RAIN WILL GIVE WAY TO SUNDANCE … Local director Laura Paglin spent several years and thousands of dollars completing her passion project NightOwls of Coventry, which premiered at the Cleveland International Film Festival in 2003. But it’s a short documentary with a budget of $25 that might make her career.

During the 2004 Ohio election, Paglin had a hunch she could find a little drama at a polling station at East 60th and Superior. She spent the day documenting the chaos inside the precinct with a hand-held digital camera. The result is a 26-minute flick called No Umbrella, which has just been accepted into the 2006 Sundance Film Festival — Mecca for aspiring filmmakers. Competition is fierce: 4,322 shorts were submitted to Sundance this year. Only 73 will be screened.

No Umbrella serves as a sampling of Ohio’s flawed election system.

“They forgot to stick the punch cards into the machines,” says Paglin. “This movie is about how what should be a simple thing can become just so difficult.”

Next up for Paglin is a feature-length doc about three hippies who met in a hotel room in 1974 in order to devise a scheme to own every coffeehouse in America. Those hippies became the founders of Starbucks, Arabica, and Coffee Connection.

“I’ve already shot some footage on high-definition digital video,” says Paglin. “It looks great. But we need funding.”

Maybe she can ask Bobby Redford for a loan.

— James Renner