HELLO and welcome to The Stranger’s 2025 SIFF Guide! We have returned to our tradition of “attempting to watch every single SIFF film,” and are proud/exhausted to say that we made it through every single screener that was made available to us, so that you, dear reader, could be a little more informed about what rules, what sucks, what is beautiful, and what is incomprehensibly boring.  

It’s our labor of love, though, to be able to do this. Seattle International Film Festival has brought independent cinema to Seattle for over half a century, and with funding and movie theaters becoming more scarce (please, I beg of you, someone with money, turn the old Broadway Rite Aid back into a theater—the sign is still there and everything!), independent film is more important than ever to celebrate. 

Below, you’ll find a handy key. UNSCREENED means we weren’t able to obtain a screener by the time of printing, even though we asked a lot, and really nicely. Of the 100-plus we did see, you’ll find we RECOMMEND 32 of them, while there are another 18 we insist you DON’T MISS (threat). But you do you—one person’s “gender-bending lo-fi Frankenstein comedy” is another person’s “supernatural thriller starring a dog,” as they say. So dig in! 

Rating Key: ★ Recommended  Don't Miss Unscreened

#  

1-800-ON-HER-OWN

USA, 2024 (78 min), Dir. Dana Flor

Ani DiFranco has lived a fascinating life. She’s self-released more than 20 albums, he’s an ardent activist, using her platform to speak out against homophobia, racism, and other inequalities. She’s worked with orgs that make music education accessible to kids, spoken out against predatory major labels, and collaborated with everyone from Prince to Cyndi Lauper. So it’s unfortunate to hear that Dana Flor’s DiFranco documentary 1-800-ON-HER-OWN is “a pedestrian musician documentary” (New York Times) and “a snooze” (The Hollywood Reporter). (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 19–20; streaming May 26–June 1) MEGAN SELING

40 Acres

Canada, 2024 (113 min), Dir. R.T. Thorne

It’s a classic premise: a pandemic sparks war, famine follows, and resources rule all. By post-apocalyptic standards, the Freeman family farm is thriving until a band of cannibals arrives. The first act is fun, but the cannibals fall flat as soon as we get a good look at them. Instead of standing on their own characterization, they play more like inconsistently styled homages to other horror-movie cannibals. With no background or motivation, it would be easy to miss the allegory to white colonial violence if the movie weren’t called 40 Acres, if the son didn’t sleep under a Fred Hampton poster, if the film didn’t prominently feature a book report on The Proletarian’s Pocketbook, etc. The cannibals feel more like an interruption of the family’s discussions of—rather than part of a story about—race and colonialism. I would have loved to see that movie. (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 16, May 21) BRIGID KENNEDY

A  

April

Georgia, 2024 (134 min), Dir. Dea Kulumbegashvili

After a baby dies during delivery, the father calls the police. The hospital launches an inquest. Nina, the hospital’s leading OBGYN, who delivered the baby, is an expert called in for every complicated birth. But Nina has a secret, which the aggrieved father knows: “I know you give abortions in the villages,” he says. “You’re a murderer.” I assumed a film about abortions in rural Georgia, a country where the procedure is restricted, would be sad. April is scary. It’s a mostly quiet story punctuated by shocking moments, and the menace of masculine control hangs heavy over this film. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 16, SIFF Film Center May 17) VIVIAN McCALL

Auction

France, 2024 (91 min), Dir. Pascal Bonitzer

Pascal Bonitzer’s Auction, is based on a true story, in which an auctioneer discovers an authentic Egon Schiele painting (exciting!), but learns that it went missing in 1939 after being confiscated by the Nazis (oh no). (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 16, Shoreline Community College May 18) MEGAN SELING

B  

  Baby Doe

USA, 2025 (100 min), Dir. Jessica Earnshaw

It’s easy to assume you’d never not know you were pregnant, all the way up until you gave birth. “How would that even happen?” is a question I myself have asked. But, like most assumptions, it’s worth deeper consideration. Gail Ritchey is a mother, grandmother, wife, and devoted church member from a conservative Christian community in rural Ohio who was leading a very ordinary life until police knocked on her door to question her about fetal remains found in 1993, leading to her arrest for murder. Her children and husband (who is the father of her living children, as well as the deceased) are understandably shocked, but stand by her side as they navigate the psychology of pregnancy dissociation and denial, and how aspects like religion, shame, resources, and politics might lead to unimaginable circumstances. Baby Doe is an empathetic look at a very complex topic, something the legal system is rarely equipped to understand or accommodate. It’s heavy stuff, but I do think it’s mind-opening and worth viewing. (AMC Pacific Place May 20, SIFF Cinema Uptown May 21) EMILY NOKES

★ The Balconettes

France, 2024 (104 min), Dir. Noémie Merlant

In Portrait of a Lady on Fire, star Noémie Merlant’s directorial debut, tensions and libidos run high as Marseille is caught in a sweltering heat wave. The titular “Balconettes” are Nicole (Sanda Codreanu), a sexually frustrated novelist; Elise (Merlant), a glamorous actress retreating from the overzealous attentions of her possessive husband; and Ruby (Souhelia Yacoub), a carefree camgirl. When the roommates flirt with the mysterious man on the balcony across from their building, a series of devastating events is set in motion. What starts out as a feminist take on Rear Window (starring Merlant as the consummate Hitchcock blonde) soon shifts into a surrealist revenge fantasy full of bright colors and unapologetic physicality: titties hanging out, farts, orgasms, etc. The effect is something like an episode of Broad City as directed by Pedro Almodóvar. One thing’s for sure: You’ll never look at a rocking chair the same way again. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 18, SIFF Cinema Downtown May 19) JULIANNE BELL

BAR

USA, 2025 (89 min), Dir. Don Hardy

It’s said the BAR (Beverage Alcohol Resource) 5-day program is like the PhD of mixology—difficult to pass, expensive to attend, and, according to the attendees, a life-changing experience packed with education and camaraderie. BAR follows a handful of the program’s attendees on their journey through spirit schooling and mastercraft. Yes, there is a certain overproof rizz that comes with some BAR personalities, but the film’s at its best when waxing about “being in the people business.” During a particularly heartfelt diversity workshop, a speaker put it best: “Everything we do…must be truly grounded in making sure that people are, at the very least, respected, considered, thought about, and then hopefully made to feel happy and comfortable.” Cheers to that. (AMC Pacific Place May 17–18; streaming May 26–June 1) EMILY NOKES

Beef

Spain, 2025 (85 min), Dir. Ingride Santos

Lati is a young Malian woman living with her family in Barcelona. Her father is dead, and her mother wants her to be a good Muslim, but she “only dreams of becoming a famous rapper.” Fuck yes! Sold. (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 16, SIFF Cinema Uptown May 22) MEGAN SELING

★ Beginnings

Denmark, 2025 (96 min), Dir. Jeanette Nordahl

The complexity of love, the intimacy of caretaking, and the fragility of “normal” come together in a quiet, painful dance in this unflinching Danish drama. Ane and Thomas, on the brink of divorce, seem to hate each other the way only people who love each other can, until Ane’s sudden stroke detonates their unhappy-but-familiar equilibrium. It’s a bleak ordeal through the relentless, pitiless humiliation of failing health and forced dependency. It’s also a captivating, compassionate story of survival and suffering that resists cheap emotional shots, carried by some devastatingly amazing acting. Don’t watch this on a first date… but do watch it. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 22–23) FOX ALLISON

★ Between Goodbyes

USA, 2024 (96 min), Dir. Jota Mun

Mieke is a Danish woman, adopted from South Korea as a baby. Having lost both her adoptive parents, she’s getting to know her birth family, who still reside in Korea. The documentary focuses on that complex, fragile relationship, and we, the viewers, are invited into some uncomfortably intimate, vulnerable moments as they wade through decades of love and heartbreak. Mieke’s parents spent every day of her life loving her and wishing to find her, but they struggle to come to terms with core things like her Danishness and her queerness. The language barrier between them stands in for all the barriers built from regret, time, and distance. The family’s story, though, is far from over. They’ll keep working on their relationships long after the cameras stop rolling. (AMC Pacific Place May 24–25; streaming May 26–June 1) FOX ALLISON

Billy

Canada (Québec), 2024 (107 min), Dir. Lawrence Côté-Collins

It’s an intriguing premise: After her fellow filmmaker, Billy Poulin, goes to prison for murder, Lawrence Côté-Collins stitches together clips from hundreds of hours of Poulin’s personal video footage to form a portrait of sorts of his undiagnosed and untreated schizophrenia. As she updates Poulin on her progress through letters and phone calls, Poulin begins to understand the scope of his illness. But Billy falls frustratingly short as Côté-Collins inserts herself into the narrative—and glosses over Poulin’s victims and the impact of his crimes—in a way that’s more opportunistic than sincere.  (SIFF Film Center May 16–17; streaming May 26–June 1) MEGAN SELING

  Bitter Gold

Chile, 2024 (83 min), Dir. Juan Olea

Each day, Pacífico (Francisco Melo) drives his workers from a desolate desert road in Northern Chile to an abandoned mine nearby. He’s searching not only for gold, but a way out for his teenage daughter, Carola (Katalina Sánchez). But after he fires his drunk of an employee, Humberto, everything goes terribly wrong. This tightly plotted, tense neo-Western is about how, as one miner puts it, “when there’s gold, the devil shows.” For clever Carlona, that evil is not only simple greed, but the patriarchal structures that define her dust-covered, hardscrabble world. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 16, May 22) VIVIAN McCALL

★ BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions

USA, 2025 (113 min), Dir. Kahlil Joseph

If you like your Blackness bold, creative, eccentric, complex, profound, mind-blowing, thought-provoking (hell, if you just like Blackness), Kahlil Joseph’s “cinematic installation” BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions is your flick. A mixtape of images, histories, and imagined futures, it refuses easy description like it refuses the white gaze. From Du Bois to Raekwon, Million Man March to Ghanaian streets, encyclopedias to encrypted futures—this is Blackness remixed and re-centered. Joseph invites us into a world where history flashes like strobe lights (epileptics beware), and meaning pulses through image, sound, and silence. This isn’t a movie. It’s an experience. (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 18–19) MARCUS HARRISON GREEN

★ Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story

Ireland, 2024 (100 min), Dir. Sinéad O’Shea

Sinéad O’Shea’s new documentary chronicles the life of Irish novelist Edna O’Brien and her ascent from a whimsical child in rural Ireland to a trailblazing writer unafraid to challenge the Roman Catholic attitudes and shame toward sex. Consisting of archival footage and contemporary interviews with O’Brien (just before her passing last year), the film doesn’t just document an interesting subject, but does so with great care and humanity, capturing her fearless spirit and rebellious attitude. Immediately after watching the film, I frantically searched for used copies of The Country Girls trilogy on eBay, so I’d call the movie a success. Some of my favorite Edna-isms in the film include: “Women don’t just need the vote, they need to be armed,” and “I knew I was doing something right by how angry my husband was.” (AMC Pacific Place May 16, SIFF Cinema Uptown May 20) AUDREY VANN

  Blue Sun Palace

USA, 2024 (116 min), Dir. Constance Tsang

Tsang immediately proves herself a master of tight-space framing in her feature-length debut, ostensibly about a Queens massage parlor but really about so much more. Every bedroom, kitchen, lobby, stairwell, divey restaurant, rooftop, and mini-mall in Blue Sun Palace is immaculately staged. Fluorescent lights become angelic. Brief stutters of the hand after a bad phone call land like daggers. And intimacy, disgust, and grief fly off the screen in sequences that convey mountains of wordless emotion. Tsang’s trust in her cast pays off handsomely, as she lets conversations play out with zero cuts and one camera tucked into a tight room’s quarters. The results—the laughs, the bashfulness, and the stone-eyed stares—feel uniquely and powerfully American, as a Mandarin-fluent cast grapples with identity, homesickness, community, loss, isolation, violence, and shame in ways I haven’t seen in a SIFF film in some time. Bravo. CW: Sexual assault. (Shoreline Community College May 19, AMC Pacific Place May 24) SAM MACHKOVECH

Boong

India, 2024 (93 min), Dir. Lakshmipriya Devi

Coming-of-age film Boong has all of the hallmarks of a first-time director overreaching. Plot lines either resolve abruptly or dangle. Characters don’t get enough room in either dialogue or action to become fully realized. And tone shifts dramatically, jumping from cheekiness to melodrama to heartbreak, often enough to distract viewers from fully connecting to its plot. But Boong also exists as a rare document of border clashes, ethnic conflicts, and family bonding inside the Indian state of Maripur—especially since they completed principal filming mere weeks before a civil war broke out that continues to this day. Thus, the film stands out for its unique and compelling perspective of Northeast India in a real-world zone that’s no longer easy to film. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 22, AMC Pacific Place May 25; streaming May 26–June 1) SAM MACHKOVECH

The Botanist

China, 2025 (96 min), Dir. Jing Yi

The premise of The Botanist seems simple: A 13-year-old boy is raised in a small community by his grandmother and falls in sweet, chaste puppy love with a neighbor girl. But, if the reviews are to be believed at least, the thing that makes this film special is the setting: the northern Chinese province of Xinjiang, just across the border from Kazakhstan. The Hollywood Reporter describes it as “an isolated community…where life goes on as if modern technology never existed,” and Screen Daily said it “runs dry on cohesive narrative.” But they all agree it’s very pretty. (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 23, Shoreline Community College May 24) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER

★ By Design

USA, 2025 (90 min), Dir. Amanda Kramer

Camille (Juliette Lewis) becomes enamored of a “stunner” of a chair she can’t afford, to the extent that she wishes she could become it. (“Oh, to be someone’s favorite thing.”) Her wish is granted—her spirit enters the chair, her body left inanimate. The people in her life continue on, monologuing around her limp form (Lewis is great at eyes-open draping), too self-absorbed to notice that she’s not entirely there. Meanwhile, an emotionally distant pianist named Olivier has fallen for the Camille chair; he can’t wait to get away from his vapid art community to spend time with her/it. By Design is surreal, aesthetically interesting (lots of MCM, but the strange lighting and proportions feel more uncanny than twee), and has the deadpan dialogue of a play. Themes include: literal objectification (obvi), tokenism, and maybe something about fetishization and consumerism? Absurdism as emotional truth? When a film is so avant-garde that you can tack almost any deeper interpretation onto it, you have to wonder if there actually is one. Or if you just need to sit with it longer.  (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 20–21; streaming May 26–June 1) EMILY NOKES

  By the Stream

South Korea, 2024 (111 min), Dir. Hong Sang-soo

For last year’s SIFF roundup, I watched Hong Sang-soo’s In Our Day, in which next to nothing happened: A cat ran off, a poet drank an ill-advised beer, and three women murmured over a box of toiletries. This came as no surprise, because disguised within the mundanity of all Hong’s interpersonal films are lo-fi reflections on the cosmic mysteries of identity, vulnerability, and life itself. In By the Stream, the question is this: “What kind of person do you want to be?… How about saying it through improvised poetry?” One of the film’s quiet strengths lies in its nuanced depiction of artists—a weaver who creates in centimeters-per-hour, an actor who runs a bookshop by the sea. It’s a refreshing reprieve from that annoying film trope of artist-as-wacky-abstract-painter. Expect something akin to Aki Kaurismaki and Eric Rohmer’s storytelling here. People talk, people think, and then the film ends. It leaves you thinking, too. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 20–21) LINDSAY COSTELLO

C  

  Cat Town, USA

USA, 2025 (73 min), Dir. Jonathan Napolitano

Terry and Bruce Jenkins are an aging couple who have lived a big, adventurous life together, and in their golden years have converted their property into an elderly cat sanctuary called Cat’s Cradle—a place where older cats who are “out of options” can live out their lives and “be well loved again.” My HEART. Terry likes taking care of the more pragmatic tasks while Bruce creates obstacle courses and fiddles with technology like live-streaming. Birthday parties are thrown, catnip taste tests are conducted, and we get to know some of the retirees. The Jenkinses have a deep reverence for these cats, and the reality of their work is very bittersweet. It’s also very inspiring. We need more folks like these. Animals are the best of us, and people who are kind to animals deserve the world. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 22, May 24; streaming May 26–June 1) EMILY NOKES

★ Chain Reactions

USA, 2024 (101 min), Dir. Alexandre O. Philippe

Swiss-American documentarian Alexandre O. Philippe has a longstanding preoccupation with American cinema history—he’s made films that look deeply at The Exorcist, Alien, and David Lynch’s love affair with The Wizard of Oz. It makes sense, then, that Phillipe would appreciate The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which (hot take incoming) is one of the best American films ever made. Chain Reactions is a straightforward celebration of the film: It launches directly into five interviews, which are interspersed with scream-heavy TCM clips and scenes from related flicks. Stephen King, Karyn Kusama, Takashi Miike, film critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, and Patton Oswalt(?!) meditate on TCM’s avant-garde, experimental spirit. (Oswalt has some surprisingly poetic things to say about the film, including comparing its title to “chewing on flesh.”) If you’re interested in Tobe Hooper’s legacy and TCM’s connections to, say, Days of Heaven, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Bergman, or Tarkovsky, you’ll dig this. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 16, AMC Pacific Place May 17) LINDSAY COSTELLO

The Chef & the Daruma

Canada, 2024 (90 min), Dir. Mads K. Baekkevold

Director Mads K. Baekkevold covers a lot of ground in The Chef & the Daruma. On its surface, it’s about Hidekazu Tojo, one of the most famous sushi chefs in North America (he says he invented the California roll!). But while Tojo tells his story of how he went from cooking out of necessity for his large family in Japan to charging $330 a head for the top-tier Omakase experience at his Vancouver, Canada restaurant, we also learn more about the history of sushi, the region’s long-standing racism against Japanese-Canadians, how a Daruma works, how sake is made, and which contemporary Vancouver chefs, inspired by Tojo, are breaking new barriers in Vancouver’s food scene. I felt like I was watching different vignettes or episodes of a series, more than a well-rounded documentary. Still, it’s a thoughtful and gentle journey, filled with people who appreciate food. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 24–25) MEGAN SELING

Cloud

Japan, 2024 (124 min), Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa

If ever an action-thriller could be described as “quiet,” Kurosawa’s Cloud fits the bill. (No, not Akira Kurosawa. This is Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the one who made Cure, Pulse, and other moody, often-overlooked J-horror gems.) Cloud’s murky nightmare unfolds in the world of digital dropshipping, which lands ruthless seller Ryôsuke in real-life danger when a band of buyers take issue with his get-rich-quick scheme. The slow, calculated action-thriller communicates in soft steps and hushed tones, broken only by the occasional gunshot beneath overcast—cloudy, even—skies. Cloud treads tricky terrain, though. I won’t spoil the story entirely, but it unravels in a way that strains plausibility. It’s clear the real villain isn’t Ryôsuke, but the suffocating grip of late-stage capitalism. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 19, May 25) LINDSAY COSTELLO

★ Coexistence, My Ass!

USA, 2025 (95 min), Dir. Amber Fares

Coexistence, My Ass! is a documentary about the activist and comedian Noam Schuster-Eliassi, a woman raised from birth to believe Israeli Jews and Palestinians could live in peace. This movie tells the truth that occupation and apartheid led to the genocide in Gaza, and it shows Schuster-Eliassi’s sincere political evolution as she comes to realize that the oppressed cannot coexist with their oppressor, that coexistence is only possible between equals. Certainly, she cares. But for all the talk about checkpoints, about fascism and violence, this is an Israeli story. Glimpsed mostly in shots of iPhones and television screens, the horrors in Gaza and the West Bank feel far away. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 24–25) VIVIAN McCALL

Color Book

USA, 2024 (98 min), Dir. David Fortune

Color Book, gorgeously rendered in black and white, tells the struggle of a newly widowed father trying to take his disabled son, Mason, to his baseball game. There is a lot going on here about love, loss, fatherhood, and community, but all I could focus on is how the true villain of this tale is the infrequent, unreliable Atlanta transportation system. As you watch Color Book, take note of how many times the dialogue is simply “Mason!” uttered in every shade of emotion known to man.  (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 24–25; streaming May 26–June 1) NATHALIE GRAHAM

Come Closer

Israel, 2024 (107 min), Dir. Tom Nesher

Grief is messy, and so is Eden, a young woman reeling from the sudden death of her younger brother. A sexy, hard-partying wild child and avatar of bisexual bad-influence stereotypes, she carves a swath of chaos through the lives of everyone around her. Her discovery of and connection with her brother’s secret girlfriend is an interesting exploration of how shared loss can build bonds in the most surprising places, but the narrative is hindered by a sense that Eden’s exaggeratedly unreliable character was written by PTA parents terrified of their children “partying.” (She’s also got shockingly long, sharp fingernails for someone in a lesbian relationship.) There are poignant moments, to be sure, but I struggled to find anything to care deeply about. (SIFF Film Center May 20, May 22; streaming May 26–June 1) FOX ALLISON

Come See Me in the Good Light

USA, 2025 (104 min), Dir. Ryan White 

Winner of Sundance’s Festival Favorite Award, Come See Me in the Good Light is a documentary that follows Colorado’s Poet Laureate Andrea Gibson and their partner Megan Falley after Gibson is diagnosed with ovarian cancer and given two years to live. Variety called it “A luminous portrait of two poets navigating an incurable diagnosis,” and Salon said, “this film delivers hope and goosebumps in equal measure.” Bonus: It’s produced by Brandi Carlile and Tig Notaro. (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 17–18) MEGAN SELING

The Crowd

Iran, 2025 (70 min), Dir. Sahand Kabiri

Taking place in modern day Tehran, The Crowd tells the story of the planning of a going-away party for a beloved friend by his largely queer community. Over the course of the day, we are shown how this friend group is dealing with the recent death of one of their own, as well as how they navigate the suffocating oppressions of a patriarchal society that views homosexuality as punishable by death. As grim as this all might sound, The Crowd is ultimately a film about platonic love and perseverance, and the celebration of love and community. Shot over the course of 12 days in a playful visual style with collage elements mixed in (personal phone videos, photos, social-media screenshots), The Crowd is a sweet tribute to those leaving and those who have left. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 23, May 25) MICHAEL McKINNEY

D  

Dancing Queen in Hollywood

Norway, 2025 (87 min), Dir. Aurora Gossé

This movie was definitely not made for me. Yes, I love hip-hop and hip-hop dancing. But the way I enjoy these forms is not at all represented in any part of this film, which has a bunch of Norwegian kids going to LA to do their hip-hop dance thing. The filming is ugly, and the acting is barely above what we find in Kenan & Kel. In the words of Skepta: “That’s not [for] me.” (Shoreline Community College May 16, SIFF Cinema Uptown May 19) CHARLES MUDEDE

  The Dark Crystal with DJ NicFit

USA, 1982 (93 min), Dirs. Jim Henson and Frank Oz

This screening of Jim Henson and Frank Oz’s beloved puppet-filled fantasy flick is hosted by Cross-Faded Cinema, with DJ NicFit providing a live remixed soundtrack. Sometimes, Cross-Faded screenings include other surprises, too, like balloons or bubbles! There’s no telling what DJ NicFit has in store. (I hope it’s Fizzgig. I really want to hug Fizzgig.) (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 20) MEGAN SELING

Dead Lover

Canada, 2025 (82 min), Dir. Grace Glowicki

SIFF describes Dead Lover as a “bizarre, performance art-coded, gender-bending lo-fi Frankenstein comedy about a lonely gravedigger who will do anything to build the perfect man.” If that intriguing word salad doesn’t pique your interest, consider this: SXSW’s film jury awarded Dead Lover with the NEON Auteur Award, describing it as “a tremendously original film.” (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 23, AMC Pacific Place May 24) MEGAN SELING

Deaf

Spain, 2025 (99 min), Dir. Eva Libertad

This Spanish drama follows a couple, Ángela, who is deaf, and Héctor, who is hearing, as they prepare to have their first child. It won the Panorama Audience Award for Best Feature Film at the Berlin International Film Festival, as well as six awards at the 2025 Málaga Film Festival. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 17–18; streaming May 26–June 1) MEGAN SELING

★ Diamonds

Italy, 2024 (135 min), Dir. Ferzan Özpetek

Whoa boy. Diamonds opens with director Ferzan Özpetek hosting a dinner for his 18 favorite actresses (“you are my diamonds!”), asking them to be in his film, which begins a few moments later. This metacinematic device is odd, but fine. That is, until we unnecessarily revisit the director’s table again midway through? The film inside the documentary tells the story of a women-led costume shop set in Rome in the ’70s. The set design and fashion are gorgeous, and everyone’s face is fun to look at, but the script is so incredibly predictable it veers into camp. Which I can get behind! By the time the Özpetek is inserted again, though, it’s clear he needs to center himself so you don’t forget who should be celebrated for celebrating these women. It’s such a brazen move I couldn’t do anything but laugh. Recommended if you’re like, day-buzzed on daiquiris and want a little spectacle (to laugh at, not with). (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 24–25) EMILY NOKES

Diciannove

Italy, 2024 (109 min), Dir. Giovanni Tortorici

Director Giovanni Tortorici drew inspiration from his own life while writing his feature-length directorial debut, Diciannove (Nineteen). Not all reviews are raves, but it sounds promising if you like candid coming-of-age dramas. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 17, SIFF Cinema Downtown May 21) MEGAN SELING

DJ Ahmet

North Macedonia, 2025 (98 min), Dir. Georgi M. Unkovski

It’s not easy being 15 in Northern Macedonia, especially for Ahmet, whose little brother, Naim, clams up in the wake of their mother’s death and whose dad obsesses over his fixing his brother’s muteness in all the wrong ways. Ahmet must abandon the usual hallmarks of teenagerdom (going to school, going to forest raves in the middle of the night) to instead schlep the family’s tobacco crop to market and tend to the family’s sheep. But, while diligently tending to the sheep, Ahmet, still a teenage boy, can’t help himself—he falls in love. With a girl trapped in an arranged marriage. Uh oh. The children of DJ Ahmet are trapped by the conservative traditions of their society and by the myopia of their own parents. Only through music—the thing Ahmet and Naim’s late mother cherished—and the slivers of technology they have access to, can the kids connect with each other, themselves, and begin to carve out the lives they want to start living. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 24, AMC Pacific Place May 25) NATHALIE GRAHAM

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight

South Africa, 2024 (98 min), Dir. Embeth Davidtz

Film adaptations of successful books can be unpredictable, but Embeth Davidtz’s interpretation of Alexandra Fuller’s critically acclaimed 2001 memoir Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, about Fuller’s childhood in a white Zimbabwean family after the Rhodesian Bush War, appears to be a success. (Shoreline Community College May 17, SIFF Cinema Uptown May 20) MEGAN SELING

Drowned Land

USA, 2025 (86 min), Dir. Colleen Thurston (Choctaw Nation)

It’s easy to think about environmental destruction mostly in big-picture terms. Drowned Land zooms in to tell the story of the Kiamichi River as not just an ecologically important body of water, but an ancestor, a being, a heart. It highlights the throughlines between cultural displacement, oppression of Indigenous people, and exploitation of natural resources. (It’s hard to think about the environment in the abstract when you’re reminded that in 2025, small, discarded communities are plagued by water too contaminated to safely wash dishes in, let alone drink.) The energy industry is a titanic foe, but the Choctaw Nation and other activists are steadfast in fighting back. As Thurston, the filmmaker, says, “This isn’t a redemption story, but it is a story about reclamation.” (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 16, Shoreline Community College May 20; streaming May 26–June 1) FOX ALLISON

  Drowning Dry

Lithuania, 2024 (88 min), Dir. Laurynas Bareiša

As with Moon (see my review, also in this guide), Drowning Dry begins with a mixed martial arts competition. But unlike Moon, the movie’s key character, Lukas, wins. And, after celebrating this win, he and his family (wife, son, sister-in-law, brother-in-law, niece) go to a country house by a lake to relax. Slowly, cracks begin to appear. But these are very human cracks. In fact, the film is really a work of philosophical anthropology that’s expressed with two narrative modes: one in which little happens slowly, and one in which a lot happens slowly. When the latter occurs, we are exposed to the terrifying frailty of the human condition. To intensify the experience of the modes, the film employs only diegetic music and naturalistic lighting and shot positions. The result is, for me, the best movie I have so far seen in SIFF. (SIFF Film Center May 17, Shoreline Community College May 22) CHARLES MUDEDE

E  

Evergreens

USA, 2025 (120 min), Dir. Jared Briley

Spokane-based director Jared Briley didn’t take shortcuts when crafting his directorial debut, Evergreens. When Eve and James set out on a road trip through Washington State, we see “heaps of gorgeous shots of Leavenworth, Seattle, Bainbridge, and the forests and waters in between.” It also features music by Damien Jurado and Lacey Brown. PNW AF. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 19–20; streaming May 26–June 1) MEGAN SELING

Everybody Loves Touda

France, 2024 (101 min), Dir. Nabil Ayouch

Touda (Nisrin Erradi) is a young woman who lives in a remote part of Morocco and dreams of making it big as a traditional dancer and singer. She has a son who is treated like shit at school because of his disability. And her jobs often expose her to sleazy men and sexual violence. One day, she decides to move to Casablanca to make her dreams come true. The movie, though visually gorgeous and filled richly with music and dancing, ultimately feels unreal. I’m not sure if this was the intention of the director, Nabil Ayouch, but Touda’s journey unfolds and even floats from scene to scene like a fairytale. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 22–23) CHARLES MUDEDE

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  Familiar Touch

USA, 2024 (91 min), Dir. Sarah Friedland

It is no wonder Familiar Touch won “Best Debut Film” at Venice Film Festival and has several other awards under its belt already. Sarah Friedland takes us through a poignant character study of Ruth Goldman (Broadway legend Kathleen Chalfant), who has lived a full life, only to have it scrambled by severe dementia in the end. For anyone who has worried about the effects of dementia on our loved ones, or stayed up late wondering where our parents will spend the rest of their lives, this film hits you straight in the chest. Kathleen Chalfant’s performance is a Master Class through the slow-moving, gorgeous cinematography that is Familiar Touch. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 18, Shoreline Community College May 25) RACHEL STEVENS

Flamingos: Life After the Meteorite

Mexico, 2024 (83 min), Dir. Lorenzo Hagerman

Flamingos are strange. With their absurdly spindly legs, weird beaks, and cartoon coloring, they look like a bubblegum sculpture whose artist ran out of gum and had to stretch what they had to the point of absurdity. This documentary was clearly made by people who love flamingos. It’s full of gorgeous footage of the birds flying, wading, nesting, incubating, and mating. (Flamingo sex is hilarious, by the way, especially when set to bizarrely sexy music.) The storytelling format is a bit wobbly, and some scenes drag on too long to let the filmmakers use all the music they paid for, but there are plenty of worse things to sit through than an excess of beautiful nature shots. (Pacific Place May 23, Shoreline Community College May 24; streaming May 26–June 1) FOX ALLISON

Fly Me to the Moon

Hong Kong, 2023 (112 min), Dir. Sasha Chuk

Fly Me To The Moon tells the story of a family from mainland China who have just migrated to Hong Kong to make a better life for themselves. Beginning in the late ’90s, the film spans two decades, focusing on the coming of age of two young daughters as they come face to face with the growing pains of the migrant experience. While trying to escape social ostracization from schoolmates through assimilation, the daughers find that things are not any easier at home as their father falls into a pattern of drug use and petty theft and is in and out of jail over the course of their adolescence. The film is a slow meditation on growing up and how we forgive, forget, and forge new paths in light of broken dreams. (Shoreline Community College May 19, SIFF Cinema Uptown May 21; streaming May 26–June 1) MICHAEL McKINNEY

★ Four Mothers

Ireland, 2024 (89 min), Dir. Darren Thornton

In this Irish remake of the 2008 Italian film Mid-August Lunch, gay author Edward’s (James McArdle) queer coming-of-age novel unexpectedly becomes a viral BookTok hit. Forced to choose between embarking on a book tour in the US or staying home to take care of his ailing mother (Fionnula Flanagan), who has suffered a stroke and can only communicate via iPad text-to-speech, he sabotages himself by avoiding going after what he wants…until his self-serving gay friends unceremoniously dump their mothers at his home so they can abscond to Maspalomas Pride. Edward, Alma, and their three new houseguests form an unlikely found family, resulting in an impromptu road trip to visit a medium. The film doesn’t hit every beat and meanders into predictable territory at times, but it’s got plenty of charm, and Flanagan speaks volumes with her arresting facial expressions without uttering a single word aloud. (Opening Night: Paramount Theater May 15) JULIANNE BELL

Free Leonard Peltier

USA, 2025 (110 min), Dirs. Jesse Short Bull (Oglala Sioux) and David France

In January, directors David France and Jesse Short Bull probably thought they were done with their documentary, Free Leonard Peltier. The Sundance date was set. Then one week before the film’s premiere, President Biden announced he was commuting Peltier’s contentious life sentence. But critics say timing isn’t the only thing that sets this film apart from previous projects—Variety praised it for having a “wider focus” than 1992’s Incident at Oglala, “placing the incidents detailed here in the context of America’s long and shameful history of exploiting, betraying, and even murdering Native people.” (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 17–18; streaming May 16–June 1) MEGAN SELING

★ Freeing Juanita

USA, 2024 (74 min), Dir. Sebastián Lasaosa Rogers

In 2014, as immigration to the US from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador skyrocketed, Mexico committed to detaining migrants as they passed through Mexico, rather than allowing them to cross the US border. That same year, Juanita, an indigenous Guatemalan who speaks Maya, not Spanish, was detained by the Mexican government, and confessed to a crime in a language she didn’t speak. Freeing Juanita tells the story of her aunt and uncle, who journeyed a thousand miles from their home in the Guatemalan mountains to advocate for her release. As a human-scale story, it would be striking at any time, but this year? Their vulnerability and determination strike especially deeply. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 20, SIFF Film Center May 21; streaming May 26–June 1) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER

  Fucktoys

USA, 2025 (107 min), Dir. Annapurna Sriram

I can’t stop thinking about this film. It opens on a floating raft in an alternative pre-millennium universe. A young sex worker (Annapurna Sriram) is on a raft, telling a psychic (Big Freedia) about how she’s losing her teeth. She’s cursed, the psychic says. And for the low, low price of $1,000 and an innocent lamb, she can break it. So she takes off into this fictional world, called Trashtown, where the cops are Tom of Finland doms and the fancy hotel is called Fancy Hotel. The journey to finding the cash to break the curse is campy, bloody, and full of other bodily fluids. The story will break your heart a little, but it’s worth it. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 16, AMC Pacific Place May 17) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER

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  The Glass Web in 3D

USA, 1953 (81 min), Dir. Jack Arnold

See the 1953 film-noir thriller The Glass Web in all its 3D glory, newly restored from the original 35mm camera negatives! Cool! (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 18) MEGAN SELING

The Gloria of your Imagination

USA, 2024 (98 min), Dir. Jennifer Reeves

The Gloria of your Imagination is either a tough or a really easy sell, depending on who you are. The “dual-projection performance” shares footage from recorded therapy sessions with a 30-year-old single mother in 1964. Gloria, perfectly coiffed, chain-smoking, and toting a wicker pocketbook, shares her anxieties about men, sex, and motherhood with three spectacled dudes, who emit varying levels of douchiness: Gestalt founder Fritz Perls (who calls Gloria “phony” in session), humanistic psychology founder Carl Rogers, and rational emotive behavior therapy founder Albert Ellis. The audience learns that Gloria consented to having the sessions filmed, but not to their being publicly exhibited—which they were, widely. Gloria sues for damages. This reveal causes me to question, then, my complicity in watching the sessions now. After all, The Gloria of your Imagination encourages conclusions that most of us have come to before—the ’60s were an exceptionally sexist time, and modern psychotherapy has its flaws. (SIFF Film Center May 19–20; streaming May 26–June 1) LINDSAY COSTELLO

Good Boy

USA, 2025 (73 min), Dir. Ben Leonberg

It sounds like a gimmick—a supernatural thriller starring a dog—but Good Boy has received some impressive accolades since debuting at SXSW earlier this year. Horror movie homebase Dread Central called it “surprisingly poignant,” the Hollywood Reporter praised the film’s emotional power, and Indiewire gave it an A-, calling Indy the dog’s performance “affecting.” (Spoiler: DoestheDogDie.com promises that Indy survives.) (AMC Pacific Place May 24, SIFF Cinema Uptown May 25) MEGAN SELING

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Hanami

Switzerland, 2024 (96 min), Dir. Denise Fernandes

“I think that inside of us, the broken pieces are put together with gold,” says Nana, the central character, in a voiceover in the opening scene. She’s referring to Kintsugi, the Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery with gold powder, highlighting the cracks as a part of its history. But Nana’s speaking from a whole different volcanic island in a whole different ocean: Fogo, Cape Verde. Part coming-of-age story, part surreal fever dream, Hanami follows Nana’s young life, grappling with being left in Cape Verde by her mother, the community that cares for her, and having to decide what “home” actually means to her.  (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 16, May 21; streaming May 26–June 1) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER

Happy Holidays

Palestine, 2024 (123 min), Dir. Scandar Copti

Oscar-nominated Palestinian director Scandar Copti’s new film gives us an enlightening look into the oppressive everyday lives of a middle-class Arab family living in Israel. Told through a series of vignettes focusing on different members of the family, the film explores how the countries’ divisions affect almost all aspects of their daily lives, from navigating relationships and dating, to dealing with cultural conventions and expectations. How does one find personal agency when all of the external forces around you feel so constricting? (SIFF Film Center May 21, AMC Pacific Place May 22) MICHAEL McKINNEY

  Happyend

Japan, 2024 (113 min), Dir. Neo Sora

In Japan’s near future, the authoritarians are in control. They use an impending, once-in-a-century earthquake to justify police crackdowns on immigrants and political dissidents. For Yuta and Kou, two best friends set to soon graduate high school, it’s just daily life. It isn’t until the principal responds to their daring prank and installs a new AI-powered security system called Panopty (get it?) that the country’s crumbling politics become real. Kou sees them one way, Yuta another, threatening their friendship. Happyend is about how people react when the unthinkable happens. Do they decide? Do circumstances of race and class decide for them? Is the answer somewhere in the middle? A film for our political age, Happyend is a must see. (AMC Pacific Place May 22–23) VIVIAN McCALL

★ Heightened Scrutiny

USA, 2025 (85 min), Dir. Sam Feder

Last year, ACLU attorney Chase Strangio became the first trans attorney to argue before the US Supreme Court in the first big trans-rights case of this second shitty Trump era. The question at the center of US v. Skrmetti: Was the state of Tennessee violating the constitutional rights of transgender kids when it banned puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy to treat gender dysphoria, while allowing doctors to offer the exact same treatments to intersex and cis kids for different medical reasons? Heightened Scrutiny makes the high-as-fuck stakes clear through shots of community meetings and serious interviews with serious people sitting in bare rooms, pizzicato strings plucking away seriously in the background. But it’s also a sweet profile of Strangio, who says arguing a case before the court is not his dream, but a nightmare for a nice normal guy with an albatross of responsibility around his neck. It’s not the most intimate profile—it couldn’t be, Strangio is a high-profile, media-trained lawyer—but Feder’s made a political document worth seeing. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 18–19; streaming May 26–June 1) VIVIAN McCALL

Home Sweet Home

Denmark, 2025 (112 min), Dir. Frelle Petersen

Do you want to see the kind of work immigrants in the USA do? Well, watch this movie, which concerns a Danish woman, Sofie (Jette Søndergaard), who, though white, is a home care worker. This film is raw. It doesn’t hide a damn thing. You see it all: caregivers (some of whom are Black) cleaning penises, handingly bodies that are about to fall apart, putting dentures into mouths, and so on. The film is slow (even monotonous) but boy does it tell like it is. It’s hard being an old person in a capitalist (USA, UK, Denmark) society. You are lonely, waiting for death, and completely dependent on caregivers who are often poorly paid immigrants. (AMC Pacific Place May 20–21) CHARLES MUDEDE

How to Build a Library

Kenya, 2025 (100 min), Dir. Maia Lekow and Christopher King

Variety describes How to Build a Library, a documentary by Maia Lekow and Christopher King, as “straightforward, methodical.” It features two Kenyan woman restructuring, over several years (their project began in 2018), a colonial-era library in the heart of their country’s capital, Nairobi. This work of transformation turns out to have numerous difficulties, one of which, not surprisingly, is the stubbornness of the post-colonial government. Anyone who has lived in an English-speaking African country knows the British did a number on the locals. Undoing what Fela Kuti famously called “colonial mentality” is like moving a mountain. (May 16, SIFF Cinema Uptown May 21) CHARLES MUDEDE

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I Am Nevenka

Spain, 2024 (112 min), Dir. Icíar Bollaín

I Am Nevenka is a biographical drama about Nevenka Fernandez, the plaintiff in Spain’s first case in which a politician was convicted of sexual harassment. Variety called the case “a landmark judicial sentence 15 years before the #MeToo movement.” As a big fan of made-for-TV Lifetime movies, I’m especially intrigued by what movies review magazine Little White Lies had to say about it: “It’s a trashy, tabloid-y film, but it’s a fine one, and a story that still needs to be told again, and again, and again.” (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 21, Shoreline Community College May 23) MEGAN SELING

Idyllic

Netherlands, 2025 (99 min), Dir. Aaron Rookus

This dense Dutch film is made with great care and intelligence. At its center is an opera singer, Annika (Eelco Smits), who is facing the nothingness of a death that will soon consume her glamorous life. The heaviness of her situation, which is always in her eyes and her gestures, streams to all the other parts of the film’s sprawling story, which easily could have been a TV series. (AMC Pacific Place May 17–18) CHARLES MUDEDE

★ Into the Wonderwoods

France, 2024 (85 min), Dir. Alexis Ducord and Vincent Paronnaud

You know when you have a dream where there is one big mission, but seemingly hundreds of side-plots with too many characters to count? And then you wake up and you’re like, “That was AWESOME.” Into the Wonderwoods is that fever-dream. This animated film has been translated from French to English, but you know the French are freaky AF, and it shows in this adventure of a 10-year-old boy, Angelo, who gets separated from his family and travels through a forest filled with ogres, robots, magic landscapes, and more. His imagination helps him brave the elements and even join a resistance. Into the Wonderwoods is for children ages 8 and above, and the young at heart. (Though I let my 5-year-old watch it with me and she hasn’t stopped talking about it since.) (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 17, Shoreline Community College May 18) RACHEL STEVENS

Invention

USA, 2024 (72 min), Dir. Courtney Stephens

I love a movie that refuses to have a genre. Invention blends fiction and autobiographical documentary to something warm and a little bit magical. In this “meta fiction,” co-writers Courtney Stephens and Callie Hernandez create a fictional version of the immediate aftermath of Hernandez’s father’s death, but intersplices real found VHS footage of her own father. It’s messy, but so is grief. (AMC Pacific Place May 16, SIFF Cinema Uptown May 17) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER

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Jean Cocteau

USA, 2024 (94 min), Dir. Lisa Immordino Vreeland

Jean Cocteau is a perfect example of a documentary with a captivating subject, but unfortunately, bland filmmaking. While I appreciated that the film let the iconic Renaissance man speak for himself—weaving together interviews, journals, and clips from his films—narrative gaps were filled by walls of text that I found clunky and uninspiring. However, this was also the first biography of Cocteau I’ve seen that gives adequate attention to his identity as a gay man and love affairs with collaborators like Jean Marais, Raymond Radiguet, and Édouard Dermit. The film also touched on his controversial friendship with Nazi sculptor Arno Breker, but lacked a stance, quoting Cocteau’s belief that friendship is more important than politics. As the credits rolled, I wasn’t particularly surprised to see that the film was funded in part by fashion giant Chanel, whose founder, Coco (a known Nazi sympathizer), designed costumes for many of Cocteau’s stage productions. (AMC Pacific Place May 19, SIFF Cinema Uptown May 20; streaming May 26–June 1) AUDREY VANN

John Cranko

Germany, 2024 (135 min), Dir. Joachim Lang

Without a doubt, John Cranko is no Amadeus. Nevertheless, it’s not half bad. The reason for this biopic’s success is found in the actor who plays John Cranko: Sam Riley. Most of us know Riley from another biopic, Control (he plays somber Ian Curtis). In this title role, he is the legendary and complicated South African choreographer who ran Stuttgart Ballet in the 1960s, John Cranko. Though highly entertaining, John Cranko offers nothing new. It has, like most biopics of its kind, scenes of the genius in a mess, the genius struggling with the establishment and lazy dancers, and, of course, the genius smoking like a chimney as he gives inspiring speeches that show why he is a genius. Rock me, Cranko. (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 22–23; streaming May 26–June 1) CHARLES MUDEDE

Joqtau

Kazakhstan, 2024 (71 min), Dir. Aruan Anartay 

After several years abroad, young scientist Darkhan returns home to Kazakhstan with his girlfriend Elena, and they join his enigmatic grandfather on a trip to the plains of their ancestral homeland. In the opening credits, we learn the title refers to a traditional Kazakh mourning song, and that sense of quiet grief lingers throughout this sparse, poetic journey. Joqtau explores family legacy and cultural erosion, and the film style shifts fluidly between the intimacy of a family dinner and the observational feel of a documentary. As they move through the countryside, Elena remains a quiet observer as Darkhan slowly reconnects with his roots. Joqtau is low on plot but high on vibe, and it leaves its somber atmosphere behind after it ends. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 20, SIFF Film Center May 22; streaming May 26–June 1) BREE McKENNA

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★ Ka Whawhai Tonu: Struggle Without End

New Zealand, 2024 (115 min), Dir. Michael Jonathan

Rare is the coming-of-age wartime film that successfully combines wildly disparate tones, like sweetness and brutality, or humor and tension. Ka Whawhai Tonu’s unflinching look at the 19th-century New Zealand Wars is an astonishing example of consistent tone and spirit in a film about colonialist travesties. The film opens on a Māori tribe capturing a half-Māori, half-European teen boy ahead of a siege by European forces and mistreating him. A teen girl in the encampment, herself facing similar adult maltreatment, finds ways to help the boy, thus sealing their friendship—while also stoking tensions among leaders. There are no winners in this conflict as viewed through younger eyes (“adults made me something I’m not, for an adult’s war”), but through this film’s genuine anguish comes a remarkable document of the human spirit at its best—and its worst. Temuera Morrison has a hell of a performance as equal parts diplomat, commander, and elder, while Paku Fernandez’s teenage vulnerability and tenacity put the beautifully shot film over the top. (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 16, Shoreline Community College May 18) SAM MACHKOVECH

  Khartoum

Sudan, 2025 (81 min), Dir. Anas Saeed, Rawia Alhag, Brahim Snoopy, Timeea Mohamed Ahmed, and Phil Cox

In Khartoum, five directors collaborate with five refugees from different backgrounds to reenact their life-changing experiences in the Sudanese Civil War. Sometimes their stories are supported by props and CGI renderings of the places they’re describing; other times, they’re acted out in front of blank green screens with a boom mic dipping into frame. Either way, the subjects take turns acting in each other’s stories, positioned and fed lines as they go, often embodying people who had drastically different experiences than their own. It’s a collective effort with something to say about community, justice, and storytelling. Khartoum is special. (AMC Pacific Place May 19, May 21) BRIGID KENNEDY

The Kingdom

France, 2024 (108 min), Dir. Julien Colonna

Sadly, this is not the 2007 action thriller starring Jamie Foxx! Instead, it sounds much more intense. SIFF’s provided description reads: “When an underground war breaks out between nationalist groups and crime families, a Corsican mobster and his daughter must go on the run, bringing them closer together and drawing her into his world.” Don’t let that scare you away! Julien Colonna’s 2024 Kingdom currently has a 100 percent critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes with 14 reviews from outlets including IndieWire and Variety, while Foxx’s Kingdom is sitting not-so-pretty at 51 percent. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 21, May 23) MEGAN SELING

★ Know Her Name

Canada, 2024 (80 min), Dir. Zainab Muse

Women were powerful in early Hollywood, and what happened will not surprise you. Money (and men) changed everything. In the freewheeling years before California lured the film industry west with tax breaks, it didn’t matter as much who was on set writing the scripts, running the cameras, or even cutting the checks (Alice Guy-Blaché made 1,000 films and ran her Solex studios in New Jersey—a “fine example of what a woman can do if given a square chance in life,” according to the Motion Picture News in 1911.) Then men took the whole thing over and still haven’t let go, more than 100 years later, enough time for us to nearly forget about pioneers like Guy-Blaché. Countless other women won’t even get that chance—75 to 90 percent of American films shot before 1929 are lost to time. Exactly why women were written out of history is a complex question, but it’s clear those opportunities never came back. Know Her Name does what only a good documentary can, unspooling the historical record so slowly and thoughtfully that it’s hard to pinpoint when a rage started smoldering in my gut. By the time the credits rolled, I didn’t just feel angry, I felt cheated out of great films that never were. (Shoreline Community College May 23, SIFF Cinema Uptown May 25; streaming May 26–June 1) VIVIAN McCALL

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  The Librarians

USA, 2025 (88 min), Dir. Kim A. Snyder

Just six minutes into The Librarians, a librarian starts to cry. That’s how bad it is out there for those working in states such as Texas and Florida, where conservatives are calling for the removal of hundreds of books. While book banning is nothing new, it has grown to unprecedented levels in recent years, largely due to the right-wing organization Moms for Liberty. But the librarians aren’t having it. They’re fighting back. They’re defending their duty to ensure their school and public libraries are inclusive, welcoming spaces, and it’s costing them their jobs, their relationships, and, in some cases, their safety. But lest people think this all comes down to ethics and morality, The Librarians does a great job digging a little deeper to show that all the fighting, screaming, and literal book burning ultimately come down to one thing: money. You’ll leave the theater wanting to simultaneously hug a librarian and burn the world to the ground. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 16–17) MEGAN SELING

Little Red Sweet

Hong Kong, 2024 (92 min), Dir. Vincent Chow

A young Chinese woman gives up her dreams of being a flight attendant and returns home to help run the family’s dessert shop after her mother suffers a stroke. Despite her sacrifices, her dad won’t let her in the kitchen to help make their famous, secret recipe red bean soup. Drama! One reviewer called it “undercooked.” One review we translated from Chinese reads: “It seems to be cleaned with bleach. It’s a clean movie, a movie without life.”  (AMC Pacific Place May 21, Shoreline Community College May 25) NATHALIE GRAHAM

LUZ

Hong Kong, 2025 (102 min), Dir. Flora Lau

Amid neon-streaked Chongqing’s nightlife scene, karaoke bar employee Wei (Guo Xiaodong) attempts to contact his estranged daughter Fa (Deng Enxi). Meanwhile, Hong Kong gallerist Ren (Sandrine Pinna) reconnects with her stepmother Sabine (the iconic Isabelle Huppert), who devotes her time to the Parisian art world and was recently diagnosed with a fatal aneurysm. One day, Wei and Ren cross paths in an open-world VR game called Luz, in which players navigate a dreamlike cyberpunk setting on a quest to find a shimmering, ethereal deer. The film has mesmerizing visuals and raises interesting questions about art, interpersonal connection in the digital age, and the blurred lines between artifice and reality, but unfortunately lacks the emotional substance to back it up. Nevertheless, Huppert delivers a standout performance as always, and it’s a joy to watch her vaping and dancing in the face of death. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 20, AMC Pacific Place May 22) JULIANNE BELL

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★ Manas

Brazil, Portugal, 2024 (107 min), Dir. Marianna Brennand

Based on director Marianna Brennand’s decade of research into the sexual abuse of children and teenagers in the Amazon rainforest, Manas is as devastating as it sounds. The drama follows 13-year-old Tielle through a world where abuse is the norm of girlhood. The film moves slowly, lingering over every facial expression and piece of the story, featuring beautifully designed shots amidst the ugliness of its subject matter. At one particularly gutting moment, Tielle’s mother tells her, “there’s no use trying to change some things.” And yet, Tielle attempts to alter the generational script, as does this film, by creating this unflinching portrait of such a difficult topic. (SIFF Film Center May 16, May 18) ROBIN EDWARDS

Meeting with Pol Pot

France, 2024 (113 min), Dir. Rithy Panh

If longtime Cambodian director Rithy Panh is new to you, and you’re horny for accolades, know this: His 1994 film Rice People was the first Cambodian film to be submitted for an Oscar and several of his films have shown at Cannes, including 2003’s S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine, which won Prix François Chalais, and his 2013 documentary The Missing Picture which took home the Un Certain Regard title. So chances are, Meeting with Pol Pot, which is partly based on the book When the War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution by Elizabeth Becker, will not be bad. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 18, May 20) MEGAN SELING

★ Monarch City

USA, 2025 (70 min), Dir. Titus Richard

Monarch City is of great importance to the history of this region’s cinema, because it is Paul Eenhoorn’s last film. For those not familiar with this actor, who came from Australia and wound up in Seattle, he spent the last part of his life starring or appearing in a number of local indie films before dying in his sleep in Tacoma in 2022. His moment, however, arrived in 2014 with the film Land Ho!, which made a splash at Sundance, and concerned two elderly men enjoying all that Iceland has to offer. Monarch City is set in a town outside of Seattle. Eenhoorn plays Sam, a broken man in a broken town (alcoholism, drug addiction, crime, guns, dead dives, beat-up pickup trucks). Sam recites poetry about arriving at other shores. He smokes and drinks and carries a gun. And he ends the film with a meditation on death. Goodnight, Eenhoorn. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 20–21; streaming May 26–June 1) CHARLES MUDEDE

Mongrels

Canada, 2024 (111 min), Dir. Jerome Yoo

If you consider yourself a dog lover, best beware that a bunch of them brutally bite the dust in this visually poetic, though ultimately scattered, directorial debut. Mongrels is told in three parts and centered on a Korean father tasked with killing dogs in the woods, his troubled son, and his imaginative daughter still trying to remain connected to her absent mother. The film follows the family  as they begin to make a new life in small-town Canada. It thrives when it lets us sit with the more ephemeral sense of loss, though it eventually becomes overly literal. As one part fades into the next, hitting plenty of familiar coming-of-age beats, the portrait it tries to paint never quite comes into focus as beautifully as the visuals do. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 16, AMC Pacific Place May 17) CHASE HUTCHINSON

★ Monk in Pieces

USA, 2025 (95 min), Dir. Billy Shebar and David Roberts

The answer to everything is just to keep making art long enough that people finally get it and pronounce you a genius. At least that’s what I learned from this loving and insightful portrayal of avant-garde musician, director, and lifelong performance artist Meredith Monk. The documentary presents Monk’s work and life in a greatest-hits mosaic, featuring interviews with David Byrne, Philip Glass, and Björk. I especially loved seeing the evolution of sexist early reviewers calling her work narcissistic, self-centered (isn’t most art self-centered?), and, my favorite, “it made my cats bite each other,” to critics finally recognizing her impact and singular vision. All the while, she continued making delightfully freaky operas that feel plucked from another dimension in the same NYC warehouse she’s lived in since the ’70s with her pet turtle, Neutron. I dream of a Seattle where artists can make our work well into our 80s, too. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 16–17) ROBIN EDWARDS

★ Moon

Austria, 2024 (92 min), Dir. Kurdwin Ayub

After losing a big fight, a famous and top-rated Austrian martial arts fighter, Sarah (Florentina Holzinger), retires. But what is she to do with the rest of her life? She is still young and has a lot of time on her hands. Out of the blue, a rich Jordanian offers her a lot of money to train his sisters, who, he claims, have taken an interest in martial arts. It’s big in Jordan. Sara accepts the offer, flies to Amman, gets set up in a fancy hotel, and soon after is introduced to the sisters, who live in a gaudy mansion on the outskirts of the city. The first training session, however, goes badly. So does the next one. Eventually, it becomes obvious that something is profoundly wrong with the sisters, their brother, his bodyguards, and the mansion. The film becomes a thriller. What is really going on here? Is Sarah’s life in danger? Moon is great until the last 10 minutes. (SIFF Film Center May 22, AMC Pacific Place May 23) CHARLES MUDEDE

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The Nature of Invisible Things

Brazil, 2025 (90 min), Dir. Rafaela Camelo

There’s something so compelling about the way children make friends: trading secrets, building mythology, finding your own language of play. In The Nature of Invisible Things, that friendship unfolds between two young girls in a hospital—one spending her summer vacation with her mother, a nurse, and the other waiting for her granny to get well. The film passes back and forth between the stark realities of the hospital, and the surreal imaginations of children trying to make sense of the world around them. It has moments of being genuinely unsettling (it is a hospital after all) but most of the film is a frank portrait of two girls, their two moms, and how they all seek out joy. (AMC Pacific Place May 16, SIFF Cinema Uptown May 17; streaming May 26–June 1) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER

  New Jack Fury

USA, 2025 (89 min), Dir. Lanfia Wal

When was the last time you saw a lo-fi, neon action movie with a virtually all-Black cast, knock-off Michael Jackson, and a scene pulled straight out of Street Fighter? If your answer is “never” (like mine was), New Jack Fury is your chance. It starts with someone getting hit with a dirty 18-inch dildo, and it ends with a dance off, swords, and betrayal. Watch this one, if only because you won’t see anything else like this self-aware, chaotic dreamscape for a long time. (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 17, Shoreline Community College May 18; streaming May 26–June 1) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER

The New Year That Never Came

Romania, 2024 (138 min), Dir. Bogdan Mureşanu

On one hand, The New Year That Never Came is an award-winning and critically acclaimed film about six lives intersecting on the streets of Romania on December 20, 1989. Their stories unfold throughout the day while Nicolae Ceaușescu’s communist regime famously falls. But with a movie poster that highlights the ensemble cast, I can’t help but imagine it as some kind of Love, Actually or New Year’s Eve rom-com starring Zac Efron and Katherine Heigl… but with a presidential execution at the end. I’d watch the fuck out of that. (AMC Pacific Place May 18–19) MEGAN SELING

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Odd Fish

Iceland, 2024 (104 min), Dir. Snævar Sölvason

Odd Fish is Iceland’s first film about a trans woman. This is the story: Two old friends who run a cozy little restaurant in a lovely little town that attracts tourists from Norway and other such parts are about to finally get filthy rich because a corporation wants to bring visitors all year round. The restaurant can expand; the town can grow. What more do you want? After the good economic news, one of the restaurant’s owners and cook, Björn, comes out as a woman. This coming out was instigated by her father’s death. The other owner, Hjalti, is smashed by this transition. He is already homophobic. How can he work with a trans woman? Though this part of the film is important, it has no surprises. And what really amazes you are the wide shots that capture the cold and treeless beauty of this island from another planet. (AMC Pacific Place May 21–22) CHARLES MUDEDE

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Paul Anka: His Way

USA, 2024 (99 min), Dir. John Maggio

I am furious that we were denied a screener for Paul Anka: His Way. Paul Anka is fascinating! (Shoreline Community College May 23, SIFF Cinema Uptown May 25) MEGAN SELING

★ Paying For It

Canada, 2024 (85 min), Dir. Sook-Yin Lee

I was pleasantly surprised by Paying for It, Sook-Yin Lee’s adaptation of her ex-boyfriend Chester Brown’s autobiographical graphic novel of the same name. The story is based on the couple’s real-life breakup, in which Lee searches for new emotional connections with other men while Brown altogether ditches the idea of romantic love and visits sex workers whenever he’s feeling horny. Paying for It could’ve easily devolved into a messy and overwrought hot take on the ethics of monogamy and the morality of sex work. Instead, it’s a realistic and thoughtfully paced portrayal of two people maneuvering new territory, both as individuals and as a bonded pair, in order to find what version of love and companionship makes them happiest. What’s right for them may not be right for everyone (or anyone) else, and that’s okay. It’s actually very sweet. Bonus: Director Sook-Yin Lee is scheduled to attend the screenings. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 17–18) MEGAN SELING

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★ Raptures

Sweden, 2025 (108 min), Dir. Jon Blåhed

Shot beautifully in a bucolic Scandinavia, Raptures tells the story of Rakel, a traditional and devout Christian living in a small Swedish village in the 1930s. As her increasingly delusional alcoholic husband, Teodor, breaks away from the church to start preaching his own messages that come directly from God (red! flag!), she must navigate her own conflicting feelings and beliefs as the anxieties of a looming world war simmer in the background. Will a large crystal arc show up to save the believers? Is a Teodor sex party in the sectarian cult house really part of God’s plan? It’s Ingmar Bergman meets Midsommar, and it’s the first feature film ever with a main dialogue in the minority language Meänkieli. It’s also brilliantly acted and totally worth watching. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 23–24) MICHAEL McKINNEY

★ Ready or Not

Ireland, 2025 (83 min), Dir. Claire Frances Byrne

Dublin, 1998: A summer of firsts for Katie (Ruby Conway Dunne) and her friends. First kisses. First drinks. Realizing for the first time that the world, and boys, mean to eat up teenage girls. Conway Dunne and Molly Byrne, who plays her best friend Danni in the film, teeter believably on the edge of adolescence. When nobody is watching, they’re playful kids. At school and parties, they’re kids trying their best at being adults. Even though I didn’t care for all the voiceover (of the “record scratch, isn’t my life soo crazy” variety) or that the script seemed to have left what should have been subtext in big bold letters, I liked this movie because those kids acted like real kids—swearing, crying, and handling everything very poorly. I just had to know if they’d be okay in the end. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 21–22) VIVIAN McCALL

Remaining Native

USA, 2025 (87 min), Paige Bethmann

Teenage cross-country phenom Ku Stevens aspires to leave his small Nevada town for college, but along the way, he wrestles with shadows of his Indigenous family’s American experience. At its best, this documentary offers an unblinking look at physical and cultural violence perpetrated by white Americans, all while humanely framing Native Americans’ continuing efforts to grieve, process, and persevere. The film’s strongest moments—particularly Stevens retracing his great-grandfather’s 50-mile running escape from a brutal boarding school—are hampered by poor pacing and editing decisions. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 17–18; streaming May 26–June 1) SAM MACHKOVECH

Riefenstahl

Germany, 2024 (116 min), Dir. Andres Veiel

For decades, people have debated Leni Riefenstahl’s films. Was her Hitler-sanctioned  documentary, The Triumph of the Will, historic filmmaking or Nazi propaganda? While my inclination is to roll my eyes and say, “Bitch was a Nazi, let her rot,” I’m intrigued by Andres Veiel’s documentary, Riefenstahl, which The Hollywood Reporter says highlights the “‘seductive nature of fascism’ both the 1930 variety and the updated versions of today.” (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 20, SIFF Cinema Uptown May 22) MEGAN SELING

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The Safe House

Switzerland, 2025 (90 min), Dir. Lionel Baier

Revolution! 1960s Paris! A Tenenbaum-esque multigenerational residence! So much to love about this film, right? Mais non, The Safe House falls flat. Taking place during the social uprisings in May 1968, France, the film focuses on the perspectives of a halfway eccentric middle-class family existing mostly domestically while violence ensues out in the streets. The film makes little (if any) real commentary on the politics of the time, and lacks any real emotion via family dynamics. And while I personally believe that a film can survive—if not thrive—on style over substance with the proper imagination, The Safe House is tepid at best in its art direction as well. The “quirky” visual and editing tricks are tired, and the voiceover muddies rather than helps the narrative along. While there are wisps of Tati and Godard in the DNA of this film, you are better off just visiting those directors’ films. Or Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, which is also about the May ’68 uprisings, but good. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 21, Shoreline Community College May 22) MICHAEL McKINNEY

★ Sally

USA, 2025 (103 min), Dir. Cristina Costantini

It wasn’t until seeing Sally that I realized flying into space may be one of the less impressive accomplishments on astronaut Sally Ride’s resume. Because you know what’s harder than getting four degrees at Stanford, pushing through years of grueling physical training, and getting taken seriously as one of fewer than a dozen women at NASA in the 1980s? Bearing the brunt of the world’s misogyny while hiding the fact that you’re gay, even from your closest friends and family for fear of how it could impact your hard-earned career. In Sally, Ride’s long-time partner Tam O’Shaughnessy introduces us to the side of Ride that Ride was too scared to share while she was alive. We get to meet the complex, vulnerable woman behind the confident public figure. It’s as inspiring as you’d expect a documentary about a trailblazer to be, but with a hefty, bittersweet, even heartbreaking, dose of reality. (Shoreline Community College May 21, SIFF Cinema Downtown May 22) MEGAN SELING

Salsa Lives

Colombia, 2025 (101 min), Dir. Juan Carvajal

Did you know salsa, the dance, not the sauce, was born in New York City? Existing rhythms in Cuba, Cuba Son and Afro-Cuban rumba merged with American jazz to create the hip-swiveling dance. Since its Big Apple inception, salsa has spread across the world. But, nowhere is it more popular these days than in Cali, Colombia. Salsa Lives traces that spicy history in what’s supposed to be a vibrant—NOT MILD—experience. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 23, Shoreline Community College May 24; streaming May 26–June 1) NATHALIE GRAHAM

★ Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass

United Kingdom, 2024 (76 min), Dir. Quay Brothers

To the outside world, in his home country, Józef’s father is dead. But inside the walls of this dingy, remote sanatorium, he is alive. Sort of. His death simply hasn’t arrived yet. Time is different here. It lags. It stretches, skitters, and loops. But that’s grief for you, rendered here in beautiful and surreal stop motion. I liked this movie enough to buy the short story collection it was based on—Polish Jewish writer Bruno Schulz’s meditation on his father’s death (published five years before the Gestapo shot the writer dead). But I’m patient. I enjoy wondering what’s going on. If you can’t stand ambiguity, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass may have you checking the sign of your watch. Stephen and Timothy Quay fans will know the film is a sequel of sorts—their most well-known work is 1986’s Street of Crocodiles, another Schulz adaptation. (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 18, May 23) VIVIAN McCALL

  Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers

USA, 1972 (82 min), Dir. Robert J. Kaplan

If you are a fan of any of the following, then Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers is a must-watch for you: the early films of John Waters, vanilla ice-cream cones, ostrich-feather boas, and Buster Keaton-style physical comedy. Robert J. Kaplan (whose only other directorial credit is the pornographic Jaws spoof Gums) directs this long-lost camp masterpiece starring Warhol superstar and transgender icon Holly Woodlawn as she flees her boring Kansas upbringing to make it as an actress in New York City. Along the way, she meets an eccentric cast of characters, including a sailor-mouthed nun, misandrist twin sisters, and a revered lounge singer named Mary Poppins (played by fellow Warhol superstar Tally Brown). I am so pleased to see this film receive a snazzy restoration and a proper theater screening—I predict a Criterion release is on the horizon. (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 24) AUDREY VANN

  Seeds

USA, 2025 (122 min), Dir. Brittany Shyne

Director and cinematographer Shyne spent nine years watching and listening to Black farmers in rural Georgia, and the end result is impossibly beautiful. Like any documentary, you see these families through her eyes, but from the families, you rarely feel the self-consciousness that comes from being watched—which just reveals how much time and patience Shyne put into this project. Shot all in black and white, the film is quiet, allowing for the long, languid pauses of rural life. But it only takes a few scenes to fully pull you in. This film won Sundance’s best documentary for a reason. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 17–18) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER

★ She’s the He

USA, 2025 (81 min), Dir. Siobhan McCarthy

This queer teen comedy starts, like many teen comedies do, with a harebrained deception scheme. Playing on conservative hysteria surrounding all-gender bathrooms, She’s the He finds best friends Ethan (Misha Osherovich) and Alex (Nico Carney) pretending to be trans to enter the girls’ locker room at school, leading Ethan to the realization that she actually is trans. The quick-witted film with a majority trans cast checks off the high school movie tropes, including makeover scenes, a blooper reel, and raunchy jokes, while creating tender moments where Osherovich’s full-hearted performance makes the coming-out story shine. It’s a lot of fun! And the costumes were so cool, I went back to the credits to track down who the designer was (Leah Morrison) and creepily requested her private Instagram. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 19, AMC Pacific Place May 20) ROBIN EDWARDS

★ Shepherds

Canada (Québec), 2025 (113 min), Dir. Sophie Deraspe

In this funny, existential drama, a burned-out Québécois marketing executive sends a fuck-off email to his bosses, gives away his possessions, maxes out his credit cards, and flees to the south of France. Dreaming of a simpler life, he wants to become a shepherd. He clumsily introduces himself to local farmers who immediately clock him as a privileged city boy with no clue what he’s doing. He stumbles from one farm to the next, debating work, God, and the treatment of sheep with stubborn, set-in-their-ways French sheep wranglers until he finally lands his big break herding in the idyllic Alps. While struggling to get a work visa, he meets a hot and charming bureaucrat who, even as she’s denying his paperwork, finds herself won over by his reckless sincerity. Shepherds is messy, earnest, and very, very French. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 23, Shoreline Community College May 25; streaming May 26–June 1) BREE McKENNA

Slanted

USA, 2025 (104 min), Dir. Amy Wang

Imagine if The Substance was about teenagers instead of adult celebrities, and instead of wanting to defy aging, it was about changing race. Slanted, the newest project from Amy Wang, centers on Joan Huang (Shirley Chang) and her pursuit of absolute assimilation: becoming prom queen. To fit in, Huang goes under the knife to change herself from Asian to white. Slanted mixes surrealism, slapstick comedy, and body horror. The people seem to love it—it won the Narrative Jury Award at SXSW— though they do say the middle drags a bit. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 24–25) NATHALIE GRAHAM

Sons

Denmark, 2024 (99 min), Dir. Gustav Möller

Sons is the feel-bad film of the fest that, for all its bleak reflections about violence, punishment, and humanity, ends up saying surprisingly little. This is a shame, as writer-director Gustav Möller’s previous film, The Guilty (SIFF 2018), was a well-crafted work of genuine dread. (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 23, May 25) CHASE HUTCHINSON

  Sorry, Baby

USA, 2025 (101 min), Dir. Eva Victor

After her world is shattered by her advisor sexually assaulting her, grad student Agnes (writer and first-time director Eva Victor) attempts to regain control of her life while living in the same sleepy New England college town and taking a professor job at her school. Victor deftly navigates a minefield of a topic with humor, grace, and quiet but powerful authenticity, resisting clichés about survivors in favor of demonstrating the unexpected healing properties of stray kittens, kind strangers, and a really good sandwich. The heart of the film is Agnes’s unconditional relationship with her ride-or-die lesbian best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie), who supports her throughout her recovery despite moving away and doesn’t hesitate to consider helping Agnes commit arson. Bottom line: An astonishing debut and an irrefutable case for more movies made by women about their experiences. Please see this film. (Closing Night: SIFF Cinema Downtown, May 24) JULIANNE BELL

★ Souleymane’s Story

France, 2024 (92 min), Dir. Boris Lojkine

He has no papers. He comes from Guinea. He is young (mid-20s) and Black. His name is Souleymane, and in two days, he must, during his application for asylum, convince French authorities that he was beaten and imprisoned in Guinea for his political views. The problem? He is not political at all. He came to Paris to work. And the work he does is at the bottom of the city’s gig economy: He delivers food orders on an electric bike. The biker can’t afford to be late or to get an order wrong because that would result in a bad review, and a bad review would result in the app shutting him out of the network and out of much-needed work. To make matters worse, he has to share half of his meager earnings with Emmanuel, whose face is used to open and operate the app (as Souleymane can’t legally work in France). The Paris we see during the dash from one order to the next is far from the one that draws millions of tourists. (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 22, May 24; streaming May 26–June 1) CHARLES MUDEDE

Spermageddon

Norway, 2024 (80 min), Dir. Tommy Wirkola and Rasmus A. Sivertsen

I could call Spermageddon a big stupid cum joke. But that would be selling it short. It’s about ballsack, too. (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 16, SIFF Cinema Uptown May 19) VIVIAN McCALL

★ Starman

USA, 2025 (85 min), Dir. Robert Stone

Space exploration used to mean something, damn it. As of this writing, Katy Perry and co. just completed their bizarre 11-minute space trip bankrolled by the losers that are actively ending the planet we live on, so I got a kick out of hearing from Gentry Lee. Lee is a jet propulsion scientist, robotics engineer, and sci-fi author who has worked at NASA since the early ’70s and LOVES what he does. Lee yell-talks directly at the camera about his work on missions like Viking, marveling at how big of a deal it was to actually make it to Mars, and what it felt like to be in the room “solving problems that no one had ever had before” (we’re talking prodigies doing STEM with a fraction of the assistance of today). Starman isn’t saying anything new, but if you can get on Lee’s level, it is kind of mind-blowing to hear it told from a real one. Come for the gold Voyager record, stay for the footage of Carl Sagan slaying a turtleneck. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 16, Shoreline Community College May 17) EMILY NOKES

  Suburban Fury

USA, 2024 (120 min) , Dir. Robinson Devor

“There comes a point where the only way to make a statement is to pick up a gun,” says Sara Jane Moore, the woman who attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford in San Francisco in 1975. Suburban Fury is directed by Robinson Devor, the same guy who brought us Zoo, with a little help from The Stranger’s own Charles Mudede. Devor gains historic access to Moore, who sheds light in an unpolished, often unreliable interview on how she went from a conservative suburban housewife to an FBI informant on radical political groups to an almost assassin. Suburban Fury tells Moore’s story at the same time it paints a picture of a decade of radical politics, braiding in footage of the Black Panthers, the Gay Liberation movement, the Attica Prison Rebellion, the United Farm Workers movement, and Patty Hearst’s kidnapping. Moore becomes convinced that killing Ford will expose the machinations of a government not for the people and inspire a revolution. While it centers on the 1970s, the political moment it captures doesn’t feel far off in 2025. (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 21, SIFF Cinema Uptown May 23) NATHALIE GRAHAM

Sudden Outbursts of Emotions

Finland, 2024 (97 min), Dir. Paula Korva

Sudden Outbursts of Emotions gets increasingly superficial the longer it carries on. It tells the story of a woman who, when not working at a travel agency, is burdened with soothing the fragile ego of her insecure boyfriend as his acting career seems to have stalled. She begins to question her life and relationship, just as said boyfriend suggests they open their relationship and attend a sex party where she meets someone new who will soon upend all she thought she knew about herself. At least, that’s what it feels like it ought to be, in theory. But the execution is far too narrow, and it’s oddly afraid to lay bare the body or the soul. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 18–19) CHASE HUTCHINSON

★ Summer’s Camera

South Korea, 2025 (82 min), Dir. Divine Sung

A young girl discovers a secret after developing film on her deceased father’s camera. She also realizes that she is a lesbian after taking photographs of her school’s popular soccer star. Either of those plots may sound like they contain drama, but the pacing is peaceful; at all the moments you might expect turmoil, there is instead a surprisingly frictionless story. It’s subtle. Maybe too subtle. But it’s very beautifully shot, tender in its understatement, and culminates in a truly moving final scene. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 21–22; streaming May 26–June 1) EMILY NOKES

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Tales From the Magic Garden

Czech Republic, 2025 (71 min), Dir.. David Súkup, Patrik Pašš, Leon Vidmar, and Jean-Claude Rozec

LA stop-motion, ethereally animated movie about children trying to fill the void they feel after losing their grandmother, their family’s storyteller. Critics ponder who is the audience for this movie because it is definitely a children’s movie, but the subject matter is, well, kinda morbid. They also say it’s slow. However, a reviewer at Loud and Clear said it’s “a gorgeous stop-motion animated tale that’s both an ode to the resilience of children and a reminder that we’re never not going to need to feel safe and looked after.” (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 18, May 25) NATHALIE GRAHAM

The Things You Kill

Canada, 2025 (113 min), Dir. Alireza Khatami

You don’t have to read interviews with writer and director Alireza Khatami to know that he’s a fan of David Lynch: It’s all over his work. It’s in the way he calmly bends reality; the way he turns a nameless Turkish city into a character in the film; and the way he kills his central characters. Most people have described The Things You Kill as a thriller, but I don’t think it has quite enough tension to earn that title. It does have relentless foreshadowing: a pistol tucked in a water tank, mirror images that become reality, the haunting phrase “kill the light” leaking from a nightmare. But the narrative itself is quiet and methodical. The unraveling of one man as he faces his own impotence, an ailing mother, an abusive father, and an impossible moral dilemma. (AMC Pacific Place May 23–24) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER

★ Time Travel Is Dangerous

United Kingdom, 2024 (99 min), Dir. Chris Reading

British besties Megan and Ruth run a vintage shop called Cha Cha Cha. They find a time machine in the alley and off they go, recklessly nicking items from any era they please to stock their shelves (and sometimes just to get takeaway from a closed restaurant). A group of inventors get involved because the machine is damaging the universe, of course. Listen, this film is deeply goofy. Almost every line of dialogue is a joke. I would not call the budget “big.” But the humor is British, which goes a long way—it’s styled as a mockumentary but is doing the tropes well enough that you’re legit enjoying the references? I was skeptical, I was, but then for whatever reason the more ridiculous shit they added, the more I thought, “yeah okay, swing big, why not.” The retro vibe is fun, and the characters are likeable. Just eat an edible, love. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 23–24, streaming May 26–June 1) EMILY NOKES

Tinā

New Zealand, 2024 (103 min), Dir. Miki Magasiva

Tinā (which means “mother” in Samoan) is part Sister Act 2 (with rich kids, though), part Samoan grief opera, and part slow-burn school drama set in post-earthquake Christchurch. After losing her daughter in the 2011 quake, Mareta—a grief-stricken but quietly formidable teacher—takes a job at a posh Catholic school where the students are privileged, the staff are casually racist, and the choir doesn’t yet exist. She builds one from scratch, connecting with emotionally closed-off kids while working through her own loss. There’s class tension, personal tragedy, and who doesn’t love when all roads in the high school movie lead to a high-stakes music competition? The pacing is slow, but the film is carried by Mareta’s low-key intensity and culminates in a genuinely very moving final performance. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 18, SIFF Cinema Downtown May 19) BREE McKENNA

To a Land Unknown

Greece, 2024 (106 min), Dir. Mahdi Fleifel

This one looks dope, in a tense, traumatic way. To a Land Unknown is the story of Chatila, a Palestinian refugee living in Athens, and barely making ends meet. He’s caught in between existences—longing to get out of Athens and escape to journey while hovering on the periphery of Athens’ seedy underbelly. Chatila meets and connects with a variety of other refugees, people whom the audience may start to care for, only to eventually discard them for his own ends. As The Guardian writes, “[Director Mahdi Fleifel] allows us to invest in characters who are to disappear from the story, so we too can experience the emotional wasteland in which Chatila lives.” (AMC Pacific Place May 23, Shoreline Community College May 24) NATHALIE GRAHAM

★ To Kill a Mongolian Horse

Malaysia, 2024 (97 min), Dir. Xiaoxuan Jiang

In the past few years, the contemporary Western has emerged as a genre whose best films are often directed by women, a welcome shift from the traditional Western’s realm of heteronormative and patriarchal values. Chloé Zhao’s The Rider and Jane Campion’s The Power Of The Dog come to mind, and with To Kill A Mongolian Horse, Xiaoxuan Jiang joins this pantheon in her directorial debut. Her film sets itself apart, though, by being set in her native Inner Mongolia (an autonomous region within China) rather than the American West. It’s a fascinating look at a man who is stuck between wanting to honor his culture’s traditions in a countryside that is rapidly changing, and trying to make a living in the modern city, a place he feels he doesn’t really belong. With modernity itself emerging as the metaphysical foe of the cowboy of the 21st century, the contemporary Western has become a much more complex genre than its traditional counterpart. (AMC Pacific Place May 18, May 20; streaming May 26–June 1) MICHAEL McKINNEY

Transfers

Argentina, 2024 (90 min), Dir. Nicolás Gil Lavedra

Transfers does not recount the full history of Argentina’s Dirty War period of 1976–83. Instead, this documentary focuses on one central and terrifying aspect of that military dictatorship’s reign: a biweekly series of “death flights” that dumped thousands of political prisoners to their brutal ends. By largely removing political pretext from the story—only brief mentions of socialism or communism—Transfers hammers home the utter depravity of the Argentinian regime for its actions, and also easily draws out metaphors for, er, certain modern regimes. Argentina’s administration freely destroyed internal records, lied to the media, and targeted mild offenses with brutality... but also enjoyed decades of relative impunity until persistent efforts turned up results. Those efforts are bravely recounted by remaining, living advocates in a crucial documentary that’s admittedly tough to watch, especially when victims’ mothers flood city streets to protest, only to become targets themselves. (SIFF Film Center May 18, May 20; streaming May 26–June 1) SAM MACHKOVECH

  Twinless

USA, 2025 (100 min) , Dir. James Sweeney

Fellas, is it gay to bond with a man over your shared grief after losing your twin while also pondering your place in a disconnected modern world? James Sweeney, the brilliant writer, director, and co-star of Twinless, says probably yes (complimentary), and so much more with this terrific dramedy that we can’t tell you almost anything about so as not to spoil the dark fun. What can be said is that Twinless sees Sweeney and Dylan O’Brien playing two troubled Portland guys who meet at an emotional support group for those who’ve lost an identical sibling. However, nothing is what it seems, and the film becomes the funniest, most chaotic, and ultimately most emotionally impactful movie to ever include key scenes surrounding attending Seattle Kraken games. (SIFF Cinema Uptown May 24–25) CHASE HUTCHINSON

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★ U Are the Universe

Ukraine, 2024 (101 min), Dir. Pavlo Ostrikov

U Are the Universe is an indie drama about a man left adrift in space after the world as we know it is destroyed, who forms a connection with what may be the last other survivor. It’s creatively constructed and carves out its own distinct place in the well-worn genre, with the set design and visual effects proving remarkable, even before you learn that Ukrainian filmmaker Pavlo Ostrikov made it during the ongoing Russian invasion. It’s a love story of sorts with plenty of mirth, but also a mournful meditation, ripping the air from your lungs when it counts. (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 22, May 25) CHASE HUTCHINSON

Unclickable

Greece, 2024 (74 min), Dir. Babis Makridis

Ad fraud, in which fraudsters show fake people fake websites that attract real ads for profit, may account for every third dollar spent on digital advertising, and it’s a hair-on-fire problem that director Babis Makridis lays squarely at the feet of Google and Facebook. The movie is convincing: I buy that ad fraud is a huge problem, likely killing local newspapers, funding misinformation, and plain ripping people off. For those reasons alone, governments should force big tech to deal with it. I also buy Makridis’s moral revulsion. But for a movie about what’s supposedly one of the biggest criminal schemes of our age, it’s boring, and the soundtrack (mostly fingers rocking back and forth between two notes on a Casio keyboard) nearly drove me insane. (SIFF Film Center May 19, SIFF Cinema Uptown May 22; streaming May 26–June 1) VIVIAN McCALL

  Under the Volcano

Poland, 2024 (102 min), Dir. Damian Kocur

In Under the Volcano, a Ukrainian family’s chill beach trip to the Canary Islands turns existential overnight, as Russia launches its full-scale assault on Kyiv. While sunscreened Brits chug sangria nearby, Anastasiia, Roman, Sofiia, and Fedir spiral into panic, anxiety, and guilt while stranded in a paradise turned hellscape. Director Damian Kocur and co-writer Marta Konarzewska dial up the tension beautifully, letting family resentments bubble under the picture-perfect surface while in the shadow of a literal sleeping volcano. Through Gen Z daughter Sofiia’s eyes, we watch the strange numbness of survival unfold in real time. Grim, visually gorgeous, and timely as ever, Under the Volcano will hit you in your gut.  (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 16, Shoreline Community College May 20; streaming May 26–June 1) MICHAEL McKINNEY

Undercover

Spain, 2024 (118 min), Dir. Arantxa Echevarría

Spanish thriller based on a true story! The late 1990s! A young female police officer in San Sebastian infiltrates the Basque terrorist group, ETA! Lead actress Carolina Yuste (known for Sky High—but not the Sky High Disney movie about a high school for superheroes) stuns, according to reviewers. (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 17, May 20) NATHALIE GRAHAM

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Viktor

Denmark, 2024 (89 min), Dir. Olivier Sarbil

Viktor is a samurai-obsessed, deaf, Ukrainian photojournalist who wishes he were a soldier. Director Olivier Sarbil really, really wants you to know all that, but Viktor is at its best when Sarbil gets out of the way. Throughout (especially in the too-perfect ending) Sarbil and Viktor are telling us two separate stories, and I prefer Viktor’s. His sullenness clashes with the swelling music and close-ups of bombing victims’ hands in plastic bags. It’s refreshing—they may air raid you every night, but they’ll never take your freedom to be a little bitchy when you get a haircut you don’t like. If you want a straight documentary about this war, watch 20 Days in Mariupol. If you’re more of a vibes guy and it won’t piss you off to watch a film about a photographer who never once gives us a clear view of his photographs, Viktor’s worth your time. (SIFF Cinema Downtown May 17, May 19; streaming May 26–June 1) BRIGID KENNEDY

The Village Next to Paradise

Somalia, 2024 (133 min), Dir. Mo Harawe

A breakout from the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, The Village Next to Paradise delivers a “sensitive and empathetic” view of Somalia, “an underappreciated and often vilified nation.” The film centers on a family struggling to not only survive, but thrive in a village where drone strikes fill the sky and living until tomorrow never feels like a sure thing. (SIFF Film Center May 19, May 21) NATHALIE GRAHAM

The Wailing

Spain, 2024 (107 min), Dir. Pedro Martín-Calero

Don’t confuse this with the Korean flick by the same name. This Wailing is a precise, stylized, femme-centered horror film. Martín-Calero—previously best known for directing a music video for the Weeknd—breaks the narrative into three distinct stories:, each led by a different young woman that’s stalked by (or stalking) something inescapable. (Shoreline Community College May 17, AMC Pacific Place May 25) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER

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Waves

Czech Republic, 2024 (131 min), Dir. Jiří Mádl

While watching Waves, which is set in Soviet-era Czechoslovakia, I got lost in its marvelous lighting and wardrobe. I could not get enough of both, scene after scene. True, the film’s story is relevant (journalists facing censorship or worse, dictators oppressing freedoms, and the like), but, ultimately, it didn’t say much more than this: “democracy dies in silence” (and, in this film, radio silence). (Shoreline Community College May 21, SIFF Cinema Downtown May 24; streaming May 26–June 1) CHARLES MUDEDE

★ Wolf Land

USA, 2025 (71 min), Dir. Sarah Hoffman

We should get this out of the way: Wolf Land is basically a dating profile for its featured player. Sure, the documentary thoughtfully explores the tension between wildlife advocates and ranchers, but then Daniel Curry’s mop of curly hair rides into the prairie, and, well, GOOSH. Tall, handsome, kind to animals, drops dad jokes, advocates intelligently for animal cohabitation, bridges political divides, and lives with his many pets (including three cutie-pie Dobermanns, who appear in a framed photo in his Eastern Washington cabin labeled “The Lads,” ARE YOU KIDDING ME). In good news, there’s more here, particularly how Curry and a rancher eke out a sweet, surprising friendship. (Shoreline Community College May 17, AMC Pacific Place May 18) SAM MACHKOVECH