The Nickel Independent Film Festival is celebrating its 16th year this week, and there’s plenty to see. Here’s just six examples from nights 1 and 2:

Vehicular Romanticide: Screening Tuesday the 14th

This dark comedy centres on a lonely young woman’s frustrating search for romance. As you might have guessed from the title, her gameplan is to nearly runover men she finds attractive, as a way of forcing them to talk with her.

Written by local Andrew Rowe, this 15-minute film has been screened at festivals like Cannes, Whistler Film Festival, Vancouver Short Film Festival (where it won the Underdog award), and Oklahoma’s Twisted Alley Film Festival (where it won 3 awards).

Rowe says this film was inspired by Scorsese’s classic, Taxi Driver, because, as he told the New Current Network, he’d “never seen that type of filmmaking applied to a female-centric film, so I wanted to explore that.”

Canoes for Peru: Screening Tuesday the 14

This short doc is a classic “you can do anything you put your heart to, and you should”  tale. But it’s one you’ve never quite heard before:

Cancergirl: Screening Tuesday the 14th 

Few local filmmakers have been making headlines as much as Allison White these last few years. She’s perhaps best known for her successful recent feature film Cast No Shadow (which won nearly 10 awards).

Cancergirl, a 12.5 minute short, will close out night one of the Nickel. It’s a comedic drama about a girl who is diagnosed with cancer just a few months before graduating high school.

Katatjanik Utippalianinga (The Return of Throat Singing): Screening Wed the 15th

This 7-minute documentary about one of the most amazing forms of musical expression to have ever evolved in any culture, was created through the St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival’s FRAMED series. It explores throat singing in Nain.

“The community of Nain is rich with breathtaking landscapes and people with a strong storytelling history. In partnership with the Nunatsiavut Government, FRAMED worked with local participants to create a short documentary on throat singing — a special talent and traditional game between women for both fun and public entertainment, which was nearly destroyed but has since been revived.”

Oblivion Season: Screening Wednesday the 15th

The first of 4 features to screen at this year’s Nickel is about an ex-prostitute in Tehran, who marries the love of her life and tries to start a new life. “But leaving the shadow of her dark past is not as easy as she’d hoped. Now she must fight for her freedom, with an oppressive husband, in a society that denies her very existence.”

Moo: Screening Wednesday the 15th

This 10-minute Australian short is a “heartfelt comedy-drama” about an aspiring artist, who is forced to decide between the acceptance of her peers and what truly makes her happy. Which is painting cows. Its filmmaker, Samuel Galloway, has a background in standup comedy, so this one should be a laugh.

Tickets can be purchased at RCA (LSPU Hall Box Office) 753-4531 or online rca.nf.ca Single evening tickets $12, Full Festival Pass $47. Visit http://nickelfestival.com for more info.