Film Feature: SFFILM Festival Spotlights #4

 

The 2021 San Francisco International Film Festival concluded yesterday, and announced its awards on Saturday. Those can be found here, but we have a final wrap up, too – nine capsules highlighting some of the Festival offerings – six dramas and three documentaries.  Check them out below, and see you next year!

Feature Films

1.) Naked Singularity (USA, 93 min. Dir.: Chase Palmer)

Naked Singularity won the Festival’s Audience Award for Narrative Feature, which somewhat puzzles me. While John Boyega of Star Wars fame gives a strong performance as Casi, an idealistic but overworked public defender, the film’s scope is overly ambitious and often hard to follow. Writer/director Chase Palmer, who wrote the screenplay for 2017’s Stephen King adaptation IT, makes his feature film debut here, and throws too many ideas into the pot. Palmer can’t seem to decide if he wants to make a New York crime thriller à la Uncut Gems, a Law & Order type reflection on the justice system, or a metaphysical treatise with touches of magic realism. The result, while often engaging, is more often dizzying and confusing. Olivia Cooke, cast against type as one of Casi’s clients, pairs well with Boyega, but their dynamic isn’t enough to hold our interest throughout the jumbled storyline.

A wide release date for Naked Singularity has yet to be announced.

2.) The Dry (Australia, 118 min. Dir.: Robert Connolly)

This Australian film, on the other hand, was the runner up for the Audience Narrative Feature Award, and, in my mind, it should have been the winner. Based on a 2016 novel by British author Jane Harper, Australian director Robert Connolly’s mystery thriller is a classic noir tale set in a parched, drought-stricken small Australian town. Eric Bana plays a federal agent who returns to his hometown for a funeral, and is asked to stay on to investigate a family murder involving his childhood best friend. That investigation brings up recollections of an earlier death involving many of the same players. Themes of truth and memory are explored as Connolly deftly interweaves the past and present to create a haunting, immersive, tension-filled film.

The Dry will be widely released on May 21st.

3.) Holler (USA, 91 min. Dir.: Nicole Riegel)

Writer/director Nicole Riegel makes her feature film debut here, turning her 2020 short of the same name into a full-length narrative. Set in Jackson, Ohio, a depressed factory town, the film follows teenage Ruth (Jessica Barden) as she decides whether to leave for college or stay and help her older brother Blaze (Gus Halper) and their recently incarcerated, recovering addict mom (Pamel Adlon, Better Things). “Helping” means collecting and selling copper wiring to make ends meet, under dubious and often dangerous circumstances for small-time scrap metal dealer Hark (Austin Amelio). Riegel’s film has a gritty feel and seems to want to make a statement about blue-collar America (snippets of Trump speeches about bringing back jobs are played in contrast to news of factories in the area closing), but much of the story is too heavy-handed and unrealistic to have the kind of powerful impact Riegel was probably hoping for.                                                                                                                                                           

Holler will be widely released in mid-June.

4.) The Whaler Boy (Russian Federation, 93 min. Dir.: Philipp Yuryev)

The remote Chukchi Peninsula is the setting for Russian director Philipp Yuryev’s exceptional first feature film. Set in Chukotka, a small whale-hunting village across the Bering Strait from Alaska, Yuryev’s picture focuses on Leshka (Vladimir Onokhov), an Inuit teenager who becomes obsessed with an American woman he watches via an Internet adult webcam service. Leshka’s naiveté — he thinks HollySweet_999 can see and hear him — causes him to take drastic action to find her, leading him on an adventure that proves both perilous and eye-opening. Infused with moments of gentle humor as well as documentary-like attention to the details of village life, Yuryev’s picture is a masterful portrait of a unique people and a place Americans know too little about.

A wide release date for The Whaler Boy has yet to be announced.

5.) Ma Belle, My Beauty (USA, 93 min. Dir.: Marion Hill)

Another debut feature from a female filmmaker, this drama won the Audience Award in the NEXT category at Sundance in January, and it’s another awardee that has me scratching my head. You’d think a picture about polyamory would be both erotic and entertaining, but, unfortunately, Marion Hill’s film is neither. Hill’s story follows Fred and Bertie (Lucien Guignard and Idella Johnson), recently married musicians living in the south of France, and their relationship with Bertie’s former lover Lane (Hannah Pepper), who comes to visit the pair after a period of estrangement. We never feel invested in any of the three characters, though, as we only witness their present-day misery and confusion. The film touches on issues of identity, jealousy, trust, artistic inspiration, and romantic partnerships without delving too deeply into any of them. The sun-dappled French countryside looks lovely, however, and the scenes of farmers’ market shopping end up being far more stimulating than the unimaginative sex scenes.

Ma Belle, Ma Beauty will be widely released in late August.

6.) I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking) (USA, 90 min. Dir.: Kelley Kali and Angelique Molina)

This SXSW Special Jury Award winner deserves its prize and its Grand Jury prize nomination. Set in Los Angeles’s Pacoima neighborhood during COVID, co-director/writers Kelley Kali and Angelique Molina tell a Nomadland-esque story of Danny (Kali, starring as well), a recently widowed mother to 8-year-old Wes (Wesley Moss). For reasons we can only guess, Danny and Wes are currently houseless, living in a tent in a field on the outskirts of town (just “camping”, as Danny assures Wes), and the film portrays Danny’s day-long quest to get the money for a down payment on an apartment before an impending deadline. By turns harrowing and tense, unsettling and disturbing, and sweet and often unexpectedly funny, Kali and Molina let us see that even in a day filled with a roller coaster of emotions, things may not always be the “fine” we tell people, but hope always exists.

A wide release date for I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking) has yet to be announced.

DOCUMENTARIES

7.) We are as Gods (USA, 92 min. Dir.: David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg)

Longtime Bay Area residents may not remember the name Stewart Brand, but they might remember his most famous creation: The Whole Earth Catalog. Dubbed “Google in paperback form” by Bill Gates, the print publication, which was published intermittently between 1968 and 1998, was chock full of useful local and global information and DIY tips and ideas. Directors David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg profile Stanford grad and Bay Area icon Brand in this documentary, which examines Brand’s early life, his counter-culture and environmental activism, and his more recent interest in de-extinction (yes, he dreams of bringing back the woolly mammoth — there are shades of Jurassic Park here). Both a fascinating study of a brilliant, often controversial figure and an examination of still-relevant ideas of ecology, technology, and environmentalism, We are as Gods is must-see viewing for anyone interested in Bay Area history and the history of unique and daring ideas. Music by Brian Eno adds to the film’s iconoclastic tone.

A wide release date for We are as Gods has yet to be announced.

8.) The Last Autumn (Iceland, 78 min. Dir.: Yrsa Roca Fannberg)

Counting sheep takes on a whole new meaning in this Icelandic documentary that may make you nod off faster than meditating on meandering lambs. Icelandic filmmaker Yrsa Roca Fannberg chronicles the winding down of an elderly couple’s sheep farm, but the cinéma-vérité style leaves much to be desired. Instead of voice-over narration or interviews explaining the history, process, or meaning of the farm to the couple, we only get long, wordless stretches in which we see the couple cooking a fish, eating a fish, eating yogurt, untangling rope, petting the dog, and driving for a long, long, long time down a road. Are you still awake? The film feels like a missed opportunity, as the sections about the sheep (including one scene involving the charring of a sheep head, which might make vegetarians wince) are the most arresting in the picture, yet the least explored. A radio broadcast we hear announcing local deaths lends some mild poignancy, but the poetic tone Fannberg seems to be going for doesn’t go much further than that. The cinematography turns the rugged landscape into the film’s star, but if you want a more rousing peek into Icelandic life, you’d do better checking out The Seer and the Unseen, an SFFFILM documentary from 2019.

A wide release date for The Last Autumn has yet to be announced.

9.) After Antarctica (USA, 104 min. Dir.: Tasha Van Zandt)

Jumping back and forth between polar explorer Will Steger’s 1989 expedition to Antarctica and his 2018 solo voyage to the Arctic, Tasha Van Zandt’s documentary immerses us in some of the most frigid, remote places on the planet. Winner of the Festival’s McBaine Documentary Feature Award, Van Zandt’s extraordinary film balances one intrepid man’s personal story of endurance and hardship with a larger narrative about climate change, science, responsibility, and interconnectedness. My favorite film of the Festival, After Antarctica is a survival story, a global scientific inquiry, and an adventure story of epic proportions that shouldn’t be missed.

A release date for After Antarctica has yet to be announced.