San Francisco International Film Festival

Film Feature: 69th SFFILM Festival Preview #3

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 an 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
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Film Feature: 68th SFFILM Festival Preview #1

The 68th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) will take place April 17-April 27 with screenings at various theaters around San Francisco and the East Bay.

For a full view of special awards, spotlights, and centerpiece films, check out the complete festival guide. Tickets can be purchased here.

Below is a preview of the festival, featuring brief looks at six films:

1.) THE BOTANIST
(China, 2025. 96 min)

The soulful connection between humans and nature lies at the forefront of Jing Yi’s directorial debut, The Botanist, about a young boy, Arsin, in the remote northern province of Xinjiang during one summer. Arsin spends his time quietly in nature, pressing flowers, examining a faded family tree and contemplating the building blocks of life. The cast of non-actors are amazing, and the stunning real-world environment is beautifully captured in a manner that exhibits the environment as a critical character. When Arsin meets Meiyu, a young girl in the village, his perception of the relationship between nature and civilization becomes simultaneously complicated and ethereal, as the filmmakers employ subtle elements of magical realism to portray his evolving emotional and physical understanding of the world. Other world-building elements include a village radio continuously spouting news about oil taxes and burgeoning industry, Arsin’s aloof brother (“uncle”) calling his network of former lovers and friends in Shanghai, and high-angled shots of the village and surrounding landscape. All of these elements create a meditative and enchanting coming-of-age story about how a forgotten pastoral corner of the world still finds ways to embrace our kinship with the natural world.

Screenings (click here for tickets):
– Fri., April 18th, 6:00pm at the Presidio Theatre
– Sat., April 19th, 5:15pm at BAMPFA Continue reading “Film Feature: 68th SFFILM Festival Preview #1”

Film Feature: 67th SFFILM Festival Preview #2

The 67th SFFilm Festival opens tomorrow, Wednesday, April 24th, and will run through Sunday, April 28th. The Festival is presenting over 45 programs featuring films from 40 countries in venues in San Francisco and Berkeley. We’ve already previewed five of the Fest’s films (two documentaries and three narratives), and below we take a look at five more narrative features:

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Film Feature: 66th SFFILM Festival Wrap-Up

The 66th SFFilm Festival concludes today, with screenings through this evening. We wrap up our Fest coverage with two final spotlights for you: Here’s a look at a documentary and a feature film that have been playing the film festival circuit, but may receive theatrical distribution. Continue reading “Film Feature: 66th SFFILM Festival Wrap-Up”

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!

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Film Feature: SFFILM 2021 Festival Spotlight #3 – “Home” Review

When doing the time isn’t enough for doing the crime

Marvin (Jake McLaughlin) returns home after 17 years in prison.

American cinema and television thoroughly covers the events leading up to someone’s arrest, trial and conviction or exoneration. But what happens after prison, when the convicted must return to their community, and face an entirely different kind of trial? Continue reading “Film Feature: SFFILM 2021 Festival Spotlight #3 — “Home” Review”

Film Feature: SFFILM 2021 Festival Spotlight #1 – Strawberry Mansion Review

Dream logic, logically dreamed

James Preble (Kentucky Audley) scans dreams to audit — VHS makes a comeback.

The writer, director, actor, and veteran Samuel Fuller is said to have remarked that the only way to make a truly realistic war film is to fill a theater full of patrons, then have soldiers shoot at them from behind the screen. No matter how realistic, a war film is still a film.
Continue reading “Film Feature: SFFILM 2021 Festival Spotlight #1 — Strawberry Mansion Review”

Film Feature: SFFILM 2019 Spotlights #2

Wrap up: 62nd annual San Francisco International Film Festival

The San Francisco Film Festival wrapped up last week, concluding with the announcement of its Golden Gate Awards and its two Audience Awards. Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut comedy feature Booksmart earned the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature. Show Me the Picture: The Story of Jim Marshall, Alfred George Bailey’s study of Bay Area photographer Jim Marshall, took the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature. If you didn’t get a chance to catch as many films as you would have liked, never fear: many of the Fest’s offerings will be widely released in the months to come. Below we take a look at four films that you’ll be able to see very soon at a theater near you (and you can also check out our previous Fest spotlights post here).

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Film Feature: SFFILM 2019 Spotlights #1

62nd annual San Francisco International Film Festival opens today, Wednesday, April 10th

The 62nd annual San Francisco International Film Festival begins today, Wednesday, April 10th, and runs almost two weeks, until Tuesday, April 23rd. This year’s Festival boasts 163 films from over 50 countries in 36 languages, and will include twelve world premieres and five North American premieres. The Festival is proud that this year close to 45% of its films are directed by women. More information, complete program listings, and online tickets can be found here.

With so many offerings, figuring out your Fest schedule can be tricky. But never fear! As always, Spinning Platters has your back. We’ll get you started by sharing five Festival film spotlights (two narrative features and three documentaries). And of course be sure to check back here throughout the Festival for more spotlights and updates.

Continue reading “Film Feature: SFFILM 2019 Spotlights #1”

Film Feature: SFFILM 2018 Festival Spotlights #4

Wrap up: 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival

The 61st San Francisco International Film Festival ended last Tuesday, but many of its offerings will find their way to your neighborhood cinema in the near future. We conclude our coverage of this year’s Fest by taking a look at four of the Fest’s films that you may want to keep your eye out for in the coming months (our previous coverage posts can be found here, here, and here). And if you’re curious to see which Fest films took home awards this year, you can see all the winners here. In the meantime, we’ll see you next year for SFFILM #62!

1.) Sorry to Bother You (USA 2018, 107 min. Centerpiece)

Detroit (Tessa Thompson) and Cassius (Lakeith Stanfield) join with striking workers at their telemarketing firm in Oakland.

Oakland rapper and artist Boots Riley got the hometown reception from the Festival this year, as his debut feature film was given a first-of-its kind, dual-venue Bay Area premiere at two of the Bay Area’s most iconic and beloved theaters: Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater and San Francisco’s Castro Theater. The movie had previously premiered at Sundance, where it garnered a Grand Jury prize nomination, but its Bay Area premiere definitely felt more special. Riley’s film centers on Cassius (Lakeith Stanfield, Get Out), a new employee at a telemarketing company in downtown Oakland (exteriors were shot around Kaiser’s Franklin Street building) whose rise up the corporate ladder doesn’t come without cost, to himself, his girlfriend (Tessa Thompson), and his friends, colleagues, and community. While inarguably entertaining, Riley’s film has a definite first attempt feel: elements of political satire, social criticism, surrealist comedy, outrageous sci-fi, and sweet romance often overlap to an extreme, coming dangerously close to burying the picture beneath its own everything-but-the kitchen-sink weight. Comedically deft performances from Stanfield and Armie Hammer, as a villainous corporate head, though, are appealing enough to make the flaws of Riley’s jam-packed screenplay forgivable.

Sorry to Bother You will open in the Bay Area on Friday, July 6th.

Continue reading “Film Feature: SFFILM 2018 Festival Spotlights #4”