The clock is ticking down to an election that will surely test the remaining strength of our democracy—in particular, whether we’re still a nation that can stand up to forces which refuse to accept a popular loss. Those forces have already made it clear they’d like to greatly curb who gets to vote and protest, two actions increasingly directed against them. So it’s an eerily apt moment for two annual local film festivals that are largely about citizen activism.
Taking place this Thu/15 through October 22 at SF’s 4Star Theater (in addition to an online viewing platform), SF Indiefest offshoot the Green Film Festival provides a disparate slate of features and shorts addressing “problems facing the planet” and their potential solutions—though not without some fun en route.
It opens with a typically eccentric new film from Hungary’s Gyorgy Palfi, Hen. Its titular live-action protagonist (actually “played” by several lookalike birds) is a coxcomb’d black chicken whose escape from a factory poultry farm is just the first among numerous close calls from mostly man-made perils. Hers is an “incredible journey” that witnesses some of humanity’s worst behaviors, but maintains an antic tone of comedic absurdism throughout.
Also in a baroque narrative vein, there’s “Eco-Horror Midnight Movie” selection Bodyhackers, a mostly English-language Portuguese fantasy in which clients at the tony Vitruvio Beauty Corp. willingly subject themselves to ever-increasingly bizarre plastic surgeries. Writer-director Carlos Conceicao made his feature debut several years ago with the very impressive Tommy Guns, which we reviewed here.
In the documentary realm, Jeffrey Reiner’s The Terroirist profiles Santa Cruz-based Randall Grahm, founder of Bonny Doon Vineyard, whose innovations in winemaking over recent decades have had major positive impacts on the industry as a whole. Closing night selection A City in the Forest from Lev Omelchenko and Nolan Huber is a more reportorial look at a bitter struggle in Atlanta. When yet another wholly unnecessary police killing of an unarmed Black man (Rayshard Brooks) occurred there in 2020, the official response was to suggest improved police training…to be held at a proposed new facility that would be the nation’s largest.
This “Cop City” campus would clearly only exacerbate the militarization of law enforcement against civilians. It was made all the worse by the fact that it would occupy “342 acres of trees” that were pretty much the last open land in a traditionally poor, non-white sector. Even its history was institutionally racist: Once Muskogee territory, it had already been a slave plantation, then a prison farm. Eco-activists settled in for a long fight which itself was not free of violence, nor the conspicuously heavy hand of politicized “justice” (including domestic terrorism charges). City is a vivid cautionary tale for our time, featuring a lot of witness footage from both sides.
Other feature documentaries focus on the challenges of modern farming (Harvest); our society’s problematic disposal methods for trash (In Excess) and feces (Unless Something Goes Terribly Wrong); athletic portraits Don’t Be Prey (ocean marathon swimming) and Best Day Ever (differently-abled mountain biking). There are also numerous shorts, from those of particular Bay Area interest to others from as far afield as Indonesia. Green Film Festival takes place Oct. 15-22 at the 4Star Theater, with some programs also available for home streaming during that span. Full info is here.
Founded in 1998 to commemorate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ then-50th Anniversary, the United Nations Association Film Festival is now in its 29th year. It tours to other locations with a traveling program, but its primary event is each fall in the Bay Area. Those eleven days of screenings and panel discussions have a different theme each annum, the one for 2026 being “Passion for Change.”
It begins this Thu/15 at Palo Alto’s Mitchell Park Community Center with three documentaries: Richard Wainwright’s half-hour The Comfort Dogs of Uganda, about a unique mutual-rehabilitation program pairing former child soldiers with stray canines; world premiere Last Christian in Bethlehem, a portrait of Palestinian Christians in the West Bank from local filmmakers Robert Levering, Stephen Talbot and Stephanie Mechura; and Through the Body, Andrew Reissiger’s look at beloved longtime Bay Area dancer/percussionist Keith Terry’s founding of the International Body Music Festival.
Closing night on Mon/26 (at the same location) will include In the Company of Wolves: An American Journey, narrated by Jeff Bridges—the actor-activist who’s the recipient this year of the festival’s Visionary Award. Directors Susan Kucera and Jim Swift examine our nation’s history through its often contentious relations toward wildlife, particularly one four-legged species. It’s preceded by another feature, Banker White and Anna Fitch’s Yo (Love Is A Rebellious Bird), which chronicles a singular friendship between the filmmakers and much older, late Pacific Grove collage artist Yolanda Shea. The former commemorate the latter in an imaginative mix of miniatures, animation, puppetry and more.
In between, UNAFF offers a wide range of nonfiction cinema, both shorts and full-length, spanning some 45 countries. Among the world premieres are David Cowan and Shawn Hardin’s US Heathens, about a rarely-noted demographic: Closeted nonbelievers stuck in devoutly religious families and/or communities. Other subjects on tap run a gamut from the self-explanatory likes of Climate Refugees: A Global Challenge and The Legacy of the Dictator: 50 Years of Democracy in Spain to agroforestry (Eat More Trees), physically impaired athletes (Adapted), Malian cultural expression through fashion (Bamako Chic), imperialist aggression (Putin and the 5 Seas War), and ICE (Shouldering Sanctuary)
Then there’s quantum physics (Federico Faggin: The Man Who Saw the Future), immigrant healthworkers (A Long Way To Go), creeping fascism (First They Came For My College, Seized), male contraception (Give It A Shot), worker rights (Who Moves America), youth environmental activism (Just Look Up), homelessness (Thy Neighbor), and much more. UNAFF2026 will take place Oct. 15-25 at various venues in the South Bay and San Francisco, for full info go here.
So many fast-emerging crises, so little time. You can’t be blamed for wanting a break, or a venting outlet… and thankfully it’s almost Halloween, so there are plentiful escapist routes covered in seasonally-excusable blood ’n’ guts. While we can hardly name all the horror and horror-adjacent film events available at present, locally and otherwise, we can name a select few.
Worth name-dropping if nothing else are new streaming releases like Deathgasm II: Goremaggedon, the belated sequel to a 2015 Australian heavy-metal splatter comedy that was actually pretty funny. Also out this week is the arguably even-more-tasteless Wuthering Heights: House of the Damned, in which Heathcliff turns serial killer to satisfy the bloodlust of Cathy’s ghost. No, I’m not joking. Well, it can’t be much worse than the most recent “respectable” big-screen version from earlier this year, which was also likely had poor Emily Bronte spinning in her grave.
Several special events anticipate the calendar’s most ghoulish holiday (unless you consider that to be Easter). None are more special than the long-awaited, fully restored re-release of Ken Russell’s notorious 1971 The Devils, based on an Aldous Huxley novel that was in turn based on actual historical incidents. Depicting a politicized demonic-possession scare in 17th-century France, it was full of lurid and blasphemous imagery, and heavily cut for release in many territories. (All the intended original footage has been put back into this new 4K version’s 114 minutes.)
Nonetheless, it was a commercial success, and despite all controversy is now considered by many the flamboyant director’s best, most serious work. It certainly drew memorable turns from stars Vanessa Redgrave (strikingly unbridled as a mad nun) and Oliver Reed (just as atypically restrained as a high-ranking priest). There were extraordinary contributions from composer Peter Maxwell Davies and set designer Derek Jarman, both new to the medium then. We wrote at greater length about The Devils here, when it played the Balboa last year. It opens a limited engagement Fri/16 at theaters throughout the Bay Area, including SF’s Metreon and Alamo New Mission.
Another grotesquely beautiful excavated jewel is Nobuo Nakagawa’s 1960 Jigoku aka The Sinners of Hell. It turned out to be the final production of the studio Shintoho, which specialized in horror and sci-fi cheapies. This more ambitious effort was poorly received at the time. But over the years its reputation grew enough that it eventually acquired cult status, and generated official as well as unofficial remakes.
Its first hour is a moralistic melodrama in which accidental deaths, plotted revenge, attempted penance, organized crime, and more accumulate into a morass of murder. It all lands hapless student hero Shiro (Shigeru Amachi) in Limbo, but not for long—he’s quickly hustled off to a Buddhist vision of Hades. Its widescreen soundstage vistas of eye-popping color, graphic torments, and trick photography are less terrifying than handsomely surreal…but their effect remains vivid. Also recently restored in 4K, Jigoku opens at SF’s New People Cinema Fri/16 (more info here).
For the endurance-inclined, there are at least two horror marathons coming up. At the Roxie, the 3rd annual Graveyard Shift will provide nearly ten hours of alarming entertainment from 9:30 pm till dawn. The fare includes Wes Craven’s original 1977 cannibal classic The Hills Have Eyes, more recent female-driven cult creepouts May and Raw, plus 2013’s WNUF Halloween Special—a faux-found-footage VHS record of a regional TV station’s disastrous 1987 sojourn to an all-too-genuinely “haunted house.” Complete with parodic commercials and PSA’s, it’s like a spoofier spin on the infamous 1992 BBC Ghostwatch, which fooled many viewers with its seemingly real “live reporting” of similar supernatural phenomena. There will also be a surprise fifth feature.
The next day, the Balboa hosts the International Vampire Film Festival, an apparent recurring event elsewhere (at least in Ireland) that to my knowledge is making its local debut. They really mean that “international” part: This approximately twelve-hour fangfest includes entries from Mexico (1957’s El Vampiro), Sweden (the original 2008 Let the Right One In), Iran (2014’s A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night), France (droll recent period piece The Vourdalak, which we reviewed here, England (the 1958 Horror of Dracula, Christopher Lee’s introduction to that role), Italy (Mario Bava’s 1965 psychedelic sci-fi Planet of the Vampires) and Japan (1971’s rather camp Toho Studios entry Lake of Dracula, previously covered her). You will surely be left drained by that lineup.
Outside the realm of horror, two more notable revivals nonetheless hinge on violence—albeit the kind proving that revenge can be very sweet. Little known in the US, though it swept the very first Cesar Awards (against such competition as Cousin, Cousine and The Story of Adele H.), Robert Enrico’s 1975 The Old Gun has Phillippe Noiret as a middle-aged surgeon in 1944 Vichy France. He does the best he can caring for wounded and hiding Resistance forces, despite brutish interference from Nazi occupiers.
But when the latter pointlessly slaughter everyone in the village where he has a country home—including his own wife (Romy Schneider, seen mostly in flashbacks) and preteen daughter—the hitherto pacifist Dr. Dandieu coolly sets about trapping and killing them all. His knowledge of the rambling property’s mazelike qualities allows him to pick off those numerous, formidably armed troops one by one, even as they assume they’re under attack by a whole phalanx of partisans. It’s a cleverly conceived, well-made thriller with a gallows-humor streak that Film Movement releases to its streaming platform on Fri/16.
