Your shoes are constantly muddy, the trees are festooned with baby buds, and the sun has stopped ignoring our pleas. That can only mean it's time once again for the George Eastman House's Dryden Theatre (900 East Ave.) to play host to the Rochester International Film Festival - informally known as Movies on a Shoestring - celebrating its 53rd year as the oldest continually held short film festival in the world, perhaps even the universe. RIFF 2011 offers up four distinct programs of narratives, documentaries and animated bits from across the globe, each making the case that size doesn't actually matter. As always, admission is free, but donations are most welcome. For further information, including the complete line-up of films, check out rochesterfilmfest.org.

Thursday 8 p.m.: Clearly inspired by American action-flick clichés, "Le Négociant," by Belgium's Joachim Weissmann, features a tough-talking hero whose efforts to secure the surrender of a despondent man with a bomb are derailed by an only-in-the-movies coincidence. The resourceful camerawork in Christopher Oroza's eerie "Sae" - one of four entries this year from the talented students at the Florida State University Film School - ratchets up the dread in the tale of a young girl rendered mute by unbearable tragedy and terrifying visions. "Once More" is an ambitious and challenging piece by Brooklyn-based filmmaker Hiroo Takaoka that employs the perspective of a troubled reporter to explore the ethical questions raised when a wealthy man decides to clone his murdered wife.

Friday 8 p.m.: Two crooked cops, a mysteriously violent collector, and a lonely road all amount to one memorable evening for a young lawyer in the moody, brutal "St. Christophorus: Roadkill," though German director Gregor Erler keeps tongue firmly in gory cheek. Jen McGowan's heart-tugging "Touch" observes as a friendly exchange between two women waiting for the train takes on an added gravity as one of them confesses her true intentions. The high-stakes setting for "Na Wewe," by Belgian filmmaker Ivan Goldschmidt, is Burundi, 1994, as the deadly prejudices of the Rwandan genocide are visited upon a quick-thinking group of travelers by gunmen with unpredictable loyalties.

Saturday 4 p.m.: Truthfully, there are no groundbreaking ideas to be found in Michael Felker's "Cliquetastrophe," but that shouldn't hamper its infectious charm as a nerdy kid works up the courage to ask out a cool girl in front of her knuckle-dragging peers. The careful stop-motion artistry in "The Gift of the Magi," by Japan's Toshikazu Ishii, evokes the work of the Brothers Quay as it tells of one cash-strapped couple's selfless devotion. A sweeping score highlights Joseph Rechtman's "Maya Anderson and the Gem of the West," which makes up for its unsubtle bad guy with a lovely performance by Marie Polizzano as a childless frontier woman determined to save a young girl from her abusive uncle. Human greed and fairy-tale magic form the basis for "The Squash," a delightfully imaginative short by Bobby Young about a poor farmer and a crop that really pays off.

Saturday 8 p.m.: Luscious mid-century production design helps set the stage for Michael Rohrbaugh's "The Perfect Gentleman," a skillfully paced psychological thriller about a handsome young groom-to-be whose roots have more dirt than most. "The Quartering Act," an accomplished historical drama by Stephen Bell, watches as a grieving French mother matches wits with desperate Nazi deserters days after the Allied invasion of Normandy. Two weary travelers get caught up in the vicious cycle of bargaining in William Peters' funny "Motel," which showcases the deadpan Ben Watts as the deceptively tough clerk... um, I mean clerks. Jacob Mendel shot his gorgeously surreal "Zlatá Rybka" in Prague, the old city providing a serene backdrop as a cat tries to trade the pressure of having to live nine times for the relative freedom afforded the six-second memory of a goldfish.

As for my favorites from the films I got to preview for this year's festival, they couldn't be more different from each other. The man behind the convenience-store counter in Aprile Ruha's twisty, hilarious "Holdup," screening Friday, doesn't seem too concerned about his robbery at the hands of a masked yet friendly bandit, and it isn't until an especially annoying customer stumbles into the situation that we learn why. Then RIFF 2011 closes Saturday night with the charming "All Birds Whistle," by Lebanese filmmaker Roy Khalil. An elderly couple spends their days in set, silent routine until a neighbor asks them to babysit his bird, giving the wife a purpose other than her increasingly jealous husband, who turns out to be quite the romantic.

53rd Rochester International Film Festival

Screens Thursday-Saturday at the Dryden