Jeffrey Blitz, the director of past festival favorite Spellbound, returns with his first narrative feature, a hilarious and bittersweet tale of a young stutterer trying to make it big in the cutthroat world of high-school debate.

One of the biggest fears for a teenager is public embarrassment: being humiliated in front of your peers is a fate worse than death. That considered, watching teenage debate teams, the ultimate in public exposure for any adolescent, is even more impressive. Young Hal Hefner, a high school student from Plainsboro, NJ, is searching for something to give himself an identity when he meets Ginny Ryerson, a precocious young woman with dreams of being the star of the school debate team. Ginny has built her world around her goal and Hal quickly realizes that in order to enter her world, he will have to join the team. There is only one problem: for most of his life, Hal has had a serious stuttering problem. Racing to overcome his fear, Hal sets out to prove for the girl of his dreams that he can be the best. Blitz displayed his uncanny ability to get the most out of children in Spellbound, and he shows the same level of talent here, in addition to a rare aptitude for screenwriting. The witty script, crafted to perfection, nails the trials and tribulations of adolescence with painfully awkward accuracy. From blunt and idiotic public heckling to the irony of teenagers making out during an abstinence debate, each moment is knowingly packed with the awkward dilemmas of growing up.