The festival formerly known as Silverdocs is now AFI Docs. We’re still trying to stop saying “Silverdocs.” We’re mostly failing.

It’s much easier to adjust to the fact that starting this year, Silver—damn it, AFI Docs—is a two-city festival with a metaphorical duplex in the ’burbs and an apartment in D.C. Most of the 2013 slate is now showing in multiple places: the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center mothership in Silver Spring, where the festival has been held since it began in 2003, and a smattering of venues in downtown D.C.: the National Archives, Goethe-Institut, the National Portrait Gallery, the Newseum, and the American History Museum. For District denizens who balk at the prospect of a trip to Silver Spring on the stop-and-go Red Line, that’s a big upgrade.

AFI Docs’ new dual citizenship might soften the blow of this year’s smaller slate of films. Starting June 19, the festival runs for five days, not seven, and its lineup has taken a big haircut—only 53 films this year, down from last year’s 114. Why the crunch? “This is a transitional year where we are basically expanding into a new city,” says AFI Docs spokesperson Jody Arlington. (Organizers expect the festival to grow again next year.) But a big factor is the loss of Discovery Channel, one of the festival’s major founding sponsors. When Discovery pulled its support, the fest turned to another sponsor, Audi, to help penetrate the District’s borders.

As for the actual films, well, they’re a little less glamorous than years past. Three of the fest’s four gala screenings skew toward an inside-the-Beltway audience, and one of them, Caucus, promises “a particularly intimate view of Rick Santorum.” Last year’s beefy slate of rock docs set a pretty high bar for music dorks, and this go-’round doesn’t match them in number, but it aims for interesting subjects: Look to The Punk Singer, a bio of Bikini Kill singer Kathleen Hanna, or Muscle Shoals, a story of the legendary Alabama recording studio. Social and policy issues remain a focus, like in The New Black, which examines how divided African-American Marylanders have become on the issue of gay marriage, and Remote Area Medical, about poor Tennesseans who camp out for days to get a rare shot at basic health care. Many of these show in both Maryland and D.C. this year.

So we’ll forgive AFI Docs for playing it safe with the occasional Washingtonia pabulum, and just be happy that after 10 years, AFI Docs finally feels like a true D.C. film festival.

AFI Docs runs from June 19 to 23 at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, National Archives, Goethe-Institut, the Newseum, the National Portrait Gallery, and the American History Museum. See a complete schedule at afidocs.com.

Thursday, June 20

Openings

The Genius of Marian

If You Build It

The Crash Reel

We Always Lie to Strangers

Schedule (Openings marked with **)

Shorts

Friday, June 21

Openings

Mistaken for Strangers

The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear

Rent a Family Inc.

Remote Area Medical

Gideon’s Army

The Trials of Muhammad Ali

Schedule (Openings marked with **)

Saturday, June 22

Openings

Life According to Sam

Our Nixon

I Learn America

Schedule (Openings marked with **)

Sunday, June 23

Openings

Anita: Speaking Truth to Power

Schedule (Openings marked with **)

Shorts