If you’ve followed my reviews over the years, you know I take a special interest in the Port Townsend Film Festival.

I’ve routinely written more than a dozen reviews for each festival over the course of the past decade.

This year, the fine folks at PTFF invited me to screen some films in advance of their 26th annual festival, which runs from Sept. 18-21.

To that end, I’ll be reviewing those films in the weeks leading up to this year’s festival.

I’m starting with films by first-time feature directors, many of which are making their premieres in the Pacific Northwest.

ANXIETY CLUB

It’s long been a cliche that standup comedians mine their own neuroses for material, but “Anxiety Club” actually samples a pool of more than half a dozen working comedians, to examine how their anxieties have affected their everyday lives.

Although I’m not nearly as anxiety-ridden as an adult as I was in my childhood, my autism immediately identified with the comedians as they described their struggles in trying to ride herd over their own occasionally misfiring mental functions.

I loved the documentary’s acknowledgment that anxiety is at least slightly essential to comedy, as standup and podcaster Joe List quotes George Carlin’s wisdom that all comedy starts with saying, “Something’s wrong here.”

The film also touches upon credible anxieties that still need to be made more manageable, such as YouTuber and mother Tiffany Jenkins’ fears of her young, school-age kids being injured or preyed upon.

Baron Vaughn, of “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” addresses not only his realistic fears as a Black man living in America, but also the social stigma against Black men going into therapy.

Regardless of how funny or anxiety-prone you are, I suspect a lot of folks will be able to relate to these experiences.

AMERICAN COMIC

“Anxiety Club” is a documentary, but “American Comic” is a fictional narrative, contrasting two perspectives of standups to satirize the state of modern comedy.

I must confess to not being familiar with Joe Kwaczala before this film, which he wrote and stars in, but he’s hit the ground running with “American Comic.”

This mockumentary skewers the performative falseness of both “woke” and “anti-woke” comedians with a cringe-worthy authenticity.

Kwaczala displays his acting range through his leading dual roles, and his screenplay rewards repeat viewings, as his tale of two comedians ties together its plot threads in clever ways that play with the presumed chronology of the narrative.

If you’ve watched enough contemporary comedy, the comedy industry types that Kwaczala portrays are all too familiar.

While those characters’ personalities are hilariously insufferable, perhaps the only criticism I can offer of this film is that these fictional standups’ intentionally unfunny jokes are still a bit chuckle-worthy, but even that speaks to Kwaczala’s innate knack for humor.

And just as “Anxiety Club” offers insights from comedy veteran Marc Maron, so too does “American Comic” feature a cameo by nerd royalty Patton Oswalt.

BATTERSEA

Quiet dramas about adult children picking up the pieces after their parents have passed away is practically its own genre, but “Battersea” nonetheless distinguishes itself within that field.

“Battersea” largely limits itself to conversations between an adult brother and sister, in the midst of clearing out their former childhood home after their mother’s death.

This takes place over the course of only a few days, lending it a minimalism that reminded me of “My Dinner With Andre.”

What works about “Battersea” is how its siblings reveal their relationship and their histories in layers, as we learn that both the one of whom great things were expected, and the one who was written off as a lost cause, each wound up flouting what was expected of them.

In any family in which someone leaves and someone stays, there’s always going to be a degree of tension, and the potential for resentment, when the leaving one returns.

Here, the two branches of the family take stock of their respective lives, not unlike Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.”

“Battersea” lives within that frisson, albeit in a very understated way, and it kept my attention.

BOUNDARY WATERS

Filmmaker Tessa Blake scored a coup by casting superstar character actor Carol Kane for a supporting role in “Boundary Waters,” which adapts the 2015 Scottish novel, “Closed Doors,” by Lisa O’Donnell.

Blake draws equally strong, empathetic performances from her younger cast members, as they stumble and even lash out in navigating the divisive aftermath of violence that hits all too close to home.

Blake is genre-savvy enough to initially mislead viewers, with a breadcrumb trail of genre tropes that had me convinced this film was heading down a made-for-Lifetime road, until she revealed the true source of her characters’ traumas.

Etienne Kellici is only 14 years old, but he’s effortlessly naturalistic as this film’s point-of-view protagonist, who wrestles with not only universal adolescent angsts, such as crushes on girls and bullying at school, but also more unique dilemmas, such as painful secrets being kept by his parents.

While this film’s emotional resolution could be considered unrealistically convenient and overly tidy, “Boundary Waters” had earned my goodwill by that point, so I was more than content to see its bridges rebuilt.

Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more preview-reviews of films from the upcoming festival.