Buzz is one of those things that makes a film festival a festival. I'm not talking here about the kind of buzz to be found at a late-night after-party or a pre-event happy hour, but the kind of buzz that's audible, that you hear while standing in line, that you can't help but hearing from pass-wearers strolling the sidewalks. It's the kind of buzz that you hear when selecting which film to see next or the kind of buzz that programmers try to overhear when slotting in new screenings of popular films.

The Santa Barbara International Film Festival is filled with plenty of buzz. You can't leave a theater bathroom without someone telling you about the film they just saw, or offering some hints about what to see next. Or commentary: "It's good, it's intense, but it's not The Lives of Others," I often heard when people were telling me to go see The Counterfeiters, nominated for this year's foreign film Oscar. When I saw The Counterfeiters, I knew it was worth seeing, worth the buzz, and worthy of general release. No film is another, and I never really think its fair to compare. A day later, I'm still thinking about it; it's a difficult issue, the moral dilemmas of an individual life versus prolonging a deadly war effort. While we often want to be uplifting when we see a film, sometimes we want to think, as well. The Counterfeiters made me think. Now, it's on to the next day's buzz.