-laundering tree farm, Kohn sets the tone of the film early with some beautiful cinematography and a riveting, unobstrusive score.

At its heart, Manda Bala is a tale about money and power. The disparity between the very rich and the very poor is marked in the bigger cities of Brazil, where the wealthy live in fantastic mansions and high-rises that overlook Brazil's favelas -- thousands of rickety shacks of cardboard and metal sheeting, where millions of poor Brazilian's struggle to survive amid crushing poverty and brutal living conditions. In Sao Paulo, the kidnapping of wealthy civilians for ransom has become a huge problem the police force is ill-equipped to resolve.

It will be a few more days before we find out the lineup for the inaugural edition of the Middle East International Film Festival in Abu Dhabi, but festival programmers have announced one thing already: a short-film competition open to anyone living in the Middle East.

The Hayah Film Competition ("hayah" is Arabic for "life"), sponsored by the festival and by Abu Dhabi Women's College, is taking the theme "life at the size of an iPod screen." Projects must be less than five minutes long and submitted in an iPod-compatible format. All the entries will be watched and judged on iPods; it may not surprise you to learn that EmiratesMac Apple User Group is also a presenting partner in the competition. Entries can be submitted now through Sept. 27, and prizes (including cash) will be given in student, professional, and amateur categories.

The Middle East International Film Festival is new, but it has a few things going for it already. One is its director, Jon Fitzgerald, a veteran festival programmer and co-founder of Slamdance, whose appointment Kim Voynar told us about in July. Another is its location. Abu Dhabi is the richest city in the world and is the capital of the emirate of Abu Dhabi, a modern, wealthy nation on the Persian Gulf. The film festival will be held at the Emirates Palace, a hotel so opulent it makes Charles Foster Kane's Xanadu look like a Motel 6.

For more information on the short-film competition, visit the Hayah Film Competition's website. For more on the festival itself -- which runs Oct. 14-19 -- check it out here.

Those Weinsteins don't waste a minute! IndieWIRE reports that the Weinstein Company has bought the Toronto International Film Festival entry Boy A before it even screens there. The deal was finalized Friday; the film premieres Saturday. Talk about beating the rush.

Based on a novel by Jonathan Trigell, Boy A is a drama about a young man released from prison after spending most of his life there for a serious crime he committed when he was a child. The director is John Crowley, his second theatrical feature after 2003's ensemble comedy Intermission, which played out like a violent version of Love Actually. Boy A's cast includes Andrew Garfield, Peter Mullan, Katie Lyons, and Shaun Evans.

The Weinsteins' luck has been bad the last couple years, with very few hits and a lot of box office flops. But one thing they've generally been good at is sniffing out winners at film festivals. Buying Boy A before it even premieres suggests they spotted a good one and didn't want to risk someone else grabbing it -- that, or they're getting desperate. Hopefully we'll have some insight from our crew members in Toronto after the film screens there.

Good news for fans of Icelandic cinema: IFC has picked up the cop thriller Jar City in what is apparently the first buy of this year's Toronto International Film Festival. (Variety calls it the "first official buy"; The Hollywood Reporter calls it "one of the first sales." The point is, the fest only started yesterday and already the cash registers are ka-chinging.)

Peter Martin told us last week about the film's fast-rising profile. It's Iceland's highest-grossing film of all time, and it won the Grand Prix competition at the Karlovy Vary fest in July. It picked up more steam when it played at Telluride last week. Based on a novel, it is the fourth film from writer/director Baltasar Kormakur, and the fourth to play at Toronto. I saw (and adored) his first two, 101 Reykjavik and The Sea; the third one, A Little Trip to Heaven, which I have not seen, was filmed in English and starred Forest Whitaker and Julia Stiles.

Kormakur returns to his native tongue in Jar City, which focuses on two connected plots. In one, a man tries to determine how his daughter could have contracted a rare genetic disease that no one in his family has ever had; in the other, a cop looks for a murderer. They cross paths; mysteries unfold; thrillarity ensues. IFC's First Take division will distribute the film theatrically in North America. No word yet on when that will be, or how much IFC paid for it.

Have you been reading Cinematical Indie lately? If not, here's what you've been missing ...

COLUMNS, REVIEWS, and INTERVIEWS

• Indie Seen: Women in Filmmaking -- Monika Bartyzel takes a closer look at some of the most important women in indie film.
• Killer Bs on DVDs: Matt Bradshaw reviews Dead Time Stories.
• Jeffrey M. Anderson's 400 Screens, 400 Blows: The Life and Death of Small Films
• Erik Davis interviews Rocket Science director Jeffrey Blitz.
• Fan Rant: Scott Weinberg wonders why the heck Nathan Fillion can't get a break already.
• Review: Rocket Science
• Cinematical Indie Seven: Freaks and Geeks -- Why Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow are Superhot.

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Have you been reading Cinematical Indie lately? If not, here's what you've been missing ...

COLUMNS, REVIEWS, and INTERVIEWS

• James Rocchi interviews Mike Binder, writer/director of The Search for John Gissing about the long road to getting his film distributed, and why he finally took matters into his own hands.
• Killer Bs on DVDs: Matt Bradshaw reviews a pair of Euro horror flicks, Black Candles and Evil Eye.
• James Rocchi interviews David Wain and Ken Marino of Ten Commandments comedy The Ten.
• Cinematical Indie Chats it up with Billy the Kid director Jennifer Venditti.
• Cinematical Indie Seven: A John Sayles Primer.
• James Rocchi reviews The Ten.
• Jeffrey M. Anderson's 400 Screens, 400 Blows: The Day the Movies Died
• Cinematical Indie reviews JLo and Marc Anthony's biopic of salsa king Hector Lavoe, El Cantante.
• RvB's After Images: Skammen, aka Shame (1968)
• The Rocchi Review Podcast: James Rocchi chats up Heidi MacDonald of The Beat on all things comic.

... and more right after the jump ...