Every year it gets bigger and certainly better, in terms of sheer selection. The 27th Annual event was also the best attended, with 33,500 cinemagoers seeing films from all around the world. Perhaps the biggest surprise was some of the festival’s best films were Canadian: Chaz Thorne’s double-threat *Poor Boy’s Game * and *Just Buried *, and titles such as *Fugitive Pieces,* *Emotional Arithmetic * and *Weiner Takes All: A Dogumentary *, not to mention all the local and national short films. Hollywood may have gotten a bit of a short shrift, but really, since 99 percent of what we see through the year is from the Dream Factory, it made for a nice break.

First runner up: The Halifax International Buskers Festival

Second runner up: Atlantic Jazz Festival