Kicking off the awards season each year, AFI FEST offers an important avenue of exposure to the film community and provides enthusiastic audiences with the very best of world film, right in the center of Hollywood. This year the festival has extended a gift to moviegoers by offering free tickets to all festival screenings, and it’s no surprise that audiences are flocking to the theaters. These films have been building substantial buzz and have the highest number of calendar adds on the B-Side Festival Genius schedule:

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus: Set in the present day, Terry Gilliam’s fantastical morality tale tells the story of a travelling show hosted by the extraordinary Doctor Parnassus. An inveterate gambler, Parnassus made a bet with the devil and won immortality. Centuries later, on meeting his one true love, Parnassus made another deal, trading his immortality for youth, on condition that when his daughter reached her 16th birthday, she would become the property of the devil. As Valentina rapidly approaches this milestone, the desperate Parnassus talks the devil into one final wager. Encountering a series of wild, comical and compelling characters, Parnassus fights to save his daughter in a never-ending landscape of surreal obstacles, hoping to undo the mistakes of his past once and for all.

Precious: Based of on the novel “Push” by Sapphire: Set in Harlem, this film follows the story of Clareece “Precious” Jones, a 16-year-old African-American girl born into a life no one would want. Pregnant for the second time by her absent father, she waits hand and foot on her abusive mother. School is cruel and chaotic, and Precious has reached the 9th grade with good marks and an awful secret: she can neither read nor write. Though sometimes down, Precious is never out. Beneath her impassive expression is a watchful, curious young woman with an inchoate but unshakable sense that other possibilities exist for her. Could a transfer to an alternative school be the chance she has been waiting for? Winner of three awards at Sundance, the audience award at Toronto and an official selection at Cannes, director Lee Daniels takes us on a journey from darkness, pain and powerlessness to light, love and self-determination.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox: Visionary director Wes Anderson’s first animated film utilizes classic handmade stop-motion techniques to tell the story of the bestselling children’s book by Roald Dahl. Mr. and Mrs. Fox live an idyllic home life with their son Ash and visiting young nephew Kristofferson. But after 12 years, the bucolic existence proves too much for Mr. Fox’s wild animal instincts. Soon he slips back into his old ways as a sneaky chicken thief and, in doing so, endangers not only his beloved family, but also the whole animal community. Trapped underground and with not enough food to go around, the animals band together to fight against the evil farmers – Boggis, Bunce and Bean – who are determined to capture the audacious, fantastic Mr. Fox at any cost.

Films synopses taken from AFI Fest schedule.