Winner of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival Audience Award, Jojo Rabbit, is funny as hell, but somewhat misguided. What do you do when satire lacks conviction?

I wonder what Denver Film Festival artistic director Brit Withey would have made of it. He was a man whose taste ran toward the confrontational and conflicting. Sadly, Withey died earlier this year, on March 31 in a one-car crash. He was 50.

Since 2007, Withey was the artistic director of the Denver Film Festival, which kicks off Tuesday, Oct. 30 with a tribute to Withey and screenings of three of his favorites: American Movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Frownland. For more on Withey’s life and death, please read Lisa Kennedy’s obituary from April.