The Tribeca Film Festival, the seventh edition of which begins Wednesday, doesn’t so much start with a bang as it does with a steadily swelling drumbeat. During the last month, announcements of various programs and competitions have gradually filled in the 120-feature slate. Though we’re still 48 hours from the opening film, the festival kicked into high gear over the weekend when tickets and passes went on sale for the general public (following preferential ticket-buying periods for American Express users and downtown residents).

Judging by the crowds in previous years, many festival-goers wait until the second week to attend, dependent on word from friends and critics as to which of the dozens of titles are the best bets. But where’s the fun in that? This is the adventurous week at the festival, so take a chance and dive in. Okay, use this cheat sheet detailing some of our early picks for the best films of the opening week.

‘MY WINNIPEG’
First screening: Thursday, 6 p.m.

It’s the new film by Guy Maddin. Need we say more? Audiences familiar with the filmmaker’s hypnotically surreal visions (not to mention his occasional live narrators and costumed sound-effects technicians) will rush out to buy tickets.

“My Winnipeg” is one of the funniest, saddest, and most haunting movies of the year. When the film — a self-described “docufantasia” experiment — made its premiere at last autumn’s Toronto Film Festival, critics rallied around it with giddy enthusiasm. Filmed in grainy black- and-white and cutting among dream sequences, archival footage, and bizarre re-enactments, the work is presented as a documentary of sorts about the titular city, in which Mr. Maddin grew up. But the further the film’s frantic narrator plumbs the depths of Winnipeg’s people, its institutions, and its history, the more this cityscape is stretched and distorted beyond all recognition, scrambled up in a dizzying array of metaphors, subconscious adventures, and montages. The lines separating truth, myth, and fabrication soon blur into a hazy mélange, and what’s left is a quirky testament to the notion that our sense of home is not something constructed of buildings and roads, but of memories — real and imagined.

Even better: The festival’s program notes say that Mr. Maddin will provide live narration during the first screening on Thursday night. It’ll be a rare instance of life imitating art imitating life.

‘TRUCKER’
First screening: Thursday, 9 p.m.

Tickets have been selling quickly for “Trucker,” one of the more buzzed-about entries in this year’s narrative competition. In James Mottern’s feature debut, Michelle Monaghan plays Diane, a truck-driving mother who is too busy living the wild life of the road to notice her own absence from the life of her 11-year-old son (Jimmy Bennett). But that all changes when Diane’s ex-husband falls ill and she must learn for the first time to wear the hat of mother.

Ms. Monaghan’s performance as a conflicted woman trying simply and desperately to do the right thing is what has people talking. “Trucker” arrives at the festival without a distributor, so it could also be one of the year’s big acquisitions.

‘ELITE SQUAD’
First screening: Thursday, 9:30 p.m.

If “Trucker” sounds a little too touchy-feely, then the gritty “Elite Squad” should offer the sufficient quotient of blood and bruises. Set in Rio de Janeiro — which, among “City of God,” “City of Men,” and other recent titles, is becoming a central location for stories of boys dealing with issues of masculinity — “Elite Squad” tells the story of a policeman and soon-to-be father who is assigned to eliminate violence on the eve of a visit by the pope but would rather escape the violence and corruption of his profession. Based on real stories of the ruthless police force that monitors the city’s most dangerous slums, this provocative and damning film has already wowed audiences at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Bear.

‘THE CALLER’
First screening: Friday, 5:30 p.m.

There’s something about the gravity and stoicism of Frank Langella that never fails to hook an audience. The veteran actor earned accolades last year for his understated role as an accomplished yet reclusive writer in “Starting Out in the Evening.” In the neo-noir drama “The Caller,” co-written and directed by Richard Ledes, Mr. Langella plays an executive at an energy firm who decides to rat out his company for corrupt business practices overseas. Convinced he’ll be killed, the executive hires a private eye — played by another stoic New York institution, Elliott Gould — to tail him.

‘THE AUTEUR’
First screening: Friday, 10:45 p.m.

Here’s one of the few screenings at this year’s festival where the art-house fan and the Adam Sandler fan might bump into each other. James Westby’s “The Auteur” is a mockumentary-style film about a master filmmaker named Arturo Domingo who has lost his inspiration and becomes depressed about an unrequited love. Arturo is a titan in the industry — who’s been hailed as the “Kubrick of porno.” We meet the artist (played by Melik Malkasian) during a retrospective of his work on the West Coast, and we watch snippets of his film catalog that seem familiar, mostly because his myriad sex scenes bear striking parallels to scenes from various cinematic classics. Mr. Westby’s 5-minute short film of 2002, also called “The Auteur,” followed Arturo as he recorded the commentary track for his DVD release, “Requiem for a Wet Dream.” The updated “Auteur” is part spoof, part mockumentary, part love story — one of those absurd concoctions that make for memorable midnight festival screenings.

ssnyder@nysun.com