AFI Fest 2010 is once again an absolutely free film festival and this year’s lineup presents some very exciting offerings. All of the free advance tickets are gone but more tickets are released online the day before a screening at 10am and at the box office the day of the screening at 10am. Here is a quick look at some of the highlights:

This year’s fest include’s the LA premieres of a whole ton of movies that have played on the fest circuit. I’ve mentioned all of these before so I won’t spend too much time. On the Hollywood front there is Aronofsky’s Black Swan, John Cameron Mitchell’s Rabbit Hole, Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine, and the premiere of Ed Zwick’s Gyllenhall/Hathaway starrer Love and Other Drugs.

From the Asian film world, the fest will host LA prems of Miike’s 13 Assassins, Takeshi Kitano’s Outrage, Korean thriller The Housemaid, and the Cannes Palme d’Or winning Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives from Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

From the European continent comes Godard’s Film Socialisme, Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech, Nigel Cole’s Made in Dagenham, and the 3D documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams by Werner Herzog.

Blank City
Celine Danhier’s debut feature docu chronicles the indie film scene in late 1970s New York City. If you have seen Edo Bertoglio’s Basquiat starring Downtown 81, then you have an idea of the bombed out Lower East Side that directors like Jim Jarmusch and Lizzie Borden used as their backdrops. This looks fascinating. Congrats Aviva!

Barbershop Punk
Henry Rollins, Ian MacKaye, and many other notable musicians feature in this docu about fair use, big business, and the first amendment from first timers Georgia Sugimura Archer and Kristin Armfield.

Karamay
Xu Xin’s documentary questions the Chinese society in the wake of a horrible catastrophe that left 100s of school children dead because they had to wait for government officials to leave a burning building before they could escape. Not only does the subject matter sound pretty heavy, but the film clocks in at a hair short of 6 hours!

Casino Jack
Kevin Spacey plays Jack Abramoff in the dramatization of the documentary by the same name, This film is directed by the very recently departed George Hickenlooper.

Boy
Los Angeles finally gets a chance to see Taika Waititi’s (Eagle Vs. Shark, Flight of the Conchords) wonderfully funny coming of age story about a Maori boy in rural New Zealand. Do yourself a favor and get to see this one as it isn’t likely to get much of a release elsewhere.

Amigo
Chris Cooper stars as an American Colonel in John Sayles’ latest film which is set in the Philippine-American war.

Submarino
Thomas Vinterberg returns to Danish filmmaking with this drama about estranged brothers.

The Myth of the American Sleepover
Playing the Young Americans section, David Robert Mitchell’s indie debut is a story of teen love set in modern metro Detroit.