The typical high school student regards the 34th Mill Valley Film Festival as a boring event that their parents go to to see foreign films that they have no interest in.

For the most part, that's true. Like most film festivals, MVFF is made up of content for older audiences and is not particularly aimed at youth. But in recent years, it seems the festival has either been trying to give high school students something to enjoy, or it has simply been getting lucky.

At the 2009 festival, I went to a screening of Youth in Revolt, the only film I saw at the festival that year. Seemed like an odd choice for a film festival, an R-rated high school comedy starring Michael Cera based on a popular young adult novel. But it was the perfect attraction for a high school student and the exact kind of thing the festival could use to have a more diverse selection.

This year, the festival has continued moving in that direction. One of the two opening night films was Jeff, Who Lives at Home, a comedy/drama with stars Jason Segel (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and Ed Helms (The Hangover). Not only is it an easy sell to teens, but the film is also quite good, and the kind of movie that people of our age group probably wouldn't have seen without those actors.

Along with that, the festival is holding a 30th anniversary screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark (Following the same idea as The Empire Strikes Back in 2010), a classic film that anyone would be interested in, including teens.

Films like these are a step in the right direction, not quite mainsteam films (Youth in Revolt made very little at the box office upon release) but very good ones that are attractive to more than their usual audiences.