Katrina Browne documents her slave-trading ancestors in R.I. Man on a Wire chronicles Philippe Petit’s high-wire act between the World Trade Center towers in New York City in 1974.Speed & Angels takes you up in F-14 Tomcats over Nevada. A scene from The Red Balloon.Wellness is a film by Rhode Islander Jake Mahaffy.

AP / STEPHAN SAVOIA Polaris / Jean-Louis Blondeau

With 19 feature films, 18 documentaries and dozens of shorts geared to both adult and young audiences, the 11th Newport International Film Festival is hoping to wow audiences with six days of the kinds of films you won’t find anywhere outside of Sundance or Venice or Berlin.

There’s a new executive director — Louisa Percudani, hired from the Sedona Film Festival in Arizona — a new programming director — Eric Bilodeau, who previously programmed the eclectic mix of films at his father’s Cable Car Cinema in Providence — and a couple of new screening venues — the screening room at the Tennis Hall of Fame and the Cable Car (natch!) join the Jane Pickens Theater and the Opera House Cinemas.

There’s a movie about a musician who overcame the odds of a paralyzing brain hemorrhage, a film about nationally ranked boys on the tennis circuit, a film about soccer girls who take on the boys’ league, a film about a family trading war-torn Laos for the mean streets of New York City, a film about musicians who sprang from the Mississippi Delta, a film about U.S. Navy fighter pilots, a film by local filmmaker Katrina Browne about her slave-trader ancestors out of Bristol. And those are just some of the documentaries.

Besides Browne, several other Rhode Island filmmakers are represented in this year’s festival.

But there also are films that Bilodeau found at the Berlin Film Festival and some — such as Man on Wire, a documentary about a Frenchman who walked a tightrope between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974 — that Bilodeau and children’s programmer Andrea Van Beuren saw at Sundance, where it was getting raves from audiences. Man on Wire went on to win Sundance’s best documentary award and will be the opening-night entry in Newport.

Then there are the films that sort of slipped in, literally. Bilodeau said he came into the office to find that Providence filmmaker Jake Mahaffy’s Wellness had been dropped through the mail slot.

It was quite a find. Bilodeau loved Wellness, a tragicomedy about a hapless schlub who invests his last nickel in a get-rich-quick scheme to sell magic weight-loss pills only to find too late that it’s all a scam. It promises to be one of the festival’s biggest hits.

Percudani said she found A Perfect Match, an inspirational documentary about the barrier-breaking friendship that developed between tennis pros Althea Gibson and Angela Buxton, “through someone driving me to the airport who said it was a pretty good film.”

Bilodeau recalls that the German film Oysters Without a Shell, about two women living in Berlin who can’t seem to be able to get on with their lives, was handed to him at a screening “by the person who did the subtitles.” It’s now in the festival lineup.

“I’m so excited. I think this is one of the most stellar lineups we’ve had,” added the statuesque Percudani who was sitting in the festival’s cramped offices above a restaurant overlooking Newport Harbor and the action on Bannister’s Wharf.

Cramped indeed. Quite a number of the 800 films that have been submitted by filmmakers hoping for their big break on screen in Newport are piled in a corner of Bilodeau’s bailiwick, which is a rickety wooden flight of stairs up from the main office floor.

Some of the 800 films received came from blanket submissions online at the beginning of the year, such as the feature documentary Secrecy, about the impenetrable layer of government “top secrets,” which was well received at Sundance, although co-director Peter Galison had actually submitted it to Newport first.

It’s one of the reasons Percudani thinks this year’s festival might land on the map beyond Rhode Island. She grew up in southwestern Connecticut and so when Percudani speaks of attracting people “from the tri-state area,” she means Connecticut and New York.

There are other films made by filmmakers who have local ties besides Browne’s roots-of-slavery movie Traces of the Trade and Wellness, made by Providence resident and Rhode Island School of Design graduate Mahaffy. The Wackness, the Sundance Audience Award winner about a psychiatrist, played by Ben Kingsley, who trades his therapy sessions for marijuana from a college student, was directed by Brown University graduate Jonathan Levine. The oddly titled B.O.H.I.C.A., about four U.S. Army Reservists fighting (and partying) in Afghanistan, was directed by Brown alumnus DJ Paul.

Other films to watch for in the festival include Frozen River, which won the Sundance fest dramatic feature award and is about smuggling illegal immigrants from Canada, and the Berlin festival Golden Bear winner Elite Squad, about the web of corruption permeating the slums of Rio de Janeiro.

And there’s Speed & Angels, with its high-definition aerial footage of dogfights over the Nevada desert and you-are-there cockpit photography in F-14 Tomcats.

“It’s the most amazing fighter plane documentary ever,” raved Bilodeau, who became so excited in describing a landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier that his baseball cap flew off. Two fighter pilots are expected to attend the festival and comment on the film.

All films will be shown in 35mm prints or high-definition video and all will be shown twice during the six-day run. Although the “closing night” has always been a Saturday, there always have been screenings on Sunday, in this case June 8, when the festival winners will be shown for a third time as well as films that will return “by popular demand.”Kids’ films

For the fourth year Andrea Van Beuren has put together a children’s festival as part of the Newport International Film Festival. Highlights will include the 50th anniversary showing of the French classic The Red Balloon and an appearance by director Jim Capobianco of the Pixar Animation Studios.

Capobianco will discuss his work and show a few short films from Pixar, including his own animated tongue-in-cheek documentary Your Friend the Rat, which is on the DVD release of Ratatouille.How to get tickets

There are a number of options for festival passes — ranging from $50 for six screenings up to $500 for a pass to all screenings and the various parties connected with the festival.

Individual tickets are $10 (except for the opening and closing-night films, which are $25) and must be purchased at the festival’s central box office located inside the Empire Tea & Coffee shop at 22 Broadway.

However, tickets for screenings at the Tennis Hall of Fame and the Cable Car Cinema in Providence may be purchased at the door. Passes and more information about the festival can be found by calling (401) 846-9100 or at www.newportfilmfestival.com.