HELLO and welcome to The Stranger’s 2025 SIFF Information! We’ve returned to our custom of “trying to observe each single SIFF movie,” and are proud/exhausted to say that we made it by way of each single screener that was made obtainable to us, so that you just, pricey reader, may very well be slightly extra knowledgeable about what guidelines, what sucks, what is gorgeous, and what’s incomprehensibly boring.
It’s our labor of affection, although, to have the ability to do that. Seattle Worldwide Movie Pageant has introduced impartial cinema to Seattle for over half a century, and with funding and film theaters changing into extra scarce (please, I urge of you, somebody with cash, flip the previous Broadway Ceremony Help again right into a theater—the signal remains to be there and every part!), impartial movie is extra essential than ever to have fun.
Under, you’ll discover a useful key. UNSCREENED means we weren’t capable of acquire a screener by the point of printing, although we requested loads, and actually properly. Of the 100-plus we did see, you’ll discover we RECOMMEND 32 of them, whereas there are one other 18 we insist you DON’T MISS (menace). However you do you—one particular person’s “gender-bending lo-fi Frankenstein comedy” is one other particular person’s “supernatural thriller starring a canine,” as they are saying. So dig in!
Ranking Key: ★ Advisable 
Do not Miss 
Unscreened
1-800-ON-HER-OWN
USA, 2024 (78 min), Dir. Dana Flor
Ani DiFranco has lived an interesting life. She’s self-released greater than 20 albums, he’s an ardent activist, utilizing her platform to talk out towards homophobia, racism, and different inequalities. She’s labored with orgs that make music training accessible to youngsters, spoken out towards predatory main labels, and collaborated with everybody from Prince to Cyndi Lauper. So it’s unlucky to listen to that Dana Flor’s DiFranco documentary 1-800-ON-HER-OWN is “a pedestrian musician documentary” (New York Instances) and “a sleep” (The Hollywood Reporter). (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 19–20; streaming Could 26–June 1) MEGAN SELING
40 Acres
Canada, 2024 (113 min), Dir. R.T. Thorne
It’s a traditional premise: a pandemic sparks warfare, famine follows, and sources rule all. By post-apocalyptic requirements, the Freeman household farm is prospering till a band of cannibals arrives. The primary act is enjoyable, however the cannibals fall flat as quickly as we get a superb have a look at them. As an alternative of standing on their very own characterization, they play extra like inconsistently styled homages to different horror-movie cannibals. With no background or motivation, it could be simple to overlook the allegory to white colonial violence if the film weren’t referred to as 40 Acres, if the son didn’t sleep below a Fred Hampton poster, if the movie didn’t prominently function a e book report on The Proletarian’s Pocketbook, and so forth. The cannibals really feel extra like an interruption of the household’s discussions of—fairly than a part of a narrative about—race and colonialism. I’d have beloved to see that film. (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 16, Could 21) BRIGID KENNEDY
April
Georgia, 2024 (134 min), Dir. Dea Kulumbegashvili
After a child dies throughout supply, the daddy calls the police. The hospital launches an inquest. Nina, the hospital’s main OBGYN, who delivered the child, is an skilled referred to as in for each difficult delivery. However Nina has a secret, which the aggrieved father is aware of: “I do know you give abortions within the villages,” he says. “You’re a assassin.” I assumed a movie about abortions in rural Georgia, a rustic the place the process is restricted, could be unhappy. April is frightening. It’s a largely quiet story punctuated by stunning moments, and the menace of masculine management hangs heavy over this movie. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 16, SIFF Movie Middle Could 17) VIVIAN McCALL
Public sale
France, 2024 (91 min), Dir. Pascal Bonitzer
Pascal Bonitzer’s Public sale, relies on a real story, wherein an auctioneer discovers an genuine Egon Schiele portray (thrilling!), however learns that it went lacking in 1939 after being confiscated by the Nazis (oh no). (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 16, Shoreline Group Faculty Could 18) MEGAN SELING
Child Doe
USA, 2025 (100 min), Dir. Jessica Earnshaw
It’s simple to imagine you’d by no means not know you have been pregnant, all the best way up till you gave delivery. “How would that even occur?” is a query I personally have requested. However, like most assumptions, it’s value deeper consideration. Gail Ritchey is a mom, grandmother, spouse, and devoted church member from a conservative Christian neighborhood in rural Ohio who was main a really bizarre life till police knocked on her door to query her about fetal stays present in 1993, resulting in her arrest for homicide. Her kids and husband (who’s the daddy of her dwelling kids, in addition to the deceased) are understandably shocked, however stand by her aspect as they navigate the psychology of being pregnant dissociation and denial, and the way points like faith, disgrace, sources, and politics would possibly result in unimaginable circumstances. Child Doe is an empathetic have a look at a really complicated matter, one thing the authorized system isn’t geared up to know or accommodate. It’s heavy stuff, however I do assume it’s mind-opening and value viewing. (AMC Pacific Place Could 20, SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 21) EMILY NOKES
★ The Balconettes
France, 2024 (104 min), Dir. Noémie Merlant
In Portrait of a Girl on Hearth, star Noémie Merlant’s directorial debut, tensions and libidos run excessive as Marseille is caught in a sweltering warmth wave. The titular “Balconettes” are Nicole (Sanda Codreanu), a sexually pissed off 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 throughout from their constructing, a collection of devastating occasions is about in movement. What begins out as a feminist tackle Rear Window (starring Merlant because the consummate Hitchcock blonde) quickly shifts right into a surrealist revenge fantasy stuffed with brilliant colours and unapologetic physicality: titties hanging out, farts, orgasms, and so forth. The impact is one thing like an episode of Broad Metropolis as directed by Pedro Almodóvar. One factor’s for certain: You’ll by no means have a look at a rocking chair the identical means once more. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 18, SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 19) JULIANNE BELL
BAR
USA, 2025 (89 min), Dir. Don Hardy
It’s mentioned the BAR (Beverage Alcohol Useful resource) 5-day program is just like the PhD of mixology—troublesome to cross, costly to attend, and, in accordance with the attendees, a life-changing expertise filled with training and camaraderie. BAR follows a handful of this system’s attendees on their journey by way of spirit education and mastercraft. Sure, there’s a sure overproof rizz that comes with some BAR personalities, however the movie’s at its finest when waxing about “being within the folks enterprise.” Throughout a very heartfelt range workshop, a speaker put it finest: “Every little thing we do…have to be really grounded in ensuring that individuals are, on the very least, revered, thought of, thought of, after which hopefully made to really feel completely happy and cozy.” Cheers to that. (AMC Pacific Place Could 17–18; streaming Could 26–June 1) EMILY NOKES
Beef
Spain, 2025 (85 min), Dir. Ingride Santos
Lati is a younger Malian girl dwelling together with her household in Barcelona. Her father is lifeless, and her mom needs her to be a superb Muslim, however she “solely goals of changing into a well-known rapper.” Fuck sure! Bought. (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 16, SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 22) MEGAN SELING
★ Beginnings
Denmark, 2025 (96 min), Dir. Jeanette Nordahl
The complexity of affection, the intimacy of caretaking, and the fragility of “regular” come collectively in a quiet, painful dance on this unflinching Danish drama. Ane and Thomas, on the point of divorce, appear to hate one another the best way solely individuals who love one another can, till Ane’s sudden stroke detonates their unhappy-but-familiar equilibrium. It’s a bleak ordeal by way of the relentless, pitiless humiliation of failing well being and compelled dependency. It’s additionally a fascinating, compassionate story of survival and struggling that resists low-cost emotional photographs, carried by some devastatingly wonderful appearing. Don’t watch this on a primary date… however do watch it. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 22–23) FOX ALLISON
★ Between Goodbyes
USA, 2024 (96 min), Dir. Jota Mun
Mieke is a Danish girl, adopted from South Korea as a child. Having misplaced each her adoptive mother and father, she’s attending to know her delivery household, who nonetheless reside in Korea. The documentary focuses on that complicated, fragile relationship, and we, the viewers, are invited into some uncomfortably intimate, susceptible moments as they wade by way of many years of affection and heartbreak. Mieke’s mother and father spent on daily basis of her life loving her and wishing to search out her, however they battle to come back to phrases with core issues like her Danishness and her queerness. The language barrier between them stands in for all of the limitations constructed from remorse, time, and distance. The household’s story, although, is way from over. They’ll preserve engaged on their relationships lengthy after the cameras cease rolling. (AMC Pacific Place Could 24–25; streaming Could 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 jail for homicide, Lawrence Côté-Collins stitches collectively clips from lots of of hours of Poulin’s private video footage to kind a portrait of kinds of his undiagnosed and untreated schizophrenia. As she updates Poulin on her progress by way of letters and cellphone calls, Poulin begins to know the scope of his sickness. However Billy falls frustratingly brief as Côté-Collins inserts herself into the narrative—and glosses over Poulin’s victims and the influence of his crimes—in a means that’s extra opportunistic than honest. (SIFF Movie Middle Could 16–17; streaming Could 26–June 1) MEGAN SELING
Bitter Gold
Chile, 2024 (83 min), Dir. Juan Olea
Every day, Pacífico (Francisco Melo) drives his staff from a desolate desert highway in Northern Chile to an deserted mine close by. He’s looking not just for gold, however a means out for his teenage daughter, Carola (Katalina Sánchez). However after he fires his drunk of an worker, Humberto, every part goes terribly flawed. This tightly plotted, tense neo-Western is about how, as one miner places it, “when there’s gold, the satan exhibits.” For intelligent Carlona, that evil is just not solely easy greed, however the patriarchal constructions that outline her dust-covered, hardscrabble world. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 16, Could 22) VIVIAN McCALL
★ BLKNWS: Phrases & Situations
USA, 2025 (113 min), Dir. Kahlil Joseph
In the event you like your Blackness daring, inventive, eccentric, complicated, profound, mind-blowing, thought-provoking (hell, should you identical to Blackness), Kahlil Joseph’s “cinematic set up” BLKNWS: Phrases & Situations is your flick. A mixtape of pictures, histories, and imagined futures, it refuses simple description prefer it refuses the white gaze. From Du Bois to Raekwon, Million Man March to Ghanaian streets, encyclopedias to encrypted futures—that is Blackness remixed and re-centered. Joseph invitations us right into a world the place historical past flashes like strobe lights (epileptics beware), and which means pulses by way of picture, sound, and silence. This isn’t a film. It’s an expertise. (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 18–19) MARCUS HARRISON GREEN
★ Blue Highway: The Edna O’Brien Story
Eire, 2024 (100 min), Dir. Sinéad O’Shea
Sinéad O’Shea’s new documentary chronicles the lifetime of Irish novelist Edna O’Brien and her ascent from a whimsical little one in rural Eire to a trailblazing author unafraid to problem the Roman Catholic attitudes and disgrace towards intercourse. Consisting of archival footage and up to date interviews with O’Brien (simply earlier than her passing final 12 months), the movie doesn’t simply doc an fascinating topic, however does so with nice care and humanity, capturing her fearless spirit and rebellious perspective. Instantly after watching the movie, I frantically looked for used copies of The Nation Ladies trilogy on eBay, so I’d name the film a hit. A few of my favourite Edna-isms within the movie embody: “Ladies don’t simply want the vote, they should be armed,” and “I knew I used to be doing one thing proper by how indignant my husband was.” (AMC Pacific Place Could 16, SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 20) AUDREY VANN
Blue Solar Palace
USA, 2024 (116 min), Dir. Constance Tsang
Tsang instantly proves herself a grasp of tight-space framing in her feature-length debut, ostensibly a couple of Queens therapeutic massage parlor however actually about a lot extra. Each bed room, kitchen, foyer, stairwell, divey restaurant, rooftop, and mini-mall in Blue Solar Palace is immaculately staged. Fluorescent lights turn into angelic. Temporary stutters of the hand after a nasty cellphone name land like daggers. And intimacy, disgust, and grief fly off the display screen in sequences that convey mountains of wordless emotion. Tsang’s belief in her forged pays off handsomely, as she lets conversations play out with zero cuts and one digital camera tucked into a good room’s quarters. The outcomes—the laughs, the bashfulness, and the stone-eyed stares—really feel uniquely and powerfully American, as a Mandarin-fluent forged grapples with id, homesickness, neighborhood, loss, isolation, violence, and disgrace in methods I haven’t seen in a SIFF movie in a while. Bravo. CW: Sexual assault. (Shoreline Group Faculty Could 19, AMC Pacific Place Could 24) SAM MACHKOVECH
Boong
India, 2024 (93 min), Dir. Lakshmipriya Devi
Coming-of-age movie Boong has all the hallmarks of a first-time director overreaching. Plot traces both resolve abruptly or dangle. Characters don’t get sufficient room in both dialogue or motion to turn into absolutely realized. And tone shifts dramatically, leaping from cheekiness to melodrama to heartbreak, usually sufficient to distract viewers from absolutely connecting to its plot. However Boong additionally exists as a uncommon doc of border clashes, ethnic conflicts, and household bonding contained in the Indian state of Maripur—particularly since they accomplished principal filming mere weeks earlier than a civil warfare broke out that continues to today. Thus, the movie stands out for its distinctive and compelling perspective of Northeast India in a real-world zone that’s now not simple to movie. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 22, AMC Pacific Place Could 25; streaming Could 26–June 1) SAM MACHKOVECH
The Botanist
China, 2025 (96 min), Dir. Jing Yi
The premise of The Botanist appears easy: A 13-year-old boy is raised in a small neighborhood by his grandmother and falls in candy, chaste pet love with a neighbor woman. However, if the evaluations are to be believed at the very least, the factor that makes this movie particular is the setting: the northern Chinese language province of Xinjiang, simply throughout the border from Kazakhstan. The Hollywood Reporter describes it as “an remoted neighborhood…the place life goes on as if trendy know-how by no means existed,” and Display Each day mentioned it “runs dry on cohesive narrative.” However all of them agree it’s very fairly. (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 23, Shoreline Group Faculty Could 24) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER
★ By Design
USA, 2025 (90 min), Dir. Amanda Kramer
Camille (Juliette Lewis) turns into enamored of a “stunner” of a chair she will’t afford, to the extent that she needs she may turn into it. (“Oh, to be somebody’s favourite factor.”) Her want is granted—her spirit enters the chair, her physique left inanimate. The folks in her life proceed on, monologuing round her limp kind (Lewis is nice at eyes-open draping), too self-absorbed to note that she’s not completely there. In the meantime, an emotionally distant pianist named Olivier has fallen for the Camille chair; he can’t wait to get away from his vapid artwork neighborhood to spend time together with her/it. By Design is surreal, aesthetically fascinating (a number of MCM, however the unusual lighting and proportions really feel extra uncanny than twee), and has the deadpan dialogue of a play. Themes embody: literal objectification (obvi), tokenism, and perhaps one thing about fetishization and consumerism? Absurdism as emotional fact? When a movie is so avant-garde you can tack nearly any deeper interpretation onto it, it’s a must to marvel if there really is one. Or should you simply want to sit down with it longer. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 20–21; streaming Could 26–June 1) EMILY NOKES
By the Stream
South Korea, 2024 (111 min), Dir. Hong Sang-soo
For final 12 months’s SIFF roundup, I watched Hong Sang-soo’s In Our Day, wherein subsequent to nothing occurred: A cat ran off, a poet drank an ill-advised beer, and three girls murmured over a field of toiletries. This got here as no shock, as a result of disguised throughout the mundanity of all Hong’s interpersonal movies are lo-fi reflections on the cosmic mysteries of id, vulnerability, and life itself. In By the Stream, the query is that this: “What sort of particular person do you need to be?… How about saying it by way of improvised poetry?” One of many movie’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 ocean. It’s a refreshing reprieve from that annoying movie trope of artist-as-wacky-abstract-painter. Count on one thing akin to Aki Kaurismaki and Eric Rohmer’s storytelling right here. Individuals speak, folks assume, after which the movie ends. It leaves you pondering, too. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 20–21) LINDSAY COSTELLO
Cat City, USA
USA, 2025 (73 min), Dir. Jonathan Napolitano
Terry and Bruce Jenkins are an getting older couple who’ve lived a giant, adventurous life collectively, and of their golden years have transformed their property into an aged cat sanctuary referred to as Cat’s Cradle—a spot the place older cats who’re “out of choices” can dwell out their lives and “be properly beloved once more.” My HEART. Terry likes caring for the extra pragmatic duties whereas Bruce creates impediment programs and fiddles with know-how like live-streaming. Birthday events are thrown, catnip style assessments are performed, and we get to know among the retirees. The Jenkinses have a deep reverence for these cats, and the fact of their work may be very bittersweet. It’s additionally very inspiring. We want extra of us like these. Animals are one of the best of us, and people who find themselves form to animals deserve the world. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 22, Could 24; streaming Could 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 historical past—he’s made movies that look deeply at The Exorcist, Alien, and David Lynch’s love affair with The Wizard of Oz. It is smart, then, that Phillipe would respect The Texas Chainsaw Bloodbath, which (sizzling take incoming) is among the finest American movies ever made. Chain Reactions is an easy celebration of the movie: It launches straight into 5 interviews, that are interspersed with scream-heavy TCM clips and scenes from associated flicks. Stephen King, Karyn Kusama, Takashi Miike, movie critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, and Patton Oswalt(?!) meditate on TCM’s avant-garde, experimental spirit. (Oswalt has some surprisingly poetic issues to say in regards to the movie, together with evaluating its title to “chewing on flesh.”) In the event you’re enthusiastic about 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 Could 16, AMC Pacific Place Could 17) LINDSAY COSTELLO
The Chef & the Daruma
Canada, 2024 (90 min), Dir. Mads Okay. Baekkevold
Director Mads Okay. Baekkevold covers a whole lot of floor in The Chef & the Daruma. On its floor, it’s about Hidekazu Tojo, one of the vital well-known sushi cooks in North America (he says he invented the California roll!). However whereas Tojo tells his story of how he went from cooking out of necessity for his massive household in Japan to charging $330 a head for the top-tier Omakase expertise at his Vancouver, Canada restaurant, we additionally be taught extra in regards to the historical past of sushi, the area’s long-standing racism towards Japanese-Canadians, how a Daruma works, how sake is made, and which up to date Vancouver cooks, impressed by Tojo, are breaking new limitations in Vancouver’s meals scene. I felt like I used to be watching completely different vignettes or episodes of a collection, greater than a well-rounded documentary. Nonetheless, it’s a considerate and delicate journey, stuffed with individuals who respect meals. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 24–25) MEGAN SELING
Cloud
Japan, 2024 (124 min), Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa
If ever an action-thriller may very well be described as “quiet,” Kurosawa’s Cloud matches the invoice. (No, not Akira Kurosawa. That is Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the one who made Treatment, Pulse, and different moody, often-overlooked J-horror gems.) Cloud’s murky nightmare unfolds on the earth of digital dropshipping, which lands ruthless vendor Ryôsuke in real-life hazard when a band of consumers take concern together with his get-rich-quick scheme. The sluggish, calculated action-thriller communicates in tender steps and hushed tones, damaged solely by the occasional gunshot beneath overcast—cloudy, even—skies. Cloud treads difficult terrain, although. I received’t spoil the story completely, nevertheless it unravels in a means that strains plausibility. It’s clear the actual villain isn’t Ryôsuke, however the suffocating grip of late-stage capitalism. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 19, Could 25) LINDSAY COSTELLO
★ Coexistence, My Ass!
USA, 2025 (95 min), Dir. Amber Fares
Coexistence, My Ass! is a documentary in regards to the activist and comic Noam Schuster-Eliassi, a girl raised from delivery to imagine Israeli Jews and Palestinians may dwell in peace. This film tells the reality that occupation and apartheid led to the genocide in Gaza, and it exhibits Schuster-Eliassi’s honest political evolution as she comes to comprehend that the oppressed can not coexist with their oppressor, that coexistence is simply attainable between equals. Actually, she cares. However for all of the speak about checkpoints, about fascism and violence, that is an Israeli story. Glimpsed largely in photographs of iPhones and tv screens, the horrors in Gaza and the West Financial institution really feel distant. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 24–25) VIVIAN McCALL
Coloration Ebook
USA, 2024 (98 min), Dir. David Fortune
Coloration Ebook, gorgeously rendered in black and white, tells the battle of a newly widowed father making an attempt to take his disabled son, Mason, to his baseball recreation. There’s a lot occurring right here about love, loss, fatherhood, and neighborhood, however all I may deal with is how the true villain of this story is the rare, unreliable Atlanta transportation system. As you watch Coloration Ebook, pay attention to what number of instances the dialogue is solely “Mason!” uttered in each shade of emotion identified to man. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 24–25; streaming Could 26–June 1) NATHALIE GRAHAM
Come Nearer
Israel, 2024 (107 min), Dir. Tom Nesher
Grief is messy, and so is Eden, a younger girl reeling from the sudden dying of her youthful brother. A horny, hard-partying wild little one and avatar of bisexual bad-influence stereotypes, she carves a swath of chaos by way of the lives of everybody round her. Her discovery of and connection together with her brother’s secret girlfriend is an fascinating exploration of how shared loss can construct bonds in essentially the most stunning locations, however the narrative is hindered by a way that Eden’s exaggeratedly unreliable character was written by PTA mother and father scared of their kids “partying.” (She’s additionally acquired shockingly lengthy, sharp fingernails for somebody in a lesbian relationship.) There are poignant moments, to make sure, however I struggled to search out something to care deeply about. (SIFF Movie Middle Could 20, Could 22; streaming Could 26–June 1) FOX ALLISON
Come See Me within the Good Mild
USA, 2025 (104 min), Dir. Ryan White
Winner of Sundance’s Pageant Favourite Award, Come See Me within the Good Mild is a documentary that follows Colorado’s Poet Laureate Andrea Gibson and their accomplice Megan Falley after Gibson is identified with ovarian most cancers and given two years to dwell. Selection referred to as it “A luminous portrait of two poets navigating an incurable prognosis,” and Salon mentioned, “this movie delivers hope and goosebumps in equal measure.” Bonus: It’s produced by Brandi Carlile and Tig Notaro. (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 17–18) MEGAN SELING
The Crowd
Iran, 2025 (70 min), Dir. Sahand Kabiri
Happening in modern-day Tehran, The Crowd tells the story of the planning of a going-away get together for a beloved pal by his largely queer neighborhood. Over the course of the day, we’re proven how this pal group is coping with the current dying of certainly one of their very own, in addition to how they navigate the suffocating oppressions of a patriarchal society that views homosexuality as punishable by dying. As grim as this all would possibly sound, The Crowd is finally a movie about platonic love and perseverance, and the celebration of affection and neighborhood. Shot over the course of 12 days in a playful visible fashion with collage components combined in (private cellphone movies, photographs, social-media screenshots), The Crowd is a candy tribute to these leaving and people who have left. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 23, Could 25) MICHAEL McKINNEY
Dancing Queen in Hollywood
Norway, 2025 (87 min), Dir. Aurora Gossé
This film was positively not made for me. Sure, I like hip-hop and hip-hop dancing. However the best way I get pleasure from these kinds is under no circumstances represented in any a part of this movie, which has a bunch of Norwegian youngsters going to LA to do their hip-hop dance factor. The filming is ugly, and the appearing is barely above what we discover in Kenan & Kel. Within the phrases of Skepta: “That’s not [for] me.” (Shoreline Group Faculty Could 16, SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 19) CHARLES MUDEDE
The Darkish 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-Pale Cinema, with DJ NicFit offering a dwell remixed soundtrack. Typically, Cross-Pale screenings embody different surprises, too, like balloons or bubbles! There’s no telling what DJ NicFit has in retailer. (I hope it’s Fizzgig. I actually need to hug Fizzgig.) (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 20) MEGAN SELING
Useless Lover
Canada, 2025 (82 min), Dir. Grace Glowicki
SIFF describes Useless Lover as a “weird, efficiency art-coded, gender-bending lo-fi Frankenstein comedy a couple of lonely gravedigger who will do something to construct the proper man.” If that intriguing phrase salad doesn’t pique your curiosity, contemplate this: SXSW’s movie jury awarded Useless Lover with the NEON Auteur Award, describing it as “a tremendously authentic movie.” (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 23, AMC Pacific Place Could 24) MEGAN SELING
Deaf
Spain, 2025 (99 min), Dir. Eva Libertad
This Spanish drama follows a pair, Ángela, who’s deaf, and Héctor, who’s listening to, as they put together to have their first little one. It received the Panorama Viewers Award for Greatest Characteristic Movie on the Berlin Worldwide Movie Pageant, in addition to six awards on the 2025 Málaga Movie Pageant. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 17–18; streaming Could 26–June 1) MEGAN SELING
★ Diamonds
Italy, 2024 (120 min), Dir. Ferzan Özpetek
Whoa boy. Diamonds opens with director Ferzan Özpetek internet hosting a dinner for his 18 favourite actresses (“you’re my diamonds!”), asking them to be in his movie, which begins just a few moments later. This metacinematic machine is odd, however advantageous. That’s, till we unnecessarily revisit the director’s desk once more halfway by way of? The movie contained in the documentary tells the story of a women-led costume store set in Rome within the ’70s. The set design and style are beautiful, and everybody’s face is enjoyable to have a look at, however the script is so extremely predictable it veers into camp. Which I can get behind! By the point the Özpetek is inserted once more, although, it’s clear he must heart himself so that you don’t neglect who ought to be celebrated for celebrating these girls. It’s such a brazen transfer I couldn’t do something however chortle. Advisable should you’re like, day-buzzed on daiquiris and need slightly spectacle (to chortle at, not with). (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 24–25) EMILY NOKES
Diciannove
Italy, 2024 (109 min), Dir. Giovanni Tortorici
Director Giovanni Tortorici drew inspiration from his personal life whereas writing his feature-length directorial debut, Diciannove (Nineteen). Not all evaluations are raves, nevertheless it sounds promising should you like candid coming-of-age dramas. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 17, SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 21) MEGAN SELING
DJ Ahmet
North Macedonia, 2025 (98 min), Dir. Georgi M. Unkovski
It’s not simple being 15 in Northern Macedonia, particularly for Ahmet, whose little brother, Naim, clams up within the wake of their mom’s dying and whose dad obsesses over his fixing his brother’s muteness in all of the flawed methods. Ahmet should abandon the standard hallmarks of teenagerdom (going to high school, going to forest raves in the midst of the evening) to as an alternative schlep the household’s tobacco crop to market and have a tendency to the household’s sheep. However, whereas diligently tending to the sheep, Ahmet, nonetheless a teenage boy, can’t assist himself—he falls in love. With a woman trapped in an organized marriage. Uh oh. The kids of DJ Ahmet are trapped by the conservative traditions of their society and by the myopia of their very own mother and father. Solely by way of music—the factor Ahmet and Naim’s late mom cherished—and the slivers of know-how they’ve entry to, can the youngsters join with one another, themselves, and start to carve out the lives they need to begin dwelling. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 24, AMC Pacific Place Could 25) NATHALIE GRAHAM
Don’t Let’s Go to the Canines Tonight
South Africa, 2024 (98 min), Dir. Embeth Davidtz
Movie variations of profitable books will be unpredictable, however Embeth Davidtz’s interpretation of Alexandra Fuller’s critically acclaimed 2001 memoir Don’t Let’s Go to the Canines Tonight, about Fuller’s childhood in a white Zimbabwean household after the Rhodesian Bush Battle, seems to be a hit. (Shoreline Group Faculty Could 17, SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 20) MEGAN SELING
Drowned Land
USA, 2025 (86 min), Dir. Colleen Thurston (Choctaw Nation)
It’s simple to consider environmental destruction largely in big-picture phrases. Drowned Land zooms in to inform the story of the Kiamichi River as not simply an ecologically essential physique of water, however an ancestor, a being, a coronary heart. It highlights the throughlines between cultural displacement, oppression of Indigenous folks, and exploitation of pure sources. (It’s exhausting to consider the surroundings within the summary once you’re reminded that in 2025, small, discarded communities are tormented by water too contaminated to soundly wash dishes in, not to mention drink.) The vitality business is a titanic foe, however the Choctaw Nation and different activists are steadfast in combating again. As Thurston, the filmmaker, says, “This isn’t a redemption story, however it’s a story about reclamation.” (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 16, Shoreline Group Faculty Could 20; streaming Could 26–June 1) FOX ALLISON
Drowning Dry
Lithuania, 2024 (88 min), Dir. Laurynas Bareiša
As with Moon (see my assessment, additionally on this information), Drowning Dry begins with a combined martial arts competitors. However in contrast to Moon, the film’s key character, Lukas, wins. And, after celebrating this win, he and his household (spouse, son, sister-in-law, brother-in-law, niece) go to a rustic home by a lake to calm down. Slowly, cracks start to look. However these are very human cracks. Actually, the movie is mostly a work of philosophical anthropology that’s expressed with two narrative modes: one wherein little occurs slowly, and one wherein loads occurs slowly. When the latter happens, we’re uncovered to the terrifying frailty of the human situation. To accentuate the expertise of the modes, the movie employs solely diegetic music and naturalistic lighting and shot positions. The result’s, for me, one of the best film I’ve thus far seen in SIFF. (SIFF Movie Middle Could 17, Shoreline Group Faculty Could 22) CHARLES MUDEDE
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 highway journey by way of Washington State, we see “heaps of beautiful photographs of Leavenworth, Seattle, Bainbridge, and the forests and waters in between.” It additionally options music by Damien Jurado and Lacey Brown. PNW AF. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 19–20; streaming Could 26–June 1) MEGAN SELING
All people Loves Touda
France, 2024 (101 min), Dir. Nabil Ayouch
Touda (Nisrin Erradi) is a younger girl who lives in a distant a part of Morocco and goals of constructing it massive as a conventional dancer and singer. She has a son who’s handled like shit in school due to his incapacity. And her jobs usually expose her to sleazy males and sexual violence. Sooner or later, she decides to maneuver to Casablanca to make her goals come true. The film, although visually beautiful and crammed richly with music and dancing, finally feels unreal. I’m undecided if this was the intention of the director, Nabil Ayouch, however Touda’s journey unfolds and even floats from scene to scene like a fairytale. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 22–23) CHARLES MUDEDE
Acquainted Contact
USA, 2024 (91 min), Dir. Sarah Friedland
It’s no marvel Acquainted Contact received “Greatest Debut Movie” at Venice Movie Pageant and has a number of different awards below its belt already. Sarah Friedland takes us by way of a poignant character research of Ruth Goldman (Broadway legend Kathleen Chalfant), who has lived a full life, solely to have it scrambled by extreme dementia in the long run. For anybody who has apprehensive in regards to the results of dementia on our family members, or stayed up late questioning the place our mother and father will spend the remainder of their lives, this movie hits you straight within the chest. Kathleen Chalfant’s efficiency is a Grasp Class by way of the slow-moving, beautiful cinematography that’s Acquainted Contact. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 18, Shoreline Group Faculty Could 25) RACHEL STEVENS
Flamingos: Life After the Meteorite
Mexico, 2024 (83 min), Dir. Lorenzo Hagerman
Flamingos are unusual. With their absurdly spindly legs, bizarre beaks, and cartoon coloring, they appear to be a bubblegum sculpture whose artist ran out of gum and needed to stretch what they needed to the purpose of absurdity. This documentary was clearly made by individuals who love flamingos. It’s stuffed with beautiful footage of the birds flying, wading, nesting, incubating, and mating. (Flamingo intercourse is hilarious, by the best way, particularly when set to bizarrely attractive music.) The storytelling format is a bit wobbly, and a few scenes drag on too lengthy to let the filmmakers use all of the music they paid for, however there are many worse issues to sit down by way of than an extra of lovely nature photographs. (Pacific Place Could 23, Shoreline Group Faculty Could 24; streaming Could 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 household from mainland China who’ve simply migrated to Hong Kong to make a greater life for themselves. Starting within the late ’90s, the movie spans twenty years, specializing in the approaching of age of two younger daughters as they arrive head to head with the rising pains of the migrant expertise. Whereas making an attempt to flee social ostracization from schoolmates by way of assimilation, the daughers discover that issues aren’t any simpler at house as their father falls right into a sample of drug use and petty theft and is out and in of jail over the course of their adolescence. The movie is a sluggish meditation on rising up and the way we forgive, neglect, and forge new paths in gentle of damaged goals. (Shoreline Group Faculty Could 19, SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 21; streaming Could 26–June 1) MICHAEL McKINNEY
★ 4 Moms
Eire, 2024 (89 min), Dir. Darren Thornton
On this Irish remake of the 2008 Italian movie Mid-August Lunch, homosexual writer Edward’s (James McArdle) queer coming-of-age novel unexpectedly turns into a viral BookTok hit. Pressured to decide on between embarking on a e book tour within the US or staying house to handle his ailing mom (Fionnula Flanagan), who has suffered a stroke and might solely talk through iPad text-to-speech, he sabotages himself by avoiding going after what he needs…till his self-serving homosexual associates unceremoniously dump their moms at his house to allow them to abscond to Maspalomas Delight. Edward, Alma, and their three new houseguests kind an unlikely discovered household, leading to an impromptu highway journey to go to a medium. The movie doesn’t hit each beat and meanders into predictable territory at instances, nevertheless it’s acquired loads of allure, and Flanagan speaks volumes together with her arresting facial expressions with out uttering a single phrase aloud. (Opening Evening: Paramount Theater Could 15) JULIANNE BELL
Free Leonard Peltier
USA, 2025 (110 min), Dirs. Jesse Quick Bull (Oglala Sioux) and David France
In January, administrators David France and Jesse Quick Bull in all probability thought they have been accomplished with their documentary, Free Leonard Peltier. The Sundance date was set. Then one week earlier than the movie’s premiere, President Biden introduced he was commuting Peltier’s contentious life sentence. However critics say timing isn’t the one factor that units this movie other than earlier initiatives—Selection praised it for having a “wider focus” than 1992’s Incident at Oglala, “putting the incidents detailed right here within the context of America’s lengthy and shameful historical past of exploiting, betraying, and even murdering Native folks.” (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 17–18; streaming Could 16–June 1) MEGAN SELING
★ Liberating Juanita
USA, 2024 (74 min), Dir. Sebastián Lasaosa Rogers
In 2014, as immigration to the US from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador skyrocketed, Mexico dedicated to detaining migrants as they handed by way of Mexico, fairly than permitting them to cross the US border. That very same 12 months, Juanita, an indigenous Guatemalan who speaks Maya, not Spanish, was detained by the Mexican authorities, and confessed to against the law in a language she didn’t converse. Liberating Juanita tells the story of her aunt and uncle, who journeyed a thousand miles from their house within the Guatemalan mountains to advocate for her launch. As a human-scale story, it could be placing at any time, however this 12 months? Their vulnerability and dedication strike particularly deeply. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 20, SIFF Movie Middle Could 21; streaming Could 26–June 1) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER
Fucktoys
USA, 2025 (107 min), Dir. Annapurna Sriram
I can’t cease interested by this movie. It opens on a floating raft in another pre-millennium universe. A younger intercourse employee (Annapurna Sriram) is on a raft, telling a psychic (Huge Freedia) about how she’s dropping her enamel. She’s cursed, the psychic says. And for the low, low worth of $1,000 and an harmless lamb, she will break it. So she takes off into this fictional world, referred to as Trashtown, the place the cops are Tom of Finland doms and the flowery lodge known as Fancy Lodge. The journey to discovering the money to interrupt the curse is campy, bloody, and stuffed with different bodily fluids. The story will break your coronary heart slightly, nevertheless it’s value it. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 16, AMC Pacific Place Could 17) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER
The Glass Net in 3D
USA, 1953 (81 min), Dir. Jack Arnold
See the 1953 film-noir thriller The Glass Net in all its 3D glory, newly restored from the unique 35mm digital camera negatives! Cool! (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 18) MEGAN SELING
The Gloria of your Creativeness
USA, 2024 (98 min), Dir. Jennifer Reeves
The Gloria of your Creativeness is both a tricky or a very easy promote, relying on who you’re. The “dual-projection efficiency” shares footage from recorded remedy periods with a 30-year-old single mom in 1964. Gloria, completely coiffed, chain-smoking, and toting a wicker pocketbook, shares her anxieties about males, intercourse, and motherhood with three spectacled dudes, who emit various ranges of douchiness: Gestalt founder Fritz Perls (who calls Gloria “phony” in session), humanistic psychology founder Carl Rogers, and rational emotive conduct remedy founder Albert Ellis. The viewers learns that Gloria consented to having the periods filmed, however to not their being publicly exhibited—which they have been, extensively. Gloria sues for damages. This reveal causes me to query, then, my complicity in watching the periods now. In any case, The Gloria of your Creativeness encourages conclusions that almost all of us have come to earlier than—the ’60s have been an exceptionally sexist time, and trendy psychotherapy has its flaws. (SIFF Movie Middle Could 19–20; streaming Could 26–June 1) LINDSAY COSTELLO
Good Boy
USA, 2025 (73 min), Dir. Ben Leonberg
It seems like a gimmick—a supernatural thriller starring a canine—however Good Boy has acquired some spectacular accolades since debuting at SXSW earlier this 12 months. Horror film homebase Dread Central referred to as it “surprisingly poignant,” the Hollywood Reporter praised the movie’s emotional energy, and Indiewire gave it an A-, calling Indy the canine’s efficiency “affecting.” (Spoiler: DoestheDogDie.com guarantees that Indy survives.) (AMC Pacific Place Could 24, SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 25) MEGAN SELING
Hanami
Switzerland, 2024 (96 min), Dir. Denise Fernandes
“I feel that inside us, the damaged items are put along with gold,” says Nana, the central character, in a voiceover within the opening scene. She’s referring to Kintsugi, the Japanese follow of repairing damaged pottery with gold powder, highlighting the cracks as part of its historical past. However Nana’s talking from a complete completely different volcanic island in a complete completely different ocean: Fogo, Cape Verde. Half coming-of-age story, half surreal fever dream, Hanami follows Nana’s younger life, grappling with being left in Cape Verde by her mom, the neighborhood that cares for her, and having to resolve what “house” really means to her. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 16, Could 21; streaming Could 26–June 1) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER
Completely happy Holidays
Palestine, 2024 (123 min), Dir. Scandar Copti
Oscar-nominated Palestinian director Scandar Copti’s new movie provides us an enlightening look into the oppressive on a regular basis lives of a middle-class Arab household dwelling in Israel. Instructed by way of a collection of vignettes specializing in completely different family members, the movie explores how the nations’ divisions have an effect on nearly all points of their every day lives, from navigating relationships and relationship, to coping with cultural conventions and expectations. How does one discover private company when all the exterior forces round you are feeling so constricting? (SIFF Movie Middle Could 21, AMC Pacific Place Could 22) MICHAEL McKINNEY
Happyend
Japan, 2024 (113 min), Dir. Neo Sora
In Japan’s close to future, the authoritarians are in management. They use an impending, once-in-a-century earthquake to justify police crackdowns on immigrants and political dissidents. For Yuta and Kou, two finest associates set to quickly graduate highschool, it’s simply every day life. It isn’t till the principal responds to their daring prank and installs a brand new AI-powered safety system referred to as Panopty (get it?) that the nation’s crumbling politics turn into actual. Kou sees them a method, Yuta one other, threatening their friendship. Happyend is about how folks react when the unthinkable occurs. Do they resolve? Do circumstances of race and sophistication resolve for them? Is the reply someplace within the center? A movie for our political age, Happyend is a should see. (AMC Pacific Place Could 22–23) VIVIAN McCALL
★ Heightened Scrutiny
USA, 2025 (90 min), Dir. Sam Feder
Final 12 months, ACLU legal professional Chase Strangio grew to become the primary trans legal professional to argue earlier than the US Supreme Courtroom within the first massive trans-rights case of this second shitty Trump period. The query on the heart of US v. Skrmetti: Was the state of Tennessee violating the constitutional rights of transgender youngsters when it banned puberty blockers and hormone alternative remedy to deal with gender dysphoria, whereas permitting docs to supply the very same therapies to intersex and cis youngsters for various medical causes? Heightened Scrutiny makes the high-as-fuck stakes clear by way of photographs of neighborhood conferences and critical interviews with critical folks sitting in naked rooms, pizzicato strings plucking away severely within the background. But it surely’s additionally a candy profile of Strangio, who says arguing a case earlier than the courtroom is just not his dream, however a nightmare for a pleasant regular man with an albatross of duty round his neck. It’s not essentially the most intimate profile—it couldn’t be, Strangio is a high-profile, media-trained lawyer—however Feder’s made a political doc value seeing. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 18–19; streaming Could 26–June 1) VIVIAN McCALL
Residence Candy Residence
Denmark, 2025 (112 min), Dir. Frelle Petersen
Do you need to see the type of work immigrants within the USA do? Effectively, watch this film, which issues a Danish girl, Sofie (Jette Søndergaard), who, although white, is a house care employee. This movie is uncooked. It doesn’t cover a rattling factor. You see all of it: caregivers (a few of whom are Black) cleansing penises, handingly our bodies which might be about to crumble, placing dentures into mouths, and so forth. The movie is sluggish (even monotonous) however boy does it inform like it’s. It’s exhausting being an previous particular person in a capitalist (USA, UK, Denmark) society. You might be lonely, ready for dying, and utterly depending on caregivers who are sometimes poorly paid immigrants. (AMC Pacific Place Could 20–21) CHARLES MUDEDE
How one can Construct a Library
Kenya, 2025 (100 min), Dir. Maia Lekow and Christopher King
Selection describes How one can Construct a Library, a documentary by Maia Lekow and Christopher King, as “simple, methodical.” It options two Kenyan girl restructuring, over a number of years (their venture started in 2018), a colonial-era library within the coronary heart of their nation’s capital, Nairobi. This work of transformation seems to have quite a few difficulties, certainly one of which, not surprisingly, is the stubbornness of the post-colonial authorities. Anybody who has lived in an English-speaking African nation is aware of the British did a quantity on the locals. Undoing what Fela Kuti famously referred to as “colonial mentality” is like shifting a mountain. (Could 16, SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 21) CHARLES MUDEDE
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 wherein a politician was convicted of sexual harassment. Selection referred to as the case “a landmark judicial sentence 15 years earlier than the #MeToo motion.” As a giant fan of made-for-TV Lifetime films, I’m particularly intrigued by what films assessment journal Little White Lies needed to say about it: “It’s a trashy, tabloid-y movie, nevertheless it’s a advantageous one, and a narrative that also must be informed once more, and once more, and once more.” (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 21, Shoreline Group Faculty Could 23) MEGAN SELING
Idyllic
Netherlands, 2025 (99 min), Dir. Aaron Rookus
This dense Dutch movie is made with nice care and intelligence. At its heart is an opera singer, Annika (Eelco Smits), who’s going through the nothingness of a dying that may quickly eat her glamorous life. The heaviness of her scenario, which is all the time in her eyes and her gestures, streams to all the opposite components of the movie’s sprawling story, which simply may have been a TV collection. (AMC Pacific Place Could 17–18) CHARLES MUDEDE
★ Into the Wonderwoods
France, 2024 (80 min), Dir. Alexis Ducord and Vincent Paronnaud
You realize when you have got a dream the place there may be one massive mission, however seemingly lots of of side-plots with too many characters to rely? And then you definitely get up and also you’re like, “That was AWESOME.” Into the Wonderwoods is that fever-dream. This animated movie has been translated from French to English, however you understand the French are freaky AF, and it exhibits on this journey of a 10-year-old boy, Angelo, who will get separated from his household and travels by way of a forest stuffed with ogres, robots, magic landscapes, and extra. His creativeness helps him courageous the weather and even be part of a resistance. Into the Wonderwoods is for kids ages 8 and above, and the younger at coronary heart. (Although I let my 5-year-old watch it with me and she or he hasn’t stopped speaking about it since.) (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 17, Shoreline Group Faculty Could 18) RACHEL STEVENS
Invention
USA, 2024 (72 min), Dir. Courtney Stephens
I like a film that refuses to have a style. Invention blends fiction and autobiographical documentary to one thing heat and slightly bit magical. On this “meta fiction,” co-writers Courtney Stephens and Callie Hernandez create a fictional model of the rapid aftermath of Hernandez’s father’s dying, however intersplices actual discovered VHS footage of her personal father. It’s messy, however so is grief. (AMC Pacific Place Could 16, SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 17) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER
Jean Cocteau
USA, 2024 (94 min), Dir. Lisa Immordino Vreeland
Jean Cocteau is an ideal instance of a documentary with a fascinating topic, however sadly, bland filmmaking. Whereas I appreciated that the movie let the enduring Renaissance man converse for himself—weaving collectively interviews, journals, and clips from his movies—narrative gaps have been crammed by partitions of textual content that I discovered clunky and uninspiring. Nonetheless, this was additionally the primary biography of Cocteau I’ve seen that offers sufficient consideration to his id as a homosexual man and amorous affairs with collaborators like Jean Marais, Raymond Radiguet, and Édouard Dermit. The movie additionally touched on his controversial friendship with Nazi sculptor Arno Breker, however lacked a stance, quoting Cocteau’s perception that friendship is extra essential than politics. Because the credit rolled, I wasn’t notably shocked to see that the movie was funded partly by style large Chanel, whose founder, Coco (a identified Nazi sympathizer), designed costumes for a lot of of Cocteau’s stage productions. (AMC Pacific Place Could 19, SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 20; streaming Could 26–June 1) AUDREY VANN
John Cranko
Germany, 2024 (135 min), Dir. Joachim Lang
Definitely, John Cranko is not any Amadeus. However, it’s not half dangerous. The explanation for this biopic’s success is discovered within the actor who performs John Cranko: Sam Riley. Most of us know Riley from one other biopic, Management (he performs somber Ian Curtis). On this title position, he’s the legendary and sophisticated South African choreographer who ran Stuttgart Ballet within the Sixties, John Cranko. Although extremely entertaining, John Cranko affords nothing new. It has, like most biopics of its form, scenes of the genius in a large number, the genius fighting the institution and lazy dancers, and, after all, the genius smoking like a chimney as he provides inspiring speeches that present why he’s a genius. Rock me, Cranko. (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 22–23; streaming Could 26–June 1) CHARLES MUDEDE
Joqtau
Kazakhstan, 2024 (71 min), Dir. Aruan Anartay
After a number of years overseas, younger scientist Darkhan returns house to Kazakhstan together with his girlfriend Elena, and so they be part of his enigmatic grandfather on a visit to the plains of their ancestral homeland. Within the opening credit, we be taught the title refers to a conventional Kazakh mourning track, and that sense of quiet grief lingers all through this sparse, poetic journey. Joqtau explores household legacy and cultural erosion, and the movie fashion shifts fluidly between the intimacy of a household dinner and the observational really feel of a documentary. As they transfer by way of the countryside, Elena stays a quiet observer as Darkhan slowly reconnects together with his roots. Joqtau is low on plot however excessive on vibe, and it leaves its somber environment behind after it ends. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 20, SIFF Movie Middle Could 22; streaming Could 26–June 1) BREE McKENNA
Ka Whawhai Tonu: Wrestle With out Finish
New Zealand, 2024 (115 min), Dir. Michael Jonathan
Uncommon is the coming-of-age wartime movie that efficiently combines wildly disparate tones, like sweetness and brutality, or humor and stress. Ka Whawhai Tonu’s unflinching have a look at the Nineteenth-century New Zealand Wars is an astonishing instance of constant tone and spirit in a movie about colonialist travesties. The movie opens on a Māori tribe capturing a half-Māori, half-European teen boy forward of a siege by European forces and mistreating him. A teen woman within the encampment, herself going through related grownup maltreatment, finds methods to assist the boy, thus sealing their friendship—whereas additionally stoking tensions amongst leaders. There aren’t any winners on this battle as seen by way of youthful eyes (“adults made me one thing I’m not, for an grownup’s warfare”), however by way of this movie’s real anguish comes a outstanding doc of the human spirit at its finest—and its worst. Temuera Morrison has a hell of a efficiency as equal components diplomat, commander, and elder, whereas Paku Fernandez’s teenage vulnerability and tenacity put the superbly shot movie excessive. (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 16, Shoreline Group Faculty Could 18; streaming Could 26–June 1) SAM MACHKOVECH
Khartoum
Sudan, 2025 (81 min), Dir. Anas Saeed, Rawia Alhag, Brahim Snoopy, Timeea Mohamed Ahmed, and Phil Cox
In Khartoum, 5 administrators collaborate with 5 refugees from completely different backgrounds to reenact their life-changing experiences within the Sudanese Civil Battle. Typically their tales are supported by props and CGI renderings of the locations they’re describing; different instances, they’re acted out in entrance of clean inexperienced screens with a increase mic dipping into body. Both means, the themes take turns appearing in one another’s tales, positioned and fed traces as they go, usually embodying individuals who had drastically completely different experiences than their very own. It’s a collective effort with one thing to say about neighborhood, justice, and storytelling. Khartoum is particular. (AMC Pacific Place Could 19, Could 21) BRIGID KENNEDY
The Kingdom
France, 2024 (108 min), Dir. Julien Colonna
Sadly, this isn’t the 2007 motion thriller starring Jamie Foxx! As an alternative, it sounds way more intense. SIFF’s offered description reads: “When an underground warfare breaks out between nationalist teams and crime households, a Corsican mobster and his daughter should go on the run, bringing them nearer collectively and drawing her into his world.” Don’t let that scare you away! Julien Colonna’s 2024 Kingdom presently has a 100% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes with 14 evaluations from shops together with IndieWire and Selection, whereas Foxx’s Kingdom is sitting not-so-pretty at 51 p.c. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 21, Could 23) MEGAN SELING
★ Know Her Identify
Canada, 2024 (80 min), Dir. Zainab Muse
Ladies have been highly effective in early Hollywood, and what occurred won’t shock you. Cash (and males) modified every part. Within the freewheeling years earlier than California lured the movie business west with tax breaks, it didn’t matter as a lot who was on set writing the scripts, working the cameras, and even slicing the checks (Alice Man-Blaché made 1,000 movies and ran her Solex studios in New Jersey—a “advantageous instance of what a girl can do if given a sq. probability in life,” in accordance with the Movement Image Information in 1911.) Then males took the entire thing over and nonetheless haven’t let go, greater than 100 years later, sufficient time for us to almost neglect about pioneers like Man-Blaché. Numerous different girls received’t even get that probability—75 to 90 p.c of American movies shot earlier than 1929 are misplaced to time. Precisely why girls have been written out of historical past is a fancy query, nevertheless it’s clear these alternatives by no means got here again. Know Her Identify does what solely a superb documentary can, unspooling the historic document so slowly and thoughtfully that it’s exhausting to pinpoint when a rage began smoldering in my intestine. By the point the credit rolled, I didn’t simply really feel indignant, I felt cheated out of nice movies that by no means have been. (Shoreline Group Faculty Could 23, SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 25; streaming Could 26–June 1) VIVIAN McCALL
The Librarians
USA, 2025 (88 min), Dir. Kim A. Snyder
Simply six minutes into The Librarians, a librarian begins to cry. That’s how dangerous it’s on the market for these working in states resembling Texas and Florida, the place conservatives are calling for the elimination of lots of of books. Whereas e book banning is nothing new, it has grown to unprecedented ranges lately, largely as a result of right-wing group Mothers for Liberty. However the librarians aren’t having it. They’re combating again. They’re defending their responsibility to make sure their faculty and public libraries are inclusive, welcoming areas, and it’s costing them their jobs, their relationships, and, in some circumstances, their security. However lest folks assume this all comes all the way down to ethics and morality, The Librarians does an important job digging slightly deeper to indicate that each one the combating, screaming, and literal e book burning finally come down to 1 factor: cash. You’ll go away the theater eager to concurrently hug a librarian and burn the world to the bottom. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 16–17) MEGAN SELING
Little Purple Candy
Hong Kong, 2024 (92 min), Dir. Vincent Chow
A younger Chinese language girl provides up her goals of being a flight attendant and returns house to assist run the household’s dessert store after her mom suffers a stroke. Regardless of her sacrifices, her dad received’t let her within the kitchen to assist make their well-known, secret recipe purple bean soup. Drama! One reviewer referred to as it “undercooked.” One assessment we translated from Chinese language reads: “It appears to be cleaned with bleach. It’s a clear film, a film with out life.” (AMC Pacific Place Could 21, Shoreline Group Faculty Could 25) NATHALIE GRAHAM
LUZ
Hong Kong, 2025 (102 min), Dir. Flora Lau
Amid neon-streaked Chongqing’s nightlife scene, karaoke bar worker Wei (Guo Xiaodong) makes an attempt to contact his estranged daughter Fa (Deng Enxi). In the meantime, Hong Kong gallerist Ren (Sandrine Pinna) reconnects together with her stepmother Sabine (the enduring Isabelle Huppert), who devotes her time to the Parisian artwork world and was just lately identified with a deadly aneurysm. Sooner or later, Wei and Ren cross paths in an open-world VR recreation referred to as Luz, wherein gamers navigate a dreamlike cyberpunk setting on a quest to discover a shimmering, ethereal deer. The movie has mesmerizing visuals and raises fascinating questions on artwork, interpersonal connection within the digital age, and the blurred traces between artifice and actuality, however sadly lacks the emotional substance to again it up. However, Huppert delivers a standout efficiency as all the time, and it’s a pleasure to observe her vaping and dancing within the face of dying. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 20, AMC Pacific Place Could 22) JULIANNE BELL
★ Manas
Brazil, Portugal, 2024 (107 min), Dir. Marianna Brennand
Based mostly on director Marianna Brennand’s decade of analysis into the sexual abuse of youngsters and youngsters within the Amazon rainforest, Manas is as devastating because it sounds. The drama follows 13-year-old Tielle by way of a world the place abuse is the norm of girlhood. The movie strikes slowly, lingering over each facial features and piece of the story, that includes superbly designed photographs amidst the ugliness of its subject material. At one notably gutting second, Tielle’s mom tells her, “there’s no use making an attempt to alter some issues.” And but, Tielle makes an attempt to change the generational script, as does this movie, by creating this unflinching portrait of such a troublesome matter. (SIFF Movie Middle Could 16, Could 18) ROBIN EDWARDS
Assembly with Pol Pot
France, 2024 (113 min), Dir. Rithy Panh
If longtime Cambodian director Rithy Panh is new to you, and also you’re attractive for accolades, know this: His 1994 movie Rice Individuals was the primary Cambodian movie to be submitted for an Oscar and a number of other of his movies have proven at Cannes, together with 2003’s S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine, which received Prix François Chalais, and his 2013 documentary The Lacking Image which took house the Un Sure Regard title. So chances are high, Assembly with Pol Pot, which is partly primarily based on the e book When the Battle Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution by Elizabeth Becker, won’t be dangerous. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 18, Could 20) MEGAN SELING
★ Monarch Metropolis
USA, 2025 (70 min), Dir. Titus Richard
Monarch Metropolis is of nice significance to the historical past of this area’s cinema, as a result of it’s Paul Eenhoorn’s final movie. For these not accustomed to this actor, who got here from Australia and wound up in Seattle, he spent the final a part of his life starring or showing in quite a lot of native indie movies earlier than dying in his sleep in Tacoma in 2022. His second, nonetheless, arrived in 2014 with the movie Land Ho!, which made a splash at Sundance, and anxious two aged males having fun with all that Iceland has to supply. Monarch Metropolis is about in a city exterior of Seattle. Eenhoorn performs Sam, a damaged man in a damaged city (alcoholism, drug habit, crime, weapons, lifeless dives, beat-up pickup vans). Sam recites poetry about arriving at different shores. He smokes and drinks and carries a gun. And he ends the movie with a meditation on dying. Goodnight, Eenhoorn. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 20–21; streaming Could 26–June 1) CHARLES MUDEDE
Mongrels
Canada, 2024 (111 min), Dir. Jerome Yoo
In the event you contemplate your self a canine lover, finest beware {that a} bunch of them brutally chew the mud on this visually poetic, although finally scattered, directorial debut. Mongrels is informed in three components and centered on a Korean father tasked with killing canine within the woods, his troubled son, and his imaginative daughter nonetheless making an attempt to stay related to her absent mom. The movie follows the household as they start to make a brand new life in small-town Canada. It thrives when it lets us sit with the extra ephemeral sense of loss, although it will definitely turns into overly literal. As one half fades into the following, hitting loads of acquainted coming-of-age beats, the portrait it tries to color by no means fairly comes into focus as superbly because the visuals do. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 16, AMC Pacific Place Could 17) CHASE HUTCHINSON
★ Monk in Items
USA, 2025 (95 min), Dir. Billy Shebar and David Roberts
The reply to every part is simply to maintain making artwork lengthy sufficient that individuals lastly get it and pronounce you a genius. No less than that’s what I discovered from this loving and insightful portrayal of avant-garde musician, director, and lifelong efficiency artist Meredith Monk. The documentary presents Monk’s work and life in a greatest-hits mosaic, that includes interviews with David Byrne, Philip Glass, and Björk. I particularly beloved seeing the evolution of sexist early reviewers calling her work narcissistic, self-centered (isn’t most artwork self-centered?), and, my favourite, “it made my cats chew one another,” to critics lastly recognizing her influence and singular imaginative and prescient. All of the whereas, she continued making delightfully freaky operas that really feel plucked from one other dimension in the identical NYC warehouse she’s lived in for the reason that ’70s together with her pet turtle, Neutron. I dream of a Seattle the place artists could make our work properly into our 80s, too. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 16–17) ROBIN EDWARDS
★ Moon
Austria, 2024 (92 min), Dir. Kurdwin Ayub
After dropping a giant combat, a well-known and top-rated Austrian martial arts fighter, Sarah (Florentina Holzinger), retires. However what’s she to do with the remainder of her life? She remains to be younger and has a whole lot of time on her arms. Out of the blue, a wealthy Jordanian affords her some huge cash to coach his sisters, who, he claims, have taken an curiosity in martial arts. It’s massive in Jordan. Sara accepts the supply, flies to Amman, will get arrange in a elaborate lodge, and shortly after is launched to the sisters, who dwell in a gaudy mansion on the outskirts of the town. The primary coaching session, nonetheless, goes badly. So does the following one. Ultimately, it turns into apparent that one thing is profoundly flawed with the sisters, their brother, his bodyguards, and the mansion. The movie turns into a thriller. What is basically occurring right here? Is Sarah’s life at risk? Moon is nice till the final 10 minutes. (SIFF Movie Middle Could 22, AMC Pacific Place Could 23) CHARLES MUDEDE
The Nature of Invisible Issues
Brazil, 2025 (90 min), Dir. Rafaela Camelo
There’s one thing so compelling about the best way kids make associates: buying and selling secrets and techniques, constructing mythology, discovering your individual language of play. In The Nature of Invisible Issues, that friendship unfolds between two younger women in a hospital—one spending her summer season trip together with her mom, a nurse, and the opposite ready for her granny to get properly. The movie passes backwards and forwards between the stark realities of the hospital, and the surreal imaginations of youngsters making an attempt to make sense of the world round them. It has moments of being genuinely unsettling (it’s a hospital in any case) however a lot of the movie is a frank portrait of two women, their two mothers, and the way all of them hunt down pleasure. (AMC Pacific Place Could 16, SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 17; streaming Could 26–June 1) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER
New Jack Fury
USA, 2025 (89 min), Dir. Lanfia Wal
When was the final time you noticed a lo-fi, neon motion film with a just about all-Black forged, knock-off Michael Jackson, and a scene pulled straight out of Avenue Fighter? In case your reply is “by no means” (like mine was), New Jack Fury is your probability. It begins with somebody getting hit with a grimy 18-inch dildo, and it ends with a dance off, swords, and betrayal. Watch this one, if solely since you received’t see anything like this self-aware, chaotic dreamscape for a very long time. (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 17, Shoreline Group Faculty Could 18; streaming Could 26–June 1) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER
The New 12 months That By no means Got here
Romania, 2024 (138 min), Dir. Bogdan Mureşanu
On one hand, The New 12 months That By no means Got here is an award-winning and critically acclaimed movie about six lives intersecting on the streets of Romania on December 20, 1989. Their tales unfold all through the day whereas Nicolae Ceaușescu’s communist regime famously falls. However with a film poster that highlights the ensemble forged, I can’t assist however think about it as some type of Love, Truly or New 12 months’s Eve rom-com starring Zac Efron and Katherine Heigl… however with a presidential execution on the finish. I’d watch the fuck out of that. (AMC Pacific Place Could 18–19; streaming Could 26–June 1) MEGAN SELING
Odd Fish
Iceland, 2024 (104 min), Dir. Snævar Sölvason
Odd Fish is Iceland’s first movie a couple of trans girl. That is the story: Two previous associates who run a comfy little restaurant in a beautiful little city that draws vacationers from Norway and different such components are about to lastly get filthy wealthy as a result of a company needs to carry guests all 12 months spherical. The restaurant can develop; the city can develop. What extra would you like? After the nice financial information, one of many restaurant’s house owners and cook dinner, Björn, comes out as a girl. This popping out was instigated by her father’s dying. The opposite proprietor, Hjalti, is smashed by this transition. He’s already homophobic. How can he work with a trans girl? Although this a part of the movie is essential, it has no surprises. And what actually amazes you’re the huge photographs that seize the chilly and treeless fantastic thing about this island from one other planet. (AMC Pacific Place Could 21–22) CHARLES MUDEDE
Paul Anka: His Means
USA, 2024 (99 min), Dir. John Maggio
I’m livid that we have been denied a screener for Paul Anka: His Means. Paul Anka is fascinating! (Shoreline Group Faculty Could 23, SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 25) MEGAN SELING
★ Paying For It
Canada, 2024 (85 min), Dir. Sook-Yin Lee
I used to be pleasantly shocked by Paying for It, Sook-Yin Lee’s adaptation of her ex-boyfriend Chester Brown’s autobiographical graphic novel of the identical identify. The story relies on the couple’s real-life breakup, wherein Lee searches for brand spanking new emotional connections with different males whereas Brown altogether ditches the thought of romantic love and visits intercourse staff every time he’s feeling attractive. Paying for It may’ve simply devolved right into a messy and overwrought sizzling tackle the ethics of monogamy and the morality of intercourse work. As an alternative, it’s a sensible and thoughtfully paced portrayal of two folks maneuvering new territory, each as people and as a bonded pair, in an effort to discover what model of affection and companionship makes them happiest. What’s proper for them might not be proper for everybody (or anybody) else, and that’s okay. It’s really very candy. Bonus: Director Sook-Yin Lee is scheduled to attend the screenings. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 17–18) MEGAN SELING
★ Raptures
Sweden, 2025 (108 min), Dir. Jon Blåhed
Shot superbly in a bucolic Scandinavia, Raptures tells the story of Rakel, a conventional and religious Christian dwelling in a small Swedish village within the Thirties. As her more and more delusional alcoholic husband, Teodor, breaks away from the church to start out preaching his personal messages that come straight from God (purple! flag!), she should navigate her personal conflicting emotions and beliefs because the anxieties of a looming world warfare simmer within the background. Will a big crystal arc present as much as save the believers? Is a Teodor intercourse get together within the sectarian cult home actually a part of God’s plan? It’s Ingmar Bergman meets Midsommar, and it’s the primary function movie ever with a principal dialogue within the minority language Meänkieli. It’s additionally brilliantly acted and completely value watching. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 23–24) MICHAEL McKINNEY
★ Prepared or Not
Eire, 2025 (83 min), Dir. Claire Frances Byrne
Dublin, 1998: A summer season of firsts for Katie (Ruby Conway Dunne) and her associates. First kisses. First drinks. Realizing for the primary time that the world, and boys, imply to eat up teenage women. Conway Dunne and Molly Byrne, who performs her finest pal Danni within the movie, teeter believably on the sting of adolescence. When no person is watching, they’re playful youngsters. In school and events, they’re youngsters making an attempt their finest at being adults. Regardless that I didn’t look after all of the voiceover (of the “document scratch, isn’t my life soo loopy” selection) or that the script appeared to have left what ought to have been subtext in massive daring letters, I appreciated this film as a result of these youngsters acted like actual youngsters—swearing, crying, and dealing with every part very poorly. I simply needed to know in the event that they’d be okay in the long run. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 21–22) VIVIAN McCALL
Remaining Native
USA, 2025 (87 min), Paige Bethmann
Teenage cross-country phenom Ku Stevens aspires to depart his small Nevada city for school, however alongside the best way, he wrestles with shadows of his Indigenous household’s American expertise. At its finest, this documentary affords an unblinking have a look at bodily and cultural violence perpetrated by white Individuals, all whereas humanely framing Native Individuals’ persevering with efforts to grieve, course of, and persevere. The movie’s strongest moments—notably Stevens retracing his great-grandfather’s 50-mile working escape from a brutal boarding faculty—are hampered by poor pacing and modifying selections. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 17–18; streaming Could 26–June 1) SAM MACHKOVECH
Riefenstahl
Germany, 2024 (116 min), Dir. Andres Veiel
For many years, folks have debated Leni Riefenstahl’s movies. Was her Hitler-sanctioned documentary, The Triumph of the Will, historic filmmaking or Nazi propaganda? Whereas 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’ each the 1930 selection and the up to date variations of right now.” (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 20, SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 22) MEGAN SELING
The Secure Home
Switzerland, 2025 (90 min), Dir. Lionel Baier
Revolution! Sixties Paris! A Tenenbaum-esque multigenerational residence! A lot to like about this movie, proper? Mais non, The Secure Home falls flat. Happening throughout the social uprisings in Could 1968, France, the movie focuses on the views of a midway eccentric middle-class household current largely domestically whereas violence ensues out within the streets. The movie makes little (if any) actual commentary on the politics of the time, and lacks any actual emotion through household dynamics. And whereas I personally imagine {that a} movie can survive—if not thrive—on fashion over substance with the right creativeness, The Secure Home is tepid at finest in its artwork path as properly. The “quirky” visible and modifying tips are drained, and the voiceover muddies fairly than helps the narrative alongside. Whereas there are wisps of Tati and Godard within the DNA of this movie, you’re higher off simply visiting these administrators’ movies. Or Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, which can also be in regards to the Could ’68 uprisings, however good. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 21, Shoreline Group Faculty Could 22) MICHAEL McKINNEY
★ Sally
USA, 2025 (103 min), Dir. Cristina Costantini
It wasn’t till seeing Sally that I spotted flying into area could also be one of many much less spectacular accomplishments on astronaut Sally Experience’s resume. As a result of you understand what’s more durable than getting 4 levels at Stanford, pushing by way of years of grueling bodily coaching, and getting taken severely as certainly one of fewer than a dozen girls at NASA within the Eighties? Bearing the brunt of the world’s misogyny whereas hiding the truth that you’re homosexual, even out of your closest family and friends for worry of the way it may influence your hard-earned profession. In Sally, Experience’s long-time accomplice Tam O’Shaughnessy introduces us to the aspect of Experience that Experience was too scared to share whereas she was alive. We get to fulfill the complicated, susceptible girl behind the assured public determine. It’s as inspiring as you’d count on a documentary a couple of trailblazer to be, however with a hefty, bittersweet, even heartbreaking, dose of actuality. (Shoreline Group Faculty Could 21, SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 22) MEGAN SELING
Salsa Lives
Colombia, 2025 (101 min), Dir. Juan Carvajal
Do you know salsa, the dance, not the sauce, was born in New York Metropolis? Present rhythms in Cuba, Cuba Son and Afro-Cuban rumba merged with American jazz to create the hip-swiveling dance. Since its Huge Apple inception, salsa has unfold the world over. However, nowhere is it extra fashionable today than in Cali, Colombia. Salsa Lives traces that spicy historical past in what’s alleged to be a vibrant—NOT MILD—expertise. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 23, Shoreline Group Faculty Could 24; streaming Could 26–June 1) NATHALIE GRAHAM
★ Sanatorium Beneath the Signal of the Hourglass
United Kingdom, 2024 (76 min), Dir. Stephen Quay and Timothy Quay
To the skin world, in his house nation, Józef’s father is lifeless. However contained in the partitions of this dingy, distant sanatorium, he’s alive. Form of. His dying merely hasn’t arrived but. Time is completely different right here. It lags. It stretches, skitters, and loops. However that’s grief for you, rendered right here in lovely and surreal cease movement. I appreciated this film sufficient to purchase the brief story assortment it was primarily based on—Polish Jewish author Bruno Schulz’s meditation on his father’s dying (revealed 5 years earlier than the Gestapo shot the author lifeless). However I’m affected person. I get pleasure from questioning what’s occurring. In the event you can’t stand ambiguity, Sanatorium Beneath the Signal of the Hourglass might have you ever checking the signal of your watch. Stephen and Timothy Quay followers will know the movie is a sequel of kinds—their most well-known work is 1986’s Avenue of Crocodiles, one other Schulz adaptation. (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 18, Could 23) VIVIAN McCALL
Scarecrow in a Backyard of Cucumbers
USA, 1972 (82 min), Dir. Robert J. Kaplan
If you’re a fan of any of the next, then Scarecrow in a Backyard of Cucumbers is a must-watch for you: the early movies of John Waters, vanilla ice-cream cones, ostrich-feather boas, and Buster Keaton-style bodily comedy. Robert J. Kaplan (whose solely different directorial credit score is the pornographic Jaws spoof Gums) directs this long-lost camp masterpiece starring Warhol celebrity and transgender icon Holly Woodlawn as she flees her boring Kansas upbringing to make it as an actress in New York Metropolis. Alongside the best way, she meets an eccentric forged of characters, together with a sailor-mouthed nun, misandrist twin sisters, and a revered lounge singer named Mary Poppins (performed by fellow Warhol celebrity Tally Brown). I’m so happy to see this movie obtain a snazzy restoration and a correct theater screening—I predict a Criterion launch is on the horizon. (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 24) AUDREY VANN
Seeds
USA, 2025 (122 min), Dir. Brittany Shyne
Director and cinematographer Shyne spent 9 years watching and listening to Black farmers in rural Georgia, and the tip result’s impossibly lovely. Like several documentary, you see these households by way of her eyes, however from the households, you hardly ever really feel the self-consciousness that comes from being watched—which simply reveals how a lot time and endurance Shyne put into this venture. Shot all in black and white, the movie is quiet, permitting for the lengthy, languid pauses of rural life. But it surely solely takes just a few scenes to totally pull you in. This movie received Sundance’s finest documentary for a cause. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 17–18) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER
★ She’s the He
USA, 2025 (81 min), Dir. Siobhan McCarthy
This queer teen comedy begins, like many teen comedies do, with a harebrained deception scheme. Taking part in on conservative hysteria surrounding all-gender bogs, She’s the He finds finest associates Ethan (Misha Osherovich) and Alex (Nico Carney) pretending to be trans to enter the ladies’ locker room in school, main Ethan to the conclusion that she really is trans. The fast-witted movie with a majority trans forged checks off the highschool film tropes, together with makeover scenes, a blooper reel, and raunchy jokes, whereas creating tender moments the place Osherovich’s full-hearted efficiency makes the coming-out story shine. It’s a whole lot of enjoyable! And the costumes have been so cool, I went again to the credit to trace down who the designer was (Leah Morrison) and creepily requested her non-public Instagram. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 19, AMC Pacific Place Could 20) ROBIN EDWARDS
★ Shepherds
Canada (Québec), 2025 (113 min), Dir. Sophie Deraspe
On this humorous, existential drama, a burned-out Québécois advertising government sends a fuck-off e mail to his bosses, provides away his possessions, maxes out his bank cards, and flees to the south of France. Dreaming of an easier life, he needs to turn into a shepherd. He clumsily introduces himself to native farmers who instantly clock him as a privileged metropolis boy with no clue what he’s doing. He stumbles from one farm to the following, debating work, God, and the remedy of sheep with cussed, set-in-their-ways French sheep wranglers till he lastly lands his massive break herding within the idyllic Alps. Whereas struggling to get a piece visa, he meets a sizzling and charming bureaucrat who, at the same time as she’s denying his paperwork, finds herself received over by his reckless sincerity. Shepherds is messy, earnest, and really, very French. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 23, Shoreline Group Faculty Could 25; streaming Could 26–June 1) BREE McKENNA
Slanted
USA, 2025 (104 min), Dir. Amy Wang
Think about if The Substance was about youngsters as an alternative of grownup celebrities, and as an alternative of eager to defy getting older, it was about altering race. Slanted, the latest venture from Amy Wang, facilities on Joan Huang (Shirley Chang) and her pursuit of absolute assimilation: changing into promenade queen. To slot in, Huang goes below the knife to alter herself from Asian to white. Slanted mixes surrealism, slapstick comedy, and physique horror. The folks appear to find it irresistible—it received the Narrative Jury Award at SXSW— although they do say the center drags a bit. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 24–25) NATHALIE GRAHAM
Sons
Denmark, 2024 (111 min), Dir. Gustav Möller
Sons is the feel-bad movie of the fest that, for all its bleak reflections about violence, punishment, and humanity, finally ends up saying surprisingly little. It is a disgrace, as writer-director Gustav Möller’s earlier movie, The Responsible (SIFF 2018), was a well-crafted work of real dread. (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 23, Could 25) CHASE HUTCHINSON
Sorry, Child
USA, 2025 (101 min), Dir. Eva Victor
After her world is shattered by her advisor sexually assaulting her, grad scholar Agnes (author and first-time director Eva Victor) makes an attempt to regain management of her life whereas dwelling in the identical sleepy New England school city and taking a professor job at her faculty. Victor deftly navigates a minefield of a subject with humor, grace, and quiet however highly effective authenticity, resisting clichés about survivors in favor of demonstrating the sudden therapeutic properties of stray kittens, form strangers, and a very good sandwich. The guts of the movie is Agnes’s unconditional relationship together with her ride-or-die lesbian finest pal Lydie (Naomi Ackie), who helps her all through her restoration regardless of shifting away and doesn’t hesitate to contemplate serving to Agnes commit arson. Backside line: An astonishing debut and an irrefutable case for extra films made by girls about their experiences. Please see this movie. (Closing Evening: SIFF Cinema Downtown, Could 24) JULIANNE BELL
★ Souleymane’s Story
France, 2024 (92 min), Dir. Boris Lojkine
He has no papers. He comes from Guinea. He’s younger (mid-20s) and Black. His identify is Souleymane, and in two days, he should, throughout his utility for asylum, persuade French authorities that he was overwhelmed and imprisoned in Guinea for his political beliefs. The issue? He’s not political in any respect. He got here to Paris to work. And the work he does is on the backside of the town’s gig economic system: He delivers meals orders on an electrical bike. The biker can’t afford to be late or to get an order flawed as a result of that may lead to a nasty assessment, and a nasty assessment would end result within the app shutting him out of the community and out of much-needed work. To make issues worse, he has to share half of his meager earnings with Emmanuel, whose face is used to open and function the app (as Souleymane can’t legally work in France). The Paris we see throughout the sprint from one order to the following is way from the one that attracts hundreds of thousands of vacationers. (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 22, Could 24; streaming Could 26–June 1) CHARLES MUDEDE
Spermageddon
Norway, 2024 (80 min), Dir. Tommy Wirkola and Rasmus A. Sivertsen
I may name Spermageddon a giant silly cum joke. However that may be promoting it brief. It’s about ballsack, too. (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 16, SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 18) VIVIAN McCALL
★ Starman
USA, 2025 (85 min), Dir. Robert Stone
House exploration used to imply one thing, rattling it. As of this writing, Katy Perry and co. simply accomplished their weird 11-minute area journey bankrolled by the losers which might be actively ending the planet we dwell on, so I acquired a kick out of listening to from Gentry Lee. Lee is a jet propulsion scientist, robotics engineer, and sci-fi writer who has labored at NASA for the reason that early ’70s and LOVES what he does. Lee yell-talks straight on the digital camera about his work on missions like Viking, marveling at how massive of a deal it was to truly make it to Mars, and what it felt prefer to be within the room “fixing issues that nobody had ever had earlier than” (we’re speaking prodigies doing STEM with a fraction of the help of right now). Starman isn’t saying something new, but when you may get on Lee’s degree, it’s type of mind-blowing to listen to it informed from an actual one. Come for the gold Voyager document, keep for the footage of Carl Sagan slaying a turtleneck. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 16, Shoreline Group Faculty Could 17) EMILY NOKES
Suburban Fury
USA, 2024 (120 min) , Dir. Robinson Devor
“There comes a degree the place the one approach to make a press release is to choose up a gun,” says Sara Jane Moore, the lady who tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford in San Francisco in 1975. Suburban Fury is directed by Robinson Devor, the identical man who introduced us Zoo, with slightly assist from The Stranger’s personal Charles Mudede. Devor beneficial properties historic entry to Moore, who sheds gentle in an unpolished, usually unreliable interview on how she went from a conservative suburban housewife to an FBI informant on radical political teams to an nearly murderer. Suburban Fury tells Moore’s story on the similar time it paints an image of a decade of radical politics, braiding in footage of the Black Panthers, the Homosexual Liberation motion, the Attica Jail Insurrection, the United Farm Employees motion, and Patty Hearst’s kidnapping. Moore turns into satisfied that killing Ford will expose the machinations of a authorities not for the folks and encourage a revolution. Whereas it facilities on the Nineteen Seventies, the political second it captures doesn’t really feel far off in 2025. (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 21, Could 23) NATHALIE GRAHAM
Sudden Outbursts of Feelings
Finland, 2024 (97 min), Dir. Paula Korva
Sudden Outbursts of Feelings will get more and more superficial the longer it carries on. It tells the story of a girl who, when not working at a journey company, is burdened with soothing the delicate ego of her insecure boyfriend as his appearing profession appears to have stalled. She begins to query her life and relationship, simply as mentioned boyfriend suggests they open their relationship and attend a intercourse get together the place she meets somebody new who will quickly upend all she thought she knew about herself. No less than, that’s what it feels prefer it must be, in idea. However the execution is way too slender, and it’s oddly afraid to put naked the physique or the soul. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 18–19) CHASE HUTCHINSON
★ Summer time’s Digicam
South Korea, 2025 (82 min), Dir. Divine Sung
A younger woman discovers a secret after creating movie on her deceased father’s digital camera. She additionally realizes that she is a lesbian after taking images of her faculty’s fashionable soccer star. Both of these plots might sound like they comprise drama, however the pacing is peaceable; in any respect the moments you would possibly count on turmoil, there may be as an alternative a surprisingly frictionless story. It’s refined. Perhaps too refined. But it surely’s very superbly shot, tender in its understatement, and culminates in a very shifting last scene. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 21–22; streaming Could 26–June 1) EMILY NOKES
Tales From the Magic Backyard
Czech Republic, 2025 (71 min), Dir.. David Súkup, Patrik Pašš, Leon Vidmar, and Jean-Claude Rozec
LA stop-motion, ethereally animated film about kids making an attempt to fill the void they really feel after dropping their grandmother, their household’s storyteller. Critics ponder who’s the viewers for this film as a result of it’s positively a kids’s film, however the subject material is, properly, kinda morbid. Additionally they say it’s sluggish. Nonetheless, a reviewer at Loud and Clear mentioned it’s “a beautiful stop-motion animated story that’s each an ode to the resilience of youngsters and a reminder that we’re by no means not going to wish to really feel secure and taken care of.” (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 18, Could 25) NATHALIE GRAHAM
The Issues You Kill
Canada, 2025 (113 min), Dir. Alireza Khatami
You don’t need to learn interviews with author and director Alireza Khatami to know that he’s a fan of David Lynch: It’s throughout his work. It’s in the best way he calmly bends actuality; the best way he turns a anonymous Turkish metropolis into a personality within the movie; and the best way he kills his central characters. Most individuals have described The Issues You Kill as a thriller, however I don’t assume it has fairly sufficient stress to earn that title. It does have relentless foreshadowing: a pistol tucked in a water tank, mirror pictures that turn into actuality, the haunting phrase “kill the sunshine” leaking from a nightmare. However the narrative itself is quiet and methodical. The unraveling of 1 man as he faces his personal impotence, an ailing mom, an abusive father, and an inconceivable ethical dilemma. (AMC Pacific Place Could 23–24) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER
★ Time Journey Is Harmful
United Kingdom, 2024 (99 min), Dir. Chris Studying
British besties Megan and Ruth run a classic store referred to as Cha Cha Cha. They discover a time machine within the alley and off they go, recklessly nicking gadgets from any period they please to inventory their cabinets (and typically simply to get takeaway from a closed restaurant). A gaggle of inventors become involved as a result of the machine is damaging the universe, after all. Pay attention, this movie is deeply goofy. Nearly each line of dialogue is a joke. I’d not name the funds “massive.” However the humor is British, which fits a good distance—it’s styled as a mockumentary however is doing the tropes properly sufficient that you just’re legit having fun with the references? I used to be skeptical, I used to be, however then for no matter cause the extra ridiculous shit they added, the extra I assumed, “yeah okay, swing massive, why not.” The retro vibe is enjoyable, and the characters are likeable. Simply eat an edible, love. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 23–24, streaming Could 26–June 1) EMILY NOKES
Tinā
New Zealand, 2024 (103 min), Dir. Miki Magasiva
Tinā (which implies “mom” in Samoan) is a component Sister Act 2 (with wealthy youngsters, although), half Samoan grief opera, and half slow-burn faculty drama set in post-earthquake Christchurch. After dropping her daughter within the 2011 quake, Mareta—a grief-stricken however quietly formidable instructor—takes a job at a fancy Catholic faculty the place the scholars are privileged, the employees are casually racist, and the choir doesn’t but exist. She builds one from scratch, connecting with emotionally closed-off youngsters whereas working by way of her personal loss. There’s class stress, private tragedy, and who doesn’t love when all roads in the highschool film result in a high-stakes music competitors? The pacing is sluggish, however the movie is carried by Mareta’s low-key depth and culminates in a genuinely very shifting last efficiency. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 18–19) BREE McKENNA
To a Land Unknown
Greece, 2024 (106 min), Dir. Mahdi Fleifel
This one seems dope, in a tense, traumatic means. To a Land Unknown is the story of Chatila, a Palestinian refugee dwelling in Athens, and barely making ends meet. He’s caught in between existences—longing to get out of Athens and escape to journey whereas hovering on the periphery of Athens’ seedy underbelly. Chatila meets and connects with quite a lot of different refugees, folks whom the viewers might begin to look after, solely to finally discard them for his personal ends. As The Guardian writes, “[Director Mahdi Fleifel] permits us to spend money on characters who’re to vanish from the story, so we can also expertise the emotional wasteland wherein Chatila lives.” (AMC Pacific Place Could 23, Shoreline Group Faculty Could 24) NATHALIE GRAHAM
★ To Kill a Mongolian Horse
Malaysia, 2024 (97 min), Dir. Xiaoxuan Jiang
Up to now few years, the up to date Western has emerged as a style whose finest movies are sometimes directed by girls, a welcome shift from the normal Western’s realm of heteronormative and patriarchal values. Chloé Zhao’s The Rider and Jane Campion’s The Energy Of The Canine come to thoughts, and with To Kill A Mongolian Horse, Xiaoxuan Jiang joins this pantheon in her directorial debut. Her movie units itself aside, although, by being set in her native Inside Mongolia (an autonomous area inside China) fairly than the American West. It’s an interesting have a look at a person who’s caught between eager to honor his tradition’s traditions in a countryside that’s quickly altering, and making an attempt to make a dwelling within the trendy metropolis, a spot he feels he doesn’t actually belong. With modernity itself rising because the metaphysical foe of the cowboy of the twenty first century, the up to date Western has turn into a way more complicated style than its conventional counterpart. (AMC Pacific Place Could 18, Could 20; streaming Could 26–June 1) MICHAEL McKINNEY
Transfers
Argentina, 2024 (90 min), Dir. Nicolás Gil Lavedra
Transfers doesn’t recount the total historical past of Argentina’s Soiled Battle interval of 1976–83. As an alternative, this documentary focuses on one central and terrifying facet of that army dictatorship’s reign: a biweekly collection of “dying flights” that dumped 1000’s of political prisoners to their brutal ends. By largely eradicating political pretext from the story—solely temporary mentions of socialism or communism—Transfers hammers house the utter depravity of the Argentinian regime for its actions, and in addition simply attracts out metaphors for, er, sure trendy regimes. Argentina’s administration freely destroyed inner data, lied to the media, and focused delicate offenses with brutality… but additionally loved many years of relative impunity till persistent efforts turned up outcomes. These efforts are bravely recounted by remaining, dwelling advocates in a vital documentary that’s admittedly robust to observe, particularly when victims’ moms flood metropolis streets to protest, solely to turn into targets themselves. (SIFF Movie Middle Could 18, Could 20; streaming Could 26–June 1) SAM MACHKOVECH
Twinless
USA, 2025 (100 min) , Dir. James Sweeney
Fellas, is it homosexual to bond with a person over your shared grief after dropping your twin whereas additionally pondering your home in a disconnected trendy world? James Sweeney, the sensible author, director, and co-star of Twinless, says in all probability sure (complimentary), and a lot extra with this terrific dramedy that we will’t inform you nearly something about in order to not spoil the darkish enjoyable. What will be mentioned is that Twinless sees Sweeney and Dylan O’Brien enjoying two troubled Portland guys who meet at an emotional assist group for individuals who’ve misplaced an similar sibling. Nonetheless, nothing is what it appears, and the movie turns into the funniest, most chaotic, and finally most emotionally impactful film to ever embody key scenes surrounding attending Seattle Kraken video games. (SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 24–25) CHASE HUTCHINSON
★ U Are the Universe
Ukraine, 2024 (101 min), Dir. Pavlo Ostrikov
U Are the Universe is an indie drama a couple of man left adrift in area after the world as we all know it’s destroyed, who kinds a reference to what could be the final different survivor. It’s creatively constructed and carves out its personal distinct place within the well-worn style, with the set design and visible results proving outstanding, even earlier than you be taught that Ukrainian filmmaker Pavlo Ostrikov made it throughout the ongoing Russian invasion. It’s a love story of kinds with loads of mirth, but additionally a mournful meditation, ripping the air out of your lungs when it counts. (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 22, Could 25) CHASE HUTCHINSON
Unclickable
Greece, 2024 (113 min), Dir. Babis Makridis
Advert fraud, wherein fraudsters present pretend folks pretend web sites that entice actual advertisements for revenue, might account for each third greenback spent on digital promoting, and it’s a hair-on-fire downside that director Babis Makridis lays squarely on the ft of Google and Fb. The film is convincing: I purchase that advert fraud is a large downside, doubtless killing native newspapers, funding misinformation, and plain ripping folks off. For these causes alone, governments ought to power massive tech to take care of it. I additionally purchase Makridis’s ethical revulsion. However for a film about what’s supposedly one of many largest legal schemes of our age, it’s boring, and the soundtrack (largely fingers rocking backwards and forwards between two notes on a Casio keyboard) practically drove me insane. (SIFF Movie Middle Could 19, SIFF Cinema Uptown Could 22; streaming Could 26–June 1) VIVIAN McCALL
Beneath the Volcano
Poland, 2024 (102 min), Dir. Damian Kocur
In Beneath the Volcano, a Ukrainian household’s chill seashore journey to the Canary Islands turns existential in a single day, as Russia launches its full-scale assault on Kyiv. Whereas sunscreened Brits chug sangria close by, Anastasiia, Roman, Sofiia, and Fedir spiral into panic, nervousness, and guilt whereas stranded in a paradise turned hellscape. Director Damian Kocur and co-writer Marta Konarzewska dial up the stress superbly, letting household resentments bubble below the picture-perfect floor whereas within the shadow of a literal sleeping volcano. Via Gen Z daughter Sofiia’s eyes, we watch the unusual numbness of survival unfold in actual time. Grim, visually beautiful, and well timed as ever, Beneath the Volcano will hit you in your intestine. (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 16, Shoreline Group Faculty Could 20; streaming Could 26–June 1) MICHAEL McKINNEY
Undercover
Spain, 2024 (118 min), Dir. Arantxa Echevarría
Spanish thriller primarily based on a real story! The late Nineties! A younger feminine police officer in San Sebastian infiltrates the Basque terrorist group, ETA! Lead actress Carolina Yuste (identified for Sky Excessive—however not the Sky High Disney film a couple of highschool for superheroes) stuns, in accordance with reviewers. (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 17, Could 20) NATHALIE GRAHAM
Viktor
Denmark, 2024 (89 min), Dir. Olivier Sarbil
Viktor is a samurai-obsessed, deaf, Ukrainian photojournalist who needs he have been a soldier. Director Olivier Sarbil actually, actually needs you to know all that, however Viktor is at its finest when Sarbil will get out of the best way. All through (particularly within the too-perfect ending) Sarbil and Viktor are telling us two separate tales, and I favor Viktor’s. His sullenness clashes with the swelling music and close-ups of bombing victims’ arms in plastic luggage. It’s refreshing—they could air raid you each evening, however they’ll by no means take your freedom to be slightly bitchy once you get a haircut you don’t like. In order for you a straight documentary about this warfare, watch 20 Days in Mariupol. In the event you’re extra of a vibes man and it received’t piss you off to observe a movie a couple of photographer who by no means as soon as provides us a transparent view of his images, Viktor’s value your time. (SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 17, Could 19; streaming Could 26–June 1) BRIGID KENNEDY
The Village Subsequent to Paradise
Somalia, 2024 (113 min), Dir. Mo Harawe
A breakout from the 2024 Cannes Movie Pageant, The Village Subsequent to Paradise delivers a “delicate and empathetic” view of Somalia, “an underappreciated and infrequently vilified nation.” The movie facilities on a household struggling to not solely survive, however thrive in a village the place drone strikes fill the sky and dwelling till tomorrow by no means appears like a certain factor. (SIFF Movie Middle Could 19, Could 21) NATHALIE GRAHAM
The Wailing
Spain, 2024 (107 min), Dir. Pedro Martín-Calero
Don’t confuse this with the Korean flick by the identical identify. This Wailing is a exact, stylized, femme-centered horror movie. Martín-Calero—beforehand finest identified for guiding a music video for the Weeknd—breaks the narrative into three distinct tales:, every led by a distinct younger girl that’s stalked by (or stalking) one thing inescapable. (Shoreline Group Faculty Could 17, AMC Pacific Place Could 25) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER
Waves
Czech Republic, 2024 (131 min), Dir. Jiří Mádl
Whereas watching Waves, which is about in Soviet-era Czechoslovakia, I acquired misplaced in its marvelous lighting and wardrobe. I couldn’t get sufficient of each, scene after scene. True, the movie’s story is related (journalists going through censorship or worse, dictators oppressing freedoms, and the like), however, finally, it didn’t say way more than this: “democracy dies in silence” (and, on this movie, radio silence). (Shoreline Group Faculty Could 21, SIFF Cinema Downtown Could 24; streaming Could 26–June 1) CHARLES MUDEDE
★ Wolf Land
USA, 2025 (71 min), Dir. Sarah Hoffman
We should always get this out of the best way: Wolf Land is mainly a relationship profile for its featured participant. Certain, the documentary thoughtfully explores the stress between wildlife advocates and ranchers, however then Daniel Curry’s mop of curly hair rides into the prairie, and, properly, GOOSH. Tall, good-looking, form to animals, drops dad jokes, advocates intelligently for animal cohabitation, bridges political divides, and lives together with his many pets (together with three cutie-pie Dobermanns, who seem in a framed picture in his Jap Washington cabin labeled “The Lads,” ARE YOU KIDDING ME). In excellent news, there’s extra right here, notably how Curry and a rancher eke out a candy, stunning friendship. (Shoreline Group Faculty Could 17, AMC Pacific Place Could 18) SAM MACHKOVECH
