Mar 22, 2016
Festival
San Francisco, CA — The San Francisco Film Society announces that Jason Lew’s The Free World (USA 2015), Andrew Neel’s Goat (USA 2016) and Todd Solondz’s Wiener-Dog (USA 2015) have been added to the schedule for the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 21–May 5).
A recently released felon becomes embroiled with an abused woman in Jason Lew’s The Free World, a hard-hitting dramatic thriller set in Louisiana. After serving his time, the taciturn Mo Lundy (Boyd Holbrook) just wants to keep a low profile—put in his hours at the local animal shelter and head home to his small apartment. But when a woman named Doris (Mad Men‘s Elisabeth Moss, showing off a different side of her talent) shows up at Mo’s workplace with a bloodied dog and her bruiser cop boyfriend, Mo’s hopes for a quiet life come unraveled. A short time after the incident with the dog, Doris returns to the shelter—and this time she’s the bloody one. Without speaking about what has happened, Mo brings her home, and the two begin a careful dance of wounded souls trying to reach a place of trust and understanding. With two protagonists not given much to talking, The Free World conveys volumes with silence and body language, and both Moss and Holbrook compel attention with their haunted and haunting performances. Octavia Spencer is moving and wry as the owner/manager of the shelter who gives the ex-con employment and a sympathetic shoulder. Though matters eventually get complicated for Mo and Doris in the film’s nail-biting climax, watching their attempts to build a new life for themselves in a world that may not be as free as people like to think makes for a moving and memorable experience. The Free World screens Saturday April 30, 2:45 pm, at Victoria Theatre. Director Jason Lew is expected to attend. IFC Films will release The Free World in theaters in July.
In Andrew Neel’s Goat, if you’re going to pledge a fraternity, Phi Sigma Mu is your first choice—alpha Greeks at a Cincinnati-based college throw the wildest parties and get the best girls. For freshman Brad (Ben Schnetzer), who’s just suffered a traumatic assault at the hands of some townies, the idea of having a band of brothers watching his back is comforting; since his literal brother Brett (pop star Nick Jonas) is a Sigma bigwig, he’s practically a shoo-in. To gain entry to this Valhalla of debauchery, however, would-be members must go through a brutal hazing ritual involving toxic amounts of alcohol consumption, dangerous physical endurance tests and the sort of humiliation designed to destroy fragile psyches. And as Brad and his fellow “goats” suffer through life-threatening tests to see whether they’re “man” enough to join, the question is not whether he’ll crack but when. A damning indictment on today’s free-for-all fraternity system and society’s winner-take-all notions of masculinity, writer-director Andrew Neel’s adaptation of Brad Land’s memoir is a harrowing trip through a beer-soaked, broken-spirited hell. From its opening shot of shirtless dudes engaging in a primitive display of aggressiveness, Goat goes for the gut and never lets up. Featuring bravura performances from Schnetzer and Jonas, this cri de coeur on collegiate bad behavior will have viewers thinking twice about the morality of these “pillars” in our institutes of higher learning. Goat screens Tuesday May 3, 9:30 pm, at Alamo Drafthouse New Mission. The Film Arcade will open the film theatrically in the fall.
To devoted fans of proudly unconventional filmmaker Todd Solondz, it will hardly come as a surprise that Wiener-Dog, his latest darkly comic exploration of modern man’s failings and flailings, dispenses with any cheap sentimentality. True to his unique, discomfiting vision, Solondz once again shocks and awes in this drama that strings together vignettes anchored around the misadventures of an adorable dachshund. With this, his eighth feature, Solondz’s jaundiced view extends not just to humans, but canines, too. In these unpredictable tales, jarring behavior and events tangle up a gallery of characters-from a young cancer-survivor (Keaton Nigel Cooke) coping with overbearing, self-involved parents (Julie Delpy and Tracy Letts) to an unhinged screenwriter (Danny DeVito), who is finally going to get noticed for all the wrong reasons, to a crabby grandmother (Ellen Burstyn) full of regrets for her life. Greta Gerwig appears as a grownup version of Welcome to the Dollhouse‘s Dawn Wiener, calling forth memories of Solondz’s notorious breakthrough while underlining that his twisted humor and dim view of the human condition remain intact. Wiener-Dog screens Monday May 2, 8:30 pm, at Victoria Theatre. Amazon and IFC Films will release the film in June.
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For photos and press materials visit sffs.org/press.
59th San Francisco International Film Festival
The 59th San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 21-May 5 at the Castro Theatre, the Alamo Drafthouse New Mission, the Roxie Theater and the Victoria Theatre in San Francisco and BAMPFA in Berkeley. Held each spring for 15 days, SFIFF is an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation in one of the country’s most beautiful cities, featuring nearly 200 films and live events, 14 juried awards with nearly $40,000 in cash prizes and upwards of 100 participating filmmaker guests.