SFMOMA Phyllis Wattis Theater

Academy Award-nominee Adriana Barraza (Babel, 2006) gives a masterfully controlled performance as Doña Flor, a solitary bureaucrat whose lifelong service in a government office has left her markedly unsympathetic towards her clients. Shot with an ...

Mexico/USA/France | 98

“You don’t get lost because you can’t see, you get lost because you don’t know where you are.” Weaving breathtaking 16mm footage of land and sky of the Sonoran Desert and eerie off-camera interviews, filmmakers Joshua Bonnetta and J.P. Sniadecki (...

USA | 94

Tender and funny, Miwa Nishikawa’s new film, adapting her popular novel, tackles grief through a comedic lens. When the wife of a popular writer dies unexpectedly, he bonds with another man who lost his beloved spouse in the same accident. By spen...

Japan | 124

With the emotional force and power of a Bruce Springsteen song, Jeff Unay’s cinema vérité portrait of Joe Carman packs an emotional wallop. A family man who has promised not to return to competitive mixed martial arts fighting, the dangerous sport...

USA | 82

Jed is a work-from-home photo editor who has never been on social media until he meets a young woman who approaches him with an experiment: allow her to brand him and make him into someone that everyone wants to know. In Sherwin Shilati’s timely d...

USA | 91

An astonishingly confident directorial debut from San Francisco-based actress Joan Chen (The Last...

99

When a sheltered teen named Sebastian meets an aspiring punk rocker and falls for the boy’s older sister, the stage is set for a cheerful and energetic comedy that tackles matters of friendship, young love, and musical dreams with equal aplomb. El...

USA | 85

Thomas Riedelsheimer’s landmark Rivers and Tides (Festival 2002) inventively documented artist Andy Goldsworthy as he created his wondrously ephemeral site-specific sculptures, spun from nature. Fifteen years later, Goldsworthy is still appealingl...

UK | 92

Although they’re the result of a scientific experiment gone awry, the infants that fail to age in Bob Byington’s provocative new comedy seem to fit seamlessly into a modern world of adults in perpetual emotional adolescence. Shot in crisp black an...

USA | 75

Muhi, a cherubic Palestinian toddler with a life-threatening immune disorder, was transported to an Israeli hospital as a baby for emergency treatment. He and his devoted grandfather have lived there ever since, stuck in a bizarre no man’s land, w...

Israel, Germany | 87

An engaging portrait of the turbulent life of one of history’s most celebrated scientists, Marie Noëlle’s stellar drama depicts the challenges and condescending societal attitudes faced by a woman in a male-dominated field. Noëlle gained access to...

Germany/France/Poland | 95

A moving homage to the bygone era of celluloid, The Cinema Travellers captures the splendor of the moving image through India’s traveling movie caravans. Shot over five years, this intimate documentary takes the viewer on a cinematic journey joini...

India | 96

A sinister, moody exploration of sexual identity, Eliza Hittman’s follow-up to her feature debut It Felt Like Love (2013) sensuously balances two different but connected worlds in a young man’s life. Strikingly handsome Frankie (sensational newcom...

USA | 95

A moving homage to the bygone era of celluloid, The Cinema Travellers captures the splendor of the moving image through India’s traveling movie caravans. Shot over five years, this intimate documentary takes the viewer on a cinematic journey joini...

India | 96

Eleanor Coppola is an American filmmaker, artist, writer, and Emmy award-winner for her film Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991). After nearly 30 years in the business, she has turned her skills to narrative filmmaking with her late...

USA | 92

It’s such a given that it is almost elemental: motion pictures and musical accompaniment complete each other. This comprehensive and relentlessly fascinating documentary traces the history of film scores, from the flame-thrower guitars of Mad Max:...

USA | 93

Sam Elliott brings the full force of his silvery, sexy charm to this bittersweet portrait of an aging cowboy star. With his career mostly in the past, worrisome health issues, and fraught relationships, Lee Hayden is only too aware of the the gulf...

USA | 96

Without sanctifying or vilifying its protagonist, Wong Chun’s first feature movingly tells the story of one man afflicted with bipolar disorder. Once a successful stockbroker, Tung (Shawn Yue) is released from a sanatorium and moves into a cramped...

Hong Kong | 101

When Gordon Gund went blind in 1970 at age 30 due to retinitis pigmentosa, he resolved to find a cure for the disease and created the Foundation Fighting Blindness. After decades of scientific research, a major breakthrough emerged, and this short...

USA | 20

When a sheltered teen named Sebastian meets an aspiring punk rocker and falls for the boy’s older sister, the stage is set for a cheerful and energetic comedy that tackles matters of friendship, young love, and musical dreams with equal aplomb. El...

USA | 85

With the emotional force and power of a Bruce Springsteen song, Jeff Unay’s cinema vérité portrait of Joe Carman packs an emotional wallop. A family man who has promised not to return to competitive mixed martial arts fighting, the dangerous sport...

USA | 82

Born in Berkeley, James Ivory is beloved by cinephiles the world over for the films he directed under the Merchant Ivory Productions banner. His association with Ismail Merchant lasted 44 years and through more than 25 films, earning a place in th...

UK | 140

Burning Man has nothing on Tultepec’s charging toritos and exploding castillos. Mexico’s weeklong National Pyrotechnic Festival is sheer unbridled madness. Scars that tourists take away from fireworks-exploding bulls and towering infernos are earn...

USA | 67

Italian artist Yuri Ancarani melds his luminous cinematic vision with the ancient sport of Arab falconry in The Challenge, an evocative and visually dazzling portrait of a celebrated hunting competition set in the coastal deserts of Qatar. Modern ...

France/Italy | 70

A moving homage to the bygone era of celluloid, The Cinema Travellers captures the splendor of the moving image through India’s traveling movie caravans. Shot over five years, this intimate documentary takes the viewer on a cinematic journey joini...

India | 96

A Spanish man’s quest to defy barriers and borders in search of the American West by planning a journey on the Trail of Tears with his donkey by his side is its own quixotic trail of laughter and tears. The understanding between man and animal has...

Spain/Germany/UK | 86

The purveyor of some of the most hallucinatory experiments in modern cinema, Guy Maddin turns his eye for the delectably idiosyncratic to the collection of Canyon Cinema. In conjunction with Canyon Cinema 50, a year-long celebration of the organiz...

62

Vertigo is a fear of losing our balance. But if we’re so wary, why do we long to fall into the consuming intrigue of films like Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo? If we’re anxious about falling, why do we treasure the intimidating steepness of our city? ...

163

When a strapping young ornithologist becomes stranded in the wilderness, his increasingly bizarre ordeals are by turns comic, sexy, surreal, mystic, and mystifying. This metaphysical (but also very physical) adventure by Portugal’s most idiosyncra...

Portugal/France/Brazil | 118

A movie about big themes set in a small space, Cristi Puiu’s (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu) latest masterpiece takes place primarily in a three-bedroom flat where various and numerous relations wait (and wait) for the local priest to deliver last ri...

Romania | 173

Stronger is the inspiring true story of Jeff Bauman, an ordinary man who captured the hearts of his city and the world to become a symbol of hope following the infamous 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

USA | 119 min.

After suffering a life-threatening head injury, rodeo competitor Brady Blackburn is told never to ride again.

USA | 104

A major Sotheby's auction is the focal point for this broad exploration of the exploding market in modern art.

USA | 98

Inspired by Kenneth Clark’s landmark 1969 Western art series, Civilization, this new forthcoming powerhouse series co-produced by PBS and BBC is a new, nine-part epic that tells the story of the role art and the creative imagination have played in...

UK | 60

The last months of a San Francisco drought year (2015) brought about Autumn (2016), while The Dreamer (2016) was born out of San Francisco spring.

138

As a visual artist and filmmaker, Lauren Greenfield (The Queen of Versailles, Festival 2012) has obsessively documented the ultra-wealthy and the gulf between their extravagant lives and their fundamental dissatisfaction as human beings for over 2...

USA | 107

Amy Adrion's necessary documentary interviews scores of women in Hollywood, including Miranda July, Ava DuVernay, and Penelope Spheeris, to address the industry's woeful record of promoting, sustaining, and advocating for female filmmakers.

USA | 94

Master director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest film is a tour-de-force examination of guilt and justice.

Japan | 125

After suffering a life-threatening head injury, rodeo competitor Brady Blackburn is told never to ride again.

USA | 104

Power struggles and moral compromises feed an escalating conflict when an uncompromising fish farmer clashes with his neighbor and a powerful company that has its sights set on his land.

Iran | 118

When Dr. Sally Ride lifted off in the Challenger, the first American woman in space was riding on the shoulders of a group of pioneering women whose little-known story finally gets its due in this passionate and rousing documentary.

USA | 100

American photographer James Balog has been tracking human-caused changes to our planet for over 35 years.

USA | 80

Irene, the mother of four boys, is thrown onto an emotional quandary when her eldest son, an expert athlete, is recruited to play for a German handball team.

Brazil/Uruguay | 98

On France's Mediterranean coast, a workshop led by Olivia (Marina Foïs), an author of popular thrillers, gathers six local students of varying backgrounds to communally craft a book suggested by their personal experiences.

France | 114

In Hong's effervescent new work, a trio of Koreans in Cannes for the film festival circle around one another and a camera-toting tourist from Paris, played by Isabelle Huppert.

France/South Korea | 69

From the age of 12, Flynn McGarry has pursued his dream to be a chef, from preparing exclusive at-home dinners to apprenticing with top chefs in Manhattan.

USA | 83

French teens in the early '70s were coming out of a particularly turbulent period of civil unrest when thousands of students and workers took to the Paris streets.

France | 92

Jamario, Jaquon, Jailen, and Teague are teammates on the J.O. Johnson High School wrestling team in Huntsville, Alabama.

USA | 96

Bringing to light a little-known piece of Cuban history, this moving and understated medical drama set in 1989 tells the story of a Russian teacher in Havana drafted to serve as a translator for children brought from Chernobyl for medical treatment.

Canada/Cuba | 108

“Everything’s different now,” says teenager Tom (Thomas McKenzie, a revelation) to her dad Will (Ben Foster) after they are forcibly removed from the Oregon state park where they’ve been living and are pressured to live more conventionally.

USA | 108

Four friends hatch a plan to steal several rare books from Transylvania University, Kentucky, in 2004, but as history will tell you, things didn’t go according to plan.

USA | 116

Pathbreaking and playful, Louise Lecavalier revolutionized the art of dance in the 1980s working with Montreal's Édouard Lock and the La La La Human Steps troupe, followed by a stint with David Bowie, and is now a world-renowned choreographer.

Canada | 103

Lisa (Regina Hall) doesn’t love her job, but she loves her "girls" — the staff that she manages at Double Whammies, a Hooters-like establishment — and would do anything to take care of them.

USA | 94

Lisa (Regina Hall) doesn’t love her job, but she loves her "girls" — the staff that she manages at Double Whammies, a Hooters-like establishment — and would do anything to take care of them.

USA | 94

In Jacir's charming and poignant new film, a father and son (played by real-life father-and-son Mohammad and Saleh Bakri) deliver wedding invitations over the course of an afternoon while personal and political tensions simmer in the background.

Palestine/France/Germany/Colombia/Norway/Qatar/UAE | 97

Stylish and impassioned, Qasim Basir's third feature expresses the vitality of being true to oneself in the face of a politically challenging new era.

USA | 89

The Nazi blitzkrieg of Warsaw provides the backdrop for the exploits of a band of Polish actors that never stops “performing”—whether to the thunder of applause or bombs.

USA | 150

"When I was 18, I had so many ideas," reflects Sandi Tan in this buoyant personal documentary.

USA | 96

Garry Winogrand may be the foremost chronicler of post-World War II America. His photographs — from the streets of New York to the expanses of Texas and the heart of Hollywood — provide a rich and complex portrait of a nation in transition.

USA | 90

In the Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, teenage siblings Gyembo and Tashi share a passion for soccer, Facebook, and girls. Gyembo enjoys reading classmates’ Facebook posts while Tashi turns heads with her confident, boyish demeanor.

Hungary/Netherlands | 74

Legendary film scholar David Thomson returns to SFFILM Festival with his unique take on film and popular culture.

75

"I already had my troubles for today, so I can't worry about tomorrow," states Daniel, one of the protagonists in award-winning photographer RaMell Ross's inspired and intimate portrait of a place and its people.

USA | 77

In an entertaining and informative Keynote, Netflix’s Vice President of Documentary and Comedy Programming Lisa Nishimura will discuss her thoughts on the current state of non-fiction filmmaking.

TRT 60

Giving Birth in America is a documentary series that examines some of the reasons for the alarming current statistics about maternal mortality rates in the US.

USA | 18

The fourth edition of our annual exploration of the year’s best short documentaries from the New York Times’ award-winning series again shows the strength and versatility of the non-fiction form.

TRT 80

This timely exploration of our increasingly mechanized world is a kaleidoscopic look at the automatically operating machines that are changing our daily lives in ways that run the gamut from intriguing to deadly.

USA | 82

Whether navigating a transition from North Korea to the UK, a release from prison, or a trip to the beach, the people documented in these non-fiction shorts are each in their different way adjusting to the changing world in which they find themsel...

TRT 70

The plight of fishermen enslaved on vessels in Southeast Asian waters is movingly documented in Shannon Service and Jeffrey Waldon's Ghost Fleet.

USA | 88

A portrait of Silicon Valley’s most important failed startup, General Magic details the rise and fall of the groundbreaking company that envisioned the first smartphone, as well as e-commerce and emojis, years before any of them became ubiquitous.

USA | 93

Posing as a photojournalist who supports jihad, director Talal Derki takes extraordinary risks and gains vivid access to the family and life of 45-year-old Abu Osama, one of the founders of Al-Nusra, the Syrian arm of Al-Qaeda.

Germany/Syria/Lebanon | 99

Join the creators of some of 2018’s most remarkable films to explore several key questions facing non-fiction storytellers. Participants include Rashida Jones and Alan Hicks (Quincy), Bing Liu (Minding the Gap), RaMell Ross (Hale County This Morni...

TRT 75

Eight wheels and a roller rink hold special significance in the African American community, as the act of roller skating provides a meaningful, vibrant, and safe way for people to express themselves.

USA | 90

France | Documentary | 99