By Joyce J. Persico for the Trenton NJ Times

Even though the city hasn't had an operating movie theater since the Mayfair closed its doors nearly 40 years ago, the Trenton Film Festival is powering up for a return to downtown this weekend after a six-year hiatus.

Originally designed in 2004 as a yearly event to lure locals and visitors to the city with films that couldn't be seen outside the festival circuit, it was an ambitious and successful venture that last was held in 2008, just as it had achieved a footing in the downtown area.

Patrons walked from the N.J. State Museum on West State Street to Gallery 125 on South Warren Street and back to The Contemporary on West State Street as they roamed from one viewing venue to another. There was no violence. People wined and dined outside the State Museum and artistic expression was the glue that held it all together.

Tomorrow through Sunday, the Trenton Film Society will host a roster of 30 films at the Mill Hill Playhouse, 205 E. Front St., as it attempts to recapture a sense of vibrancy in the city through the medium that transports viewers to foreign places, intergalactic adventures and inside the hearts of people who have managed to endure despite their circumstances.

Two featured films in the festival speak to the resiliency of the human spirit, one dedicated to the rebuilding of Long Beach Island after Hurricane Sandy swept away so much of its history and future away. "Landfall: The Eyes of Sandy" will close the festival with its 6:15 p.m. showing on Sunday. Directed by A.D. Pearson, it concentrates on Stafford Township and Long Beach Island as residents struggle to rebuild their lives and their homes after the October 2012 storm.

All proceeds from the film will go to a nonprofit that has continued to provide aid for families, first responders and businesses in the area.

"Lost Child — Sayon's Journey" is a different type of film about survival. It will be shown on Sunday at 4 p.m. followed by a question-and-answer session with its director-producer, Rocky Hill resident Janet Gardner, who traveled to Cambodia to research and film it.

A bittersweet documentary running 57 minutes, "Lost Child" details the story of Sayon Soeun, a child who was taken from his family at age 6 by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and forced to become a child soldier during the ruling Communist Party's four-year reign in the late 1970s.

His solitary journey eventually took him to Lowell, Mass., where, speaking no English and still in shock over what he had seen in war, he was adopted by an American family. Even in a town whose population was 25 to 35 percent Cambodian, Sayon's loneliness was nearly tangible and the person he most identified with was his 2-year-old American sister, who knew as little language as he did.

The film documents his journey back to Cambodia as he searches for the brothers, sisters and parents he left behind.

An award-winning film-maker who liked the idea of showing her film at the Mill Hill Playhouse after attending a Trenton Film Society screening of Oscar-nominated shorts there and then dining out locally, Gardner is an example of the type of talent this year's event will feature.

Gardner first ventured into filming the aftermath of the Cambodian genocide in "Dancing Through Death," an award-winning documentary on the classical dancers who survived the Khmer Rouge. Broadcast on PBS in 2007, it echoes Sayon's own efforts to preserve his culture in the young Cambodians who come to his classes in Lowell, where he still resides.

Gardner's pre-filmmaking career included a long list of journalism jobs at newspapers, including the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Cleveland Plain dealer and the Boston Globe.

She founded The Gardner Documentary Group to produce educational documentaries in 1990.

Her research took her to tours of Cambodia and Vietnam. It was on one of her trips that she met a translator whom Sayon married. Eventually she became an assistant producer on the film, Gardner said.

"Sayon was very quiet when he first came to the United States. He had PTSD and didn't talk very much," Gardner said. "As you can see from the film, the families he visited had conflicting stories to tell, so he asked for a DNA test to be sure he found his family. He was only a child when he was taken from his family, so he couldn't remember much."

Hoping to show her film on PBS stations in 2015, Gardner sees "Lost Child" as a way for festival audiences to "understand how children are still being robbed of their childhoods in places like Africa and Burma" and hopes that "they will become angry enough to do something about it."

A pair of films about Trenton will help fill out the film festival lineup.

The documentary "This Trenton Life" follows a Passage Theatre production by Trenton area youth and "The Trenaissance: A Better Way for the Capital" is a documentary short that highlights positive changes within the city.

For tickets and a complete list of films at the festival, visit trentonfilmsociety.org