Each fall since 1998, Northwest Film Forum has hosted its Local Sightings Film Festival. Unlike SIFF’s global reach and scale, Local Sightings looks as far as Oregon, Montana, and maybe British Columbia for interesting stories and filmmakers. Some of the standout documentaries of recent years have followed a serial killer in eastern Washington, profiled the late local poet Steven Jesse Bernstein (1950–1991), and visited New Orleans with Seattle aid workers after Hurricane Katrina. (And sometimes you get to see early cuts of future SIFF picks, like Linas Phillips’ doc Walking to Werner.) The inward-looking Northwest often seems more conducive to nonfiction filmmakers than to scripted drama, but maybe we’ll find the next Lynn Shelton at this fall’s festival. BRIAN MILLER 1515 12th Ave., localsightings.org