The Văcărești wetlands, an environmental oasis minutes away from the center of Bucharest, has been home to the Enache family for 18 years. Free of societal constraints, they find a way to subsist off the grid.

Romania | Documentary | 85

Universal Studios in Florida, a Hilton Hotel in Dallas, Museum of World Treasures in Kansas, and private homes in the Hollywood Hills are just some of the places where slabs of the Berlin wall have ended up.

USA | New Visions | 70

"Evil must be contained," says Sister Claire (Imelda Staunton, Vera Drake), but trying to achieve that proves challenging in actress Romola Garai's gory and hypnotic horror film. The wickedness Claire has in mind is a being that lives in the attic...

UK | Fiction | 99

The moral implications of embezzling from a school district are immense, but that doesn't stop Superintendent Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman) or lead accountant Pam Gluckin (Allison Janney) from stealing millions.

USA | Fiction | 108

Tibet's leading director, Pema Tseden (Old Dog, Festival 2012), continues his masterful chronicles of family life on the steppes with this humorous, touching, and ribald film.

China | Fiction | 102

This captivating documentary tells the remarkable story of South African dancer Siphe November, who was discovered as a young boy in the township of Zolani and rose to become one of a handful of Africans to lead a Western ballet company.

Canada | Documentary | 84

Political figures, the body, drugs, and money represent just some of the exquisitely choreographed images in the newest, and perhaps most anxious, cycle from prolific collage animator Lewis Klahr (Sixty Six, Festival 2016).

USA | New Visions | 65

A shattering exposé of systemic corruption, Collective depicts the woeful response to the victims...

Romania | Documentary | 109

Made with great love and imagination, Kirsten Johnson's tribute to her father gives a capacious sense of his life while focusing on his present struggles with memory loss.

USA | Documentary | 89

Join director and animator Brian Scott as he discusses the film he made as part of Disney's Short Circuit program, Elephant in the Room, and the vivid childhood memory that inspired the story.

USA | Short Film | 120

Disneynature continues to inspire passion for conservation with its groundbreaking series of wildlife films. The latest, narrated by Natalie Portman, follows Echo, a young bottlenose dolphin, as he navigates the coral reef his family calls home, l...

USA | Fiction | 77

A last party between lifelong theater geek friends before they scatter to college reveals just how much they don't know about one another in Jonathan Wysocki's warm, funny, and moving coming-of-age dramedy.

USA | Fiction | 91

Join Dan Lund, veteran effects animator with over 25 years of experience at Walt Disney Animation Studios, for a workshop that explores the magical elements of Frozen 2.

120

Join us for an in-depth conversation with Jacolby Satterwhite, a recent Artist in Residence at Headlands Center for the Arts, and a presentation of his two-channel epic Birds in Paradise (Jacolby Satterwhite, USA 2016, 63 min), a hybrid of 3D anim...

70

After fleeing Angola’s civil war, Walter has spent 17 years in NYC, separated from his wife and daughter, so when they are finally reunited, they have a gulf of physical and emotional absence to bridge. With grace and nuance, Farewell Amor e...

USA | Fiction | 103

The division between urbanity and the wilderness is atmospherically explored in acclaimed documentarian Maya Da-Rin’s narrative debut. Middle-aged Justinio works security at the port of Manaus, but longs for the Amazonian environment where h...

Brazil | Fiction | 98

Since Trump took office, the ACLU has filed a record 147 lawsuits; this is the rousing story of four of them. As they prepare to litigate hot-button issues like reproductive choice, immigration policies, and transgender rights, the lead attorneys ...

USA | Documentary | 96

The controversial show Ren & Stimpy (1991-95) was ostensibly for kids but quickly found an appreciative older audience and initiated the wave of adult animation programs that continues today. Though the program is remembered fondly, less is kn...

USA | Documentary | 107

Before the phrase “early adopter” existed, Pierre Cardin was one: The first designer of haute couture to make ready-to-wear for the masses, a pioneer of hiring models of color and in expanding his brand far beyond fashion. This engagin...

France | Documentary | 97

Being bright and bookish is rarely a recipe for high school popularity, and Joanna Morrigan (Beanie Feldstein, Booksmart, Festival 2019) spends as much time with the rock god posters on the wall of her Midlands bedroom as she does with her mates u...

UK | Fiction | 102

The brief moment at the end of the 20th century when it seemed that diplomacy might prevail in the long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, along with the collapse of that hope, are explored through the rueful recollections of US diplomats in Oscar-nomi...

USA | Documentary | 108

Iván is an aspiring chef in Mexico, struggling to make it in the kitchen and provide for his son. When he meets and falls for the effervescent Gerardo, he is denied seeing his child and decides to illegally cross the border to pursue his dream of ...

USA | Fiction | 111

An action film with a moral message, Just 6.5 delves into the nooks and crannies of a Tehran drug bust, following cops and criminals alike. It begins with a thrilling foot chase through Tehran’s back alleys as narcotics detective Samad (Paym...

134

From the Ivory Coast comes this daring 1969 drama that reflects the culture at a postcolonial crossroads. The unnamed male protagonist is an intellectual who finds reality a bit too much to bear. Haunted by visions of a woman who alternately threa...

Ivory Coast (Cote d'Ivoire) | Fiction | 80

On the remote Icelandic coast sits a sheep farm tended to by a husband and wife who have lived off the land for years, but have decided that this will be the last season they spend with their shimmying, braying herd.

Iceland | Documentary | 78

Considered to be the most successful art forger of all time, Dutch painter Han van Meegeren (Guy Pearce) perfected the strokes of Vermeer so convincingly that he sold a fake to a high-ranking Nazi soldier. When the war ends, he’s declared a ...

USA | Fiction | 117

History suggests that bad people in power don’t pay for their misdeeds, but Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante’s new film proposes an alternative. Despite age and infirmity, Don Enrique Monteverde is being tried for sanctioning the m...

96

At a drunken wrap party, film producer Lee Chan-sil finds herself out of a job when the director she’s long collaborated with drops dead of a heart attack. At loose ends, she starts working as an assistant to an actress friend while reevalua...

South Korea | Fiction | 96

Marona is a mixed-breed pup who has a profound impact on every human she encounters. After an accident, she journeys into the past, revisiting all of the humans who shaped her perception of the world. This beautifully expressionistic depiction of ...

France | Fiction | 92

Bodies of water ebb and flow throughout this poetic experimental documentary by filmmaker Sky Hopinka. Honoring connections to nature and the cycles of life, maɬni separately follows two Native Americans from the Pacific Northwest as they share th...

USA | New Visions | 82

SFFILM members and their guests are invited to join us for an insider preview of the 2020 San Francisco International Festival, which runs April 8–21 at venues all over the Bay Area! Our programming team will deliver a multimedia walkthrough of th...

In this intimate and wondrous program, Miwa Matreyek will perform two of her most recent pieces. Infinitely Yours (Miwa Matreyek, USA 2020, 30 min), her latest layered-projection performance, is a gorgeously moving and anguished cry in the face of...

70

Imagine a nondescript house in the middle of a wasted landscape where a man named Will (Winston Duke from Us and Black Panther) holds a series of “job interviews” where the job is existence itself. Posed a series of existential questio...

USA | Fiction | 124

Yonfan’s vibrant and erotic animated film about youthful obsessions utilizes a remarkable new process that turns 3D illustrations into 2D images. Set in 1967 Hong Kong, when students protested British colonial rule, the story offers the reme...

Hong Kong | Fiction | 125

Notions of public image and private persona collide in this funny subversion of the concert documentary. Wanting to capture footage from her Fear the Future tour, Annie Clark (better known as St. Vincent) offers best pal and Portlandia co-creator ...

USA | Fiction | 91

Director Arnaud Desplechin (Kings & Queen, Festival 2005) returns to his beloved hometown of Roubaix, but shifts gears from the family-centered dramas he’s known for to this tense police procedural. Police forces, though, often take on f...

France | Fiction | 119

When Maria (Chiara Mastroianni) breaks up with Richard (Benjamin Biolay), her husband of 20 years, and checks into a hotel across the street, she crosses into a magical realm where she’ll meet her guardian angel, several ex lovers, and the 2...

90

Along a single road running through Algeria, in the expansive Saharan desert, sits a lone café run by the brash, opinionated, yet hospitable Malika. Her establishment caters to all travelers needing respite from the road, offering them tea and a s...

Algeria | Documentary | 100

When two large-scale paintings by Czech artist Barbora Kysilkova are stolen from a gallery in Oslo, she finds herself in the courtroom with one of the convicted thieves, Karl-Bertil Nordland. She asks to paint Nordland, both for compensation and t...

Norway | Documentary | 102

Ottinger’s latest film begins from the perspective of autobiography. It describes her experiences as a young artist living in Paris in the 1960s, when she came into contact with the intellectual and artistic community surrounding Fritz Picard’s an...

Germany | Documentary | 129

Saudi Arabia has one of the least satisfactory records with respect to women’s rights, but Haifaa Al Mansour’s latest film reminds us that great change often happens in incremental steps. Eminently capable physician Dr. Maryam is frust...

Senegal | Fiction | 101

Armando Iannucci (In the Loop, Festival 2009) reimagines Charles Dickens’ epic, autobiographical masterpiece as a curiously contemporary tragicomic adventure. An exuberant Dev Patel (The Man Who Knew Infinity, Festival 2015) sets an amiable tone a...

UK | Fiction | 120

Carey Mulligan is nothing short of sensational as a one-time med student reduced to slinging coffee in Emerald Fennell’s (Killing Eve‘s executive producer) brilliant pitch-black comic thriller. Cassie’s candy-colored nails and ul...

113

British-Nigerian teenager Rocks is a dynamic presence at her high school, doing her classmates’ makeup and initiating food fights in Home Ec class. What her friends don’t know is that she’s contending with an unstable mom who som...

UK | Fiction | 93

Rose is a veterinary student whose complicated feelings around being adopted make her feel as though she hasn’t become the person she was meant to be. Her education takes a back seat when she decides to track down her birth parents and takes...

Ireland | Fiction | 100

Muna is a young woman in Saudi Arabia who is unable to live the life that she desperately wants. Restricted by laws and religious practices that prohibit women from doing anything alone – including leaving home to visit the store – Muna decides th...

Switzerland | Documentary | 88

A surprising intrusion shocks Brooklyn hipsters vacationing at an isolated cabin in the woods in this breezy comedy about “getting away from it all.” Jack (John Reynolds) and Su (Sunita Mani) are a devoted couple, but inept when it com...

USA | Fiction | 94

Catty, territorial high school cliques are at the center of this fresh film by Tayarisha Poe. Selah Summers (standout newcomer Lovie Simone) is a senior at her private school and the head of one of five school-run factions, The Spades. Her reign i...

USA | Fiction | 97

A psychological drama dipped in acid, this darkly funny fictional portrait of writer Shirley Jackson (“The Lottery”) soars on Elisabeth Moss’s fearless eponymous performance. Stricken with writer’s block and under the thumb...

USA | Fiction | 107

Reflecting on his short film The Fall, Jonathan Glazer quotes another master filmmaker, Anthony Minghella, who said that a short film should be like a perfect sentence. And the sentences that these eight directors craft are impeccable indeed. In a...

97

A new patient triggers a psychotherapist’s obsessions in this psychological thriller. An aspiring writer, Sibyl (Virginie Efira) follows actress Margot (Adèle Exarchopoulos) to a remote island movie set under the guise of treatment. But, really, s...

France | Fiction | 100

Holiday tensions rise to a boil for the Argentinean family at the center of Paula Hernández’s masterfully controlled film. At a country house, an extended clan gathers to celebrate the New Year. The focus is on Luisa, who’s facing a tr...

Argentina | Fiction | 107

Wang Xiaoshuai’s (Red Amnesia, Festival 2015) unforgettable family portrait tackles the tragic implications of China’s one-child policy in epic form. It tells the story of two families from the 1970s to the present, revealing their trajector...

China | Fiction | 185

Florida’s The Villages is one of the highest-ranked senior-living communities in the country.  For those who are fortunate enough to reside in this “Disneyland for Seniors,” there are plenty of activities to indulge in, but behin...

USA | Documentary | 83

The world of three stray dogs commingling among the inhabitants of the sprawling city of Istanbul is the subject of Elizabeth Lo’s beguiling documentary feature debut. The viewer is thrust into their world as they wander the busy thoroughfares and...

USA | Documentary | 72

The challenges facing aging gay men are dramatized with great warmth in Ray Yeung’s Hong Kong-set portrait of a new love affair. Hoi and Pak have both acknowledged their sexuality late in life; Pak is still married when he makes a pass at Ho...

Hong Kong | Fiction | 92

In a sterile environment, unnamed experts meticulously replicate an elephant tusk and other objects with the help of 3D printers, molds, and brushes – as if excavating artifacts from the wild – all observed at an extreme closeness. Questioning the...

Argentina | New Visions | 67

As President Duterte’s reign of terror in the Philippines continues seemingly unchecked and underreported, his most powerful and influential foe is Maria Ressa, the fearless journalist who co-founded the online news site Rappler. Ramona S. Diaz’s ...

USA | Documentary | 120

The topic of this documentary is unjust prison sentencing, but its real subjects are time and love. The love Sibil Fox Richardson has for her incarcerated husband Robert and for their six sons. Over two decades of imprisonment, Sibil marks time by...

USA | Documentary | 81

1917’s George MacKay puts his charismatic stamp on the legendary 19th-century Australian outlaw in Justin Kurzel’s thrilling, drenched-in-blood adaptation of Peter Carey’s acclaimed novel. Rebelling against the British that have colonized his home...

Australia | Fiction | 124

The perils of a closeted relationship take on an almost unbearable weight for Nina (the incomparable Barbara Sukowa), who finds her dreams of a shared life in Rome with her beloved Madeleine (Martine Chevallier) shattered when the older woman suff...

France | Fiction | 100

Actor Arley de Jesús Carvallido Lobo is onscreen for almost all of Valley of Souls, and he is unforgettable. He plays José, a fisherman whose two sons are abducted by paramilitaries. With little fuss or ceremony and almost certain knowledge that t...

Colombia | Fiction | 136

High-school graduate Jette has plans to spend most of her gap year in Costa Rica. Though she wants to get out from under her domineering dad, Urs (Dark‘s Sebastian Rudolph), her departure means separation from her beloved boyfriend, Mario. W...

Germany | Fiction | 86

David France’s vital new film uncovers extreme human-rights abuses against LGBTQ people in Chechnya. Profiling a group of Russian activists performing rescues and providing shelter for escaping refugees, the film hones in on two cases–a youn...

USA | Documentary | 107

Issues of inequalities in income and housing are at the heart of this powerful film. When an accident happens on the construction site of an expansive home and the company blames the employee, a crewman named Francisco creates an opportunity for h...

Mexico | Fiction | 82

In this visually entrancing film debut from Sudan, religious superstition places a heavy burden on a young man’s life. Faced with a sheikh’s dire prediction of an early death, new mom Sakina becomes overprotective of her son Muzamil wh...

Sudan | Fiction | 105

It’s been almost 30 years since Frank Zappa’s death, yet his legacy is prodigious. Granted unfettered access to the musician’s archives, Alex Winter (Deep Web, Festival 2015) unearths stellar footage ranging from Zappa’s fi...

USA | Documentary | 129