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HERE IS WHAT the Spokane International Film Festival, which continues its eight-day run tonight at the River Park Square Cinemas, is not. It’s not Sundance. It’s not Cannes. It’s not Toronto nor Berlin.

What the SpIFF is, though, is a festival that boasts a 15-film lineup good enough to compete with any of the festivals listed. It’s easy to navigate, it’s easy to get tickets for, it plays in a theater that boasts comfortable seats with good sight lines and, maybe most of all, it’s a sign that Spokane may have grown up culturally – at least in terms of filmgoing.

“I lost out on some films that I really wanted,” says festival director Bob Glatzer. “But then I picked up on some that I didn’t know I was going to get.”

That latter list includes the Japanese film “Nobody Knows,” whose star, Yuya Yagira, won the best actor award at Cannes.

Which proves that, now in its seventh year, the SpIFF has come of age. Including Thursday night’s premiere, Indian director Bharatbala’s “Hari Om,” this year’s festival features 15 full-length films and eight shorts. It features documentaries, dramas, a classic comedy and examples of international work from the likes of Argentina, South Korea, Slovenia, Austria, China and Tajikistan.

Bharatbala, who appeared with his film, isn’t the only director scheduled to visit. So is the Argentine filmmaker Gaspar Biraben (“Captive”), for example, and Maryte Kavaliauskas, co-director of “David Hockney: The Color of Music.” Morton Sobel, the 88-year-old third defendant in the infamous Rosenberg case, will appear with Ivy Meeropol’s historical documentary “Heir to an Execution.”

These films represent the best of some 200 films that Glatzer saw at festivals in New York, Vancouver, Telluride and Seattle. It says something about current American cinema that he ended up with only two films from the United States.

“I would have been delighted to have American films if I felt that they were the ones that I wanted,” Glatzer says. “I just wasn’t excited this year by any.”

The two special parts of the festival include the showing of the classic film “The Thin Man,” which stars William Powell and Myrna Loy, and a three-film retrospective of German director Tom Tykwer’s career.

“My first choice was ‘The Lady Eve,’ by Preston Sturgess. But Paramount told me that they have only two prints in 35mm, and they only show them in theaters that have the old-fashioned projection system,” Glatzer says. “Then my daughter Gabby suggested ‘The Thin Man,’ and it just rang a bell.”

As for Tykwer, Glatzer makes it no secret that he’s a big fan.

“I really love his work,” he says. “I really think that he’s one of the great filmmakers of this era.”

Looking toward the future, Leslie Ronald, chair of the board of the festival sponsor Contemporary Arts Alliance, is on record as having said that she would like to expand to 30 or even 35 films. But Glatzer isn’t so sure.

He’s more concerned with the present.

“I don’t know what kind of audiences we’ll draw,” Glatzer says. “I don’t know whether there will be a demand to expand it. It’s all a big question mark.”

Too true. And it’s up to those of us who love film to provide the right answer.