Looking at the lineup for this year’s Athens International Film & Video Festival, I noted I had seen only two of the selected films. In fact, I’d heard of less than half of the 23.

That’s a great sign.

In the past few years, the film festival — playing April 27 to May 3 — has been heavier on buzzed-about art house hits and lighter on little-seen fare, but the feature film schedule this year has taken a turn for the unexpected and the unpredictable. It’s the most fascinating lineup I’ve seen in my almost four years in Athens.

Even the films that might ring a bell with some moviegoers have an intriguing edge. Leading the pack is Mulholland Drive director David Lynch’s first film in five years, Inland Empire. Some critics are calling it a masterful three-hour-long head trip, while others are labeling it an endurance test. Either way, it’s likely to be the most talked-about movie playing.

Other already known works coming include The Lives of Others — better known as “that German movie that beat Pan’s Labyrinth for Best Foreign Film” — and The Host, a South Korean horror-drama hybrid that soars when it’s a monster movie but flops when it’s a family drama.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. This year, there’s Ed Harris playing Ludwig van Beethoven (Copying Beethoven), an acclaimed American indie with a Yo La Tengo soundtrack (Old Joy) and, well, one film acclaimed as one of the greatest movies ever made by the few who have seen

That movie is Killer of Sheep, a recently restored film from 1977 that takes place in a Los Angeles ghetto and features gorgeous black-and-white cinematography (see the trailer at www.killerofsheep.com and weep) and a soundtrack that has kept it underground for copyright reasons.

Having this movie at the festival this year isn’t just a pleasant surprise — it’s a piece of history that will rarely be seen throughout the country this year. Athens is getting Killer almost a full six months before Columbus will even see it.

Of course, the film festival is about more than just making sure you catch the new Lynch film or the resurfaced classic (though trust me, I’ll be damned if I miss either). This festival is all about taking risks and forking over for movies you know nothing about. It’s a gamble that has paid off well for me, particularly three years ago.

Bored on a weekday evening during the festival in 2004, I wandered into The Athena and watched Waiting For Happiness, a French-Mauritanian co-production I knew nothing about, but a movie that has stayed with me ever since. It hasn’t been released on DVD in the United States yet, and I’m OK with that — I’d rather keep the memory of that first and only overwhelming viewing.

The chances of that happening again are good this year, particularly because the director of Waiting For Happiness, Abderrahmane Sissako, has a film playing at this year’s festival called Bamako.

What a week.