This stunning film by Leos Carax has earned him comparisons with such virtuoso filmmakers as David Lynch and Martin Scorsese. Awarded France’s Prix Delluc as Best Film of 1986, it more than confirms the promise of Boy Meets Girl (The Festival 1985), made when he was only 24. Like Godard’s Pierrot le Fou, Bad Blood’s […]
Young filmmakers from across the globe showcase their daring creativity and craft in this collection of films that address the complexity of growing up and the innocence of youth. Employing animation, narrative, and documentary, these shorts embrace emotion, curiosity, and risk-taking to experience the fullness of life. Among the films are a vivid hand-drawn animation […]
One of director Anna Fitch’s closest friends, Yo was adventurous, self-assured, and headstrong. Before Yo passed away in 2013, Fitch spent countless hours capturing memories and anecdotes of Yo’s colorful life. That documentation became a broader project through which Fitch processed her grief as she crafted a meticulous miniature recreation of the home where Yo […]
Agnès Varda’s new film, which not only won Venice’s Golden Lion but the awards of the international critics as well, has echoes of her earlier work, Cleo from 5 to 7 and also recalls Alain Tanner’s superb Messidor. Its central character, beautifully played by Sandrine Bonnaire, is a young drop-out who roams a wintry south […]
For photographer Kwame Brathwaite, the camera served as an instrument of love for his people. From capturing the mirth flowing through the streets of 1960s Harlem to following the Jackson 5 on a tour of Africa, Brathwaite chronicled Black America in all its glory. It was Brathwaite along with his brother Elombe Brath who coined […]
Academy Award®–winning director Daniel Roher (Navalny, Festival 2022) makes a striking leap into narrative filmmaking with this stylish, genre-bending thriller. Leo Woodall plays Niki, a meticulous piano tuner whose hypersensitive hearing makes the world painfully loud—but also gives him an uncanny ability to detect the inner workings of locks. His quiet life tuning pianos across […]
An abandoned telephone booth calls out to 10-year-old Risa. After a tragic fire devastates their small town, residents take to calling the dead on an out-of-order telephone high atop a hill. But only Risa can hear the voices from the other side. Hoping to finally contact her mysterious father somewhere in this crowd of impatient […]
Ambitious and emotionally potent, Cyril Aris’s drama explores one couple’s romantic travails with three tumultuous decades of Lebanese history as the backdrop. Since childhood, Nino and Yasmina have had a connection. The former loses his parents to a car accident while the latter feels her world shaken by the separation of hers. Flash forward, and […]
Tangled networks spread through the forest floor, connecting plants, humans, and fungi in an inseparable web of coexistence. In the forests of Mexico, mycologists Eliseete and Julieta are working to document and preserve their communities’ long-held symbiosis with the mushrooms that grow around them, a project grown more urgent in the face of continued environmental […]
For over a decade, SFFILM mainstay Sam Green (Utopia in Four Movements, Festival 2010; 32 Sounds, Festival 2022) tenaciously documents the world’s oldest person, as determined by the Guinness Book of World Records. Traveling the globe, Green interviews each new record holder as the title passes. What begins as a simple premise evolves into a […]
Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason faces an unthinkable task: composing the eulogy for Okjökull, the first glacier declared dead due to climate change. In Sara Dosa’s (Fire of Love, Festival 2022) luminous documentary, Magnason confronts the disappearance of his country’s ice while preserving the stories of his grandparents, intertwining personal history with vanishing landscapes. Drawing […]
In the Polish seaside town of Łeba, a kingdom rests upon plates of smoked cod, mackerel, halibut, and salmon. The picturesque beaches are one tourist draw; the town’s smokehouse is another, overseen by Leba’s undisputed queen, Meicia. This delightful documentary follows her as she spends her summer days managing her business, serving her customers, and […]
