CHAMPAIGN – Chicagoan Armando Rodriguez was surfing the Internet on Sunday morning when, just by a fluke, he came across a link to Ebertfest.

He noticed that the festival would end that afternoon with a screening of "Baraka" and an onstage discussion afterward with Chicago Sun-Times tech writer Andy Ihnatko and the two men who made the epic, non-verbal film.

"When my friends said, 'Let's go to the lake and play ball,' I said, 'How about going down to Champaign to see Mr. Ihnatko and Roger Ebert and 'Baraka'?" he said.

Nobody took Rodriguez up on it. So he hopped into his car and made it to the Virginia Theatre a half hour before the screening of a freshly struck 70mm Todd-AO print of "Baraka," described by director Ron Fricke as a "guided meditation" and by Ihnatko as a "cathedral film."

For Rodriguez, the trip was worth it. He said the print was amazing and called the questions asked afterward "spot-on."

As the film ended, the 41-year-old Chicago man, a buyer for diesel-engine-maker Navastar, shook Ebert's hand and thanked him for the 11th annual Roger Ebert's Film Festival, a special event of the critic's alma mater, the University of Illinois College of Media.

The festival opened Wednesday night with the 1970 documentary "Woodstock" and continued with 11 more movies that Ebert said earlier via e-mail seemed to really connect with the audience.

While several of the movies were sold out, everyone who waited in line for screenings got in except for 60 who wanted Saturday to see in person director-writer Rod Lurie's "Nothing But the Truth" and its co-star Matt Dillon.

Excluding having to turn away the people who wanted to see Dillon and "Truth," which was based on the Valerie Plame affair, the five-day festival went smoothly, with no reported medical problems or other issues, according to Jameel Jones, manager of the Virginia Theatre.

"I think that this really seemed like the best festival ever, even though I say that every year," said Chaz Ebert, who acted as emcee on behalf of her husband, who lost his speaking voice as a result of complications following cancer surgery a couple of years ago.

Chaz told the Ebertfest audience on Sunday that her husband, even though he was tired and had things to do, watched every festival movie and question-and-answer session.

He did so while ensconced in a specially installed Laz-Z-Boy recliner in the back of the theater. He often waved his approval at comments. And during "Woodstock," the critic rocked out with the performances – festival-goers applauded each one as if they were watching the famed concert live.

Festival director Nate Kohn said after the festival ended that Roger Ebert told him he's "really proud of our audience because of the questions they ask" of the filmmakers and other guests.

"I've never seen this level of consistently intelligent questioning at any other festival," Kohn said. "We also take seriously the introductions to the films, and it's good to have Roger back making the introductions."

Each time, the critic, standing at the podium on the Virginia stage, used his laptop and text-to-voice software to offer up succinct descriptions of the films, in a computer voice with a British accent.

During his introduction to "Baraka," Roger Ebert also made a plug for the nearby Boardman's Art Theatre. He told the people in his audience that after his festival ended, they should walk to Boardman's to see "Gomorrah," an Italian film about Camorra, the crime syndicate based in Naples.

During his lead-in to "Baraka," originally released in 1992, the critic also called the newly restored 70mm print a "supreme visual experience in cinema" that would be projected by the world's best projectionists, James Bond and Steve Kraus, both of Chicago.

"If ever a film speaks for itself, this film does," he said.

Director Fricke said the guiding light for the three-year project was "humanity's relationship to the eternal." He and four others, among them producer Mark Magidson, also on stage after the screening, spent 15 months filming "Baraka," which means blessing or the in-dwelling spiritual force, in 24 countries.

The resulting 96-minute film, set to world music by Michael Stearns, shows a panoply of humanity and even animals engaged, often prayerfully or ritualistically, with often stunning natural and built environments. The sequences included the burning of bodies along the Ganges River and stars in the night sky, to allude to birth, death and rebirth.