Even a venerable event just like the San Francisco Film Festival faces challenges lately.
Like many festivals across the country, SFFILM has to contend with a decline within the variety of places where movies are shown. Since the pandemic, the Bay Area has been hit hard by the temporary or everlasting closure of major venues.
As a result, the 67th annual SFFILM in 2024 will likely be leaner – with a program lasting five days moderately than 11 days as prior to now.
But irrespective of, the festival stays as special as ever. It runs through April 28, with an encore program May 2-4 on the Roxie Theater in San Francisco.
The event begins with East Bay native Sean Wang's “Dìdi,” a Sundance Film Festival winner, a couple of charismatic 13-year-old Taiwanese American about to enter highschool. (It's also showing May 2 on the Roxie.) The festival ends April 28 with Josh Margolin's charmer “Thelma,” which stars 94-year-old June Squibb as a senior citizen and Ethan Hunt targets the idiot, who cheated on her.
In between lies a stellar array of offerings, including gripping dramas, thought-provoking documentaries and even a romantic dramedy featuring two incredibly beautiful people snuggling up together.
There isn't a nasty film within the series and plenty of works have references to the Bay Area.
For SFFILM's inaugural selection, programmers have once more chosen a piece by an East Bay filmmaker. Last 12 months, it was Oakland's Peter Nicks who brought his “Stephen Curry: Underrated” to the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. This 12 months, it's Wang's turn to shine with “Dìdi,” a movie that many fell in love with when it premiered on the Sundance Film Festival.
It's easy to see why.
Filmed in Fremont, the Oscar nominee's coming-of-age dramedy is about in the summertime of 2008, a pivotal time within the lifetime of 13-year-old Taiwanese-American skateboarder Chris Wang (Izaac Wang, in a career-defining performance). . “Dìdi” addresses all-too-comprehensible moments that cause growing pains, comparable to: E.g. clumsily attempting to impress someone you've fallen in love with, or hanging out along with your brothers and stepping into trouble. The best sequences, nevertheless, revolve across the brittle, tense relationship between Chris and his exhausted mother (Joan Chen, who may even be honored with the SFFILM Persistence of Vision Prize on April 25). They are sometimes at one another's throats, but over time they learn to grasp and appreciate one another higher.
“Dìdi” encores on the Roxie in San Francisco on May 4 at 8:30 p.m. ($20; roxie.com). The film opens in local cinemas on July twenty sixth.
Some of this 12 months's best movies come from the documentary category. Here are a few of our favorites.
“Sugarcane”: Former Oakland resident Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie direct an explosive, award-winning account of the horrific abuses committed by Catholic priests and nuns on young Canadian Indigenous students at a boarding school. NoiseCat's family's painful legacy is incorporated into the film, as is the Williams Lake First Nation's investigation into St. Joseph's Mission. “Sugarcane” travels to the darkest of places, however the trauma experienced is treated with care and respect (a final sequence underscores this sensitivity; NoiseCat and Kassie decide to focus their cameras on an exterior shot moderately than the harrowing conversation that takes place). ). )
Demonstration: 4:15 p.m., April 28 on the Premier Theater; NoiseCat and Kassie are expected to be present.
“Black Box Diaries”: Japanese journalist Shiori Ito's eight-year struggle to acquire justice after she was sexually assaulted by a veteran journalist with close ties to the prime minister led to mandatory changes in judicial laws and social structures. The difference within the narrative of this grueling, harrowing climb to carry the journalist accountable is that Ito turns the cameras on herself. The result’s an honest portrait of a determined journalist and illustrates how the system continued to fail her. “Black Box Diaries” is a couple of courageous woman who’s willing to step directly into the road of cruel public opinion to stop others from having to endure the hell she endured.
Demonstrations: April 26, 6:00 p.m., screening on the Marina Theater (Ito's performance is scheduled); and a couple of:15 p.m. screening April 27 on the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
“Counted”: Sausalito's Vicki Abeles looks on the nation's deep-rooted dislike and even fear of math after which shows why its application can result in a greater life for all. Her insightful documentary travels from Alameda to New York and beyond, showing that math doesn't should be a frightening subject. Counted Out speaks with award-winning Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin, who talks about why newsrooms, not only students, need to raised understand the numbers game so that they can hold private and non-private institutions more accountable. Abeles' documentary speaks to a spread of innovators and educators – including the late civil rights activist Bob Moses – about developing a greater understanding of mathematics, especially those of us who’ve been told we simply don’t have any sense of numbers. As “Counted Out” suggests, anyone can prove these critics flawed after which use the mathematics to back up that statement.
Demonstration: April 28, 5 p.m., Marina Theater; Abeles and others involved within the film are expected to be in attendance.
“The Cats of Gokogu Shrine”: Cat lovers will purr over this meditative, measured documentary that shows the rowdy but lovable cats gathering around a Shinto shrine in Ushimado, Japan. Anyone looking exclusively for footage of cute kittens playing must be prepared: filmmaker Kazuhiro Soda is equally all for the residents and the caretakers around them. As we discover, not everyone seems to be obsessed with these four-legged, furry friends who wish to use the garden as a rest room. Soda's observations are slow and unhurried, but in addition insightful and sometimes moving.
Demonstrations: 2:45 p.m. April 27 on the Marina Theater; 7:15 p.m. April twenty eighth at BAMPFA.
“Eternal You”: The directors Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck not only plunge into the moral debate concerning the diverse uses of AI, they plunge into it with full force like two cliff divers. The result’s a provocative, sometimes shocking and disturbing take a look at a wave of startup corporations using technology to reunite the living with their departed family members. Some connections occur through email exchanges, others through various high-tech means – including VR. Block and Riesewieck speak with various innovators and their grieving customers. In considered one of Eternal You's most awkward moments, a South Korean mother has a VR visit together with her dead child. It rips your heart out.
Demonstration: April 26, 3 p.m. on the Premier Theater; Block is meant to participate.
There are actually some feature movies which can be price keeping an eye fixed out for.
“Your idea:” For those that all but swoon over romantic dramas, sit up for Michael Showalter's funny, sexy, and poignant entry. Anne Hathaway wins hearts as a Southern California owner of a small art gallery who forms a relationship with the lead singer (Nicholas Galitzine) of a boy band after meeting him on the Coachella festival. There's great chemistry between the 2 stars, and this entertaining romp – based on a preferred novel – touches on topics like ageism, social media cruelty and sexism. Nevertheless, it never loses sight of the proven fact that it’s, in the beginning, a sizzling romance.
Demonstration: 8:15 p.m., April 27, on the Marina Theater (and it's expected to sell out); may even be released on Amazon Prime on May 2nd.
“Sing Sing”: Director Greg Kwedar's already acclaimed drama (it premiered to rave reviews on the Toronto International Film Festival and later SXSW) follows inmates who take part in a jail theater program. It stars Colman Domingo, who showcased his acting chops on the Berkeley Rep and other Bay Area theaters and even met his husband at Berkeley—and Sean San José, the artistic director of San Francisco's Magic Theater.
Demonstration: 8:30 p.m., April 25 on the Premier Theater, with Kwedar, San José and producer Monique Walton in attendance.
“Mabel”: Nichola Ma's family-friendly film is a couple of young girl who’s fascinated by her botany lessons and experiments. It is a component of the Sloan Science in Cinema Initiative, which strengthens the voices of emerging filmmakers whose works are connected to science.
Demonstration: April 27, 5 p.m. on the Vogue Theater.
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