Denver Film Society artistic director Brit Withey sits at the restaurant around the corner from the organization’s theaters on East Colfax with an amber scotch in front of him and a stack of DVD screeners nearby. It must be film-fest time.

And he acknowledges with a mix of pride and exhaustion that he, festival director Britta Erickson and their team have stuffed the upcoming 34th Starz Denver Film Festival, running Nov. 2 through Nov. 13, to the gills.

No kidding. When the festival schedule is unveiled on the Film Society’s website (denverfilm.org) later this afternoon, festgoers will be faced with enticing blurbs and come-hither descriptions for 274 films.

That’s 146 feature-length works (documentary and narrative) and 128 shorts (ditto).

“We’re trying to rival Toronto,” Erickson added, only half joking. (The Canadian event floats around 300 films.)

While not on the scale of a WikiLeaks document dump — and the only thing put in danger will be moviegoers’ assumptions and sleep cycles — whittling down 274 movies is still a daunting task for vets and newbies alike.

Competition for tickets has increased. When executive director Tom Botelho returned to lead the organization in 2009, festival ticket sales were $180,000. “Last year, we did $270,000” he said.

Film Society members get first crack at tickets on Wednesday. They become available to all Friday.

So the first caveat of a well- programmed festival is: Get comfortable with the fact you are going to miss something good, maybe even soul- rattling or life altering. You just can’t see everything.

I’ve yet to meet a film-fest grid that didn’t turn me into (for at least a day) a deer in the headlights of an 18-wheeler.

Of course, a tractor-trailer can’t take you to all the places this year’s films will. More than 36 countries are represented, among them: Albania, Argentina, Australia, Bosnia, Canada, China, Croatia, Chile, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hungry, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, the Slovak Republic, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

So where to begin?

In recent years, the Denver Film Society has helped audience navigate their particular interests by creating sidebars. This year’s include a Salute to South Korean Cinema and an expanded Environment in Focus program.

In 2010, the film society launched a Focus on Japanese cinema program. It was a critical success and a well-attended affair. When the earthquake and tsunami struck Japan last spring, the sophomore installment was postponed until now with the fest’s Focus on Japanese Cinema, Art & Culture.

There are also branded programs within the festival that have a year-round presence at the FilmCenter/Colfax: Women + Film, The Watching Hour and Cinema Q to name the most robust.

This year’s Women + Film festival selections include Dee Rees’ “Pariah,” about a young black lesbian living in Brooklyn and making her way toward clarity. The film, which premiered at Sundance, earned the New York-based director a two-picture deal with Focus Features.

The festival can take some pride of ownership in Rees’ impressive debut. Rees’ 2007 student short on which it is based was one of the gems screened during the First Look Student Film Festival, a long-running and vibrant festival that stepped under the umbrella of the Starz Denver Film Festival a few years ago and anchors the second weekend.

Newcomer Adepero Oduye, who gives a deep and rich turn as Alike, will be in town for the screening and a panel. As will singer Chely Wright. In 1995, Wright was named top female vocalist by the Academy of Country Music. She’s the subject of the documentary “Wish Me Away,” about her exile from the country-music community after she came out as gay.

Earlier last week, the film society announced the fest’s Opening Night, Big Night and Closing Night films. Each screens at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House.

“Like Crazy,” a love story about a Brit and an American separated by immigration policy, launches the fest. Director Drake Doremus, winner of Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize, will attend.

Big Night honors belong to “The Descendents.” Alexander Payne’s deft dramedy is generating best-actor Oscar buzz for George Clooney for his turn as a father who has to step up and be the parent to his two daughters when his wife is injured in an accident.

The 12-day happening closes with “The Artist.” Silent-film purists may scoff and call French director Michel Hazanavicius’s update on the Hollywood silent movie a pseudo- silent. After all, there won’t be live musical accompaniment come closing night because this tale of a silent star thrown by the arrival of the talkies has a charming soundtrack. French star Jean Dujardin won the best-actor honors at Cannes in May.

Indeed, there is an abundance of films arriving with accolades. Kirsten Dunst also won in Cannes, for her work in Lars von Trier’s end-of-the world drama “Melancholia.”

Powerfully gifted and rising fast, Michael Fassbender will be well represented by Steve McQueen’s “Shame” and David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method,” both screen in the festival’s strong slate of special presentations.

Fassbender was recipient of the Venice fest’s best-actor award for his terrifically raw yet utterly controlled turn as a sex addict in “Shame.” In the Cronenberg-directed period drama, he plays Carl Jung to Viggo Mortensen’s Sigmund Freud. Adapted by Christopher Hampton from John Kerr’s “A Most Dangerous Method,” and Hampton’s own play “The Talking Cure,” the film tells the story of the mavericks of psychoanalysis and Jung’s student Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), who becomes the third party in a vexed triangle.

Also playing under the banner of special presentations is “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” Lynne Ramsay and writer Rory Kinnear’s vivid, disturbing tale of a mother and her indifferent toddler, Kevin, who turns more detached and possibly cruel with each passing year.

The film has inflamed debate. Is it an indie gloss on “Bad Seed” children? Or a taboo-testing tale of ambivalent mothering? Whichever camp you find yourself in — and camps were struck at Cannes, where the film premiered — you’re not likely to be conflicted about Tilda Swinton’s scoured-raw performance.

Not to be glib, but festgoers are going to need to talk about “We Need to Talk About Kevin” when the house lights come up. Its dark themes and high-school-age sociopath have resonance for this post- Columbine city. One of the draws of the Starz Denver Film Festivals is the opportunity to see the challenging, the brutal, the beautiful movie and hash it out, argue its merits, or sing its praises with revved or riled fellow festgoers and often the filmmakers. Ramsay and Kinnear will attend the fest.

There is another reason for this year’s especially tenacious programming.

Last year, when the film society moved its theater operations into the Lowenstein Complex on East Colfax Avenue, the organization entered the final year of its lease with University of Colorado at Denver. So this is the final year the festival screens at the Tivoli.

Even before there was a Starz FilmCenter, the festival showed films at the Tivoli’s theaters.

“Not being at the Tivoli is a big deal,” said Withey. “It’s been a long time. It’s been 1985 since the festival was first there.”

In a wistful look back, the festival will show “The Big Chill,” which screened during the festivals first year at the Tivoli. The touchstone movie about college friends who gather in the wake of a friend’s death is a resonant choice. There’s sure to be a little dearly departed aspect to this end for film-fest programmers and devoted festgoers.

Shortly after the festival closes, film society operations move from the Starz FilmCenter to its new home on the corner of York and Colfax.

The exposed brick, wood- floored, sunlit office in a one-time hotel has a nice and meaningful view.

Look east, and you can see the marquee for the Denver FilmCenter/Colfax.

No, not a bad view at all.

Film critic Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com; also on blogs.denverpost.com/ madmoviegoer

How to make the most of the festival

Five things to know as you plan for the 34th Starz Denver Film Festival.

1. The official schedule for the 34th Starz Denver Film Festival goes online this afternoon at denverfilm.org.

2. Tickets go on sale Wednesday for Denver Film Society members and Friday for everyone else. Red-carpet and six-pack ticket packages already have gone on sale.

3. Know your venues and their parking challenges.

This year’s venues include the Denver FilmCenter/Colfax (parking garage on-site, but it’s shared with Twist & Shout and Tattered Cover Book Store, so it’s likely to be stretched by fest needs; there also will be additional parking at East High School); Ellie Caulkins Opera House (ample parking structure at 14th and Arapahoe streets); The Starz FilmCenter and King Center on the Auraria campus (validated parking garage to the north of the Tivoli); and the L2 Event Center, 1477 Columbine St. (Parking at East High).

4. It’s important to balance a desire to be the first on your block to see a film that has distribution and a release date already with a list of movies that may never have a theatrical release but deserve your attention.

5. Once the festival starts, you’ll find yourself in lines, plenty of them. Use them to your advantage. Listen to the buzz — contribute to it, too. Of course, it’s a trust- and-verify proposition, movie chatter. Still take a chance or two, and allow someone else’s enthusiasm to rouse your curiosity and change your course.