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| title ▼ | country | year | length | director | url | blurb | virtual_screening | programmer_blurb | trailer_url | language |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 399: Queen of the Tetons | USA | 2024 | 88 | Elizabeth Leiter | https://www.siff.net/festival/399-queen-of-the-tetons | The most famous and photographed grizzly bear in the world, known only as #399, lives a humble life in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park. But can she raise a rare four-cub litter in a world of unneeded human intervention and the threat of climate change? | 1 | For nearly two decades, Grizzly #399 has been a fixture in Grand Teton National Park. Known only by her research number, #399 has captivated photographers, both professional and amateur, since 2007, becoming the most photographed and famous grizzly in the world. But more important than her photogenic nature is the large number of cubs, 18 total, she has mothered over her lifetime. As the documentary opens, hundreds have gathered, awaiting her first appearance following winter hibernation. When she finally emerges from her den, she is accompanied by an extremely rare four cub litter. But an uphill battle lies ahead: cubs face a 50% mortality rate in their first year, and danger is everywhere. Crowds of photographers, tourists, and wildlife rangers watch as #399 teaches her young to swim, scavenge, and survive along the park’s roadsides. The bears’ proximity to humans offers protection against other predators, including male grizzlies, that are deterred by crowds, but there is also an attendant risk of habituation—a loss of their natural fear response—which could have deadly consequences. Exploring issues around wildlife management, environmentalism, and eco-tourism, 399: Queen of the Tetons offers a complex portrait of ursine-human relations, as continuously in flux as the landscape binding them together.—Dan Doody | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPyErIq68Kk | English |
| A Journey in Spring | Taiwan | 2023 | 90 | Wang Ping-Wen, Peng Tzu-Hui | https://www.siff.net/festival/a-journey-in-spring | In this sensitive and strikingly well-inhabited drama about coming to terms with loss and past regrets, gruff old Khim-Hok is unwilling to grapple with the overwhelming grief of his wife’s sudden death and places her body in the freezer…until family comes to visit. | 0 | The death of a loved one is an unfortunate painful part of the cycle of life. Especially if the loss comes unexpectedly. However, one aging man living in the hills of Taipei finds an unusual way to freeze time and his impending grief. Instead of judging his decision, the film focuses on capturing the invisible emotions he is so desperately trying to hide from. A Journey in Spring tenderly depicts the complicated relationship between a family broken by estrangement and the regrets we reflect on, like old home movies playing in our head. The lush cinematography and 16mm photography help capture that feeling beautifully, imploring you to slow down and empathize with the character’s story. Jason King’s poignant performance as the grieving husband and hostile father who suddenly finds his quiet life in disarray will surely touch the stoniest of hearts. Bring a tissue.—Sandra Woolf | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niscLludHS8 | Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese Hokkien |
| A New Kind of Wilderness | Norway | 2024 | 84 | Silje Evensmo Jacobsen | https://www.siff.net/festival/a-new-kind-of-wilderness | In the vast Norwegian wilds, five family members navigate grief and what “home” means after the loss of the mother who had served as the family’s glue. Winner of the World Cinema – Documentary Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2024. | 0 | The Payne family at center of this documentary from Norway’s Silje Evensmo Jacobsen appears to be living the idyllic pastoral dream. Maria and Nik take their four children on nature walks, teach them farming skills, and home-school each one without a video screen in sight. Soon, however, we see images of Maria enduring chemotherapy injections. Eventually, she is gone, existing only as a gaping wound in a grieving family unit. While a devastated Nik struggles to keep the unplugged lifestyle going, the eldest daughter, Ronja, moves in with her biological father, leaving her younger half-siblings to stay behind with their dad. Nik, a British expat, runs into financial troubles, reluctantly enrolls his kids in public school, and expresses a desire to return to England. The film has no overt message about sustainable living; the Paynes, after all, own a car, slaughter animals, and use Wi-Fi. Jacobsen is instead concerned with coping after tragedy, focusing most poignantly on Ronja and her adoring little sister, Freja, who mourns not only their mother but the loss of her sole remaining female family tie. This moving, melancholy doc effectively shows how blended families can navigate new paths ahead, even when their north star burns out.—Randy Woods | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuPJqVeMoh8 | Norwegian, English |
| ALT Shorts: See and Be Seen | France | 2023 | 85 | Jeanne Herry | https://www.siff.net/festival/alt-shorts-see-and-be-seen | Looking through colored filters, found footage, high school memories, or visual effects, this series of experimental shorts will transport you to locations that are real, remembered, abstracted, or simply imagined. | 1 | |||
| Admissions Granted | USA | 2024 | 90 | Hao Wu, Miao Wang | https://www.siff.net/festival/admissions-granted | As white supremacy barrels its way through the United States legal system, witness the landmark Supreme Court case of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that pitted a coalition of Asian American students against anti-Affirmative Action activists. | 0 | Affirmative Action in higher education admissions programs was struck down in 2023 by a conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. It will be years before anyone really knows the consequences of that decision. Admissions Granted tackles this hot-button issue head-on and explores what led to the landmark case “Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard,” in which Asian American plaintiffs went up against Harvard University’s race-conscious admissions program. Opening with interviews of students who applied for Harvard and other Ivy League schools but were rejected for what they see as discriminatory admissions policies, this fascinating documentary outlines the personal impact of these practices. Through news stories and testimonials, it showcases the varying sides of the story and provides important context for why there is this fight in the first place. At front and center are the two opposing sides: those, including Asian Americans, who believe that affirmative action levels the playing field and addresses historic imbalances for underrepresented groups in higher education, versus the anti-affirmative action Asian American activists and student members of Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), led by 71-year-old conservative lawyer Edward Blum. This topical documentary foregrounds the ways in which Asian Americans have been affected both positively and negatively by Affirmative Action and the wider systemic racism in admissions attitudes and policies that have yet to be effectively addressed.—Kathleen Mullen | English | |
| After the Fire | France | 2023 | 96 | Mehdi Fikri | https://www.siff.net/festival/after-the-fire | As an immigrant family mourns the death of one of their own at the hands of Strasbourg’s brutal police force, they decide to take on the justice system that helped to cover it up in this rousing political thriller from Mehdi Fikri. | 0 | In his debut feature, director Mehdi Fikri, previously a journalist, tells a story based on a real incident, and part of a larger French phenomenon that runs parallel to the Black Lives Matter movement in the U.S. Karim, a young man of North African descent living in Strasbourg, has died suddenly after being held in police custody. While the police say that the death was the result of an epileptic fit, the bruises on Karim’s body suggest otherwise. In the aftermath, his family must decide whether to bury Karim and mourn in private, or to accept that their personal grief has a political dimension with public significance. When they decide to pursue justice on Karim’s behalf, it is his estranged older sister Malika who steps forward. She takes the photos of Karim’s bruised body at the morgue; she persuades a skillful lawyer to take on their case; she manages the media attention, all the while contending with difficult family dynamics and relationships under strain. As the case takes over her life, it threatens her business and even her marriage. Is all of this worthwhile in the uncertain pursuit of “justice for Karim” (as the protesters chant)? Perhaps, another character observes, if one considers all the “other Karims” past, present, and future.—Justine Barda | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6Hn3lkktGY | French |
| Agent of Happiness | Bhutan | 2024 | 93 | Dorottya Zurbó, Arun Bhattarai | https://www.siff.net/festival/agent-of-happiness | Amber is a government employee tasked with conducting “happiness scale” surveys in the remote Himalayas. As he investigates and chronicles the diversity of lived experiences, he learns that he, too, is searching for his own place in the world. | 1 | "How happy and satisfied are you with your life, on a scale from zero to 10?" This is the question that Amber Gurung—and other “happiness agents” like him—ask their compatriots in the small mountainous country of Bhutan. As government worker Gurung goes door-to-door, administering the Gross National Happiness index, each encounter unveils a unique narrative. A new calf for milking raises the index score for one woman; caring for drunk volatile parents lowers another’s. A wealthy man declares his home life is “10 out of 10” as his three wives sit by; on their own, they paint a different picture. In Agent of Happiness, co-directors Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó employ a curatorial lens, offering a mosaic of profiles that reveal the complex fabric of Bhutanese lived experiences. At its heart lies Gurung's own story, contemplating his own contentment as he surveys others about theirs. Through his narrative arc, the film captures the elusive nature of happiness, even for its most dedicated agents.—SuJ’n Chon | Nepali, Dzongkha, English | |
| Aggro Dr1ft | USA | 2023 | 80 | Harmony Korine | https://www.siff.net/festival/aggro-dr1ft | In the first film from Harmony Korine’s new multimedia design collective EDGLRD, jump headfirst into a deranged abyss of infrared vaporwave cinema as a tortured, Miami-based assassin hunts for his biggest target—a demon-winged crime lord. | 0 | Shot entirely on thermal imaging cameras and filtered through extensive visual effects, Aggro Dr1ft abstracts reality and looks like the manufactured world of a videogame. Set in and about Miami Beach, it looks like Florida filtered through a hangover, sometimes throbbing and occasionally beautiful when you can get outside of your own head. The title also invokes an existential videogame that’s as much about driving and shooting people as it is about drifting through life. The plot matches that, where a hit man would rather hang out with his family than take another job. It’s a very surface movie in its look, but also very “present tense.” The characters often think out loud and describe their own actions, and it’s almost like you can see director Harmony Korine thinking on film: Demons appear in the background and ink-like illustrations and machine parts appear on people’s skin, as if he is manifesting his visual impulses. Meanwhile, the non-player characters often loop their actions while waiting for something to do. It’s visceral filmmaking that is sometimes boring, often amusing, and even though he's not in it, it’s almost as though Korine himself is the main character. For me, the best thing about Harmony Korine as a filmmaker is his penchant for capturing what he finds interesting no matter what the commercial market is saying, and how what he finds interesting is usually well beyond the script or plot. Like it or not, Aggro Dr1ft is different from everything else out there.—Andy Spletzer | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0mXKW6JHpE | English |
| Agra | India | 2023 | 132 | Kanu Behl | https://www.siff.net/festival/agra | A brazen and bold movie about a lonely, self-pitying twentysomething call center employee, still stuck at home with his family (plus his dad’s mistress), as he struggles for sexual and spatial independence amid a society that overemphasizes masculine stereotypes. | 1 | Guru is frustrated. Single and living with his parents and his father’s mistress, he finds his sexual urges increasingly unbearable by the lack of personal space. He wants to convert the terrace level of the family home into a private room for himself and his imaginary girlfriend. However, his father and his mistress have their own designs for the terrace. So does Guru's mother, who’s pledged the space to her niece to establish a dental clinic, a potential income source for the family. This clash of ambitions, along with a radioactive mix of sexual compulsions, mental health issues, and constrained economic options, threatens the fragile family dynamics. Newcomer Mojit Agawal’s portrayal of the tightly wound, delusional Guru takes a compelling turn when he begins to date Priti (Priyanka Bose), a self-assured widow with a physical disability. Will Priti's presence serve as a catalyst for Guru's explosive breakdown, or will she be the coolant to this troubled family? Kanu Behl's Agra premiered at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in 2023, garnering a five-minute standing ovation for its unflinching exploration of patriarchal norms and the corrosive effects of male sexual repression within the struggling middle class.—SuJ’n Chon | Hindi | |
| All Shall Be Well | Hong Kong | 2024 | 93 | Ray Yeung | https://www.siff.net/festival/all-shall-be-well | In the aftermath of her longtime girlfriend’s sudden passing, Angie must fight not just for her own peace of mind in the face of grief but to keep the apartment they called home. Winner of the LGBTQ+ Teddy Award at the 2024 Berlinale. | 0 | Pat (Maggie Lin-Lin Li) and Angie (Patra Au Ga Man), two elderly lesbians living in Hong Kong, have been in a loving, committed relationship for over 40 years. Although their partnership is not widely accepted in Hong Kong’s socially conservative culture, Pat’s family recognizes the closeness of their bond and has woven Angie into the fabric of their kinship, even spending holidays like the Mid-Autumn Festival at the couple’s home. When Pat abruptly passes away, the familial relationship between her partner and her family destabilizes, and the family, in the absence of a marriage license binding Angie to Pat or her assets, takes full advantage of their legal right to determine where Pat will be buried and who will be the beneficiaries of her estate. Quiet, mild-mannered Angie finds herself thrown into total precarity with her longtime lover gone and even the roof over her head contested. Director Ray Yeung conceived of All Shall Be Well after interviewing older gays and lesbians who, upon their partner’s passing, find that their partner’s families quickly gobble up the inheritance, as is their legal right in Hong Kong, where gay marriage remains forbidden, making the default next-of-kin the closest blood relative of the deceased. The film serves as a stunning, gentle call to action for legal protections for LGBTQ+ elders and families.—Angel Cetorelli | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3goprbZjfqY | Cantonese |
| All We Carry | USA | 2024 | 87 | Cady Voge | https://www.siff.net/festival/all-we-carry | Mirna and Magdiel fled Honduras in search of a brighter future. After making their way north, including a months-long stint in a U.S. detention center, they found sanctuary in a Seattle synagogue, who showed mercy on them as they awaited asylum. | 1 | In Southern Mexico, crowds of migrants gather. They wait and hope for a chance at a new life beyond the United States’ towering border wall. They have few possessions: a few bags, blankets, and—if they’re lucky—each other. All We Carry is a documentary following Magdiel and Mirna, a young Honduran couple fleeing narco traffickers with their toddler son. They’ve left everything they know for this uncertain, perilous journey because all that exists for them back at home is the threat of likely death; two of Mirna’s family members were killed, as was Magdiel’s father, and the two fear they’re next. The problem? Gaining asylum in the United States under a then-Donald Trump presidency requires the couple to convince the government to believe in and care about their story. All We Carry tells the story of the in-between period for migrants after they’ve made it to the U.S., but before they are granted asylum. Magdiel and Mirna, after two respective stints in a detention center, find themselves in Seattle enduring the two years before their final immigration hearing, which will determine whether they can stay or whether they must leave. During this time, neither can legally work. They have a son to care for and little English between the two of them. What follows is a story of the Seattle community banding together to help two immigrants fighting for survival.—Nathalie Graham | Spanish, English | |
| All Your Faces | France | 2023 | 118 | Jeanne Herry | https://www.siff.net/festival/all-your-faces | Adèle Exarchopolous (Passages) won a César Award for this moving ensemble drama about a restorative justice group, where criminals and victims meet face-to-face and learn together what it takes to heal, to evolve, and to forgive. | 1 | Restorative justice, a program that provides victims and offenders with the possibility of dialogue, as a path to healing, has been in practice in France since 2014. In this nominee for the César for Best Film, Jeanne Herry brings together an impressive ensemble cast to tell the stories of seven people who decide to participate in such a program. The film follows two separate restorative justice processes. In the first, three victims of violent crime meet with three perpetrators of similar crimes. Among the participants are Grégoire (Gilles Lellouche), Nawelle (Leïla Bekhti), and Sabine (Miou Miou), victims of home invasion, a holdup, and purse snatching, respectively; while Nassim (Dali Benssalah), Issa (Birane Ba), and Thomas (Fred Testot) are offenders, convicted of violent robberies. In the second process, Chloé (Adèle Exarchopoulos), a survivor of childhood sexual abuse by her older brother, must confront the past as she tries to define the terms for her future. The victims share their experiences, and their debilitating impact; the offenders provide insight into why and how they commit their crimes. Unsentimental, the film does not shy away from the difficulties of such a process, at the same time as it offers a powerful and moving affirmation of the power of dialogue.—Justine Barda | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEfCIihfqxE | French |
| Animation4Adults | France | 2023 | 93 | Marie Amachoukeli | https://www.siff.net/festival/animation4adults-x37507 | From magic candies to disappearing frogs, this year’s animated shorts take us on unexpected journeys from the otherworldly outer reaches to the inner depths of one’s mind. | 1 | |||
| Babes | USA | 2024 | 109 | Pamela Adlon | https://www.siff.net/festival/babes | In her feature directorial debut, Pamela Adlon (“Better Things,” “King of the Hill”) joins forces with star/co-writer Ilana Glazer (“Broad City”) in this hysterical, no-holds-barred comedy about a woman who gets pregnant after a one-night stand. | 0 | After wrapping up the run of her acclaimed FX series “Better Things,” Pamela Adlon makes her feature directorial debut with the riotous Babes. This bawdy comedy about two friends navigating different stages of motherhood presents an unfiltered look at ways in which the experience is both joyous and revolting. Eden (Ilana Glazer, “Broad City”) has been a steadfast friend to Dawn (Michelle Buteau, Always Be My Maybe) as she and her husband welcomed their first two children. So when Eden decides to have a baby after getting pregnant from a one-night stand that ghosts her, she looks to Dawn to get her through the wild ride on which she’s about to embark. The film mines the unbelievably long list of “things you never knew before getting pregnant” for gross-out laughs earned through brutal honesty. Yet Babes is, at its core, a paean to female friendship and resilience. Frank and funny, it manages to craft a vital look at parts of a woman’s life rarely, if ever, seen on screen.—Betsy Cass | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_FnQY4f8Bw | English |
| Banel & Adama | Mali | 2023 | 87 | Ramata-Toulaye Sy | https://www.siff.net/festival/banel-and-adama | In a tiny, drought-plagued village in northern Senegal, Banel and Adama are madly in love. But as their modern ways break from local traditions—Adama refuses to become chief, Banel doesn’t want children—their community take it as a curse. | 0 | In Banel & Adama, a film directed and written by Ramata-Toulaye Sy, viewers are whisked away into an epic narrative of love and rebellion set in the stark yet stunning landscapes of the Sahel. This film marks Sy's impressive transition from short films to feature-length storytelling, building on the acclaim she received for her short film Astel at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2021, where she was celebrated for her emerging talent. The story centers around the intense relationship between Banel (Khady Mane) and Adama (Mamadou Diallo). Their journey is one of youthful defiance against the heavy weight of cultural expectations and familial obligations. Their love story is unique, transcending the norms of their community in Senegal, challenging the legacy left by Adama's deceased brother Yero and the consequent marital and social responsibilities thrust upon them. As Adama faces the pressure to take up his brother's mantle as the village chief, both he and Banel yearn for a different path, one that promises freedom and the fulfillment of their own dreams. Yet, their aspirations are tested by environmental and social crises, as drought threatens their way of life and societal norms encroach upon their desires. Sy's Banel & Adama made a notable debut at the Cannes Film Festival, standing out as a significant first feature film. The movie delves into the realms of myth and legend, painting a story that resonates with the timeless essence of folk tales. Through her narrative, Sy crafts a visually and emotionally captivating world, portraying characters with depth and resilience, and forging a tale that speaks to the enduring human spirit against a backdrop that is both harsh and magnificent.—Nancy Pappas | Pulaar | |
| Before It Ends | Denmark | 2023 | 90 | Anders Walter | https://www.siff.net/festival/before-it-ends | Oscar®-winning director Anders Walter (Helium) highlights a sensitive chapter in Denmark’s history near the end of World War II about a headmaster torn between helping the stranded refugees assigned to his boarding school or adhering to his city’s anti-German sentiment. | 1 | The fragility of morality lies at the heart of Anders Walter's Before It Ends. Following Jakob, a headmaster at a boys boarding school in Ryslinge, Denmark in April 1945, the imminent Nazi occupation finally rears its ugly, fascistic head one day and Jakob is forcibly dictated to convert the school he pridefully leads into a shelter for German refugees. Jakob, his family, and close associates are thrust into roles well beyond their asking, and when a brutal wave of diphtheria plagues the unwelcome visitors, an impulsive act of humanity by Jakob ultimately leads to the swift unfurling of the town's populace, pitting once-peaceful neighbors against one another in a battle of muddied motives. Walter's diffused direction does plenty in obfuscating where exactly the “right” and “wrong” lie, and the lack of moral clarity Walter presents may further frustrate in a world currently pained by both bloodsheds in Gaza and Ukraine. But with the film’s setting in history as an example, freedom from conflict can always be around the corner, in spite of current bleakness. If anything, the film is a harsh reminder of the work that must still be done in preventing wide-scale atrocities from occurring again in the future. Walter's cryptic messaging perhaps asks of us not to raise our pitchforks at those we're closest to first, but instead to read beyond the room and reorient our collective energy to those who really pull us apart.—Dannzel Escobar | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGZxwQfKUIk | Danish |
| Black Box Diaries | Japan | 2024 | 104 | Shiori Ito | https://www.siff.net/festival/black-box-diaries | In this nonfiction procedural that cuts right to the heart, a journalist takes on Japan’s patriarchal sociopolitical system as she investigates her own sexual assault, using her camera to detail every step of the grueling eight-year process to attain justice. | 0 | A young journalist becomes the story after she refuses to stay quiet about a sexual assault at the hands of one of Japan’s most well-connected men. Before the #MeToo movement would make waves across the globe, Shiori Ito decided to go public when police dropped their investigation against the man who attacked her, a close personal friend of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Ito documents her fight for justice in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, knowing that she risks her livelihood and her life by speaking out. This harrowing and heartfelt record of her struggle to change cultural and legal attitudes shows Ito at her most tenacious and vulnerable. While she builds a cadre of close and sometimes unlikely allies to support her as she presses forward, ultimately the weight is hers to bear. Equal parts personal diary, elaborate criminal investigation, and indictment of the Japanese cultural norms that subjugate women, Black Box Diaries merges the intimate and the universal in presenting the brutal journey Ito must make as she becomes the face of sexual assault survivors in Japan.—Betsy Cass | Japanese, English | |
| Bob Trevino Likes It | USA | 2024 | 105 | Tracie Laymon | https://www.siff.net/festival/bob-trevino-likes-it | When her narcissistic father suddenly cuts her out of his life, Lily (Barbie Ferreira, “Euphoria”) finds solace in Facebook of all places when she connects with and befriends a kindhearted man (John Leguizamo) who shares her father’s name. Winner of the 2024 SXSW Narrative Jury and Audience Awards. | 0 | Friendship can come from the oddest places, like a Facebook profile with no picture, a contractor who fixes your flooding toilet, or a stranger with a familiar name. Inspired by true events, Bob Trevino Likes It stars Barbie Ferreira (“Euphoria,” Unpregnant) as Lily Trevino, a 25-year-old loner abandoned by her mother when she was young and feeling even further abandoned when her manipulative narcissist father cuts her off. Desperate for sage advice, someone to lean on, or at least some words of reassurance, Lily chats online with a local man (John Leguizamo) who shares her father’s name: Bob Trevino. Struggling with his own disconnection from his wife after the loss of their baby, his thankless job, and his unrealized dreams of being an astronomer, Bob finds himself easily falling into a paternal role and developing a close bond with Lily. Leguizamo and Ferreira’s chemistry is warm and lively, shining most brightly through the little acts of kindness, thoughtfulness, and humor they offer to each other. Bob Trevino Likes It is about the journey of healing after trauma, the explosive sadness and riotous laughter that guides us through, and the value in the family we choose along the way.—Emalie Soderback | English | |
| Bonjour Switzerland | Switzerland | 2023 | 88 | Peter Luisi | https://www.siff.net/festival/bonjour-switzerland | In this socially conscious slapstick political comedy about multilingualism, a Swiss referendum leaves the country with only one official language—French—much to the chagrin of the German- and Italian-speaking citizens. From the director of SIFF 2018 audience hit Streaker. | 1 | Ah, Switzerland! Home of the cuckoo clock, hole-riddled cheese, and the best dang pocket knife you can buy. Throughout its history, the Alpine country has become a byword for neutrality, keeping an even keel during even the most chaotic of world events. Until now. The Swiss government decides to hold a referendum on the country’s long held multilingualism. The “No Blingue” initiative, supported by oddly coiffured media mogul Jeannot Bachmann, would establish one national language. Polls show it will never pass—only it does: French is now the official language, even though only 23% of the population speak it. However this happened, it is now up to federal agent Walter Egli to oversee the planned transition, despite his own execrable command of French. Meanwhile, a separatist group emerges in the southern canton of Ticino, where the Italian language dominates. Walter and his partner, hotshot undercover specialist Jonas Bornard, infiltrate the group only to find out they’re pretty nice people and just might have the right plan to fix this mess. From Peter Luisi and Beat Schlatter—the same creative team behind SIFF 2018 sleeper hit Streaker—Bonjour Switzerland conjures forth the same uproariously entertaining mix of absurdist narrative, wry satire, and warmhearted hilarity.—Dan Doody | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPpLYZLEbEY | Swiss German, French, Italian |
| Bring Them Home | USA | 2024 | 85 | Ivan MacDonald (Blackfeet), Ivy MacDonald (Blackfeet), Daniel Glick | https://www.siff.net/festival/bring-them-home | Oscar® nominee and onetime Washington resident Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon) narrates this soul-stirring and tradition-oriented documentary about Montana’s Blackfoot tribe as they seek to reinstate a wild buffalo herd back to their ancestral land. | 0 | SIFF 4th World alumni Ivy and Ivan MacDonald (Blackfeet) partner with co-director Daniel Glick in Bring Them Home, which tells the story of a small group of Blackfoot peoples and their mission to establish the first wild buffalo herd on their ancestral territory since the species’ near-extinction a century ago, an act that would restore the land, re-enliven traditional culture, and bring much-needed healing to their community. Blackfeet actress and Bring Them Home executive producer Lily Gladstone (Oscar® nominee for Killers of the Flower Moon) narrates the film, imbuing the story with her love for their people, the land, and the iinnii (buffalo).—Tracy Rector | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWGt8Ur-MBc | English |
| Chasing Ice | USA | 2012 | 75 | Jeff Orlowski | https://www.siff.net/festival/chasing-ice | With his breathtaking time-lapse imagery and stunning landscapes, National Geographic photographer James Balog documents the rapid and alarming shrinkage of the world’s glaciers, warning of looming consequences for the planet. | 0 | In 2005, National Geographic photographer James Balog set out for the Arctic to document the effects of climate change on the planet’s northern ice cap. A skeptic of the science behind global warming at the time, Balog wanted to see with his own eyes whether a warming planet really posed dire consequences for life on Earth. Seven years later, the shocking evidence he’s seen of rapid glacier shrinkage and ice shelf disintegration has made him a passionate convert, leading him to launch the Extreme Ice Survey project to record the polar ice retreat. Balog and director Jeff Orlowski created Chasing Ice as a clarion call to the rest of the world about what Balog calls “the biggest story in human history.” To capture these starkly beautiful, jaw-dropping images, Balog and Orlowski battled sub-zero temperatures using largely untested technology. Using the tack-sharp images from Balog’s lens and cutting-edge time-lapse photography showing mountains of ice disappearing over the course of a few months, Chasing Ice is the story of one man’s mission to change the tide of history by gathering undeniable evidence of climate change. This film stands as a warning that these fantastical icescapes may be gone forever if nothing is done.—Randy Woods | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3h3FQYvXBo | English |
| Chasing Time | USA | 2024 | 40 | Jeff Orlowski-Yang, Sarah Keo | https://www.siff.net/festival/chasing-time | From the director of Chasing Ice (SIFF 2012) and Chasing Coral (SIFF 2017) comes their latest foray into the effects of climate change, as the Extreme Ice Survey completes its 15-year mission chronicling evidence of rapid glacier shrinkage. | 0 | English | ||
| Chuck Chuck Baby | United Kingdom | 2023 | 101 | Janis Pugh | https://www.siff.net/festival/chuck-chuck-baby | In this bold Welsh film packed with flourishes of musical whimsy, Helen is a chicken factory worker still living with her estranged husband and his new family with a much younger woman. Can the return of a childhood friend bring Helen a second chance at life? | 0 | Helen works the night shift at the local poultry processing plant. Despite the long, ungodly hours, the job offers a genial camaraderie with her coworkers and a welcome respite from oafish husband Gary. Although legally separated, the couple still shares a home where Helen takes care of her ill mother-in-law Gwen, with whom she has a warm, maternal bond, while Gary loafs about with his vapid live-in girlfriend Amy and their rather colicky newborn. But hold on, this isn’t the British kitchen sink drama you think it is. Helen’s humdrum world takes a surprising turn with the prodigal return of her schoolgirl crush, Joanne. Thrilled by emotions she hasn’t felt in years, Helen encourages Joanne’s romantic affections, and it’s not long before she shows up outside the factory, ghetto blaster thumping, sports car revving to whisk Helen away for an impromptu beach holiday. But life intervenes as their burgeoning romance grows: Helen’s home life threatens to upend their happiness, leading the couple to make difficult emotional decisions. If you’ve been searching for a sapphic romance semi-diegetic jukebox musical—featuring the songs of Janis Ian, Minnie Riperton, and Neil Diamond—then Janis Pugh’s warmhearted, generous, and rousing first feature will strike the perfect chord.—Dan Doody | English | |
| City of Wind | Mongolia | 2023 | 103 | Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir | https://www.siff.net/festival/city-of-wind | In this quietly told Mongolian drama from debut filmmaker Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir, a 17-year-old shaman is in for a world-changing shift, one that pits his traditional customs with the allure of modern society, when he becomes enamored with a peer who needs heart surgery. | 0 | In Director Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir’s feature debut City of Wind, a spiritual shaman is a crucial member of the community, the one who everyone depends on when in need of moral and spiritual guidance. But what happens when that shaman is a 17-year-old high school student named Ze who must balance his profound spiritual responsibilities while also juggling another life—that of a high school student—working hard to succeed and even fall in love in the cold, callous society of modern Mongolia? Majestic landscapes are captured through striking, wide screen framing in City of Wind, transporting the viewer to a familiar yet specific coming of age narrative. This beautifully constructed film is like a carefully tended flame that spreads a little circle of light and warmth in the world's coldest capital. Buoyed by Tergel Bold-Erdene’s subtle but endearing performance as Ze, Director Purev-Ochir provides a blunt, honest, completely frank portrayal of Ze's life and its contradictions. Neon club nights, first love, and intergenerational spirits clash in this deeply felt and thoughtful coming-of-age drama, reflecting not just the struggles of one teenager but that of a nation.—Eden Sapir | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15E8Ji_ZTUg | Mongolian |
| Close Your Eyes | Spain | 2023 | 165 | Víctor Erice | https://www.siff.net/festival/close-your-eyes | In his first film in over 30 years, Víctor Erice (The Spirit of the Beehive) makes another masterpiece, an ode to cinema following a reclusive former filmmaker investigating the two-decades-old disappearance of one of his actors. Nominated for 11 Goya Awards. | 1 | *Restricted to audiences in WA State.Miguel Garay, a former film director, deals with the mysterious and unexpected disappearance decades ago of his friend and film lead, Julio Arenas. There are those who believe Julio has died. Others still hope to find him. Julio’s own daughter, Ana Arenas, questions his complete existence. The truth is that Miguel's life and career as a director stopped the day Julio walked out of the set and never came back. Life imitating fiction, the film they were making then was about a man seeking to find his also mysteriously disappeared daughter. Twenty years later, a television program hires Miguel to talk about the actor’s disappearance. Although Miguel initially is in it for the money, reliving the days of shooting the unfinished film brings back the ghosts of his and Julio's past. With an extraordinary cast led by José Coronado (Julio), Manolo Solo (Miguel), and Ana Torrent (Ana), the latest work from acclaimed Spanish director Víctor Erice (The Spirit of the Beehive) is a tale that captivatingly explores the themes of memory, aging and identity. Facts and fiction collide in Erice’s masterpiece, offering an unforgettable tale of the mighty communion between cinema and life.—Hebe Tabachnik | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgctYfFuOCU | Spanish, Catalan |
| Coloring Outside the Lines | Spain | 2023 | 93 | Víctor Erice | https://www.siff.net/festival/coloring-outside-the-lines | Through their creativity (rather, queerativity), these stories of performance, sound, and image not only validate that art imitates life, but that it IS life. | 1 | |||
| Critical Zone | Iran | 2023 | 99 | Ali Ahmadzadeh | https://www.siff.net/festival/critical-zone | With only the voice of his GPS to guide him, Amir drives through the underbelly of Tehran delivering hashish to his clients and friends. Winner of the 2023 Locarno International Film Festival Golden Leopard Award. | 0 | Amir is a drug dealer in Tehran. Over the course of one long night, with only the GPS to guide him, he navigates the city’s underworld, meeting friends and clients. He visits an erstwhile girlfriend performing dance for children, a friend traveling abroad hoping to make it to the U.S., and a flight attendant/drug courier returning to Iran for a short layover. He delivers homemade hash muffins to a hospice where he and the nurse administer them like medicine. He hands out free bags of hash to a group of devoted sex workers. And he helps a conservative mother who’s trying to save her drug-addicted son. “First I trust in you, then in God,” she tells him. Indeed, Amir is a kind of modern messiah: benevolent, compassionate, providing people with a means of escape, that is also a means of resistance, and, in one unforgettable scene, an incitement to feminist revolution. Because of its transgressive subject matter, Critical Zone was shot without a permit, using hidden cameras and non-professional actors. As a result, the director was prevented by the Iranian government from attending the Locarno Film Festival for the film’s premiere, where it won the festival’s top prize, with the jury describing it as “a 99-minute scream in the name of rebellion and freedom.”—Justine Barda | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaNDSwKX7lo | Farsi (Persian) |
| Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano | Lebanon | 2023 | 84 | Cyril Aris | https://www.siff.net/festival/dancing-on-the-edge-of-a-volcano | While shooting Costa Brava, Lebanon (SIFF 2022), the film crew’s world stopped when Lebanon’s Port of Beirut suddenly exploded, killing over 200 people and injuring thousands more. What does it mean to strive for human dignity and make art amid a country’s continuing turmoil? | 1 | In 2022, SIFF showed a Lebanese film called Costa Brava, Lebanon. Two years on, we present a film about the “making of” that film, which also happens to be a harrowing documentary about the devastating port explosion which hit Beirut in 2020, and a fascinating chronicle of filmmaking under the most challenging of circumstances. The port explosion killed more than 200 people, injured 6,500, many of them critically, and left 300,000 homeless overnight. The cause was a stockpile of ammonium nitrate, which had been stored haphazardly in Beirut’s port for years. The origin and destination of the chemicals remain unknown, but their mishandling is widely attributed to the corruption and criminal practices of the ruling political establishment. Deep in pre-production for Costa Brava at the time of the blast, the cast and crew must decide whether to go forward with the shoot, despite severe damage to the production company’s office and injuries to its staff. Once the decision is made, they must figure out how to contend with a collapsing currency and rolling blackouts—not to mention COVID. A tribute to the perseverance and fortitude of the filmmakers, the story of making Costa Brava, Lebanon is in some ways, the story of a country where crisis has become the norm.—Justine Barda | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YmDp_Tz6Ks | Arabic, English, French |
| Disco Afrika: A Malagasy Story | Madagascar | 2023 | 81 | Luck Razanajaona | https://www.siff.net/festival/disco-afrika-a-malagasy-story | Young Kwame works in the sapphire mines of southern Madagascar. But when he becomes ill and returns to his home village, he connects to his community’s past and their decades-long fight against corruption and oppression. | 1 | Disco Afrika introduces us to Kwame, a 20-year-old navigating life's harsh realities in the clandestine sapphire mines. But a twist of fate sends him back to his roots, where old bonds and new challenges await. The film unravels Kwame's tumultuous journey amid his country's societal decay. Reconnecting with his mother and friends, he stands at a crossroads: the lure of quick riches or the tough path of integrity and awakening. His choice is a mirror to the soul of a nation caught between past wounds and hopeful resurgence. The film's vivid portrayal, enriched by a captivating soundtrack, paints a vibrant tableau of a time when art and activism danced to the same beat. It's not just a story; it's an experience, weaving together personal struggle and collective memory. Disco Afrika is a journey into the heart of a continent's enduring spirit.—Nancy Pappas | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPD13jF3RmU | Malagasy |
| Dragon Superman | Taiwan | 1968 | 90 | Satoru Kobayashi, Shao Lo-hui | https://www.siff.net/festival/dragon-superman | Women love him. Men want to be him. And when the fearsome Cosmos Gang crosses him, nothing will stop our masked, motorcycle-riding hero from doling out justice in this swinging, hard-punching, and high-flying 1968 Taiwanese actioner. | 0 | Have you been complaining about there being too many superhero films recently? Well, you haven’t seen Dragon Superman. An explosion rips through the night as a frightened man runs down a deserted city street. A gang of mysterious masked men, known only as the Cosmos Gang appear, kill the man, and seize his briefcase. The next day, crusading journalist San Lin-jun and staff photographer Mr. Mischief attend an exhibition of valuable jewels at the Hsin Pao Department Store. Wouldn’t you know it, the Cosmos Gang strikes again—stealing the jewels and eluding police capture. San Lin-jun vows to bring these villains to justice, employing the guise of masked crimefighter, Dragon Superman. He soon discovers the Cosmos Gang’s plot to extort an ancient Incan artifact from department store owner, Liu Ching-yun, by kidnapping his granddaughter. But when the Gang also abducts Mr. Mischief and Li-yun, a beautiful blind chanteuse who just so happens to have captured Lin-jun’s heart, they unleash the full fury of Dragon Superman. Heavily influenced by Japan’s tokusatsu films with nods to American noir, Dragon Superman is exhilarating pulp cinema cut from the same spandex as luchador El Santo and the Green Hornet.2K digital restoration, courtesy of TFAI—Dan Doody | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhSSbhA6v6s | Taiwanese Hokkien |
| Dìdi (弟弟) | USA | 2024 | 96 | Sean Wang | https://www.siff.net/festival/didi | Oscar® nominee Sean Wang (Nai Nai & Wài Pó, SIFF 2023 Grand Jury Prize Winner) won the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award at Sundance for this joyous tale about a skate video-loving NorCal Taiwanese American circa 2008 who spends his final pre-high school summer learning what it means to grow up. | 0 | Transport yourself back in time; all the way back to the summer of 2008. When YouTube was in its infancy and MySpace and AIM reigned supreme. Dìdi (弟弟), the charming debut feature from 2024 Oscar® nominee Sean Wang (Nai Nai & Wài Pó, SIFF 2023 Grand Jury Award Winner for Best Documentary Short), follows a skate video-loving Bay Area Taiwanese American thirteen-year-old kid spending his last summer before high school encountering all the classic misadventures of growing up. First kisses, finding the correct angle to point the camera, learning to appreciate your mom (Joan Chen, “Twin Peaks”) for all she is and all she does…all the important lessons. Wang playfully intertwines elements of his own upbringing in Fremont, CA as a first-generation immigrant kid, and the inclusion of his maternal grandmother Chang Li Hua (featured in Nai Nai & Wài Pó) aptly cast as Chris’ grandmother serves as a reminder of the deeply personal approach Wang takes to filmmaking as he blurs the line between reality and fiction. Within all these hyper-specific details emerges a painfully sweet portrait of the halcyon days of summer experienced only by the young.—Megan Leonard | English, Taiwanese | |
| Eat Your Heart Out (WTF) | Taiwan | 1968 | 86 | Satoru Kobayashi, Shao Lo-hui | https://www.siff.net/festival/eat-your-heart-out-(wtf) | A pu pu platter of shockingly delicious shorts with an aftertaste of WTF. Pizza. Dumplings. Milking. Hole. | 1 | |||
| Empire Waist | USA | 2021 | 94 | Claire Ayoub | https://www.siff.net/festival/empire-waist | Lenore Miller’s size has always earned her teases and jeers in her school’s hallways, but this clothes-loving teenager is about to set the world on fire with her own line of inclusive fashion designs. Co-starring Rainn Wilson and Missi Pyle. | 0 | It’s rare that a debut feature hits with so much laughter and heartbreaking relatability as Claire Ayoub’s Empire Waist. Inspired by her personal essay “Notes to My Twelve-Year-Old Self,” Empire Waist centers on Lenore (Mia Kaplan), a highschooler deeply insecure about her weight and desperate to make herself smaller wherever she goes. After a friendship blooms between her and Kayla (Jemima Yevu), an extroverted and confident fellow plus-size teen, Lenore begins stepping outside of her shell and embracing who she really is. Despite warnings from her mother (Missi Pyle, Galaxy Quest)—a diet-obsessed woman struggling with her own insecurities—and cruel bullying by the popular crowd at school, Lenore makes a group of friends who are all dealing with their own obstacles, and with them enters a fashion design contest. With the support of her new friends, her father (walking dad-joke Rainn Wilson, “The Office”) and her teacher (Jolene Purdy, “Orange is the New Black”), Lenore proves that loving yourself is a radical act. Empire Waist’s diverse young cast, spearheaded by newcomers Kaplan and Yevu, bring sparkling chemistry and hard-hitting authenticity to their roles. With hallway struts that rival your favorite ’90s teen movies, colorful photoshoot montages, and laugh-out-loud dialogue, Empire Waist is more than just another high school flick; it’s a joyful journey for anyone who’s ever struggled to love themselves.—Emalie Soderback | English | |
| Eternal | Denmark | 2024 | 100 | Ulaa Salim | https://www.siff.net/festival/eternal | Danish writer/director Ulaa Salim (Sons of Denmark, SIFF 2019) helms this “sliding doors” romantic eco-thriller, as a climate change scientist tasked with repairing a terrible fracture in the Earth’s core considers how his life could have gone differently when he runs into an old flame. | 0 | Director Ulaa Salim first registered with me via his galvanizing and relevant political thriller Sons of Denmark (SIFF 2019), which cleverly subverted and usurped the police procedural to fresh ends through Salim's ability to merge formal deftness with the inner consciousness of the film's themes. Returning with his sophomore feature Eternal, the intrepid and tactile Danish filmmaker makes a turn towards science fiction with themes also marked with a poignant timeliness. Eternal follows Elias, a young and driven climate scientist studying to close a mysterious widening seabed fracture off the coast of Denmark. This environmental anomaly, theorized to be an effect of the worsening climate crisis, also happens to collide with his romance with a woman he meets named Anita, whom he explores the intimate possibility of starting a family with. This split in raison d'êtres for Elias goes on to trouble him with age, with the consequences of his choosing leaving him existentially adrift. Salim teases Fantastic Voyage for ecological heroism and instead delivers a distinct crossbreed between elements of Arrival and Enter the Void. Where Salim takes us is a journey too descript for feeling and too raw for logic. Rife with directorial specificity, Salim's Eternal mesmerizes us into a new dimension of science fiction.—Dannzel Escobar | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC72ODOQPWc | Danish, English, Swedish |
| Evil Does Not Exist | Japan | 2023 | 105 | Ryûsuke Hamaguchi | https://www.siff.net/festival/evil-does-not-exist | After finally breaking through in the U.S. with the Oscar®-winning Drive My Car, filmmaker Ryûsuke Hamaguchi turns his eye to Mizubiki, a remote lakeside village that’s about to be overtaken by a new “glamping” site built on sensitive natural land. | 0 | With parts originally conceived as a visual accompaniment to Eiko Ishibashi’s stunning original score, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s meditation on a mountain village’s duty to the natural world proves imminently capable of conveying a compelling story without words. Opening sequences enmesh us in daily rural life: friends collect fresh water for the evening’s soup from an icy alpine brook, a wandering young girl marvels at bare trees swaying against an icy blue sky, her forgetful father chops wood with well-honed precision outside a cozy cabin. Later, a talent agency from nearby Tokyo intrudes on the idyllic community to pitch a pandemic-funded project set to develop their woods into a glamping resort. The municipal proceedings, an exercise in firm but politely worded discourse that would do Frederick Wiseman proud, are compelling in the depth of care expressed by long-term residents weary of the environmental effects of intruding tourists. When the story shifts to the out-of-their-depth functionaries charged with implementing the ill-conceived project, the film grants them humanity as they ponder the implications of what they’ve been hired to do. A stirring film of quiet observation, its enrapturing spell weaves disparate threads together in an increasingly dreamlike third act’s confrontation of capitalism will spark conversations long after the credits roll.—Josh Bis | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMNILmECRbM | Japanese |
| Excursion | Bosnia and Herzegovina | 2023 | 94 | Una Gunjak | https://www.siff.net/festival/excursion | In Bosnia and Herzegovina’s entry for the 2024 Academy Awards®, teenage Iman becomes the center of controversy when, during a game of Truth or Dare, she erroneously confirms a piece of gossip…that she has lost her virginity to an older boy. | 1 | One of the more disconcerting experiences during adolescence is the tendency for rumors to be spread—whether small or something more sinister, they can fester and derail a young person’s entire life to the point where they lose whatever sense of self-confidence they had to begin with. In her feature debut Excursion, writer and director Una Gunjak skillfully and tenderly explores what happens when one of these rumors is started by a teenager about herself during a game of “truth or dare” among middle schoolers. Trapped in her own lie, she fabricates a pregnancy and becomes the center of a controversy in this Bosnian teen drama. Aided by a remarkable debut performance by Asja Zara Lagumdzija, Excursion manages to subvert every trope in the coming-of-age formula book by never giving in to preconceived expectations, especially when it comes to the wants and needs of young people. The film implies that growing up is experienced in milestones you seldom even notice until they’re long gone. While innately understanding this hard truth while also delivering a solemn, sensitive teen angst drama, this film only marks the beginning of two rising Bosnian talents.—Eden Sapir | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AY82osdd7c | Bosnian |
| FUTUREWAVE: Teenaged Terror | Italy | 2023 | 91 | Chloé Barreau | https://www.siff.net/festival/futurewave-teenaged-terror | What's scarier than being a teenager? Dive into adolescent anxieties, hormonal horror, and the yearning of youth with films made by filmmakers 18 and under. | 1 | |||
| Familiar | Romania | 2023 | 106 | Călin Peter Netzer | https://www.siff.net/festival/familiar | In this arch, passionate deconstruction of storytelling, a Romanian filmmaker sets out to document his family’s emigration to Germany, only to uncover a mother lode of unexpected reversals and long-buried secrets that hold a key to his own identity. | 1 | In his latest probe into family, corruption, and everyday betrayal, Călin Peter Netzer (Child's Pose) has perfected the astringent, deadpan gaze at the everyday that fans of contemporary Romanian cinema have become addicted to. This time, Netzer goes meta on meta: He makes a film about making a film about an unsolved question in his family history. Why were his parents granted approval from Romania's communist authorities to emigrate to Germany when the director was a child? In his research, the director, Dragos, butts up against layers upon layers of secrets, lies, and betrayal between his doctor parents, the state, and a mysterious "Stern"—who may have been a secret police informant, his mother's lover, or both. Uncovering that history through archives, family interrogations, interviews, and lies launches the viewer through a truly thrilling narrative full of unexpected reversals and recognitions. Netzer finds frequent, mordant humor in its characters’ venality and self-regard but does not shy away from passion, shame, rage. This picture walks the line between emotion and intellect, history and present, narrative and documentary, and truth and falsehood with purpose, assurance, and an arch smirk.—Martin Schwartz | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a1GtXhVG0U | Romanian |
| Fish War | USA | 2024 | 79 | Jeff Ostenson, Charles Atkinson, Skylar Wagner | https://www.siff.net/festival/fish-war | In 1974, a conservative federal judge upheld Indigenous fishing rights in Washington, ending violent clashes with law enforcement and laying the foundation for environmental stewardship in this locally produced activism documentary. | 1 | Salmon are the lifeblood for many Indigenous communities in Washington. When the state government all but cut off their fishing access in apparent violation of an 1855 treaty, the tribes refused to take it lying down. They saw their fight as part of the growing civil rights movement across the country and capitalized on their penchant for peaceful disobedience and protest to draw national attention to their plight. Their dogged work earned them a day in court but, instead of settling the issue of fishing rights, a landmark decision by a conservative judge triggered a decades-long battle between the tribes, the government, and non-Indigenous fishermen. With support from the Northwest Treaty Tribes, Fish War uses rare archival footage and the insight of activists on the front lines of the fight to trace the battle from its origins in the ’60s to today while interrogating what guaranteed fishing rights truly mean in the face of a climate crisis and human intervention.—Betsy Cass | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vt3W8ePF0w | English |
| Food Roots | USA | 2023 | 60 | Michele Josue | https://www.siff.net/festival/food-roots | Documentarian Michele Josue (Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine) trains her camera on famed Chicago restaurateur Billy Dec as he journeys to the Philippines to rediscover his ancestral heritage one delicious recipe at a time. | 1 | Food Roots tells a story of connection to oneself and family. Billy Dec’s genetics (Caucasian and Filipino) lead to him being wedged between two worlds. When trials arise, Dec pushes himself and becomes a Chicago icon so he can care for his family. But after another trial in the death of a beloved lola (Tagalog for “grandmother”) from cancer, he realizes his Filipino roots have withered, as his focus was on assimilating into the white world. From his youth, Filipino food has been integral in Dec’s family. With only one lola alive, he decides to travel to the Philippines to revive his roots. Dec aims to learn her recipes and keep traditions alive before she passes. With scenes filmed by Dec of a previous trip to the Philippines woven in, he comes to a realization on this new trip, which his high school yearbook quote from his lolo (Tagalog for “grandfather”) summarizes perfectly: “You don’t know where you’re going until you know where you’re from.” While in the Philippines, he reconnects with relatives all across the country, eventually reuniting with his last lola. All along the way, Filipino cuisine helps direct Dec’s rediscovery of deep-rooted hospitality, family ties, and his true story.—Joshua Ray Amiling | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfBx-61o69s | English |
| Fragments of a Life Loved | Italy | 2023 | 95 | Chloé Barreau | https://www.siff.net/festival/fragments-of-a-life-loved | Chloé Barreau has exhaustively documented her love affairs since the age of 16. Now, she plans to reconstruct her love life through interviews with 12 of her exes, discovering the disparate points of view between her archival recordings and her interviewees’ memories. | 0 | When you look back at your relationship history, do you ever think about why you broke up with certain people, why you had amazing sex with some lovers and others not, who broke your heart, who you ended up with long term or didn’t? The evidence remains in memories, photographs, gifts, and now social media. Director Chloé Barreau meticulously retraces her personal history by asking her exes how they remember being with her. Since she was 16 years old, living between Paris and Rome, Chloé has been photographing, filming, and collecting mementos from her lovers. She’s even been consciously recording the memories while she was still in the relationships. And now, with all this documented history, she is looking back and wondering what happened and what was their point of view. Wrapping you up in the individual stories of past relationships, Fragments of a Life Loved is made up of interviews with people who were with Chloé for a time, from one-night stands to longer-lasting relationships: Sébastien, Jeanne, Laurent, Ariane, Rebecca, Anne, Jean-Philippe, Anna, Bianca, Marina, Marco, Caroline. Their stories are full of love, anger, passion, indifference, and honesty. Barreau’s questions lead her down memory lane and to some unexpected revelations about what it is to love and be loved by others.—Kathleen Mullen | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLtaL5Jzqpg | French, Italian |
| Ghostlight | USA | 2024 | 110 | Kelly O’Sullivan, Alex Thompson | https://www.siff.net/festival/ghostlight | A tender and heartwarming drama about a construction worker who is pulled into a local production of “Romeo and Juliet,” only to find community and a way to work through his own family troubles. Co-starring Dolly de Leon (Triangle of Sadness). | 0 | Directors Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson leverage the chemistry of a real-life family in crafting a drama about a working-class Chicago-area household reeling from the aftershocks of an unspecified trauma and the stress of a looming lawsuit. Belligerent daughter Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) faces expulsion from her high school for a bathroom break incident. Exasperated mother Sharon (Tara Mallen) is at her wit’s end, barely holding her grief at bay for the sake of others. Gruff but caring father Dan (Keith Kupferer) has receded into his construction job, jackhammering concrete all day while repressing his turbulent feelings. When his pain erupts through his thick emotional callus in a fit of public rage, he catches the attention of prickly actress Rita (Dolly de Leon). The alchemy of her grounded presence and his barely suppressed desperation convinces him to gingerly dip his toes into a ramshackle community theatre’s production of “Romeo & Juliet.” Dan’s gently comedic entry into the dramatic arts, complete with its array of colorful characters, proves to be an unexpected outlet for catharsis. Filmed with rare intimacy, the mounting parallels between Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy and the real pains of a wounded family culminate in a rousing testament to the enduring and transformative power of treading the boards.—Josh Bis | English | |
| Girls Will Be Girls | India | 2024 | 118 | Shuchi Talati | https://www.siff.net/festival/girls-will-be-girls | 16-year-old Mira crashes headfirst into teenage love, her country’s oppression of female sexual agency, and her own mother’s stifled desires in this stellar debut feature from Shuchi Talati that won the World Cinema Audience Award at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. | 0 | To leave girlhood behind and ascend into womanhood is a beautiful experience. But first you have to deal with complex emotions, changing bodies, and raging hormones. Ask any girl and they will tell you the biggest hurdle to overcome is Mom. Straightlaced 16-year-old Mira (Preeti Panigrahi) must navigate good grades, her first crush, and an unwelcome emotional love triangle with the woman who raised her (Kani Kusruti). This complicated relationship between a mother who wants to regain her youth and a daughter who craves independence is surprisingly cozy (the 4:3 aspect ratio helps). Its sensitive storytelling and warm cinematography are reminiscent of an adolescent memory come to life, with a strong focus on female empowerment at its core. Don’t worry, there is plenty of teenage awkwardness to embarrass you by proxy. Because growing up is never easy and, as Girls Will Be Girls lovingly depicts, sometimes the way isn’t always clear.—Sandra Woolf | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4pnID-gnE4 | English, Hindi |
| Gloria! | Italy | 2024 | 106 | Margherita Vicario | https://www.siff.net/festival/gloria | In Italian singer-songwriter Margherita Vicario’s beautiful and intense feature directorial debut, the mute maid at a Baroque-era, Venetian musical institute for girls discovers she’s a natural at the pianoforte and inspires the girls in her charge as they prepare for a visit from the Pope. | 0 | Rebellion, anarchy, and pop music; dismantling the patriarchy has never sounded so good! A group of women in 18th century Venice will use their musical talents to break free of their systematic confinement in this energetic historical musical dramedy. A rigid Italian musical institute is given a loud awakening when a young woman with extraordinary talent creates a musical uprising. While the lovely costumes and elegant cinematography will catch your eye, it’s your ears that are in for a treat! Cinema and music merge together beautifully in Gloria! With music forming the narrative language that both unites and bonds the women together to create a new type of joyful harmony. The result is an uplifting, feminist-focused film created by renowned Italian pop singer and songwriter Margherita Vicario in her feature directorial debut. Strongly inspired by the invisible women in musical history who have been written out of the margins, this movie dares you not to tap your toes.—Sandra Woolf | Italian | |
| Good One | USA | 2024 | 90 | India Donaldson | https://www.siff.net/festival/good-one | In India Donaldson’s painfully real feature debut, 17-year-old Sam goes on a Catskills camping trip with her father and his longtime friend. As the two men relive their glory days and past errs, Sam learns some hard truths about the helplessness of adulthood. | 0 | Writer/director India Donaldson’s striking debut feature follows 17-year-old Sam as she embarks on a backpacking trip through the Catskills with her divorcé father and his divorcé friend, whose son is supposed to join but opts out at the last minute. Alone, with these two middle-aged men reliving their glory days and past errs, Sam’s internal thoughts play out mostly on her face as she quietly leads the woefully unprepared men through the woods. In the lead performance as Sam, relative newcomer Lily Colias (Palm Trees and Power Lines) gives a breakthrough performance that thrives in its subtleties as she maintains her composure amid boundary pushing conversations between the older men. Performed in pitch perfect cringe-inducing harmony by James le Gros (Drugstore Cowboy, Certain Women) and Danny McCarthy (HBO’s “Somebody Somewhere”), the crisis-ridden men showcase that age does not necessarily equal wisdom. Any proper Pacific Northwesterner will feel right at home in the rainy, lush environment Donaldson utilizes; if I didn’t know better, I might mistake the backdrop for the Cascades.—Megan Leonard | English | |
| Grandpa Guru | Croatia | 2023 | 91 | Silvio Mirošničenko | https://www.siff.net/festival/grandpa-guru | You may have heard of or even met Srđan Gino Jevđević, but do you know his full story? After fleeing Sarajevo, Jevđevic found refuge in good ol’ Seattle and started the world-famous Balkan punk band Kultur Shock. Now it’s his 60th birthday, and he and his friends are pulling out all the stops. | 1 | Attend the tale of Srđan “Gino” Jevđević, whose later nickname provided the title of Silvio Mirošničenko’s rock doc—an aspiring musician and free spirit who grew up in a time and place, Yugoslavia in the ’60s and ’70s, not so amenable to either. After a few attempts at stardom with a boy band and a New Wave synth-pop act, Jevđević got into theatre, organizing and starring in a defiant production of “Hair” in his hometown of Sarajevo in 1992, at the height of the Bosnian War siege, that made global headlines. Seattle’s Group Theater invited him here soon after to stage a show-about-the-show; the transplant took, and Jev evi stayed in what was then, you may recall, the red-hot center of the music biz to found and front Balkan folk-metal outfit Kultur Shock. His rock-god/wild-man ebullience, stomping tunes, punk-is-not-dead political messaging, and heroic backstory have ever since attracted collaborations with a string of Seattle-scene boldface names, including grunge superproducer Jack Endino,composer/vocalist/sax player Amy Denio, and Bulgarian guitarist/entrepreneur Val Kiossovski. Copious clips (was every show Jevđević ever played filmed?), including of that “Hair” production, enrich this decades-spanning portrait of an eccentric, inspiring, and admired local icon.—Gavin Borchert | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBrQve29uCg | Croatian, Bosnian, English |
| Grasshopper Republic | USA | 2023 | 94 | Daniel McCabe | https://www.siff.net/festival/grasshopper-republic | Daniel McCabe (This is Congo) directs this verité doc set in the small Ugandan village of Bundibugyo, where workers harvest grasshoppers by any means necessary—sodium lights, flour, corrugated steel, barrels—and sell the culinary delicacy in open-air markets. | 1 | In the Pacific Northwest, people will risk dangerous seas to work on fishing boats with the hope that they’ll make a lot of money in a short amount of time. In Uganda, instead of fishing boats, people risk their health in the hope of a good and lucrative grasshopper season. For those of us who didn’t know that a grasshopper season even existed, Grasshopper Republic takes us from the preparation to the harvest to the final haul. Filmed in a verité style, it feeds us just enough information to keep us curious, putting us in the position of a new recruit thrown into a grasshopper harvesting team where you have to figure out what’s happening as you go along. Similar to a fishing boat captain, the harvest captain stakes their claim on an area of land where they think the grasshoppers will appear, then spend time and energy setting up generators and lights in hopes that a swarm passing by at night will be drawn into their traps. The danger comes from the fact that the lights can impair the vision of workers, not to mention attracting bugs and butterflies that irritate the skin, but all that is worth the risk when you can earn a year’s salary in three months. This is an absolutely fascinating documentary about a market that is literally foreign to us.—Andy Spletzer | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE3ppk49lY4 | Luganda, English |
| Green Border | Poland | 2023 | 147 | Agnieszka Holland | https://www.siff.net/festival/green-border | Legendary filmmaker Agnieszka Holland won the Golden Lion at the 2023 Venice Film Festival for this ground-level examination of the refugee crisis at the titular exclusion zone between Belarus and Poland, seen through the eyes of a Syrian family fleeing their war-torn home. | 0 | Green Border depicts a family of Syrian refugees as they hope to cross the border from Belarus into Poland to escape the violence of their homeland and eventually connect with relatives living in Sweden. They board a plane to Belarus, comforted by Belarusian President Lukashenko’s promise of a safe trip through his country to the Polish border, but this promise is designed to amass a crowd at the border to frustrate Poland and the European Union, who do not welcome the misled refugees. While the family makes their arduous journey, the film pivots to the story of Polish psychologist Julia (Maja Ostaszewska), who experiences a political awakening that leads her to join an activist group that aids refugees camping out in the forest at the border. It is here where the family, accompanied by an Afghan English instructor, Leïla (Behi Djanati Atai), encounters Julia. The film then boldly shifts focus to Jan (Tomasz Wlosok), a Polish border guard whose pregnant wife refuses to acknowledge his participation in the horrific treatment of the refugees—actions that his captain explicitly endorses—until she witnesses a video of it. Whereas Lukashenko sought to reduce Syrian refugees to political pawns devoid of personhood, Green Border asserts the humanity of diverse people affected by the crisis, bestowing each with their own motives, dreams, and fears.—Angel Cetorelli | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du3ukp3UWIQ | Polish, Arabic, English, French |
| Hajjan | Saudi Arabia | 2023 | 122 | Abu Bakr Shawky | https://www.siff.net/festival/hajjan | In the Saudi Arabian desert, teenage Matar and his camel Hofira are inseparable. But when his older brother dies, Matar’s only chance of saving Hofira is to become a “hajjan,” or jockey, and join the winner-takes-all world of Bedouin camel racing. | 0 | Two young Bedouin brothers Matar (first-time actor Omar AlAtawi) and Ghanim have grown up listening to stories about their legendary grandfather, referred to only as “Hajjan,” the Arabic word for jockey. Determined to carry on the family tradition, Ghanim is preparing for the Great Safwa Race, where both jockeys and camel owners vie for glory. After Ghanim is killed during the race, it appears that Jasser Al Saqqar, the scheming owner of another team, is responsible. But Matar wants to follow in his brother’s footsteps and volunteers himself and his beloved camel, Hofira, for the next race. When he comes in second, his family sells Hofira to the rival team—which happens to be owned by Jasser. Refusing to be separated from her, Matar is forced to ride for Jasser. In the races that follow, the stakes become higher and higher. Set against the backdrop of the Arabian desert, Hajjan, the second film from Abu Bakr Shawky (Yommedine, SIFF 2019) offers a fascinating glimpse into the world of camel racing, one of the region’s oldest and most popular sports. “Camels are adored by their jockeys,” a Bedouin camel herder sings at the beginning of the film, which is, at its heart, a moving account of the bond that can develop between human and animal.—Justine Barda | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yYAye13Ym0 | Arabic |
| Hammarskjöld – Fight For Peace | Sweden | 2023 | 114 | Per Fly | https://www.siff.net/festival/hammarskjold-fight-for-peace | A speculative biopic about Swedish UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld (Mikael Persbrandt, “Sex Education”), the anti-colonialist, allegedly queer diplomat who died under mysterious circumstances during the Cold War while trying to bring peace to the Congo. | 1 | The biopic Hammarskjöld – Fight For Peace delves into the complex life and legacy of Dag Hammarskjöld, the Swedish diplomat who served as the Secretary General of the United Nations. Hammarskjöld, whose philosophies are encapsulated in his reflective work "Markings," believed in the intertwining of moral duty and practical action. His tenure at the UN was marked by his fervent efforts to resolve international disputes and his staunch opposition to colonialism, endeavors that garnered both acclaim and animosity. The film explores Hammarskjöld's involvement in the Congo crisis, highlighting his initiative to establish a covert peacekeeping operation, a move that risked his career and reputation. Hammarskjöld's character is portrayed as complex and contradictory, embodying both solitude and mystery, with ongoing debates about his life's details and mental state. Directed by Per Fly and featuring Mikael Persbrandt, who reprises his role from The Siege of Jadotville, the movie presents Hammarskjöld as a man torn between his hidden personal life, including his struggles with his sexuality, and his driven dedication to his global responsibilities. The film also addresses the contentious circumstances surrounding Hammarskjöld's untimely death in a plane crash, presenting a firm perspective on the event that has been subject to speculation and controversy.—Nancy Pappas | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX_7_UCbpPg | Swedish, French, English |
| Hesitation Wound | Turkey | 2023 | 89 | Selman Nacar | https://www.siff.net/festival/hesitation-wound | One tense day in the life of a Turkish criminal defense attorney (Tülin Özen) as she wrestles with legal and ethical questions in defending a factory worker accused of murder while also keeping her hospitalized mother on life support. From Selman Nacar, the director of Between Two Dawns (SIFF 2022). | 0 | In Hesitation Wound, the second feature from Selman Nacar (Between Two Dawns, SIFF 2022), defense attorney Canan has recently returned to the small Turkish city of U ak having fled the place many years before. After a lengthy spell abroad—a judge makes a sarcastic comment about her UK education—she’s back, now tasked with handling the case of a man on trial for murder, while also tending to her dying mother. Whether she has brought it back with her, or had it before she left, her defining characteristic seems to be the determination to achieve the end she thinks is best by sheer force of will. She has her work cut out for her. During the day, she’s trying to save Musa, a factory worker accused of murdering his boss, from the possibility of life imprisonment. And she may just pull it off, if she can finish her argument before the ceiling of the decrepit courthouse collapses. At night, she’s looking for reasons to keep her comatose mother on life support, against the doctor’s advice, her sister’s wishes, and her mother’s own desire to donate her organs. This may be a harder issue to resolve, and indeed as a certain moral ambiguity arises in both cases, it suggests that Canan’s own will may not be the force she thinks it is.—Justine Barda | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1heJA9cF3Rk | Turkish |
| High & Low - John Galliano | France | 2023 | 116 | Kevin Macdonald | https://www.siff.net/festival/high-and-low-john-galliano | Fearless fashion designer John Galliano took the world by storm with his rock and roll style, only for his controversial opinions to irrevocably damage his career. Now, get the inside scoop from the lives he changed, for better or worse, and from the enfant terrible himself. | 0 | Oscar®-winning director Kevin Macdonald opens his documentary about the once-acclaimed fashion designer John Galliano with the 2011 video of the offensive and antisemitic rant he drunkenly spewed at his favorite bar in the Jewish quarter of Paris. Right away we know this movie will be as much about the fall of the fashion star as his rise, and whether or not it’s possible for him to redeem himself. The fact that there is no definitive answer by the end makes High & Low all the better. But before we know how far he’s fallen, we need to see the heights he achieved. He burst onto the scene not long after graduating when his first collection was a hit. His rise was meteoric, his collections theatrical, and soon he was heading up Givenchy and then Dior. Along the way he accepted more and more responsibility, took on more and more work, partied more and more, and indulged his addictions. A master at surface beauty without always looking for the meaning underneath, he would sometimes get in trouble for shows like “Tramps,” a high-fashion line inspired by the homeless. But throughout his rise to fame, fashion editors and supermodels loved him and loved working with him. Many of them are interviewed for this doc, including Anna Wintour, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, and Charlize Theron. As for the redemption arc, by the end he’s spoken to Jewish leaders to learn just how hurtful and offensive his comments really were, and he tells the camera that he’s learned his lesson. It’s up to you to decide if you believe him.—Andy Spletzer | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ9rzdoTkvY | English, French |
| Hitchcock’s Pro-Nazi Film | France | 2023 | 84 | Daphné Baiwir | https://www.siff.net/festival/hitchcocks-pro-nazi-film | As WWII-era United States enlisted its greatest filmmakers to support the war effort through cinematic propaganda, even Alfred Hitchcock got involved. But with 1944’s Lifeboat, some believe that despite Hitch’s best intentions, he accidentally crafted a pro-German movie. | 0 | As America entered the Second World War, Hollywood turned its efforts toward producing pro-Allied propaganda. Directors Frank Capra, John Ford, and William Wyler all served on the front lines documenting the Allied war effort. Meanwhile, Hollywood’s new master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, a loyal Brit by birth, was formulating his next project. After making Foreign Correspondent and Saboteur, two films advocating American entry into the war, Hitchcock collaborated with Pulitzer Prize-winner John Steinbeck for his next film: Lifeboat, a chamber piece thriller in which eight shipwreck survivors drawn from a cross-section of society set aside their differences in order to survive on the open sea. Their camaraderie is further tested after rescuing the manipulative Nazi U-boat captain responsible for sinking their ocean liner. Stage sensation Tallulah Bankhead agreed to star—her first film in over a decade—alongside such great character actors as William Bendix, Hume Cronyn, and Walter Slezak. However, upon the film’s theatrical release, initial plaudits soon gave way to a critical backlash accusing the film of perpetuating the fallacy of Aryan supremacy while also exposing the inherent social divisions found within the Allied democracies. Providing a fascinating look at wartime Hollywood, Hitchcock’s Pro-Nazi Film examines how even the best intentions can be misread through the fog of war.—Dan Doody | English | |
| Hollywoodgate | Germany | 2023 | 91 | Ibrahim Nash’at | https://www.siff.net/festival/hollywoodgate | An intrepid filmmaker tracks the Taliban’s first year in power in the wake of the United States’ Afghanistan withdrawal, centering on an air force chief and a low-level fighter as the fundamentalist sect takes over a former American military base known as the Hollywood Gate complex. | 1 | *Restricted to audiences in WA State.“Why is he filming?” one member of the Taliban asks another about the director of Hollywoodgate early in the film. The other replies, “He is making a documentary. It’s like a movie but with real people. Documenting our everyday lives, both civilian and military, for a year. If his intentions are bad, he will die soon.” These are the conditions under which Ibrahim Nash’at, an Egyptian journalist and filmmaker, chronicled the Taliban takeover of a former U.S. military base, claimed to be a deserted CIA base, in Kabul, beginning just days after the hasty withdrawal of the U.S. Army. Improbably, Nash’at has been allowed to follow and film two men now stationed at the base: Talib lieutenant Mukhtar (whose brother was killed by U.S. soldiers) and his superior officer Malawi Mansour, the head of Afghanistan’s Taliban-controlled air force. As part of the larger project of transforming a militia into a military regime, Mansour’s first order of business is to take stock of what the Americans have left behind. He surveys a warehouse stocked with crates of medicine and office cubicles littered with smashed computers, as well as valuable military equipment, weapons, and aircraft. “The Americans,” he observes, “have left behind a treasure trove.”—Justine Barda | Pashto, Dari, English | |
| Holy Mother | Spain | 2024 | 122 | Antonio Chavarrías | https://www.siff.net/festival/holy-mother | In this stark historical drama set during the Early Middle Ages, Emma of Barcelona is a Catalan nun who defied the odds—both against her country’s enemies and her own clergy—in her God-granted mission to repopulate Spain’s embattled border territories. | 0 | In the 9th century, Emma, who was raised from a young age to be a nun, becomes an abbess at the age of 17. She is given the task of repopulating and Christianizing the border territories in conflict with the Moors. Upon arriving at the abbey, Emma faces mistrust and misunderstandings from everyone in her surroundings, as her determination and will to fulfill her mission challenge the idea she was actually there only to pray and obey. But Emma’s increasing religious, economic, and political power arouse suspicions: first in her brother, then in the nobility and ultimately in the mighty Church itself. Aided by a visceral performance by Daniela Brown as Emma, Director Antonio Chavarrías (Dictado, Volverás) addresses universal and current themes, such as women's struggle to find their place in a masculine world, territorial and religious conflicts, and the clash between dogmatic ideologies and other more open and tolerant ones. Chavarrías masterfully recreates the atmosphere and aesthetics of medieval times with the use of natural lighting and candles capturing the gloomy and austere atmosphere of a Catalan convent in the Middle Ages. In Holy Mother, Emma’s story from an almost forgotten past becomes a painful reminder of the challenges women still face in the world a thousand years later.—Hebe Tabachnik | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0xgoVmedw0 | Spanish |
| I Saw the TV Glow | USA | 2024 | 100 | Jane Schoenbrun | https://www.siff.net/festival/i-saw-the-tv-glow | After taking the indie horror circuit by storm with We're All Going to the World's Fair, Jane Schoenbrun returns with this eerie slice of reality-f**king cinema, as two lonely suburbanites find solace and obsession in a late-night TV show. | 0 | Eager to give queer people another (and more expensive) nod from the big screen, Jane Schoenbrun responds to their indie success We're All Going to the World's Fair with a one-of-a kind cinematic experience. In this oddly nostalgic, magenta-tinted exploration of queer dread, teenagers Owen (Justice Smith, The American Society of Magical Negroes) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine, Bill & Ted Face the Music) form a bond through shared solace in a horror television show called “The Pink Opaque,” where they give themselves away to fictional characters with a cosmic connection who fight the big and bad Mr. Melancholy. Removing themselves from suburbia’s oppressive familiarity, self-denial descends into musical phantasmagoria. A commissioned soundtrack weaves unapologetic queerness through their loss of selves and establishes a broodingly digitized cinematic language entirely unique to Schoenbrun. Fanatical media consumption—no social interaction required—gives way for community, a currency more relevant than ever in a hyper-online society. But the characters’ journeys reveal the stickiness of shared escapism and how that looks like human connection but turns out to be pretty empty. It’s a vibrating embrace to queer kids who didn’t live their truth early enough and a cautionary tale for everyone who allows electronic spaces to take up physical space. I Saw the TV Glow dares viewers to live their truth, because if they don’t, their personhood may disappear entirely.—Selena Calacat | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3XfXfx0sHg?si=ycmbPG6toSyQVpfd | English |
| I Told You So | Italy | 2023 | 100 | Ginevra Elkann | https://www.siff.net/festival/i-told-you-so | Strange things happen when temperatures rise. As Rome suffers a terrible heat wave (in January!), an ensemble of citizens—played by some of Italy’s finest actors—crumble emotionally and morally in the face of this unprecedented climate crisis. | 0 | I Told You So channels today’s environmental anxieties into a black comedy/drama that asks, “How exactly would the climate apocalypse magnify each of our little ticks?” Set amidst an abnormal January heatwave in Rome, Gianna (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) copes with the loss of custody of her daughter Mila (Sofia Panizzi) by indulging her alcoholism, going to church, and stalking her estranged friend, the washed-up ’80s porn actress Pupa (Valeria Golino), whose plastic surgery obsession and hunger for the fame of decades past have set her on a vicious cycle of bankruptcy and embarrassing career choices. Mila, who struggles with bulimia, works as a caretaker for an older woman who can’t stop TV shopping. The priest of Gianna’s church, Father Bill (Danny Huston), an ex-heroin addict, is surprised when his sister pops up with their mother’s ashes and some strange post-mortem instructions. And as all these very human issues intensify with the heat, you know that the birds, rats, and other animals of Rome are going absolutely bananas. Where other climate apocalypse films have zoomed out to confront the global catastrophe of climate change, I Told You So whips out a magnifying glass to investigate how individuals and relationships quickly become strained when the world boils.—Angel Cetorelli | English, Italian | |
| Igualada | Colombia | 2024 | 81 | Juan Mejía Botero | https://www.siff.net/festival/igualada | An intimate portrait of Afro-Colombian Francia Márquez, a political leader and activist who learned to subvert attacks on her ethnic origin, her social class, and her gender to fight for equality, freedom, and social justice. | 0 | It is unusual to find life stories as inspiring and transformative as that of Afro Colombian Francia Márquez. Here, in Igualada, director Juan Mejía Botero (Death By a Thousand Cuts, SIFF 2016 Documentary Grand Jury Award winner) patiently retraces her uphill journey from a rural activist to Vice President of Colombia. We follow Márquez through her days, enjoying the excitement when her original ideas seem to be working, but more often than not, she faces insurmountable challenges as she wrestles with a government that has repeatedly failed her and her people. Igualada addresses the most notable events in Márquez’s career as a Colombian leader and politician, including never-before-seen scenes that reflect her character and moments of vulnerability. She revolutionized the socio-political landscape in Colombia by transforming the derogatory term igualada into a pride banner that inspired millions. Mejía Botero’s years of documenting Márquez’s career, witnessing her evolution and passion come to fruition in this intimate portrait and historical document of a woman who learned to subvert attacks on her ethnic origin, her social class and her gender, to fight for equality, freedom and social justice.—Hebe Tabachnik | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI1uFajsuhU | Spanish |
| In A Violent Nature | Canada | 2024 | 94 | Chris Nash | https://www.siff.net/festival/in-a-violent-nature | Sundance audiences went apeshit for this graphically violent, brutally gory deconstructed arthouse slasher that methodically follows a resurrected killer’s reign of terror through the remote northern Ontario wilderness. Now’s your chance to witness the carnage. | 0 | Described as an “ambient slasher film,” In A Violent Nature is subgenre cinema like none before. An experimental take on the ’80s slasher movie, its bare-bones story follows a mute killer (Ry Barrett) as he stalks a group of teenagers through a remote woodland, picking them off in increasingly gruesome fashion. So far, so Friday the 13th, but where progenitors favored the perspective of the jock and the final girl, this esoteric reworking observes events through the eyes of its killer, with no musical score and little dialogue beyond which is overheard on the monster’s bloody course. And what a monster he is! Vengeful lumberjack Johnny is clear riff on Jason Voorhees, but director Chris Nash puts his own stamp on the motif, giving Johnny an intimidating original look and grisly murder implements in the drag hooks he wields. A disfigured face and mommy issues further honor the slasher greats. Emphasizing long takes by cinematographer Pierce Derks within an unsettlingly shot Ontario wilderness, Nash draws inspiration from the work of auteurs Gus Van Sant and Terrence Malick. However, it remains faithful to the subgenre’s bloodthirsty underpinnings in its extreme violence and gnarly practical effects. In A Violent Nature doesn’t so much reinvent the wheel as mercilessly warp the thing into a grotesque, curiously haunting echo of its former self.—Joel Harley | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFdC9QHOf7M | English |
| In Flames | Pakistan | 2023 | 98 | Zarrar Kahn | https://www.siff.net/festival/in-flames | A widow, her adult daughter, and her tween-aged son are haunted by ghosts of the past and the patriarchy when their paternal grandfather dies in this heart-wrenching Middle Eastern Gothic and Pakistan’s official Academy Awards® entry for Best International Film. | 1 | The debut feature of Pakistani Canadian filmmaker Zarrar Kahn, this claustrophobic psychological horror story centers on young would-be doctor Mariam (breakout star Ramesha Nawal) who finds herself tormented by terrifying visions of a nightmarish past following the death of the family patriarch. Unmoored in a hostile, male-dominated society, Mariam and mother Fariha (Bakhtawar Mazhar) attempt to navigate their existence as women in modern-day Pakistan. Set amid the hustle-bustle of inner-city Karachi, In Flames was written by Kahn as a comment on the country’s patriarchal society and sexism. Creeping in as the menfolk in Mariam’s community circle what they perceive to be easy, unclaimed prey, the film’s genre element is subtly introduced—the threat of violence is always there, from memories of Mariam’s abusive father to the women-hating men encroaching on her space on a daily basis. In Nawal, the film finds a magnetic, leading presence in this compelling account of a young woman under attack from insidious forces which, while supernatural, are very much rooted in our world. Bleak and distressingly relevant.—Joel Harley | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg26gexToKs | Urdu |
| In Our Day | South Korea | 2023 | 84 | Hong Sang-soo | https://www.siff.net/festival/in-our-day | In another one of South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo’s naturalistic, low-key narratives about life’s quiet truths (his 30th feature film!), two parallel stories thematically link together—an actress unsure of her future, and an aging poet unsure of his past. | 0 | Prolific South Korean minimalist Hong Sang-soo takes things to the extremes of simplicity with his 30th feature. Two parallel storylines see artists seek to understand their own craft as they answer queries from inquisitive upstarts. In one, disillusioned actress Sangown (Hong regular Kim Min-hee) examines why serving a storyteller and finding one’s own truth will always be in conflict. In the other, an aging poet (Ki Joo-bong) who has found sudden popularity questions the search for meaning in the world. This closing selection for the 2023 Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes Film Festival is light on narrative, even for Hong, allowing the stories to play off each other in mysterious ways. Do the recurring motifs mean they are secretly connected or merely in dialogue? In what ways do the quotidian moments that populate the film reflect or refute the conclusions its main characters have reached? In Our Day is another keenly observed example of Hong’s ability to mine resonance from the otherwise ephemeral.—Betsy Cass | Korean | |
| Iron Mask | South Korea | 2023 | 100 | Kim Sung Hwan | https://www.siff.net/festival/iron-mask | When young Jae-woo (Joo Jung-hyuk, “Extraordinary Lawyer Woo”) reaches the upper ranks of South Korea’s national kendo team selection, he is shocked to learn his main competition is the man who accidentally killed his older brother. | 0 | In IRON MASK, Kim Jae-woo (Joo Jong-hyuk) enrolls in a demanding boot camp alongside competitors nationwide, all vying for spots on the kendo national team. Unknown to the others, Jae-woo harbors a personal vendetta against Tae-su (Moon Jin-seung), the team's most talented competitor, who accidentally killed his brother when they were boys. Jae-woo is forced to confront his past traumas and the person who embodies them as his mounting bitterness threatens to sideline him. Kim Sung-hwan, in his directorial debut, presents a screenplay devoid of clichés found in typical sports-revenge narratives. Instead, he crafts a gripping narrative through compelling characters, captivating cinematography, immersive sound design, and gripping action sequences to a satisfying conclusion. IRON MASK won the Korean Fantastic Film Award at last year's Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival, offering a beautifully nuanced melodrama set in the world of kendo martial arts seldom seen by Western audiences.—SuJ’n Chon | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIl4d-WcxDU | Korean |
| I’m Just Here for the Riot | Canada | 2023 | 77 | Kathleen Jayme, Asia Youngman (Cree-Métis) | https://www.siff.net/festival/im-just-here-for-the-riot | When the Canucks lost the final game of the 2011 Stanley Cup series to the Boston Bruins, the citizens of Vancouver took to the streets flipping over police cars and breaking windows. How did social media, smartphones, and mob mentality play a role in this chapter of NHL history? | 1 | On June 15, 2011, thousands of Vancouver Canucks fans descended into the city’s downtown core to watch their beloved team face the Boston Bruins in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. The home team had won each of the previous six games, and Vancouverites, cautiously optimistic, hoped this pattern would hold. The Bruins emerged victorious, 4-0, and Vancouver descended into chaos. Police cars were overturned and burned, windows shattered, stores looted, and countless numbers of young people were caught up in the mayhem. Startling images of the rioters and their actions—captured by legions of cell phone cameras—were soon posted on every social media platform. The mob mentality in the streets led to a similar atmosphere in cyberspace as online vigilantes used the pictures to identify and disgrace the offenders, indifferent to any potential long-term consequences. But was justice ultimately served or harmed by such sanctimonious samaritans? Which mob’s actions were the more traumatic? Through interviews with Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo and author Jon Ronson, among others, directors Asia Youngman & Kathleen Jayme delve into the aftermath of these events, scrutinizing deeper issues around sports fandom, online culture, and how each can give way to the raw, violent power of an angry crowd.—Dan Doody | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2tEcs0NyxM | English |
| Janet Planet | USA | 2023 | 113 | Annie Baker | https://www.siff.net/festival/janet-planet | 11-year-old Lacy lives with her bohemian single mother (Julianne Nicholson, “Mare of Easttown”) in the tranquil forests of rural Massachusetts. Over one summer, she will witness the fleeting moments of life. An evocative and tender feature debut from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker (“The Flick”). | 0 | Though the title of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker’s directorial debut may evoke “Schoolhouse Rock” to some of you and The Rocky Horror Picture Show to others, her intimately nuanced examination of a bohemian mother and introverted daughter in 1991 makes it a central metaphor. Lacy (Zoe Ziegler), navigating the summer vacation between fifth and sixth grade, yearns to—but also fears to—escape the orbit of her mother Janet (Julianne Nicholson, “Mare of Easttown”) as she leaves childhood. It’s been just the two of them, you see, but then three satellites enter, then leave, the picture: Will Patton (Wendy and Lucy) as an aspiring boyfriend, Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda) as an old friend, and Elias Koteas (Exotica) as the head of a spacey theatre troupe. The screenplay gestated in Baker’s mind and heart for decades—“It was kind of the first idea for a movie I ever had,” she revealed—drawing deeply on the milieu she grew up in, the woods of western Massachusetts. Nicholson did too, though not until they met during casting did the two discover their childhood proximity (“We shopped at the same stores and swam in the same ponds,” Baker said in an interview). No score, just nature sounds, keeps the focus entirely on the mother and daughter in this hyper-subtle character study; sound designer Paul Hsu has said Janet Planet was the quietest movie he’s ever worked on.—Gavin Borchert | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1Pstfw3nGY | English |
| July Rhapsody | Hong Kong | 2002 | 103 | Ann Hui | https://www.siff.net/festival/july-rhapsody | In Ann Hui’s internationally renowned 2002 masterpiece about the revelations of middle age, a high school teacher (recording sensation Jacky Cheung) who yearns for his simpler youth must navigate his troubled family life, his wife’s sick ex, and the interests of a lovestruck student. New 4k restoration. | 0 | A middle-aged teacher risks everything when he considers pursuing a relationship with a flirtatious teenage student. What’s on the line, though, is not what it seems. Lam Yiu-kwok appears to have a simple and satisfying life: He has a job he is passionate about, long-time friends, a stable marriage of 20 years, and two well-adjusted sons. Yet that veneer of normalcy slowly begins to slip away as a secret from the past reasserts itself unexpectedly. Hong Kong New Wave stalwart Ann Hui directs this masterfully restrained examination of what we sacrifice for others and what we owe ourselves. A standout amongst a career of triumphs, July Rhapsody (2002) sees Hui interrogating the insidious pressure to lead a conventional life and the damage we risk as a result. The languid pacing and understated performances bely a sneaky momentum, while the explicit normalcy of the film’s events lend them an unexpectedly recognizable emotional heft. By the time the film glides to its conclusion, the audience finds themselves confronted with final moments that are both quietly devastating and fully earned.—Betsy Cass | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxKt0Mlnp08 | Cantonese |
| Killing Romance | South Korea | 2023 | 107 | Lee Won-suk | https://www.siff.net/festival/killing-romance | When a studious young man and the famous retired actress next door fall in love, the two conspire to murder her vain, possessive husband. An absurd, ridiculously heightened delight of a musical romantic comedy co-starring the late Lee Sun-kyun (Parasite). | 0 | If you thought you’d figured out what to expect from South Korean cinema, think again. Killing Romance is a fairy tale, murder revenge plot, rom-com, musical, and cult comedy all deliriously rolled into one. As director Lee Won-suk instructed Deadline, “Don’t ask why, just go with it.” When superstar actress Hwang Yeo-Rae (Lee Ha-nee) takes a hard fall from grace, she decides to lick her wounds on a tropical getaway. There, she meets and marries the uber-rich Jonathan Na (the late, great Lee Sun-kyun of Parasite fame). But when their romance sours, Yeo-Rae allies herself with super-fan Kim Beom-Woo (Gong Myoung) to haphazardly murder her way out of her gilded cage. Cue death saunas, a telepathic ostrich, and gigantic song-and-dance numbers. This comedy of errors reaches bonkers Shakespearean heights thanks to the talents at its helm. Director Lee’s penchant for everything-but-the-kitchen-sink aesthetics creates a truly fantastical vehicle for his stars’ high-voltage performances. Lee Ha-nee pits her character’s ethereal beauty against utter ridiculousness to comedic perfection. But it’s Lee Sun-kyun who stuns, playing his flamboyant super villain so epically big, Mark Ruffalo’s POOR THINGS lothario feels underwhelming by comparison. Beneath the panache, Killing Romance critiques misogyny, environmental destruction, and the toxicity of the Korean entertainment industry with enough seriousness to make this gonzo cult hit bound for global adoration.—Hannah Baek | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66kS5HuSY60 | Korean |
| Lies We Tell | Ireland | 2023 | 89 | Lisa Mulcahy | https://www.siff.net/festival/lies-we-tell | In this smart modern reworking of Sheridan Le Fanu’s gothic novel “Uncle Silas,” an orphaned heiress who intends to make good on her inheritance is forced to take care of her uncle and his family, only to learn that they have sinister ulterior motives. | 0 | In the wake of her father’s death, 18-year-old Maud (Agnes O’Casey) inherits Knowl, a prosperous yet secluded country estate; or rather, she will upon coming of age at 21. Until then, it is necessary for a trustee to serve her interests. Enter dear Uncle Silas, revealed to be Maud’s intended guardian in her father’s will, despite his alarming reputation. Rumors of an infamous past—gambling debts, rakishness, and even murder—have forced him into a pariah’s existence. Accompanying Silas to Knowl are his shiftless son Edward, flighty daughter Emily, and a stark governess known only as Madame. Instead of a household enlivened by new members, an atmosphere of oppression pervades. Silas’s initial gentility gives way as his true intentions become evident: secure what he sees as his rightful inheritance, ideally through nuptials between Maud and Edward. Should that fail, darker methods are available. Escalating dangers and violent assaults ignite the young heiress’s resolve to fight for her birthright, and as family secrets are revealed, the full force of Maud’s righteous fury is unleashed. Based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s classic Gothic novel, Lies We Tell reimagines the genre’s women-in-peril foundations through a distinctly feminist lens, empowering its heroine to seize her own fortune and fate.—Dan Doody | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMhPPBTYCwQ | English |
| Love Machina | USA | 2024 | 91 | Peter Sillen | https://www.siff.net/festival/love-machina | What if love could last beyond our mortal bodies? Meet Martine and Bina Rothblatt, two futurists who have commissioned a humanoid robot so they can house Bina’s consciousness and extend their love affair into infinity and beyond. | 0 | What if you (or a robot version of you) could live forever? Futurists Martine and Bina Rothblatt explore the limits of Artificial Intelligence in a quest to transfer Bina's consciousness, memories, and emotions into a humanoid robot head called Bina48. Bina48’s “AI mind file” is all from in-depth interviews that Bina has done over the years about who she is and how she feels about life, and the likeness of Bina48 is modeled after Bina herself, a middle-aged Black woman. Driven by a desire to keep their love alive forever, Martine and Bina work with a group of people committed to AI and robotics research. Utilizing the resources Martine has as an entrepreneur and inventor of Sirius Satellite Radio, they continue to finesse the creation of this infamous robot. Their passion for each other, their research, and common goal of eternal life has seen them through Martine’s gender transition in the 1990s and their daughter's diagnosis of a terminally ill disease (that she survived) all while traveling around with Bina48 in their arms. Love Machina is a spellbinding and topical documentary that tells a sci-fi love story that brings a whole new meaning to living happily ever after.—Kathleen Mullen | English | |
| Love Story (SIFF's Version) | USA | 2024 | 86 | Peter Sillen | https://www.siff.net/festival/love-story-(siffs-version) | From malfunctioning sex robots to towering stacks of emotional baggage, explore the idiosyncrasies of humanity’s greatest (and most complicated) emotion. | 1 | |||
| Luther: Never Too Much | USA | 2024 | 101 | Dawn Porter | https://www.siff.net/festival/luther-never-too-much | An absolutely stunning profile on the velvet-voiced R&B singer Luther Vandross, from his auspicious beginnings as a backup vocalist all the way to selling over 40 million albums before his passing in 2005, told through archival footage and the friends he made along the way. | 0 | There’s a term in pro wrestling describing a certain type of wrestler: a “good hand.” Good hands are skilled, dependable performers whose role is to put others over. Though they may never reach the top of the mountain, you’re guaranteed a good show. This term came to mind several times when watching Dawn Porter’s Luther: Never Too Much, a career retrospective of one of R&B’s greatest unsung treasures, Luther Vandross. The start-stop highs and lows are all here with the “Endless Love” singer finding wins whenever he can in the face of bigotry, body-shaming, and an ever-shifting music landscape. Vandross’ professional drive and undeniable mind for vocal composition creates a hall-of-fame resume, landing gigs with Young Americans-era David Bowie, disco titan Dionne Warwick, and even Jim Henson. A murderer’s row of Motown greats, A-Listers, and the industry elite line up in this doc to testify to Vandross’ greatness and professionalism. It’s hard to argue. This womb-to-tomb music documentary highlights one of the best to ever grace the music industry. It’s time this “good hand” got his due.—Andrew Shanks | English | |
| Making Of | France | 2023 | 114 | Cédric Kahn | https://www.siff.net/festival/making-of | In this metafictional drama that elicits comparisons to Day For Night, we follow a film crew as they try to make a movie about a factory closure. Naturally, nothing goes right, egos clash, the money runs out, and everything is captured in a warts-and-all, behind-the-scenes “documentary.” | 0 | Featuring a cast list that reads like a who’s who of French actors—some of whom are also directors—Making Of is an insiders’ send up of the trials and tribulations of filmmaking. There’s Denis Podalydes as the beleaguered auteur, trying to stay true to his vision for the story of striking workers fighting to save their factory—in spite of his financier’s insistence on a happy ending. There’s Xavier Beauvois, as the producer who must find new financiers when the director decides to stick to his guns. Emmanuelle Bercot is the line producer who’s trying to hold it all together when the new financiers can’t be found, and Valérie Donzelli is the director’s wife, who just wants a divorce. There’s the unbearable lead actor who keeps stealing lines from the increasingly fed up lead actress. There’s the crew who must decide whether or not to keep working when the money runs out. (It is at this point that the story of the factory workers and the story of the filmmakers start to meld.) And last but not least, there’s the extra who secretly dreams of directing and, in a lucky break, gets tasked with shooting the “making of.” Director Cédric Kahn, himself also an actor, has managed to direct and star in this film about the making of a film. The cast of Making Of is producers scheming, self-centered actors, and stressed-out crew members, and he quickly finds himself overwhelmed by the events. In this hellish shoot, his only ally is the young extra to whom he entrusts the making of the behind-the-scenes. After The Goldman Case, Cédric Kahn reveals, in less than a year, a brilliant and humorous second opus that navigates between dreams, absurdity, and the tribulations of the art of making movies.—Justine Barda | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gas_QcArkI0 | French |
| Memories of a Burning Body | Costa Rica | 2024 | 90 | Antonella Sudasassi Furniss | https://www.siff.net/festival/memories-of-a-burning-body | In a lyrical and intimate way, director Antonella Sudasassi (SIFF 2019’s The Awakening of the Ants) exalts the body of mature women and their sexuality in the broadest of senses so everyone, regardless of gender identity or age, can question their own notions of pleasure and desire. | 1 | *Restricted to audiences in WA State.Ana, Patricia and Mayela were raised in a repressive era where sexuality was taboo, and they were forced to find the meaning of femininity and their roles as women through unspoken rules and implicit impositions. But how do they feel now? How have their desires and pleasure evolved through the years? Have they changed? We get to hear their brave voices embodied in a single 65-year-old woman, played masterfully by actress Sol Carballo, who inhabits their kaleidoscopic lives and intertwines their memories, secrets and hidden desires. Director and writer Antonella Sudasassi (The Awakening of the Ants, Best Ibero American Film at SIFF 2019) blends real testimonies with very effective reenactments of moments from all three women’s lives. But the poignancy of this very unique exploration, winner of the Audience Award in the Panorama Section at the Berlin Film Festival this year, is in how these women understand and enjoy their sexuality today, when the rest of the world thinks they no longer exist, when their wrinkles, gray hairs, and aging bodies are questioned and dismissed as no longer desirable. In a lyrical and intimate way, the film exalts the bodies of women. Their sexuality becomes a stimulating space where everyone, regardless of gender identity or age, can question their own notions of pleasure and desire.—Hebe Tabachnik | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmiYW4--VkU | Spanish |
| Merchant Ivory | USA | 2023 | 110 | Stephen Soucy | https://www.siff.net/festival/merchant-ivory | Over their 44-film partnership, Ismail Merchant and James Ivory brought decades of high-quality dramas to Seattle filmgoers. Now, join Ivory—still kicking at 95 years old—and a litany of the company’s greatest collaborators as they look back on the indelible mark they made on queer and arthouse cinema. | 0 | Throughout the 1980s & ’90s, Merchant Ivory Productions became synonymous with a certain type of prestige arthouse cinema distinguished by exquisite cinematography, lush settings, gorgeous costumes, charming music, complex characters, worldly sensibilities, and intelligent scripts, often adapted from literary sources. The two principals, director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant, first met at the Indian Consulate in New York City. Though from starkly different backgrounds, the couple soon became inseparable and embarked upon a fruitful professional and personal partnership, though the latter was “...understood, but never talked about.” With the key additions of novelist and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and composer Richard Robbins, the core creative consortium achieved critical mass. Yet even after their films’ achieved wide popularity, Merchant Ivory Productions often relied on shoestring financial arrangements, leading one prominent performer to lead an on-set industrial action. Filmmaker Stephen Soucy delves beneath the company’s classy mystique, uncovering the many tribulations encountered on-set during filming through forthright, funny anecdotes recounted by cast and crew. Featuring interviews with Vanessa Redgrave, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Helena Bonham Carter, and many others, Merchant Ivory provides a vital and compelling perspective upon a unique partnership that produced 43 groundbreaking films over four decades.—Dan Doody | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD6DCaVGdO0 | English |
| Molokaʻi Bound | USA | 2024 | 112 | Alika Tengan (Kanaka Maoli) | https://www.siff.net/festival/molokai-bound | Fresh out of a multi-year stint in prison, Kainoa returns to his family hoping to reconnect with his adolescent son, rekindle things with his ex, and reintegrate into his native culture. But old habits die hard. From the director of Sundance 2022 standout Every Day in Kaimuki. | 1 | Set against the verdant backdrop of Hawai’i, Moloka’i Bound is the story of Kainoa (Holden Mandrial-Santos), a formerly incarcerated man who is trying to walk the Red Road while striving to reconnect with his teenage son, Jonathan (Austin Tucker). Showing up out of the blue one day outside Jonathan’s school while Jonathan is waiting for a lift home, Kainoa is desperate to mend the broken bond between him and his son. In his sophomore feature, Alika Tengan (Kanaka Maoli) produces an astute and sober look at family dynamics, the impacts of colonization, and father-and-son relationships while navigating contemporary Native Hawaiian identity.—Tracy Rector | English, Pidgin, Hawaiian | |
| Mountains | USA | 2023 | 95 | Monica Sorelle | https://www.siff.net/festival/mountains | In Miami’s Little Haiti, demolition worker Xavier must tear apart the very neighborhood he called home if he wants to afford a new house for his working-class family. From Monica Sorelle, winner of the Someone to Watch Award at the 2024 Film Independent Spirit Awards. | 1 | *Restricted to audiences in WA State.Xavier (Atibon Nazaire) is a hard-working man whose job in demolition in Little Haiti is helping tear down the very neighborhood his family immigrated to. He dreams of moving the family to a larger home, but his wife Esperance (Sheila Anozier) already works two jobs and is unsure of how they'll afford the move. His Americanized son Junior (comedian Chris Renois) has dropped out of college to pursue a stand-up career, with little earning potential to help with household expenses. Winner of the Someone to Watch award at the 2024 Independent Spirit Awards, first-time director and co-writer Monica Sorrelle crafts a poignant narrative exploring the complexities of the American Dream—where economic advancement comes at the expense of others, where children abandon their immigrant roots, and where microaggressions permeate daily life. Set against the backdrop of a swiftly gentrifying Miami, Sorrelle's Mountains underscores the loss of neighborhoods where the unique features of its ethnically specific communities are physically and metaphorically razed.—SuJ’n Chon | Haitian Creole, English, Spanish | |
| Moving Poetry: Indigenous Stories | USA | 2023 | 72 | Monica Sorelle | https://www.siff.net/festival/moving-poetry-indigenous-stories | This selection of short, Indigenous-made films exemplifies the poetic language of the body as memory, cultural healing, and relationship to the natural world. | 1 | |||
| My Sextortion Diary | Spain | 2024 | 63 | Patricia Franquesa | https://www.siff.net/festival/my-sextortion-diary | When film producer Pati Franquesa’s computer is stolen, she becomes trapped in a blackmail scheme when the hacker demands $2,400 or he will release a handful of lewd, private photos to her coworkers. Will the authorities help, or will she have to take matters into her own hands? | 1 | Extortion is when a criminal offers you protection from a threat that they have complete control over. When that threat is the distribution of compromising or sexual photos of you, that is sextortion. It’s a distinction I’m sure Patricia Franquesa never wanted to know, but something that she had to deal with. This story begins when she’s delivering a film of hers to a film festival in Madrid. On the way, she stops for lunch with an ex-boyfriend and her laptop gets stolen. This pain-in-the-ass incident turns darker once a hacker contacts her and demands she deposit $2,400 into a Bitcoin account or they’ll send the compromising nude photos they found to friends, family, and business contacts. She doesn’t want to believe it’ll happen, but friends start receiving the photos. If this was a documentary, we would have the benefit of hindsight to know whether what she does next is right and wrong, but because this is smartly structured as a present-tense diary, we are thrust into the position of questioning what we would do in the same situation. When the private is made public, there is often a sense of shame, embarrassment, and anger, but Franquesa finds strength in turning her trouble into this movie. You’ll have to watch it to know how it all turns out.—Andy Spletzer | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRWIEEQeBxE | Catalan, Valencian, English, Spanish |
| Música! | USA | 2023 | 72 | Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman | https://www.siff.net/festival/musica | From SIFF mainstays Rob Ebstein and Jeffrey Friedman (Howl) comes this jubilant profile on Horns for Havana, a U.S. organization trying to keep Cuba’s jazz tradition alive by repairing and providing instruments for the students of the Amadeo Roldan Conservatory of Music. | 1 | From the award-winning documentary duo Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman comes Musica!, a joyous slice-of-life documentary detailing the lives of students at the prestigious Amadeo Roldán Conservatory of Music. Our gateway in follows Horns for Havana, a non-profit arts organization who’ve been making yearly excursions to Cuba for over a decade to help the students of prestigious Amadeo Roldán with instruments and music supplies. The stories of four students unfold as decades worth of sociopolitical instability has affected their education. (Due to the embargo, Cuba doesn’t have sandpaper, much less repair supplies, for intricate jazz instruments.) Though light on the political theatre, Musica! more than makes up for it by showing the soul of jazz music and how it inspires new generations, regardless of language or social barrier. It culminates in students making the pilgrimage to New Orleans, birthplace of jazz, which only solidifies the unshakeable link the Big Easy has with the island nation. Any chance to see the Preservation Hall Jazz Band All-Stars do their thing is a must-see. A sobering coda reminds us of the continued struggle for artists in the face of global instability (*cough* pandemic *cough*), but also the unbreakable spirit of jazz and the enduring resolve of Cuban people.—Andrew Shanks | English, Spanish | |
| Oddity | Ireland | 2024 | 98 | Damian McCarthy | https://www.siff.net/festival/oddity | After her twin sister is gruesomely murdered, a blind psychic in rural Ireland vows to unearth the truth with the help of her ex-brother-in-law’s new girlfriend and a particularly cursed wooden mannequin. Winner of the 2024 SXSW Midnighter Audience Award. | 0 | Winner of the SXSW Midnighter Audience Award, Oddity is an absolutely original and unsettling supernatural thriller. In true Gothic fashion, the film begins on a dark and stormy night. Home alone, Dani (Carolyn Bracken) is busily renovating the new country house she recently purchased with her husband Ted, a doctor at the nearby psychiatric hospital, when a desperate knocking summons her to the front door. A tense standoff ensues between her and Olin Boole, an escaped mental patient. His warnings, however, fall upon deaf ears, and a shrouded figure murders Dani. One year later, Ted still lives in the half-refurbished home with his new girlfriend Yana. Dani’s twin sister Darcy (also played by Bracken), a blind antiques dealer who specializes in collecting cursed objects, unexpectedly visits, bringing with her an utterly bizarre housewarming present—a grotesque wooden mannequin. Despite his own skepticism toward her claims of being a spiritual medium, Ted allows her to stay overnight. But as darkness falls, Darcy’s psychic talents soon reveal the mysteries surrounding her sister’s slaying while malevolent forces marshal against her. In his second feature film, writer-director Damian McCarthy employs a wickedly clever flashback structure, skillfully infusing this creepy phantasmagoria with an eerie atmosphere of pervasive dread.—Dan Doody | English | |
| Once Upon a Nightmare… | Ireland | 2024 | 97 | Damian McCarthy | https://www.siff.net/festival/once-upon-a-nightmare | As bedtime approaches, these eight macabre visions will disturb your sleep and haunt your dreams. | 1 | |||
| Parental Guidance | Ireland | 2024 | 92 | Damian McCarthy | https://www.siff.net/festival/parental-guidance | These short films reveal the absurdity and profundity in the choice to become a parent. | 1 | |||
| Pigsy | Taiwan | 2023 | 95 | Li Wei Chiu | https://www.siff.net/festival/pigsy | A fast-paced, action-packed animated science fiction extravaganza that takes cues from China’s centuries-old Monkey King legends, as a streetwise pig in a bustling future metropolis makes friends and foes in his quest to stop the Bull Demon King’s evil plans. | 0 | Pigsy is unsatisfied with his life in Old Town, a dilapidated and overcrowded neighborhood in a futuristic Taiwan. He dreams about moving to the New World, but unfortunately for the self-absorbed pig, only the most productive members of society are selected for utopia. In a last-ditch effort to secure his and his grandmother’s future, he agrees to help a sketchy underground organization get access to the Nirvana algorithm that selects who goes to the New World. As Pigsy spies on his boss, the algorithm’s inventor, he finds himself becoming friends with the very people he must betray to get to the New World. Pigsy is based on the classic Chinese novel “Journey to the West” and is about becoming part of a community by learning to appreciate the people in your life. Director Li-Wei Chiu’s expressive animation combines 2D and 3D techniques to create a distinctly high-energy Taiwanese style with a cyberpunk twist.—Mackenzie Wardlow | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAxUMsDXh7E | Chinese |
| Porcelain War | Ukraine | 2024 | 87 | Brendan Bellomo, Slava Leontyev | https://www.siff.net/festival/porcelain-war | As the Russia-Ukraine war rages on, Kharkiv-based Slava Leontyev and Anya Stasenko make tiny porcelain figurines. What does it mean to continue with their artistic passions as the world crumbles around them? Winner of the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2024. | 1 | “Ukraine is like porcelain, easy to break, but impossible to destroy.” —Co-director, Brendan BellomoUnder roaring fighter jets and missile strikes, Ukrainian artists Slava, Anya, and Andrey choose to stay behind and fight, contending with the soldiers they have become. Defiantly finding beauty amid destruction, they show that although it’s easy to make people afraid, it’s hard to destroy their passion for living. The award-winning feature documentary Porcelain War argues that, while under a vicious attack, you can learn to fight back using all the tools you have including your art. Imbued with the striking nature of Kharkiv, the film also features music by Ukrainian force of sound DakhaBrakha, which is not easily forgotten. “We’re ordinary people in an extraordinary situation” is how co-director Slava Leontyev describes their current life. Though there is nothing ordinary about them—these artists, farmers, IT specialists—they together to fight their oppressor. Porcelain War is a sobering and hopeful cinematic experience. Co-directors Leontyev and Bellomo manage to capture the dissonance between the horrors of war and the fragile, artful beauty of nature. Anya and Slava’s porcelain pieces come to life in intricately crafted animations that offer context to their story and a vital, beautiful outlet for processing grief.—Eden Sapir | Ukrainian, Russian | |
| RATS! | USA | 2023 | 85 | Maxwell Nalevansky, Carl Fry | https://www.siff.net/festival/rats | In this maniacal stoner epic of bad taste—think John Waters if he was from the South and liked screamo—a young vandal must survive the unhinged citizens of Pfresno, Texas, including drug dealers, plutonium suppliers, amateur TV newspeople, and a psychotic cop out for blood. | 0 | Rats! is an unholy union of the scrappy, DIY scene that blossomed out of Austin, TX in the ’90s and a distinctly American strain of trash auteurism. Extremely crass and utterly charming, the film adeptly balances the clever and the idiotic. The plot is set in motion when emo kid Rafi gets sentenced to community service for spray-painting a local landmark, which happens to be a dilapidated payphone. What follows are the increasingly surreal exploits of a group of misfits as they navigate a serial killer on the loose, a power-tripping policewoman, FBI surveillance, nuclear terrorism, and how to make the most perfect sandwich you’ve ever had in your life. Despite raising bad taste to the level of fine art, the film also has a surprising undercurrent of sweetness. It’s a set of immaculate weirdos that truly care about each other who ground this chaotic, candy-colored snapshot of small-town life in the Lone Star State, circa 2007. The result is an unexpectedly warm, but still brilliantly bloody, instant slacker classic.—Betsy Cass | English | |
| Rainier: A Beer Odyssey | USA | 2024 | 124 | Isaac Olsen | https://www.siff.net/festival/rainier-a-beer-odyssey | Crack open a cold one with the epic story of Rainier Beer and the world-famous 1970s advertising campaign—designed by a small, up-and-coming agency with everything to prove—that put the Seattle-based brewing company on the map. | 0 | The word “iconic” is greatly overused, but Rainier Beer’s red-script “R” logo is just that—for decades a symbol of Seattle second, perhaps, only to the Space Needle itself. Rainier: A Beer Odyssey explores, exhaustively, how that happened. Short version: It was the dozens of witty, zany TV ads that have never left the memories of anyone who lived in Seattle from the World’s Fair through the Reagan era, dreamed up by a troupe of infinitely inventive (m)ad men and women led by Terry Heckler and Gordon Bowker. (Several of these merry pranksters were alumni of Seattle magazine, and that chapter of local journalistic history gets an affectionate sidebar.) Parody was a favorite strategy, using celeb impersonators from Carson to Rambo and sending up films from Jaws to Amadeus, plus plenty of the time’s pop songs. Mickey Rooney, of all people, got a late-career boost when the ad-makers found by accident he was available. Then in 1987 Rainier was bought by Aussie Alan Bond, the Rupert Murdoch of brewing; he instantly fired Heckler Bowker and Rainier sales plummeted in about as long as it took you to read this sentence. Funny how that happens. Since the ad crew was so young, several are still around, eager talking heads for director Isaac Olsen amid the wealth of vintage old-Seattle clips he’s amassed.—Gavin Borchert | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka0y4Ekn4zI | English |
| Red Rooms | Canada (Québec) | 2023 | 118 | Pascal Plante | https://www.siff.net/festival/red-rooms | In this unnerving psychological thriller from Pascal Plante (Fake Tattoos, SIFF 2017), a Montreal-based model becomes obsessed with a high-profile serial killer trial. As the terrible details of the case infect her every waking moment, she finds herself on a road toward destruction. | 0 | Director Pascal Plante’s cyber-thriller Red Rooms takes courtroom drama to new places, edging into the realm of psychological horror. Enigmatic Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) lives in a luxury apartment in Montréal and holds a successful career as a model and high-stakes video poker player. She is the first to show up at the courtroom every day for the trial of the man dubbed “The Demon of Rosemont,” Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos). Chevalier is accused of torturing, killing, and dismembering three young girls in “red rooms,” where snuff films are livestreamed on the dark web. The plot transgresses from gripping courtroom drama to nail-biting thriller as Kelly-Anne goes down the rabbit hole into the dark online world where millions of dollars in cryptocurrency is at stake in securing the videos which can uncover the truths about the horrors which had befallen the schoolgirls. Though sharing tonal echoes with Michael Haneke’s Funny Games and David Slade’s Hard Candy, Red Rooms shows very little actual violence. Plante (Fake Tattoos, SIFF 2018) builds suspense through mastery of the camera and through pulling in a pitch-perfect score. Juliette Gariépy’s performance is powerful as the cold and unreadable Kelly-Anne, who leaves us guessing through plot twists until the ultimate climax of the film, when we can finally let out our breath.—Colleen O’Holleran | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6XWULDoIVg | French, English |
| Red, White & Brass | New Zealand | 2023 | 85 | Damon Fepulea’i (Samoan) | https://www.siff.net/festival/red-white-brass | When Maka and his friends fail to secure tickets to the sold-out Rugby World Cup match between Tonga and France, they hastily create a brass marching band to gain access to the stadium. Based on a true story and from the producers of Hunt for the Wilderpeople. | 0 | Red, White & Brass is the ultimate fake-it-until-you-make-it story. After failing to secure tickets to the Tonga vs. France Rugby World Cup game, superfan Maka finds his own way in by volunteering his church’s brass band as the halftime entertainment. If only his church HAD a brass band. With only four weeks until the game, Maka’s community rallies their minimal resources to keep up the charade, but somewhere along the way it becomes less about watching the match and more about properly representing Tonga on an international stage. First-time feature director Damon Fepulea’i brings the unbelievable true story to life with the same dry New Zealand humor you would find in fellow Kiwi and executive producer Taika Waititi’s films. This feel-good sports (-adjacent) comedy is a celebration of community, culture, and māfana, a Tongan word describing the feeling of emotion so strong you have to dance and scream.—Mackenzie Wardlow | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N42GC8e4x8 | Tongan, English |
| Resynator | USA | 2024 | 96 | Alison Tavel | https://www.siff.net/festival/resynator | Alison Tavel never knew her father, only stories of his genius. But when she finds his old synth prototype in her grandmother’s attic, she embarks on a journey to meet musicians affected by his invention. Winner of the 2024 SXSW Documentary Audience Award. | 1 | Surely you’ll never see a more poignant and touching documentary about…electronic music technology. Director Alison Tavel’s father Don, who died when she was only 10 weeks old, was something of a question mark during her childhood; family lore held that Don had “invented the synthesizer,” though the history books mentioned only the name Robert Moog. (His bright idea was to make the synth keyboard-driven, analogous in impact to adding a mouse to the PC.) Later, driven to dig deeper, Tavel found those books hadn’t told the whole tale. She discovered, literally in Grandma’s attic, the black box, dubbed the Resynator, Don had built. As a roadie for Grace Potter, Tavel had a bit of an in to the music biz, so starting there she set off to retrace his story. Jon Anderson of Yes, Peter Gabriel, even Paul McCartney had expressed early interest—but what went wrong? Find out as Tavel totes the prototype Resynator from one enthusiastic music geek to the next, even as far as Colombia, as she untangles two intertwining mysteries: the secret of her father’s invention and of her father himself.—Gavin Borchert | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mehsU2OOWgA | English |
| Rioja: The Land of a Thousand Wines | Spain | 2023 | 96 | José Luis Lopez-Linares | https://www.siff.net/festival/rioja-the-land-of-a-thousand-wines | Through mesmerizing images of the whole winemaking process and the testimonies of winemakers, sommeliers, enologists, and restaurateurs from La Rioja, this is a sumptuous invitation to enjoy the surprising variety and delicious secrets behind Spain’s most well-known wine. | 0 | Many people have enjoyed a glass (or a bottle) of Rioja wine in their lives. But how much do we know about this wine, the region in Spain that produces it, or its unique history? Rioja: Land of The Thousand Wines, the new documentary of director, writer and cinematographer José Luis López Linares (Virgin & Extra: The Land of the Olive Oil, SIFF 2019) takes us into a fascinating tour into La Rioja, the winding land along the Ebro River, sprinkled with sunbathed villages and colorful vineyards on the hillsides. Through mesmerizing images of the whole winemaking process and the testimonies of winemakers, sommeliers, award-winning enologists, and restaurateurs from La Rioja, the remarkable spirit that guides the entire region becomes clear, one that combines its rich and treasured wine heritage with innovative ideas implemented by a young generation of winemakers. Traditional forms of winemaking peacefully coexist with state-of-the-art technology which in turn gives birth to new denominations, new manufacturing processes, new culinary concepts, and an ever-expanding international projection. Rioja: Land of The Thousand Wines, with its vibrant photography, precise editing, and immersive music, is a sumptuous invitation to enjoy with all our senses the surprising variety and delicious secrets behind Spain’s most well-known wine.—Hebe Tabachnik | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsE2CIk8K7U | Spanish |
| Rising Up at Night | Belgium | 2024 | 96 | Nelson Makengo | https://www.siff.net/festival/rising-up-at-night | In this captivating documentary, director Nelson Makengo paints a vivid picture of life in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's capital, where its residents navigate challenges ranging from power shortages to the aftermath of natural disasters. | 0 | When darkness envelops the city of Kinshasa, the heartbeats of its 17 million souls echo with resilience and determination. In this captivating documentary, director Nelson Makengo paints a vivid picture of life in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's capital, where residents navigate challenges ranging from power shortages to the aftermath of natural disasters. The storyline weaves together the lives of compelling characters like Kudi, who rallies his community to raise funds for a new power cable, and Davido, grappling with homelessness after the Congo River floods his home. Against the backdrop of Mount Mangengenge, Pastor Gédéon's sermons about hope and faith offer a poignant contrast to the city's struggles. Shot with remarkable intimacy and sensitivity, Rising Up at Night is filmed with a deep understanding of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s complex history and socio-economic challenges, inviting viewers to bear witness to the indomitable human spirit even in the face of unimaginable uncertainty. It's a film that resonates long after the credits roll, leaving audiences inspired and moved by the indomitable spirit of those who call Kinshasa home.—Nancy Pappas | Lingala | |
| SIFF & CFC Event - The NeverEnding Story | USA | 1984 | 92 | Wolfgang Petersen | https://www.siff.net/festival/siff-cfc-event-the-neverending-story | Hop onto your Luck Dragon and ride into the magical world of Fantasia for a very special presentation of The NeverEnding Story. This time, Seattle’s own DJ NicFit will create a live soundtrack to accompany Wolfgang Petersen’s glorious 1984 fantasy classic. | 0 | For 40 years, The NeverEnding Story has thrilled generations of moviegoers, though I wager most have only ever seen it on television screens, where, like The Wizard of Oz, the film became a classic. Like Dorothy before him, our hero Bastian longs to escape his mundane everyday life. That opportunity comes when Bastian hides from a trio of bullies by ducking into Mr. Coreander's Bookshop, where the shop’s cantankerous proprietor is reading a beguilingly strange book. "It's not for you," he warns Bastian, which only entices the boy to "borrow" it when Coreander steps away. Late for school, Bastian skips classes to hide in the attic and begins reading the mysterious book. Within its pages, he discovers the kingdom of Fantasia, under threat from a malevolent entity known as The Nothing. Fantasia’s heralds seek aid from the Childlike Empress, only to discover her mortally ill. Atreyu, a young warrior, embarks upon a quest to discover a cure for the Empress. But as Bastian continues turning the pages of Atreyu's adventures, the lines between fantasy and reality grow perilously thin. Although we may not be able to escape into the fantastical world of Fantasia or ride Falkor the Luck Dragon, The NeverEnding Story continues to enchant audiences, particularly when seen on the silver screen as you hear Liamhl’s iconic theme song pounding through the cinema’s thunderous sound system.—Dan DoodyCross-Faded Cinema (curated by Seattle's own DJ NicFit) returns to the Festival to provide an all-new soundtrack to this fantasy classic, promising a trippy, ultra-sensory time done live on two turntables. Previous SIFF appearances include the all-Queen soundtrack to Highlander (1986) and last year’s goth and New Wave-infused presentation of 1996’s The Craft. What will DJ NicFit deem worthy of The NeverEnding Story for this one-of-a-kind music and film hybrid event? | English | |
| Saturn Return | Spain | 2024 | 105 | Isaki Lacuesta, Pol Rodríguez | https://www.siff.net/festival/saturn-return | It’s the late 1990s, and Granada indie music group Los Planetas is about to record their third album. But with the band in turmoil, they find themselves on the brink of success…or total destruction. Can they come together against all odds or collapse in a ball of fire? | 0 | Inspired by the story of one of the most popular Spanish bands of the ’90s called Los Planetas, we meet the Granada indie rock music group at a moment of crisis. The bassist breaks up with the band looking for her place outside of music and the guitarist finds himself immersed in a spiral of self-destruction. Meanwhile, the singer struggles to find the inspiration to produce their third album. But just before the band is close to its dissolution, their biggest dream comes true: they finally receive an offer to record their new album in New York. This once in a lifetime opportunity gave birth to an album that defined a generation and forever changed the music scene in Spain. Directors Isaki Lacuesta and Pol Rodríguez portray this world of rock and psychedelia with beauty and mystery, through a story that dares to go beyond the conventional biopic. A brilliant ensemble played mostly by real Andalusian musicians infuses this rock band drama with captivating magic and sensuality. Saturn Return, the big winner at the 2024 Malaga Film Festival, receiving awards for best film, direction and editing, is a romantic, bittersweet, and highly entertaining journey along the very narrow path that separates dazzling success from complete disaster.—Hebe Tabachnik | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgOP-kJgkHU?si=vVjOA7rh2uYa7A7b | Spanish |
| Scala!!! | United Kingdom | 2023 | 96 | Jane Giles, Ali Catterall | https://www.siff.net/festival/scala | The wild history of the Scala Cinema in King’s Cross, London, a repertory house of ill repute with enough nose-thumbing alternative programming, midnight madness, illicit pornography, and transgressive politics that it would make Margaret Thatcher’s head explode. | 0 | From 1978–93, London’s legendary Scala cinema offered its patrons a wealth of diverse film programming, everything from kung-fu to queer, grindhouse sexploitation to gorehound horror, Laurel & Hardy classics to provocateurs John Waters & Divine. If there ever was a high temple of cult cinema, it was the Scala. Founder (and Academy Award nominee) Stephen Woolley adopted the same DIY approach to film exhibition that fueled the punk music scene—as a “cinema club” the Scala was allowed to show more transgressive fare and, in some cases, uncertified or even “banned” films. The cinema’s anarchic reputation attracted and inspired a whole generation of renowned musicians, artists, and filmmakers. And then there’s cinema cat Huston, whose exploits are almost as legendary as the Scala itself. Directed by former Scala programmer Jane Giles with Ali Catterall, Scala!!! Or, The Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World's Wildest Cinema and How it Influenced a Mixed-Up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits, to give the film its full title, is not only a profoundly heartfelt tribute to the weird, wild, and wondrous motion pictures of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, but also a love letter to those cinema spaces where we all gather and collectively share such experiences.—Dan Doody | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH-sdpLjQvI | English |
| Scorched Earth | Germany | 2024 | 101 | Thomas Arslan | https://www.siff.net/festival/scorched-earth | In this tense, tight-lipped arthouse thriller that recalls the work of Jean-Pierre Melville and Michael Mann, a criminal returns to Berlin for a big-time art heist, only for Murphy’s Law to take effect, causing everything to frantically spiral out of control. | 0 | On the gritty periphery of Berlin, nervous professionals come together for a standard brief: pinch a valuable painting from a museum warehouse. But in this slow-burning, tense, and tight-lipped arthouse thriller from Berlin-school director Thomas Arslan (In the Shadows), getting the goods is the easy part. Deliberate with its tempo and its film cred, with a lot of Jean-Pierre Melville and a little Michael Mann, this one is boiled hard and, while subtle and psychological, entertaining as hell. Once the heist is pulled off, the real suspense begins: the shadowy crook who commissioned the job turns on the pros, and the museum, trying to get its property back, isn’t playing fair either. The art subplot, focusing on a small canvas by German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, is played just right, and Alexander Fehling (Inglorious Basterds) chews a delicious villain’s role to smithereens. With thieves’ honor and a lone black knight on the margins of the city, Scorched Earth is classic film noir, made in Germany today.—Martin Schwartz | German | |
| Seagrass | Canada | 2023 | 115 | Meredith Hama-Brown | https://www.siff.net/festival/seagrass | A tense, atmospheric, and visually compelling drama about breaking intergenerational curses, as a dysfunctional biracial couple goes on a group therapy retreat, only for their fractured marriage to deleteriously affect the young daughters who tagged along. | 1 | A biracial family struggling to stay together must battle against the generational trauma that haunts them. Seagrass is an ethereal drama that doesn’t shy away from the complexities of marriage, parenthood, and microaggressions. We meet Judith (Ally Maki) a Japanese Canadian, and her Caucasian husband Steve (Luke Roberts) on an island retreat for couples counseling. With them are their two adolescent children, who must bear witness to the erosion of their family unit whilst dealing with their own identity crisis. A ghostly presence that only the youngest can perceive looms over the fracturing group. A tinge of horror mixes with unease. The mounting tension is brought eerily to life through the film's oscillating score and twisting cinematography. The standout performances being Maki’s portrait of a grief-stricken daughter full of regrets while juggling a deteriorating marriage and motherhood. The realistic sibling dynamic between the two daughters (Nyha Huang Breitkreuz and Remy Marthaller) is a joyful highlight in the face of approaching tragedy.—Sandra Woolf | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9ZtUywByxw | English |
| Sebastian | United Kingdom | 2024 | 110 | Mikko Mäkelä | https://www.siff.net/festival/sebastian | When an ambitious 25-year-old journalist (Ruaridh Mollica) goes undercover as a gay sex worker to inform his debut novel, he begins to enjoy his nocturnal alter ego more than he anticipated in this exhilarating and erotic drama of self-expression. | 0 | They say write what you know, but what if you took the matter into your own hands and experienced what you thought people would want to read? Aspiring writer Max does just that, becoming a gay escort under the pseudonym Sebastian to fuel the pages of his first novel. Touching on the subject of expectation, exploitation, and persona in an age when it’s so easy to deceive or to cultivate perception, we follow Max as he struggles to define himself in a way that he thinks will impress the collective literary audience. Out of desperation to stand out, he chooses to push prose rather than wait for it, stepping into the role of his sex worker protagonist to the point that he loses his grip on where the narrative ends and reality sets in. The swirl of guilt from using his clients combines with the shame of being used, longing for experience to the point of no longer being present in oneself. This is not so different, in my opinion, from the malaise of a morning after a fit of drinking; hazy memory bleeding into dysphoria, recalling what you’ve said and the hours you stole in order to indulge. Who are you really? Which moments were true? At the end you get a story, perhaps something shocking to tell at a party, but at what cost? At what point are you just a device to move the plot? For Max, he must decide where his loyalties lie: owning his life sincerely or the sacrifice of self; maintaining the façade of who he believes he should be in order to be the next golden boy of writing. Note: This film contains explicit sex.—Marion Bailey | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsbxmYSoimw | English, French |
| ShortsFest Opening Night | United Kingdom | 2024 | 84 | Mikko Mäkelä | https://www.siff.net/festival/shortsfest-opening-night-x37524 | It is our great pleasure to open our ShortsFest Spotlight with this collection of superb films from around the world: whether narrative or documentary, live action or animation—these films prove short is truly sweet. | 1 | |||
| Sing Sing | USA | 2023 | 107 | Greg Kwedar | https://www.siff.net/festival/sing-sing | Oscar® nominees Colman Domingo (Rustin) and Paul Raci (Sound of Metal) lead a cast of non-professionals, many of whom play themselves, in this inspirational true story about a troupe of incarcerated people who find healing through the redemptive power of theatre. | 0 | In this stirring film based on a real-life theatre program inside New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility, director Greg Kwedar (Transpecos, SIFF 2016) demonstrates the transformative power of art using an ensemble cast of professional actors and formerly incarcerated people who participated in Sing Sing’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program. Academy Award® nominees Colman Domingo (Rustin) and Paul Raci (Sound of Metal) portray characters based on real people who challenge themselves to stage an original comedy—a first for the group, which usually relies on a repertoire of dramas and Shakespearean classics. Sing Sing focuses mostly on the behind-the-scenes work that goes into theatre production and in doing so reveals an incredible ensemble of talented actors as they mount the ambitious show. RTA veteran John "Divine G" Whitfield (Domingo) sees a spark from brilliant newcomer Clarence Maclin (playing a fictionalized version of himself) and works to develop his acting ability. Sing Sing is an inspiring true story of resilience, humanity, and the transformative power of art. | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur0Il9aall0 | English |
| Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds | Belgium | 2023 | 80 | Benoît Chieux | https://www.siff.net/festival/sirocco-and-the-kingdom-of-the-winds | In this vivid animated feast for viewers young and old, two children pick up their babysitter’s book and magically fall into the story’s fanciful world. There, they must make their way through the Kingdom of the Winds and find a way out before they are trapped forever. In English, ages 8+ | 0 | Inheriting the adventurous spirits of Studio Ghibli, Alice in Wonderland, and The Wizard of Oz, Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds conjures a technicolor fantasia that will delight animation lovers of any age. One boring afternoon, sisters Juliette and Carmen tumble head-over-heels into their favorite book and into the Kingdom of the Winds. Now humanoid cats, they find themselves at the whims of a frog-goblin mayor and the hurricanes sent his way by the secretive sorcerer Sirocco. Juliette and Carmen must band up with the ethereal storm chaser-turned-songstress Selma in their quest to find home...just as soon as they find Sirocco. This female-led adventure fairy tale will capture your heart with its portrayals of empathy, unapologetic confidence, and enduring sisterly love. But its mind-melting style will truly bowl you over. In his first venture as a solo director, Benoît Chieux draws from psychedelic references like Yellow Submarine and French illustrator Moebius to craft a world of pure imagination as dark as it is uncannily comforting. A real highlight, French-Cameroonian jazz vocalist Célia Kameni lends her singular voice to an otherworldly soundtrack. Sailing between breathy fantasy and a grounded story about just how far we’ll go to protect and remember those we love, Sirocco is bound to join its inspirations in the pantheon of great animation.—Hannah Baek | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b6YytLHk0s | English |
| Slow | Lithuania | 2023 | 108 | Marija Kavtaradze | https://www.siff.net/festival/slow | There’s more than one way to love. Elena has hit it off big-time with Dovydas, an interpreter for the Deaf. But as their relationship blooms, he reveals that he is asexual, leaving the couple to explore new paths of intimacy and romance. | 1 | In a patriarchal, heteronormative, sex-obsessed culture, asexuality is often defined as being a lack of something. Most allosexuals—people who experience sexual desire—imagine that asexual people live a life closed off from deep connection with others. Contrary to popular belief, asexual folks are leading rich, intimate fulfilling lives with and without partners. Slow tells the story of an asexual sign-language interpreter named Dovydas (Kestutis Cicenas) and an allosexual dancer named Elena (Greta Grineviciute), whose attraction to each other drives them to do what all loving couples must: compromise, learn from each other, and try to find a path to lasting partnership. The hurdles they experience help the viewer reflect on their own concepts of intimacy, trust, and love. Lithuanian filmmaker Marija Kavtaradze has already won numerous awards for SLOW, including the World Cinema – Dramatic Directing Award at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.—Heather Marie Bartels | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zygiXIjr6kA | Lithuanian, English |
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