Billed as the longest running film festival in the Americas, the San Francisco International Film Festival returns for its 68th iteration this year from April 17th through 27th. While I myself am located across the country on the East Coast, thanks to the power of virtual screenings I’ll be providing coverage where available. That said, if you are local to the Bay Area you really should take the chance to make it out as their lineup of films run the gamut from potential awards contenders to strong Canadian films and more.
Canadian Films
Of course I would be remiss if I did not mention the handful of Canadian produced and centered films at SFFILM. First up we have 40 Acres (dir. R. T. Thorne in his feature debut) starring Danielle Deadwyler (Till). Set in a post apocalyptic world where the death of most animals has led to arable land being all the more precious, Deadwyler protects the land that has been in her family since the American Civil War. 40 Acres debuted at TIFF 2024.
Also debuting at TIFF and making its way to the Bay Area is Sharp Corner (dir. Jason Buxton) starring Ben Foster and Cobie Smulders. A Irish-Canadian production, the film follows the different reactions of a couple when a car crashes through their house – one tries to move forward while the other obsesses on how to prevent it from happening again. With director Buxton’s debut film Blackbird winning best Canadian First Feature at TIFF, this one is one to watch for Canadian film lovers
On the animated front we have two films – Hola Frida (dir. Andre Kadi and Karine Vezina) and Endless Cookie (Seth and Peter Scriver). A French-Canadian collaboration, Hola Frida adapts a French children’s book telling the early life of artist Frida Kahlo. Meanwhile, Endless Cookie is an animated autobiographical documentary of the lives of the half-brother directors and the complications growing up with one being half-indigenous and the other not. I had actually seen this virtually when it debuted at Sundance this year and will definitely have a review for this one soon.
The final Canadian film I want to highlight is The Track (dir. Ryan Sidhoo), a Cool Runnings-esque sports story of a team of Bosnian lugers who dream of representing their country at the Olympics in a time when many only see their country for its war-torn history. Director Ryan Sidhoo is certainly well versed in sports documentaries, with Handle with Care: The Legend of the Notic Streetball Crew being nominated for three Canadian Screen Awards and the series True North – Inside the Rise of Toronto Basketball winning a Webby.
Get a Head Start on the Oscars
Last year, four of the five nominees for Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars actually played in competition at SFFILM – Black Box Diaries, Soundtrack of a Coup d’Etat, Porcelain War, and Sugarcane. So if you want to get a head start on your Death Race now, it would behoove you to at least give a look over the documentaries SFFILM has on offer that were also at Sundance.
In addition to Endless Cookie which I noted above, on the International Competition side we have Cutting through Rocks (dir. Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni), a documentary about Sara Shahverdi, the first female elected to her rural Iranian village council and the backlash she faces. Cutting through Rocks won the World Cinema Documentary Jury Award at Sundance.
We also have How to Build a Library (dir. Chris King and Maia Lekow), a story about two women who embark on the eight year mission to renovate and decolonize the formerly white-only library in downtown Nairobi.
On the US Documentary side of things, there are many films to keep an eye on. BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions (dir. Kahlil Joseph) is an experimental exploration of afrofuturism and the question of how to properly document Black stories. I had actually seen this at Sundance and will have a review of this one for sure. Similarly, Seeds (dir. Brittany Shyne) almost acts as a documentary version of 40 Acres noted above in that it tells the story of Black farmers who have been working their family’s land in the American South for over a century. Seed won the US Documentary Jury Award at Sundance.
We have a couple of films focused on deafness, with Deaf President Now! (dir. Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim) telling the story of a 1988 student protest demanding a deaf president for a university for the deaf and hard of hearing, and Marlee Matin: Not Alone Anymore (dir. Shoshannah Stern) following the life of the eponymous Academy Award winner. We also feature another strong female role model in astronaut Sally Ride in Sally (dir. Cristina Costantini).
Rounding out the Sundance contenders making their way to SFFILM are Come See Me in the Good Light (dir. Ryan White) – a film about poet laureate Andrea Gibson and how they and their partner Megan Falley deal with Andrea’s terminal cancer diagnosis; Folktales (dir. Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady) about Norwegian teenagers who enroll in “folk high school” which involves being dropped in the arctic wilderness for one year; and The Dating Game (dir. Violet Du Feng), about the effects of the one child policy on men trying to enter the dating market
And Many More
Of course, these are not all that SFFILM has to offer! If you love international and Asian film, we have films from and about Korea (3670, Winter in Sokcho, Isle Child), Japan (Cloud which was Japan’s submission to the Oscars last year and Happyend which I covered at NYFF last year). Viet and Nam from Vietnam, Shadowbox from India, and The Botanist from China (which debuted at Berlin earlier this year).
One special shoutout I want to give is to conspiracy theory comedy Operation Taco Gary’s starring Simon Rex (Red Rocket), Jason Biggs (American Pie), Brenda Song (The Last Showgirl) and Doug Jones (The Shape of Water) while also being directed and written by Michael Kvamme, who co-founded the comedy video site Funny or Die alongside Will Ferrell and Adam McKay.
In any case, I hope that if you are local to the Bay Area you take time to come out to SFFILM!
