Growing Montclair Film Festival Covers The Gamut

MONTCLAIR, N.J. (CBSNewYork) -- The fourth-annual Montclair Film Festival features some big names as well as young talents who are just starting out.

The festival started Friday night in New Jersey and runs through May 10.

"We're really growing. It's grown exponentially in four years," the festival's director, Tom Hall, told CBS2's Andrea Grymes. "So we've got over 150 films and events, conversations. We had Richard Gere in town yesterday with Stephen Colbert. He (Colbert) is going to be interviewing Mavis (Staples) after our screening this coming Friday night. Yo La Tengo is doing a live score for a documentary on Thursday night in town. We have filmmakers coming from all over the world -- documentaries, fiction, independent, foreign films. It's going to be a really great week."

One of the films being screened is a documentary about Staples, the legendary gospel and soul singer.

The Montclair Film Festival also includes a Kidz Shortz category, which features "Stranded" by 10-year-old Talia Cohen-Vigder.

"It's about someone named Leo, who says that he's going on a nature walk while he's in the desert with his mom, and he ends up getting lost," Cohen-Vigder said. "So he gets really sad, and he gets found by someone, and he gets taken back to his mom."

To watch the full interview with Hall and Cohen-Vigder, click on the video above.

For more information on the film festival, visit MontclairFilmFest.org.