When I arrived in a small Tuscan village last month, our movie plans didn’t stretch far beyond the 4:3 television at our apartment, and a possible road trip to Florence to see Avengers: Endgame in its version originale. (Subtitled versions of films are few and far between in Italy generally, and in Tuscany particularly.)

Imagine my delight, then, to discover that just over half an hour from our bucolic doorstep, the walled town of Lucca was hosting a film festival, with guests including actor Rutger Hauer, Gremlins director Joe Dante, filmmakers Mick Garris, Philip Gröning, Paolo Taviani, and French animation director Michel Ocelot.

The Lucca Film Festival brings high-profile filmmakers to its city gates every April, along with a competition featuring up-to-the-minute titles and other special screenings, all for a low cost of 20 euros for the week. Before booking your tickets, do bear in mind that the festival is optimized for locals, which means that without a European language or two up your sleeve it can be a challenge. Hence, we gave a to the stacked Rutger Hauer retrospective (including Spetters), but we weren’t going to miss the opportunity to see the legend in person, and showed up for a Hauer “masterclass”.

The term was a loose one, as the event that ensued was a barely moderated Q&A, with Hauer tending towards a rambling conversation style, avoiding specificities in most of his answers. When asked what he looks for in a film that he’s considering acting in, for instance: “Something that pulls me in … but I don’t know what it’s called.” On the directors he has worked with, he did manage to reveal: “Paul Verhoeven, who I did my first five features with, made me walk. I was a baby. He taught me how not to act. Ridley [Scott] taught me to dance. And I danced like a motherfucker.”

More rewarding was the competition lineup, particularly Bait. Englishman Mark Jenkin, who shoots on black and white 16mm film, has produced his first feature following several shorts. Set in an unspecified Cornish fishing village, Bait chronicles the tensions between the “old way of life” and the modern, where locals are edged out by out-of-towners buying investment properties to run as Airbnbs, and fishing boats give up their trade to host stag parties.

It takes time to adjust to Jenkin’s stylistic flourishes, but he’s relentlessly attuned to the emotional truth of his characters, even as the celluloid flares and ripples; call it kitchen-sink unrealism. Shot on a Bolex with the 13,000 feet of film negative hand-processed, Bait has a solid 3.5 on Letterboxd at the time of writing—a good indication that the Lucca Film Festival has its eyes open beyond the usual suspects. (Other competition titles include Dollhouse.)