In addition to being The Stranger's resident philosopher, movie and TV critic, and cultural commentator, Charles Mudede is also an academic, much called-upon lecturer, enthusiast of hiphop and jazz, and filmmaker. The screenplay he wrote based on his years of covering the police peat for the paper—which became Police Beat, directed by Robinson Devor—was named among “The 30 Best (Truly) Independent Films of the 21st Century” by pop culture site The Ringer; Mudede is mentioned in the same 'graph as David Fincher and Dostoyevsky, pretty impressive. Mudede also wrote the screenplay for Zoo, a doc about the Enumclaw man who died in 2005 after performing a sexual act with a stallion. Now, he’s wrapping up his feature-length debut as director, Thin Skin, and will be screening an excerpt from the film (“a music-infused dark comedy about keeping it together when you're falling apart”) at SIFF. Then, he’ll be present for an on-stage talk with the creative team about the process of turning a true story into a feature film with his real-life subject and film-co-writer, Ahamefule Oluo, who plays himself in the film. by Leilani Polk