Film festivals are an inherently ever-evolving thing, but few have undergone more changes, over a longer span, than the San Francisco International Film Festival, commonly known these days by its organizational umbrella monicker SFFilm.
This year marks the 69th edition of what remains the longest-running event of its type in the Western Hemisphere. Its form these days is considerably altered from those decades when it had few competitors, locally or nationally. But this “celebration of global cinema” still offers a diverse selection of upcoming commercial releases, arthouse fare that may not surface locally again (particularly as the Bay Area’s arthouse scene has drastically shrunk), shorts programs, tributes, and more. The festivities run this Fri/24 through Monday May 4 at various venues in SF, Oakland, and Berkeley.
Opening night sees a return to the historic Castro Theater, with two of the higher-profile titles on tap. First up is Late Fame, an update of a same-named novella by Austrian scribe Arthur Schnitzler (who died nearly a century ago at age 69, incidentally). It has Willem Dafoe as a Manhattan postal worker startled when he’s approached by a group of rich kids with salon des artistes pretensions—they have rediscovered the lone book of poems he published to scant notice in the late 1970s. Such drastically belated acclaim for pursuits he’d long since abandoned proves flattering, but also discombobulating, in Kent Jones’ rueful seriocomedy.
Following later in the evening is Olivia Wilde’s third directorial feature, following Booksmart and Don’t Worry Darling. The Invite stars herself, Seth Rogan, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton in one of those twisty black comedies where two couples’ seemingly harmless dinner party takes increasingly discordant, dark turns. Written by actors Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, it’s a remake of a 2020 Spanish film that in turn was adapted from a stage play. Both Invite and Late Fame were well-received in their prior festival premieres (at Sundance and Venice, respectively), and should be hitting regular theaters later this year.
As will I Love Boosters, the highly anticipated second feature from Oakland’s own Boots Riley, arriving eight long years after Sorry To Bother You. It promises another imaginative satire of race, class, and economic divisions, this time involving Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, and others as women who wreak an elaborate vengeance on an imperious queen of the fashion industry (Demi Moore). Riley and select cast members are expected at this SFFilm “Centerpiece” presentation at the Grand Lake on Tues/28.
Back at the Castro, the closing night selection is an oldie, The Empire Strikes Back aka Star Wars: Episode V. Still arguably the best entry in that entire, still-active franchise, its revival screening will feature an onstage conversation with actor Anthony Daniels, the man beneath C-3PO’s metal.
SFFilm #69 in fact features quite a number of revivals, from Guillermo del Toro’s 1992 Mexican debut feature Cronos to Amerindie classic Beasts of the Southern Wild 20 years later. A rarity is T’ang Shushuen’s 1968 Hong Kong film The Arch, newly restored over sixty years after it originally played this same festival. There’s also a quartet of vintage French films: Agnes Varda’s atypically harsh, terse 1985 narrative feature Vagabond, Leos Carax’s enigmatic Bad Blood from the next year (which has one of my favorite scenes ever—see clip above), Claire Denis’ 1999 military drama Beau Travail, and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 The Wages of Fear, the harrowing adventure thriller William Friedkin later remade as Sorcerer.
Other highlights include the Wed/29 BAMPFA presentation of this year’s Persistence of Vision Award to longtime experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs. She’ll be there for a discussion of her 40-year body of screen work, as well as a showing of her latest, the feature Every Contact Leaves a Trace—a freewheeling meditation on connectivity triggered by curiosity about the 600+ business cards she’s accrued over time. They lead her from Berlin to China, from an ex-therapist to her ongoing hairdresser, as well as interviews with her own children. It’s a typically playful mix of autobiography, archival materials, reportage and essay. (Note: The film will also be shown May 9 in SF’s Other Cinema series. Likewise, Sam Green’s The Oldest Person in the World will play SFFilm Sun/26, then Other Cinema May 2. OC’s calendar is here).
Also getting an in-person program’s focus are Indian writer-director Ritesh Batra (with his 2013 debut The Lunchbox); Founding Senior Director of Sundance Institute’s Artist Programs Michelle Satter (with screening of the aforementioned Beasts); and guitarist Gabriela Quintero, who’ll perform both live and in Beth Aala’s world-premiere documentary portrait Mysterious Bird.
As ever, international narrative features run a wide gamut, with contributions from Italy (The Kidnapping of Arabella), Iran (Inside Amir), the Philippines (Filipinana), Scotland (The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford), Venezuela (It Would Be Night in Caracas), Hungary (Blue Heron, Silent Friend), South Korea (The World of Love), Pakistan (Ghost School), Argentina (Elder Son, Risa and the Wind Phone), Malaysia (The Fox King, Lost Land), Lebanon (A Sad and Beautiful World), Czech Republic (Ungrateful Beings), Kenya (Memory of Princess Mumbi), Costa Rica (If We Don’t Burn, How Do We Light Up the Night), Japan (Renoir), Romania (Milk Teeth), Turkey (Salvation,Those Who Whistle After Dark), and more. English-language imports include Space Cadet, a Canadian animated fantasy from Kid Koala, Stroma Cairn’s bittersweet UK buddy-roadtrip seriocomedy The Son and the Sea, and Cornish villlage-set drama Rose of Nevada.
US fiction features encompass some familiar acting faces, from Dale Dickey (in Ramzi Bashour’s Hot Water) to Jamie Lee Curtis (Russell Goldman’s Sender) and erstwhile SFFilm awardee Dustin Hoffman (Daniel Roher’s Tuner).
There are some hard-hitting titles among the nonfiction features, with Poh Si Teng’s American Doctor a standout. It follows three US physicians as they make regular trips to Gaza, where targets of the Israeli military now routinely include Palestinian children, hospitals, healthcare workers, and local or visiting journalists. A Syrian refugee family get traced over a full decade of drastic change, from warzone to Germany and back home again, in Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes’ One in a Million.
There are also exposes of the conservative war on higher education (First They Came For My College), the Kivu War in Congo (Enough Is Enough), and surprising aspects of the rural Mexican rodeo circuit (Jaripeo). Not to mention films about Girl Scouts (Cookie Queens), domestic labor (How to Clean a House in 10 Easy Steps), inventive strategies for the blind (Joybubbles), imperiled nature (Nuisance Bear, Time and Water), phantom pregnancy (A Child of My Own), and fungi (Daughters of the Forest). Several documentaries pay tribute to distinctive personalities in artistic (Figaro Up, Figaro Down, Black Is Beautiful: The Kwane Brathwaite Story, Nava), activist-political (Amilcar, Scenes From the Divide, The Baddest Speechwriter of All), and athletic performance (Give Me the Ball!, about Billie Jean King).
There is still more on tap in the 11-day schedule, running April 24-May 4 at various SF and East Bay venues. For full day-to-day info on films, locations, showtimes, tickets and so forth, go here.
Elsewhere, there are other events and releases worth note over the next week, including a Castro Theatre screening of the starry documentary The Celluloid Closet (more info here), adapted from the late Vito Russo’s book about 20th-century Hollywood’s erstwhile scurrilous caricaturing (and/or downright exclusion) of gay characters. This 30th anniversary showing of a new 4K restoration will feature directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman in person, plus very special guest (and onscreen interviewee) Lily Tomlin.
Since we covered I Swear at the Mostly British Festival several weeks ago, that very good biopic about a Scottish Tourette’s syndrome sufferer turned activist has gotten more attention—some quite unfortunate. Kirk Jones’ film won two British Academy Film Awards, including Best Actor for lead Robert Aramayo (an actor more typically known for villainous parts, such as in the recent Palestine 36). But during the ceremony in late February, real-life protagonist John Davidson blurted the “n-word” from the audience during a Sinners acceptance, a maximally awkward moment that generated more anger than understanding.
In any case, I Swear is opening Fri/24 in Bay Area theaters, and it admirably manages to eke both comic mileage and real poignancy out of its protagonist’s uncontrollable verbal and physical tics. Shirley Henderson plays the mother who cannot get past deep shame over her son’s at-first-inexplicable condition, while Peter Mullan (also in SFFilm’s Sir Douglas, noted above) plays an employer who’s the first person to treat our hero as a normal bloke with a manageable problem. It’s the rare deliberate “crowdpleaser” that manages to hit its marks without feeling like a Pavlovian experiment on the viewer’s emotions.
Also arriving Friday, at SF’s Roxie Theater, is Berlin Fest Silver Bear winner The Blue Trail. It’s a personal best to date for Brazilian writer-director Gabriel Mascaro, whose prior features Neon Bull and Divine Love also offered provocative mixes of fantasy, drama and visual bravado. But those didn’t hang together so well as this tale set in a near future where the government places severe controls on the elderly—denying them basic legal rights past a certain age, then shipping them off to an ominous-sounding “Colony.” (Is it a real retirement community, or a fate more like Soylent Green? We never find out.)
77-year-old Tereza (Denise Weinberg) isn’t having it. She refuses to relinquish her independence, circumventing a senior travel ban by taking a boat piloted by Rodrigo Santoro far down the Amazon, where she eventually finds a fellow scofflaw-elder (Miriam Socorras).
As is Mascaro’s wont, things grow gently surreal, offering up a type of magical realism more subversively funny than it is whimsical. This is a much more imaginative rebellious-oldster movie than the likes of Grandma (which starred Tomlin) or recent June Squibb vehicle Thelma. It’s trippy and stylish, oddly upbeat despite its narrative ambiguities.
