SFFILM
The Bay Area's home for the world's finest films and filmmakers.
← Back to Events
South Sudan may have declared its independence but that hasn't stopped multinationals and missionaries from laying claim to its natural resources and influencing its people's religious beliefs. Employing intrepid techniques and striking visuals, d...
France/Austria | 110
Part Lord of the Flies riff and part ticking-time-bomb character study, the debut feature from Kazakh filmmaker Emir Baigazin watches as a high-school gangster and a disturbed misfit kid become entwined in a plot for revenge. Welcome to a world of...
Kazakhstan/Germany/France | 114
Journalist Katie Couric produced and narrated this documentary focusing on America’s obesity epidemic, making complex science and Byzantine politics accessible and engaging as it answers big questions regarding the food industry and shows how its ...
USA | 90
A struggling father copes with the loss of his wife while blind to the emotional toll her death and his frequent absences have taken on his sons—a motocross-riding teenager and his brother, a sensitive pre-adolescent boy. Outstanding performances ...
USA | 93
Every September, over 200 seasonal workers, most of them Cambodian, Lao, Hmong, Mien and Thai, descend upon the tiny town of Chemult, Oregon, to search the woods for the rare Matsutake, a fungus highly prized in Japan. This documentary examines th...
USA | 78
Single and 40, Sandro has zero prospects for finding true love. Fate lends a hand when he runs into a hairdresser, but there’s a catch: Her husband is getting out of prison the next day. For those new to the Georgian New Wave, this low-key, comic ...
Georgia | 95
Isabelle Huppert stars in this daring blend of a police procedural, screwball comedy and social satire, following two internal affairs cops who investigate the murder of an informant in a small town in northern France. Serge Bozon’s (La France SFI...
France/Belgium/Luxembourg | 105
A backwoods-dwelling pariah in 1960s Tennessee stumbles upon a pair of dead lovers and becomes romantically obsessed with the woman’s corpse, spiriting her body away to his squalid abode. James Franco’s latest directorial effort is a seething, sna...
USA | 104
Travel from Kenya to Korea—and a few imaginary destinations in between—in this collection of short films for kids and families. A bear tries to find his hat, a pig tries to make a new friend, and the Oscar-winning animators of Moonbot Studios brin...
77
The 1994 Cannes Jury Prize Winner—now technically enriched and restored to full length—immerses viewers in the bosom-heaving passion and political intrigue of 16th-century France, with Isabel Adjani as the titular monarch caught up in bloody battl...
France/Italy/Germany | 159
In 1988, labor organizer Cesar Chavez began a 36-day water-only fast to protest the use of pesticides that led farm workers and their children to develop cancer at record rates. With unparalleled access, Chavez's former press secretary Lorena Parl...
USA | 100
Starting out from Alice Springs, a young woman decides to walk to the Indian Ocean, 2,000 miles across Australia, with four camels and a dog for company in this adaptation of adventurer Robyn Davidson’s memoir, a journey of self-discovery made vis...
UK/Australia | 110
Antigone returns to her seaside hometown in hopes of starting anew but soon discovers troubling undercurrents of despair and exploitation pervading the town. Subtly referencing both classical Greek tragedy and Westerns, this unflinching look at au...
Greece | 90
A doting mother and her lethargic 15-year-old son pass away the idle hours of the off season at an empty Mexican resort hotel, luxuriating in their laziness until an odd and taciturn girl arrives and attracts the boy’s attention. Though theirs may...
Mexico | 82
Continuing his very particular parsing of language and politics—here, the politics are cinematic— Corneliu Porumboiu tells the story of a film director rehearsing the details of a nude scene with his lead actress. Investigating the repetitive natu...
Romania/France | 89
Justin Simien reinvigorates the campus comedy with his sharply written satire about race and identity. Following a group of students at a fictional Ivy League university, his film tackles taboo topics with finesse and verve, and earned a Special J...
USA | 106
An old man caught in the brutal 1992 conflict over the Abkhazia region of Georgia finds himself nursing two wounded soldiers from opposing sides in his small house. Zaza Urushadze’s intense and compelling antiwar drama provides discerning insight...
Estonia/Georgia | 84
A pop star wannabe sees a path to fame when he is asked to join an art rock band. But his outsized ambition is at odds with his own meager talent, the defiantly avant garde group’s lack of commercial prospects and the diffidence of the band’s musi...
Ireland/UK | 96
South Korean director Hong Sang-soo’s 15th film finds him once again exploring the world of self-interested filmmakers with strained love lives. In a series of amusingly droll and acerbic drinking sessions, attractive film student Sunhi nervously...
South Korea | 88
A chilling examination of religious fanaticism starring Joe Swanberg, Amy Seimetz and AJ Bowen, Ti West’s new film tells the story of a camera crew reporting on a utopian commune operating in a remote location outside the United States.
USA | 95
High in the snow-capped mountains of Bhutan, nine-year-old Peyangki would rather play outdoors than study in the monastery. A trip to the capital, and exposure to television and the modern world, opens his eyes to an enticing, complicated future i...
France/Finland | 80
Roy Scheider stands in for writer/director Bob Fosse in Fosse's dazzling, self-lacerating and clearly autobiographical musical, a Best Picture nominee about a celebrated choreographer/director who fantasizes about his mortality as he juggles his m...
USA | 123
In this low-key, loosely plotted coming-of-age tale, a Turkish teenage girl wrestles with mood swings, unfocused restlessness, familial responsibilities, shifting friendships and romantic complications during a year of quiet tumult.
Turkey/Germany/Netherlands/Greece | 97
A student leader fighting against the bosses of striking packinghouse workers in 2002 Uruguay experiences a coming-of-age crisis when he inherits his father’s ranch. The radical becomes the boss and finds himself responsible for paying months of b...
Uruguay/Argentina | 121
Investigating musician/writer/poet Nick Cave’s history, psyche and creative path, 20,000 Days on Earth is a must-see for fans or anyone interested in an artist’s journey. This highly stylized biopic presents a choreographed “day-in-the-life,” depi...
UK | 95
Originally inspired by the death of Chinese cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay, Julien’s immersive film installation, commissioned by MoMA, interweaves contemporary Chinese culture with its ancient myths. Shown here as a composite, the piece features...
UK | 50
The experimental shorts in this program radically trace the outer edges of filmmaking form and style, asking for adventurous viewers. From the hilarious fantasy-sports based Numbers & Friends by relative newcomer Alexander Carson to the ineffably ...
68
In riveting fashion, the British costume drama is married to issues of social justice in this adaptation of a true story. Dido Elizabeth Belle, a mixed-race young woman, takes her place in 18th-century society, in the shadow of her great uncle, a ...
UK | 105
From the wintry landscapes of Siberia to a desert posting in Israel for two female soldiers, these narrative and documentary shorts showcase a wide-ranging exploration of life and locale. Here in the US, two delightful shorts depict the lives of ...
83
Neto Villalobos’s debut feature All About the Feathers details the unconventional relationship between an impoverished security guard and the newly acquired fighting cock that he struggles to care for. Anchored by the stellar performances of a mo...
Costa Rica | 85
John Wojtowicz, whose ill-fated 1972 robbery of a Brooklyn bank to pay for his transgender bride's sex-change operation inspired Sidney Lumet's 1975 classic Dog Day Afternoon, recalls both the heist and his years as a gay rights activist in an eng...
Argentinian director Juan Taratuto and actor Diego Peretti make a sharp detour from their previous comedies in this finely observed character study set against the desolate beauty of Patagonia. Peretti is remarkable as an embittered, rough-hewn oi...
Argentina | 93
Unemployed folks across America want new oil jobs in North Dakota, but housing is at a premium. Enter Pastor Jay Reinke. Despite protests from his own congregation, he opens up his church to “overnighters"—people in search of a second shot at the...
In Peter Chan's clever crowd-pleaser, three college buddies become caught up in the thrall of China's budding entrepreneurial spirit. Abandoning dreams of stateside success in favor of establishing an empire at home, they yearn to beat America at ...
Hong Kong/China | 110
Stand up comedians Hasan Minhaj and Nato Green present live comedy before the premiere of Stand Up Planet, a documentary that grew out of host Minhaj’s recognition of several facts: “The world is full of struggle. Comedy comes from adversity. This...
USA | 75
The Trip's (SFIFF 2011) Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon continue their culinary adventures with a restaurant tour of Italy. One-upping each other with literary quotations and movie-star impressions, they squabble through some of the world's most gorge...
UK/Italy | 115
In The Seventh Walk, celebrated Indian filmmaker Amit Dutta fuses painterly technique and cinematic vision to form an engrossing meditation on the artistic legacy of Northern India's lush Kangra Valley. Dutta masterfully illuminates the region's ...
India | 70
Writer-director Mohammad Rasoulof has rooted his remarkable career in a wide-ranging critique of censorship and authoritarian rule in his native Iran. Here, the filmmaker extends his uncompromising and diverse body of work with a taut, finely wove...
Iran | 127
Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg) is a white-collar drone stuck in a Kafkaesque world of perpetual humiliation. Enter James Simon (also Eisenberg): a Type-A doppelgänger who offers to woo Simon’s dream girl (Mia Wasikowska) for a price. As writer/dire...
UK | 93
Four couples gather for a dinner party on a night that coincides with a comet passing overhead. Repercussions straight out of The Twilight Zone ensue as relationships begin to shift amid the chaos. Coherence soon takes a turn for the delightfully ...
USA | 89
Muslim, Christian, Roma and atheist Communists live together peacefully in Satovcha, a Bulgarian village. They have differing theologies and politics, but are united by a love of food and the eternal mystery of being men and women. Beautifully sho...
Bulgaria/Finland | 69
The extraordinary Emmanuelle Devos and Mathieu Amalric give fascinating, just-off-center performances as a longtime couple who’ve fallen awkwardly out of rhythm and possibly out of love. A hike in the forest leads to a fork in the road in this qui...
France | 102
Part courtroom drama, part Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous satire and part coal-black comedy, with a masterful, Oscar-winning turn by Jeremy Irons, Reversal of Fortune is one of the 1990s’ key cinematic triumphs.
USA | 111
Recent college graduate Tamako does little more than sleep, eat and indifferently work in her father’s store. “Japan is hopeless,” she insists, but she seems pretty hopeless herself. When her dad makes a tentative stab at dating, it turns the numb...
Japan | 78
After being flushed out of his subterranean forest hovel by a hatchet-wielding priest, the scruffy Borgman knocks on the door of a well-heeled couple and requests the use of their bath. He soon worms his way into their home, hatching a bizarre plo...
Netherlands | 113
After a stroke that leaves the left side of her body immobile, a film director named Maud strikes up a fraught relationship with a swindler who takes advantage of her fragile state. SFIFF favorite Catherine Breillat has teamed up for the very firs...
France/Belgium/Germany | 104
A near tragedy reunites long-estranged twins after a decade apart, a visit that reopens old wounds and tweaks current insecurities, but also rekindles their former closeness and delight in one another. As siblings Milo and Maggie, SNL alums Bill H...
To escape Paris for a few months, 33-year-old musician Maxime returns to his hometown of Tonnerre in the middle of winter, where he reconnects with his quirky father and has a fling with a charming young journalist. These initially amicable relati...
France | 106
On the eve of an ambitious remodeling and reinstallation at Vienna’s famed Kunsthistorisches Museum, this perceptive and slyly humorous documentary peers into the inner workings as the big day approaches. The Great Museum unsurprisingly makes for ...
Austria | 95
A 10-year-old boy's desire to straighten his kinky hair causes outsized conflict with his unemployed, harassed single mother in Mariana Rondón's Caracas-set drama. Unexpected issues related to Venezuela’s volatile economic situation and the young ...
Venezuela/Peru | 93
With a nod to politically tinged whistleblower dramas such as Silkwood and The Parallax View, Erik Skjoldbjaerg’s new thriller starring Scandinavian superstar Aksel Hennie depicts the competitive maelstrom surrounding the race to construct an unde...
Norway/Germany/Sweden/France/Finland | 106
Filmed in the civil war-ravaged region between South and North Sudan, Beats of the Antonov paints an inspiring portrait of the Blue Nile and Nuba Mountain refugee communities and their reliance on music-making not only as a healing force in the fa...
Sudan/South Africa | 68
What makes a masterpiece? This documentary examines the curious life of one of the most prolific art forgers in the United States, who—under the guise of philanthropy—deceived museums across the country with his ingenuously crafted counterfeits fo...
Two- and four-legged creatures display remarkable similarities in Benedikt Erlingsson's gorgeously photographed series of connected tales, set in rural Icelandic horse country. Though the film contains a running string of tragedies, its tone never...
Iceland/Germany | 81
In this erotically charged nail-biter, director Robin Campillo takes the audience on an unexpected ride when Daniel, a dapper, 50-something Parisian businessman, coyly cruises the Gare du Nord and awkwardly propositions an eastern European immigra...
France | 128
Patricia Clarkson gives a spirited performance as an aging matriarch who wants her family and friends to gather one last time for a fond farewell to the magnificent Lake Tahoe manor she intends to sell. But comically, her plans quickly crumble in...
USA | 94
From the first entrancing images of trees being cut down in a fog-filled forest to the later blues of sky and ocean fusing to erase the horizon, the always static frames of this documentary offer a meditative and prismatic view of Spain's much sto...
Spain | 81
Bob Weir, “the other one,” steps into the spotlight and out of Grateful Dead band mate Jerry Garcia’s shadow in this expansive documentary in which Weir’s story unfolds through performance footage of him, with and without the Dead; home movies; in...
Against a backdrop of politics and paranoia comes this humorous and suspenseful story of a blocked Korean screenwriter holing up in a remote cabin to finish his latest script. As the young scribe attempts to work, he is beset by a variety of distr...
South Korea | 99
Surly Tokyo loner Kumiko (Rinko Kikuchi) has a mission: Recovering loot buried somewhere in the snowbound countryside outside Fargo, North Dakota. No matter that this treasure may exist only in the Coen brothers' classic movie—it’s real to her. A...
USA | 105
Recently dumped Donna (the charismatic, hilarious Jenny Slate) is a raunchy stand-up comedian flailing through life, bolstered by her equally comical friends and family. Normally witty and open, she struggles with how to tell clean-cut Max that sh...
USA | 85
Kanbar Award: Stephen Gaghan. Everything is connected in writer/director Stephen Gaghan’s politically-charged story of power and corruption. A missile’s disappearance, a Saudi oil contract and the death of an economist’s son all intersect unpredic...
USA | 128
Eight-year-old Yerkin is an immensely resourceful third grader who proudly takes care of himself. He lives in Bulak, a small village on the steppes of Kazakhstan, where his keen observations are sometimes humorous and always honest. Director Seric...
Kazakhstan | 97
Millions of folks love Burt’s Bees products, but what about the man behind them? With the full cooperation of his lovable but cantankerous subject, director Jody Shapiro gives us the whole fascinating story, replete with legal wrangling, corporate...
Canada | 88
Filmmaker Gia Coppola expertly adapts James Franco’s book Palo Alto, about teenagers shifting from childhood innocence to adult responsibility. This richly atmospheric ensemble drama features a terrific cast, including Emma Roberts, Jack Kilmer an...
USA | 98
Miriam Karlkvist took a well-deserved Shooting Star award at Berlin for her portrayal of an androgynous teenage girl negotiating life in a mafia-controlled town whose code of silence is destroying her family. A first feature from Fabio Mollo, film...
Italy/France | 90
Police Inspector Liu (Andy Lau) assembles a crack team to bring down a racketeer from the Chinese mainland in this Hong Kong blockbuster. In the process, he is forced to question old loyalties and his own principles. Featuring top-notch action seq...
Hong Kong/China | 119
A handsome but stupid heir and a delectable con artist enjoy a shipboard romance until he drops her when he learns she’s a grifter, setting the stage for comic confrontation when she reappears in his hometown in another guise. The phenomenal Prest...
Imaginary friends and the Blue Angels are only a couple of the entities to be encountered in this collection of documentary and narrative shorts. Under Bill Morrison’s masterly treatment, Oliver Sacks’s encephalitic patients have their story told ...
86
Delving into issues of identity and aging, this nuanced and touching relationship drama portrays the personal crises faced by an aging gay cop in France and a younger Israeli man who is found on the beach, mute and without any identification.
France/Israel | 87
It’s 1985 and in the seaside resort town of Ocean City, Maryland, table tennis looms large for one young teen in this coming-of-age comedy that pays affectionate homage to all things ‘80s as a shy, hip-hop obsessed 13-year-old boy makes new friend...
USA | 92
Inspired by news reports of the ongoing perils faced by albinos in Tanzania, Noaz Deshe’s first feature film, White Shadow, depicts a fractured and uneasy world, where superstition and rule of law collide. An albino youth, Alias, must learn to nav...
Italy/Germany/Tanzania | 115
A reluctant smuggler and his eager neophyte brother drag a massive load of narcotics up the coast of Colombia, posing as fishermen. Paramilitary, guerrillas and hardscrabble desperation suffuse every inch of the jungle and waters that surround the...
Colombia/USA | 82
(In)famous for pitching a no-hitter on LSD in 1970, Pittsburgh Pirate Dock Ellis was the Muhammad Ali of the ballpark: proudly black, loudly opinionated and ready to rumble. When his addictions left him broke and unemployable, he battled back to ...
What's it like to be a 21st-century young adult—with access to gadgets, the Internet and other high-tech conveniences—within China's surveillance state? First-time writer-director Vivian Qu's taut, slow-building noir cleverly uses a simple boy-mee...
China | 94
The patient cameras of Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab (Sweetgrass, Leviathan) return in Manakamana, Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez's intimate record of an isolated Nepalese pilgrimage site and the cable car journey that brings adherents, trave...
USA/Nepal | 120
