Every November, St. Louis is home to one of the most celebrated film festivals in America. The St. Louis International Film Festival (SLIFF) is an annual event that was started in 1992 to present and promote films to advance filmmaking as an art form. Once again, this year’s 20th annual festival will have a Jewish sidebar, along with striking offerings for teen audiences both in terms of Jewish and non-Jewish films.

The process of deciding which films will make it into the festival is a long one. The festival’s staff takes time to carefully choose films that will be of interest to their diverse viewers, including Jewish and teen audiences.

“We generally do not start out by seeking films for any one category or interest group, but instead look for the best films from all over the world that are available to us for festival screenings. After that, the selected films are organized into any number of sub-categories called sidebars and marketed to individuals and groups that we feel may have some interest in the topic of storyline,” explains Chris Clark, the festival’s artistic director.

This year, three films that stand out as scene-stealers are “My So-Called Enemy,” “The Bully Project” and “To Be Heard.”

“My So-Called Enemy,” which is part of the Jewish sidebar, follows Israeli and Palestinian teen girls for several years to see how they communicate with one another and forge friendships.

“I have seen ‘My So-Called Enemy’ and I think it’s marvelous,” says Clark. The film’s director, Lisa Gossels, will attend the festival to host a Q&A following its screening, which will be a free on Sunday, Nov. 13 at Washington University’s Brown Hall as part of SLIFF’s Human Rights Sidebar.

“The Bully Project,” which follows five bullied kids and their families, touches on how bullying has impacted their lives. The much-anticipated documentary offers a closer look at the bullying crisis in America over the past year in an attempt to educate and empower kids. The film will be screened at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 16 at the Tivoli Theatre, 6350 Delmar Boulevard.

The third documentary for teens, “To Be Heard,” is the story of three teens from the South Bronx whose struggle to change their lives begins when they start to write poetry. The three young adults use poetry and creativity as an outlet to help them evolve and become aware of their identity as artists. Throughout the film, putting their creativity to use motivates the adolescents to change their circumstances. The film will be shown at 7:15 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 17 at the Tivoli.

After the films screen, the SLIFF team gathers feedback from their audiences. Having viewers evaluate their selections helps SLIFF staffers continually improve the festival each year.

“The main way we receive feedback is the audience choice voting on the films,” says Clark. “All feature films are voted on a 1 to 5 scale and awards are given at the end of the festival for Best Film, Best Foreign Film, and Best Documentary. These scores give us an indication of what people like and what they didn’t, but generally doesn’t ultimately affect the selection process to any significant degree. We will always include smart, challenging films in the program even if they don’t always get big audience.”

Aside from these three films, many other of the 300 or so films showing at the festival are likely to be of interest to teens. Screenings are scheduled Monday, Nov. 14, through Friday, Nov. 18, at COCA, Plaza Frontenac Cinema, Tivoli Theatre, and Sheldon Concert Hall. For a full list of screenings and more information about the festival, go to www.cinemastlouis.org