It’s finally here! The 69th SFFILM Festival starts TOMORROW, Friday, April 24th! Running through Monday, May 4th, this year’s Fest features over 100 films from more than 40 countries. The SFFILM Festival FAQ website will quickly answer all your questions about programs, tickets, and venues. And be sure to review our two previous preview posts (#2 and #1) for more Spinning Platters-approved Festival highlights!
Below we highlight and additional two documentaries and two features that are worth a look. See you at the Fest!
1.) WHO MOVES AMERICA
(USA, 2026. 87 min.)
A real-life drama about the power of unions in the vein of Norma Rae and Pride, this inspiring documentary will leave you cheering. Focusing on the 340,000 UPS Teamster members and their 2023 contract negotiations and potential strike, documentarian Yael Bridges crafts a portrait of union struggle and solidarity that is as thoughtful as it is rousing. Bridges turns her camera on local chapters in New York, southern California, Kentucky, and New Jersey, and the stories of the workers profiled are insightful and engrossing. UPS doesn’t come off well, and its executives can’t be happy about this film. But that just makes this truth-to-power story all the more affecting. Union yes! .
Screenings (click here for tickets):
– Mon., Apr 27th, 6:15 pm PT @ Marina Theatre
– Mon., Apr 27th, 8:45 pm PT @ Marina Theatre
2.) THE OLDEST PERSON IN THE WORLD
(USA, 2025. 87 min.)
What advice do centenarians have for us? What is the significance, if any, of living so long? This SXSW Audience Award nominee poses these questions and more in this beautiful and sobering meditation on mortality, life, death, and what it all means. Narrated by filmmaker Sam Green (an Oscar nominee for 2002’s The Weather Underground), the documentary features interviews with the oldest people in the world over the course of 10 years. Green’s project takes on extra weight when, during the course of filming, he’s diagnosed with cancer around the same time his son is born. This contemplative and philosophical film is a must see. Just be sure to bring tissues.
Screenings (click here for tickets):
– Sun., Apr 26th, 4:00 pm PT @ Premier Theater at One Letterman
3.) TUNER
(USA, 2024. 109 min.)
Leo Woodall (The White Lotus; Nuremberg) and Dustin Hoffman star in this first feature film from acclaimed documentarian Daniel Roher. Roher won an Oscar back in 2023 for Navalany, his film about the Russian opposition leader. Although fictional, Tuner is similarly tense and intriguing. Woodall stars as Niki, a piano tuner with an auditory affliction that turns out to be valuable to a group of thieves he inadvertently falls in with. Part crime thriller, part relationship drama, and 100% excellent character study, Tuner proves unequivocally that Roher’s filmmaking talents extend well beyond documentaries.
Screenings (click here for tickets):
– Sun., Apr 26th, 1:00 pm PT @ Premiere Theater at One Letterman
4.) Blue Heron
(Canada and Hungary, 2025. 90 min.)
Another feature film debut, Blue Heron is Canadian filmmaker Sophy Romvari’s hauntingly beautiful dramatization of her childhood memories of her troubled older half-brother. Similar in tone to last year’s The Secret Agent and 2022’s Aftersun in terms of its impressionistic shifts from past to present, Blue Heron’s dreamlike quality appropriately underscores its themes. Romvari’s delicate rendering of childhood innocence, confusion, and wonderment at the often impenetrable adult world is as artfully portrayed as her sensitive exploration of mental health issues. By the time Daniel Johnston’s melancholic “Some Things Last a Long Time” comes on the soundtrack, you’ll already be wiping away tears.
Screenings (click here for tickets):
– Sat., Apr 25th, 4:30 pm PT @ BAMPFA
– Wed., Apr 29th, 8:30 pm PT @ Marina Theatre
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