The complete lineup for the latest edition of AFI Fest was announced last week -- indieWIRE was among the first to report on it -- and I've been mulling it over ever since. I've worked at the festival in the past and so it's difficult for me to be completely objective, but even though I won't be attending this year, I can't help but feel intense interest. When it comes to film festivals in general, I prefer to be unreasonably optimistic rather than smugly pessimistic.

Under new Artistic Director Rose Kuo, the programming team has made some adjustments. The Asian New Classics section is gone -- the Asian films have been integrated into other sections -- but other regional sidebars remain (American Showcase, Latin Cinema Series, African Showcase) and a new documentary showcase has been introduced, as well as Milestones, devoted to retrospective films. Beyond the already-announced titles, including Robert Redford's political drama Lions for Lambs as the opener and Jason Reitman's much-loved comedy Juno as the centerpiece gala, Mike Newell's romantic drama Love in the Time of Cholera, starring Javier Bardem (pictured), has been named as the closing night presentation. Tributes have also been announced for Laura Linney and Catherine Deneuve.

North American Premieres include Noise, directed by Henry Bean (The Believer), in which Tim Robbins stars as a New York attorney who takes the law into his own hands when life in the city gets too noisy for him, and The Searchers 2.0, the latest by Alex Cox (Sid and Nancy), featuring two aging actors in search of revenge on an even more aging screenwriter. Doghead stars Juan Jose Ballesta (the excellent Seven Virgins) as a young man suffering from an odd disease who starts a romance that encompasses "the endearing and the bleak," according to the program notes. Please Vote for Me is a documentary from China about eight year olds (!) running for class monitor. AFI Fest runs from November 1-11.

"It's an art ... it's a game ... it's a crime." That's the tag line for Thieves, which opened in Spain last month. Starring the very popular Juan José Ballesta (7 Virgins) and the lovely María Ballesteros (Princesses), the film opened against Shrek 3 (AKA Shrek Tercero) and was admittedly swamped by the green ogre. Breaking down the numbers, though, Thieves had a decent per-screen average. The reaction has been mixed on the Spanish-language sites I visited, with comments ranging from "very good" to "slow and pretentious" to "I'm so tired of this actor!" (referring to Ballesta).

When Thieves debuted at the Malaga film festival earlier this year, it won a jury award, though Jonathan Holland of Variety was not entirely positive: "Bringing an unexpected lyricism to a subject more accustomed to in-your-face treatment, Jaime Marques Olarreaga's Thieves unfolds the details of its artful young dodger's troubled mind with craft and flair, but only intermittently grips the emotions." Still, he singled out Ballesta's performance and thought it could "steal into Spain-friendly offshore arthouses, with fest play guaranteed." That latter prediction has come true: Cineuropa reports that Thieves will compete for the Golden Leopard award at the Locarno (Switzerland) festival in August.

Still in his teens, Ballesta became a star thanks to his work in television. He was very compelling as a troubled kid trying to stay out of trouble in 7 Virgins, for which he was nominated for a Goya Award. In Thieves, he plays a young man who was abandoned by his mother as a child; the only thing she taught him was how to steal. He puts those skills to work as a pickpocket. When he meets a middle-class girl dabbling in crime, he offers to team up with her. The versatile Patrick Bauchau plays a junk shop owner. The trailer looks promising; time will tell how far these thieves travel.