For music fans, CIFF’s Music on Screen lineup is an obvious place to start. This year’s six films stretch across decades and genres, digging into everything from a legendary ’90s concert tour captured on forgotten Hi8 tapes to an all-girl band whose strange, singular sound became the stuff of cult legend. There’s also a Scottish rap scam, an album resurrected by the internet and some long-overdue flowers for one of pop music’s great voices.

Here are the ones we think are worth catching.

The Best Summer

Beastie Boys. Sonic Youth. Foo Fighters. Beck. Bikini Kill. If that list already has you reaching for your calendar, start here. Tamra Davis’ THE BEST SUMMER turns a box of old Hi8 tapes into a time machine, resurrecting footage from the 1995 “Summersault” tour. Live performances, candid interviews and backstage chaos capture some of the era’s biggest and most influential names at a moment when alternative music was still rewriting the rules. Making its Canadian premiere at CIFF, the documentary looks less like a history lesson than a chance to get dropped directly into the middle of it.

CALIFORNIA SCHEMIN’

Two Scottish friends, a fake Californian rap identity and, somehow, an actual record deal. CALIFORNIA SCHEMIN’ is the kind of music-industry story that would sound ridiculous if it weren’t true. Directed by James McAvoy, the film follows two lads from Dundee who convince the industry they’re an established American rap duo, eventually landing a deal and appearing on MTV before their elaborate scam begins to unravel. Come for the audacity of the con; stay for what it says about an industry apparently willing to believe just about anything if you sell it convincingly enough.

Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been

You almost certainly know Darlene Love’s voice, even if the music industry hasn’t always made sure you knew her name. Barry Avrich’s documentary puts the spotlight squarely where it belongs, tracing the extraordinary career of the singer behind the holiday staple “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” and countless other recordings. With a lineup of famous admirers helping tell her story, DARLENE LOVE: I KNOW WHERE I’VE BEEN offers a long-overdue celebration of a performer whose voice has been woven into pop history for decades.

Los Lobos: Native Sons

More than 50 years into their career, Los Lobos have never been particularly interested in staying inside one musical box. LOS LOBOS: NATIVE SONS traces the story of the genre-defying East L.A. band and the musical traditions, friendships and communities behind their enduring legacy. Making its Canadian premiere at CIFF, the documentary offers an intimate look at how a group capable of moving between rock, Tex-Mex, blues, folk and traditional Mexican music built a sound that remains unmistakably their own.

Summer 2000: The X-Cetra Story

In 2000, four childhood friends recorded an album. Then it disappeared. Two decades later, the internet found it. Summer 2000: The X-Cetra Story follows the unlikely second life of a forgotten record that resurfaced online and unexpectedly went viral. It’s a music story that could really only happen now, when an algorithm can pull something out of obscurity and put it in front of an audience its creators never imagined. Equal parts time capsule and internet-era rediscovery, the film asks what happens when something you made as a kid suddenly comes back looking for you.

We Are The Shaggs

And then there are The Shaggs. The all-sister band’s 1969 album Philosophy of the World has spent decades being called everything from one of the worst records ever made to an accidental avant-garde masterpiece. Its admirers famously included Kurt Cobain and Frank Zappa, and its baffling, deeply unconventional songs have only grown more legendary with time.

Ken Kwapis’ We Are The Shaggs goes behind that mythology to the family at the centre of it, exploring how three sisters from small-town New Hampshire ended up making one of rock music’s strangest cult artifacts. Of all six films in this year’s lineup, this might be the one most likely to send you down a very weird rabbit hole afterward.

Tickets go on sale Aug. 28 at 10 a.m. MT, with pass and bundle holders able to reserve their screenings at the same time. With everything from lost ’90s tour footage to accidental outsider-art legends on the program, CIFF’s Music on Screen lineup has plenty worth turning up for. For more info visit ciffcalgary.ca.