Wrap Notes: Bay Area Artists & International Filmmakers Shine at the 2024 SFFILM Festival

May 22, 2024

With a full slate of in-person programming and events, the 2024 SFFILM Festival featured essential stories from both local and international filmmakers, who hailed from 40 countries.

Photo by Pamela Gentile

The 67th San Francisco International Film Festival brought audiences into theaters throughout San Francisco and Berkeley and showcased works from 40 countries. The Roxie Theater hosted SFFILM Festival Encore Days in early May, and the reviews are in The 2024 SFFILM Festival was a resounding success.

In its 67th iteration, the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM Festival) ran from April 24–28, and welcomed moviegoers into theaters across the Bay Area, from the Premier Theater at One Letterman in the Presidio to San Francisco’s bustling Chestnut Steet and the Marina Theatre to the East Bay’s Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA).

“The 2024 SFFILM Festival was a true celebration of Bay Area filmmaking and moviegoers,” said Anne Lai, Executive Director of SFFILM. “We saw theaters packed with fantastic audiences enjoying wonderful films from around the world and from a thriving pipeline of independent filmmakers we have supported being able to come back and share their work in hometown premieres.”

From Sean Wang’s Dìdi (弟弟) to a Tribute to Joan Chen, the 2024 SFFILM Festival Provided Exemplary Programming

The Festival opened with a celebratory hometown premiere of Sean Wang’s Dìdi (弟弟) across two sold-out theaters. With the Oscar-nominated director, producers, and numerous local cast members in attendance, Opening Night reaffirmed SFFILM’s commitment to the Bay Area’s robust filmmaking community. Audiences were generous and excited throughout the Festival. Director Greg Kwedar’s much-anticipated Sing Sing, which stars Academy Award nominee Colman Domingo and local Bay Area artist Sean San José, received a warm welcome from a sold-out crowd on the Festival’s second night. Other notable moments included at-capacity screenings of Slava Leontyev and Brendan Bellomo’s Porcelain War, Vicki Abeles’ Counted Out, and Shiori Ito’s Black Box Diaries.

Photo by Tommy Lau

Shorts Filmmakers

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Industry Days

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SFFILM Executive Director Anne Lai, Vicki Abeles, Danny Glover, SFFILM Director of Programming Jessie Fairbanks

Photo by Pamela Gentile

Johan Grimonprez, Fumi Okiji

Photo by Pamela Gentile

Josh Peters, Sean Wang, Valerie Bush

The Festival also honored local pioneer and champion of film exhibition Gary Meyer with the Mel Novikoff Award, and paid tribute to multi-hyphenates Chiwetel Ejiofor (Rob Peace) and Joan Chen, a local legend whose directorial debut, Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl, screened on 35mm for Festival attendees after an intimate onstage conversation with producer and President of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Janet Yang. Two sold-out screenings complete with standing ovations of Josh Margolin’s Thelma, which stars the steely-yet-hysterical June Squibb, closed the 2024 SFFILM Festival.

Award Winners at the 2024 SFFILM Festival Included Sugarcane, Great Absence, The Teacher & Seeking Mavis Beacon

Other special honors included: SFFILM’s Persistence of Vision Award, which went to Belgian filmmaker and multimedia artist Johan Grimonprez (Soundtrack for a Coup d’Etat), and the Sloan Science in Cinema Award, which went to Tania Hermida’s On the Invention of Species (La Invención de las especies). Golden Gate Award winners included: Julian Brave Noisecat and Emily Kassie’s Sugarcane (Documentary Award), Farah Nabulsi’s The Teacher (Audience Award: Narrative Feature), Kei Chika-ura’s Great Absence (Global Visions Award), Jazmin Renée Jones’ Seeking Mavis Beacon (Bay Area Documentary Award), and Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó’s Agent of Happiness (Audience Award: Documentary Feature).

The remaining Golden Gate Awards went to Estaban Pedraza’s Bogotá Story (Narrative Short Award), Ruth Hunduma’s The Medallion (Documentary Short Award), María Luisa Santos’s a film is a goodbye that never ends (Bay Area Short Award), Carla Melo Gampert’s La Perra (Animated Short Award), Travis Lee Ratcliff’s Dynasty and Destiny (Family Film Award), and Yezy Suh’s Sil-tteu-gi (Youth Works Award).

Photo by Pamela Gentile

Janet Yang, Joan Chen

Photo by Tommy Lau

Industry Days

Photo by Pamela Gentile

Anne Thompson, Gary Meyer

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Greg Kwedar

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Chiwetel Ejiofor, SFFILM Director of Programming Jessie Fairbanks

SFFILM, which puts on the Americas’ longest-running film festival, further reaffirmed its ongoing commitment to fostering in-person community with the SFFILM Festival Encore Days program, which was held at the Roxie Theater from May 2–4. “This was our most successful Festival in years,” Lai said, “and I am already looking forward to planning for the 68th edition next year.”

About the Author

Kate Bove is a freelance writer, whose entertainment writing appears on GameRant, CBR, Ask.com, and other publications. Their short-form fiction has been featured in Portland Review, Exposition Literary, and Lambda Literary’s Emerge magazine, among others.

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