Photo caption: Steve Zahn and Ethan Hawke in SHE DANCES, Bay Area premiere at Cinequest. Courtesy of Cinequest.
Cinequest, Silicon Valley’s own major film festival, returns March 10-23 to the California Theatre and the Hammer Theater in downtown San Jose and the Alamo Drafthouse in Mountain View. Selected films from the program will move to to Cinequest’s virtual platform, Cinejoy, March 24-31.
Highlights of the 2026 Cinequest include:
123 world and US premieres and many directorial debuts.
Films from 44 countries, including from Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Albania, Norway, Hungary, China, Finland, India, and the UK.
New movies produced by James Ivory, directed by Steven Soderbergh, Rebecca Morris (Electrik Children) and Ben Wheatley (High-Rise); and starring Bob Odenkirk , Steve Zahn, Ethan Hawke, Vivica A. Fox, Tamara Weaving, Henry Winkler, Sonequa Martin-Green, Thomas Sadowski, Mimi Rogers, Betsy Brandt, Rosemary DeWitt and Tony-nominee Amber Gray.
Personal appearances by Steve Zahn and Viveca A. Fox to receive Cinequest awards and to present their upcoming films.
Cinequest’s Silent Cinema Event will present a major spectacle, the 1926 Ben-Hur, accompanied by master organist Dennis James on the historic California Theatre’s Mighty Wurlitzer.
And, at Cinequest, it’s easy to meet the filmmakers.
At Cinequest, you can get a festival pass for as little as $199 (a ten-pack for $110), and you can get individual tickets as well. The prices have not been raised SINCE 2019!) Take a look at the entire program, theschedule and the passes and tickets
I’ll be rigorously covering Cinequest for the fifteenth straight year, with features and movie recommendations. I usually screen (and write about) over twenty Cinequest films from around the world. Bookmark my CINEQUEST 2026 page, with links to all my coverage (links on the individual movies will start to go live on Sunday, March 8).
Cinequest at the California Theatre. Photo credit: The Movie Gourmet.
Sylka, Bruno Clairefond and Alain Guillot in THE KEY at Slamdance Film Festival. Courtesy of HTTH Productions.
The 32nd Slamdance Film Festival opens tomorrow in LA, unveiling the work of new filmmakers. Christopher Nolan, Bong Joon-ho and Sean Baker are among the filmmakers whose early work was showcased at Slamdance; will another cinema icon emerge from this year’s program?
Here’s my Slamdance festival preview. I’ve had a chance to sample some of this year’s program and here are my recommendations.
MUST SEE
The Key: This offbeat French fable brings us unexpected characters and takes them into an even more unexpected world. Bruno and Alain, strangers to each other, are each, despite living in the middle of Paris, completely devoid of connection to other humans. Both the disagreeable, prickly Bruno and the more passive Alain remain essentially invisible to others – and anchored to a profound loneliness. The two are suddenly waylaid by a third man, Z, who invites them back to his place, which turns out to be one of those gloriously posh Parisian apartments, with high ceilings and a grand piano. The three new friends are getting to know each other when Z surprises them with a revelation that I won’t spoil. Fascinated, Alain and Bruno embrace Z’s highly unconventional lifestyle, but will it fulfill their lives? In his first narrative feature, writer-director Paul G. Sportiello explores what he calls “hidden people”. What makes a “nobody”? Is it a bad thing to be a nobody? Is it better to be comfortable in one’s own skin? Every aspect of this highly original storytelling serves to introduce Sportiello as an especially promising auteur. North American premiere at Slamdance.
OTHER SLAMDANCE HIGHLIGHTS
Manolya Maya in DUMP OF UNTITLED PIECES. Courtesy of Melik Kuru and Hafif Film.
Dump of Untitled Pieces: In this Turkish dark comedy, photography student Asli (Manolya Maya), a law school dropout, and her oddball roomie face eviction from their bohemian flat unless they can raise the rent money ASAP. They embark on a campaign to sell her portfolio to art dealers, careening through the the non-touristy neighborhoods of Istanbul and confronting the unwelcome realities of commerce (foreign buyers want tragedy). Their escapades are funny, but the humor in this first feature by writer-director Melik Kuru is primarily character-driven. Is the stubborn Asli an uncompromising artist or a slacker posing as an artist to avoid getting a real job? Kuru’s clever, surprise ending give us a clue. Beautifully shot in black-and-white in a cinéma vérité style by cinematographer Baris Aygen. North American premiere at Slamdance.
The Lemieurs: This cinéma vérité doc chronicles over a year in the lives of a Minnesota family as they meet the inevitabilities of life. Five middle-aged brothers must face the increasing frailty of their aged mother, while three cousins from the younger generation run the family’s funeral home. The stories of the family members are fittingly bookend by two funerals and anchored by the spirited matriarch. At once intimate and unsparingly clear-eyed, The Lemieurs is absorbing and brimming with humanity. First feature for director Sammy LeMieur. World premiere at Slamdance.
Slamdance festival passes are SOLD OUT, but you will be able to sample at least some of these films on the Slamdance Channel from February 24 thru March 6.
Sylka, Bruno Clairefond and Alain Guillot in THE KEY at Slamdance Film Festival. Courtesy of HTTH Productions.
It’s time for the 32nd Slamdance Film Festival, which is all about discovering new filmmakers and unveiling their work. Originating with 30 years in Utah, this is the second Slamdance in Los Angeles. It’s a hybrid festival with live events (February 10-25) and online via the Slamdance Channel (February 24-March 6). Three LA venues will host the screenings – DGA, Landmark Sunset, and 2220 Arts with the closing night ceremony held at the Egyptian Theater.
Slamdance was founded in 1995 by filmmakers reacting to the gatekeeper role and growing marketplace focus of a nearby Utah film festival with a similar name. Whenever I cover a film festival, I’m on the lookout for first films and world premieres – and here’s a festival essentially entirely made up of first films and world premieres.
Slamdance alumni include: Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer, Memento,Dunkirk), Bong Joon-ho (Parasite), Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild), Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room), Lynn Shelton (Outside In,Sword of Truth), Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Tangerine), Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Brick), Benny & Josh Safdie (Uncut Gems) and the Russo Brothers (Avengers: Infinity War).
All Slamdance feature films selected in the competition categories are directorial debuts without U.S. distribution, with budgets of less than $1 million. The 141 films in this year’s program, featuring 50 world premieres, hail from 50 countries and were selected from 10,000 submissions.
Slamdance opens with the world premiere of Alexandre Rockwell’s The Projectionist, a love letter to cinema starring Vondie Curtis-Hall and co-produced by Quentin Tarantino.
This year, Utopia will offer theatrical distribution for at least one Slamdance Grand Prize Winner. Way cool.
I’ll start rolling out full reviews of some Slamdance films on February 24th. Remember, even if you don’t get to the fest in LA, you can sample these films on the Slamdance Channel from February 24 thru March 6.
The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, returns January 16 and runs through January 25 at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. The 23rd edition of the festival showcases noir and neo-noir movies with and about musicians. After all, how many guys start off playing in a nightclub and end up face-down in the gutter?
Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and hard-to-find movies. You know Eddie Muller from TCM’s Noir Alley, and he hosts Noir City in person..
Noir Ciry 23 features films with real-life musicians Elvis Presley, Doris Day, Louis Armstrong, Keely Smith, Dexter Gordon, Ella Fitzgerald, Hoagy Carmichael, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peggy Lee, Oscar Levant, Dave Brubeck, Charlie Mingus, Mel Torme and many more. It turns out that Elvis, Louis Armstrong and Sammy Davis, Jr., among others, could really act when they chose to.
Of course, movie characters in the classic period of film noir inhabited a jazz-infused world, so films in the Noir City program feature plenty of movie stars playing musicians: Kirk Douglas (Young Man with a Horn), Rita Hayworth (Gilda), Lauren Bacall (To Have and Have Not),John Garfield (Humoresque), Mickey Rooney (The Strip), Frank Sinatra (playing a trumpet player in The Man with the Golden Arm).
Sammy Davis, Jr. in A MAN CALLED ADAM
Highlights include:
King Creole (1958): If you think that Elvis Presley never made a good movie, you haven’t seen this outstanding MIchael Curtiz crime drama. Elvis plays an impoverished wannabe singer who becomes entangled in the New Orleans underworld when he attracts the romantic interest of a sultry Bad Girl (Carolyn Jones), whose boyfriend is the local gangster kingpin (Walter Matthau). Jones, now best remembered for her campy Morticia in The Addams Family, had 44 previous screen credits, but only one as the female lead in a feature film. Besides future stars Matthau and Vic Morrow, the cast features past Oscar-winner Dean Jagger and the reliable noir stalwart Paul Stewart. The Good Girl is played by Dolores Hart, the only Elvis co-star to become a nun in real life. This was Elvis’ favorite of his movie performances, and his charisma, deployed in a grown-up story, makes us wonder what might have been had he returned to well-written screenplays.
Hangover Square: As with Elvis, we wonder what might have been, had not star Laird Cregar died at 31, when early weight loss surgery went wrong. Cregar’s rare combination of tortured magnetism and hulking menace dominates this noir set in Edwardian England.
A Man Called Adam (1966): In this hard-to-find gem, Sammy Davis Jr. plays Adam, a self-destructive jazz star. Adam draws people in with his talent and charisma, and, racked by guilt, pushes away those closest to him with selfish and cruel behavior. Claudia (Cicely Tyson, in her first screen credit) is drawn to Adam and tries to save him, anchoring herself in the roller coaster of his life. Remember that, after all the ups and downs, a roller coaster always ends at the bottom. Tyson absolutely commands the screen in two great speeches which reveal she is going to be a movie star. Louis Armstrong is very good here as an actor, and Sammy, a multi-instrumentalist who did perform with the trumpet looks credible as a musical prodigy. The best musical performance in A Man Called Adam is by Mel Torme, playing himself at an after-hours musicians party.
All NIght Long (1962): This is Shakespeare’s Othello, set in the jazz world of 1962 London – and with real jazz stars and real jazz music. When the musicians show up for the jam, they include none other than Charles Mingus and Dave Brubeck – and a slew of top British jazz musicians, too. The juicy Iago role of drummer Johnny Cousins is played by Patrick McGoohan (Secret Agent, The Prisoner).
Pete Kelly’s Blues (1966): In real life, Jack Webb of Dragnet fame was a bona fide jazz enthusiast. Webb directs this story in which he stars as a speakeasy’s bandleader, amid mobbed-up nightclubs, alcoholism and murder. Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald perform, and the cast includes Janet Leigh, Edmond O’Brien, Lee Marvin and Andy Devine. Watch for Jayne Mansfield as the cigarette girl.
Patrick McGoohan in ALL NIGHT LONG
As always, Noir City features films that are not available to stream: so Noir City is your best chance to see them:
Hangover Square(1945)
The Strip (1951), with one of Mickey Rooney’s most naturalistic performances.
The Crimson Canary (1946), a very hard-to-find Brit noir.
Make your plans now. Review the program and buy tickets at Noir City. I’ll be there.
Photo caption: Jeremiah Daniels and William Catlett in COLOR BOOK. Courtesy of NashFilm.
NashFilm, the Nashville Film Festival, opens on Thursday, September 18 and runs through September 24 with its mix of indies, docs and international cinema, including world and North American premieres. I’ve highlighted the highest profile festival events, including Nicole Kidman’s personal appearance, in my NashFilm preview.
Today, I’m focusing on two indie Must Sees at NashFilm. One is an emerging writer-director’s first feature and the other reflects a resurgence from an indie filmmaking icon.
Color Book: After the sudden death of his wife, Lucky (William Catlett) is left to parent their son Mason (Jeremiah Daniels), who has Down syndrome. Now grieving and trying to make ends meet on a one income, Lucky faces the unrelenting struggles of single parenting – why does everything have to be so hard? Although he has a hard time asking for help, in many ways, Lucky is the ideal dad – affectionate, patient and consistent. Lucky wants to thrill Mason with his first major league baseball game, but the two get a bigger dose of Atlanta’s transit system than they would ever want. The journey is far more more meaningful than is the destination. Atlanta writer-director David Fortune has won eight festival awards in the US and France with his inaugural film. The black and white cinematography by Nikolaus Dummerer is exquisite. Without a hint of sentimentality, Color Book is authentic and endearing.
The Baltimorons: In this sweet and funny movie about second chances, a cracked tooth sends a guy to an emergency dentist; the misfortune of an impounded car launches the two of them into a raucous nighttime adventure through Baltimore that could result in romance. Cliff (Michael Strassner) is a floundering goof, a comedian who hasn’t performed during his months of new-found sobriety. In contrast, the highly functional dentist Didi (Liz Larsen) is personally reeling from her divorce, which has left her lonely and gashed a hole in her confidence. So, we have two talented people in moments of vulnerability and recovery. What happens is funny, but The Baltimorons succeeds because of its humanity – we really care about Cliff and Didi. The Baltimorons is the first film directed by indie film legend Jay Duplass since 2012. Festival audiences in Austin, Philadelphia and San Luis Obispo loved this film, which won the Best Narrative Feature Audience Award at SXSW. I expect The Baltimorons, after its theatrical run this fall, to become a word-of-mouth Holiday hit on the streaming platforms.
Molly Belle Wright, Wyatt Solis and John Magaro in OMAHA. Courtesy of NashFilm.
And here are two other indie discoveries in the NashFilm program.
Omaha: This concise, searing drama is a showcase for John Magaro (Past Lives), who stars as an especially devoted dad who has been financially ruined by his late wife’s final illness. His inability to provide for his kids has filled him with desperation and profound shame, but he is determined to insulate his kids from his stress. He bundles the two kids into his barely drivable car for a a road trip across the Great Basin toward Nebraska. The purpose of the road trip is mysterious, and even the whip-smart nine-year-old daughter can’t guess it. Omaha is the first feature for director Cole Webley, working off a screenplay from Richard Machoian (God Bless the Child, The Killing of Two Lovers). Webley has a gift for portraying those seemingly minor life moments that tell the audience so much about relationships and motivations. The emotionally powerful ending is shattering.
Peacock: In this droll and absurd comedy, Matthias (Albrecht Schuch of All Quiet on the Western Front) works in a most unusual companion service; he gets paid for jobs like masquerading as a client’s fictional partner. Matthias has so perfected being a chameleon that he has lost all sense of himself. When the vengeful ex-husband of a client terrorizes him, Mattias’ world starts to unravel. Austrian director Bernhard Wenger won a prize at Venice, where it was also nominated for Best Film in the Critic’s Week. If you like Ruben Ostland’s work (Force Majeure, The Square, Triangle of Sadness), you’ll like Peacock.
All in all, this year’s NashFilm presents 140 films from 30 countries. Peruse the program and get tickets. Here’s the trailer for Color Book.
Photo caption: Liz Larsen and Michael Strassner in THE BALTIMORONS. Courtesy of NashFilm.
The always exquisitely curated NashFilm, the Nashville Film Festival, opens on Thursday, September 18 and runs through September 24 with a diverse menu of cinema. The Nashville Film Festival is the oldest running film festival in the South (this is the 56th!) and is an Academy Award qualifying festival. The program includes a mix of indies, docs and international cinema, including world and North American premieres.
The most high profile events at NashFilm will be:
Opening night’s Man on the Run, the story of Paul McCartney’s life and career after the breakup of the Beatles, fresh off its world premiere two weeks ago at Telluride. Director Morgan Neville has delivered two of the very best recent biodocs (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Roadrunner: A Film about Anthony Bourdain).
Nicole Kidman will appear personally for Q&A and a special screening of Cold Mountain.
The centerpiece biodoc John Candy: I Like Me.
The closing night film, Kiss of the Spider Woman, starring Diego Luna, Tonatiuh and Jennifer Lopez.
Omaha, an indie drama starring John Magaro that garnered buzz at Sundance.
Rebuilding, another Sundance indie drama starring Josh O’Connor.
The Baltimorons, the first film directed by Jay Duplass since 2012, a sweet and funny film that won the Best Narrative Feature Audience Award at SXSW.
The Nashville Film Festival embraces its home in Music City with a strong program of music films. This year, NashFilm celebrates the beloved John Prine with You Got Gold. There’s also Finding Lucinda, a singer-songwriter’s road trip to explore the stories that formed the powerfully raw songs of Lucinda Williams. There are also documentary features on genre-buster Sun Ra, grunge icon Eddie Vedder, Gospel artist Carl Bean, emerging flamenco star Yerai Cortés and Christian rappers LeCrae and the 116 Clique. It’s hard to imagine a more diverse slate of music docs.
My favorite element of most NashFilm fests is the discovery of new auteurs with their ballyhooed first films. This year’s slate includes these first films:
Peacock: new Austrian director Bernhard Wenger won a prize at Venice, where his droll debut was also nominated for Best Film in the Critic’s Week.
Mad Bills to Pay: the Bronx’s Joel Alfonso Vargas was nominated for Best First Film at Berlin and won a NEXT Special Jury Award at Sundance
Color Book: Atlanta’s David Fortune has won eight festival awards in the US and France with his inaugural film.
Fucktoys: Nashville’s hometown girl Annapurna Sriram, who also stars, won a Special Jury award at SXSW with her first feature.
Slanted: Chinese-Australian filmmaker Amy Wang won the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW with her calling card.
All in all, this year’s NashFilm presents 140 films from 30 countries. Peruse the program and get tickets. I’ll be publishing my fest recommendations on September 16. Here’s the trailer for The Baltimorons.
Photo caption: Logan Lerman as Isaac and Molly Gordon as Iris in OH, HI!. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF), always a major event for Bay Area cinephiles, opens tomorrow. The program offers 70 films from Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Switzerland, the US and the UK and Uzbekistan. Here’s my festival preview.
This year, I’m recommending two nuggets:
Oh, Hi!: This dark romantic comedy begins with a couple heading off to a countryside vacation rental for their first romantic getaway. All is lustful fun until they discover that each has a different perception of what their relationship is and where it is headed. What could have been a merely awkward or hurtful moment precipitates an extreme reaction, and escalates into an absurdly funny situation. Oh, Hi! is the sophomore feature for writer-director Sophie Brooks, who has created a broadly funny, over-the-top situation that is sharply observant about relationships tending to evolve at different speeds for the participants. It’s a very smart screenplay. Oh, Hi!, which premiered at Sundance, is releasing into theaters soon; see it early at the SFJFF. (Full review to be published on July 23.)
THE STAMP THIEF. Courtesy of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
The Stamp Thief: We don’t expect a Holocaust-related documentary to get wacky, but The Stamp Thief combines a historical whodunit and a real-life comic heist. It begins with tracking down a fourth-hand oral account of Nazi-stolen valuable stamps hidden in Poland: Is it true, who was the Nazi, where did he stash the loot and is it still there? And here’s where The Stamp Thief gets zany. Because the Polish authorities have not been supportive of the restitution of Nazi loot, our heroes decide to find and recover the stamps with a ruse. The team masquerades as a film crew shooting a romantic drama; they plan to dig around Polish basements until they find the stamps, under the noses of the Poles. What could possibly go wrong? How does the team navigate the moral ambiguity of lying for a good cause? Do they find the stamps? Do they get caught? What follows is Sherlock Holmes meets The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, an unusually colorful documentary. Full review.
The SFJFF runs through August 3 in select San Francisco and Oakland venues. Check out the program and buy tickets at SFJFF.
Photo caption: Logan Lerman as Isaac and Molly Gordon as Iris in OH, HI!. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
One of the Bay Area’s top cinema events is back – the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF), running from July 17 to August 3. The SFJFF is the world’s oldest and largest Jewish film festival – this year’s festival is the 45th! The program offers 70 films from Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Switzerland, the US and the UK and Uzbekistan.
After opening night at the Herbst Theatre, films will screen at the AMC Kabuki 8, the Vogue, the Roxie, and Oakland’s Landmark Piedmont Theater, as well as additional programming at theJewish Community Center of San Francisco.
Highlights include:
Opening Night: Amber Fares’s Coexistence, My Ass! won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Freedom of Expression at this year’s Sundance. the film follows Israeli comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi (who will perform live in a separate event on the SFJFFF’s first weekend) as she develops an act tackling inequality and taboo amidst the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Centerpiece Narrative: In Fantasy Life, writer-director Matthew Shearstars as a laid-off, thirty-something paralegal who begins nannying for his psychiatrist’s grandkids and falls for their mother. Co-stars Amanda Peet and Judd Hirsch.
Next Wave Spotlight: The dark rom com Oh, Hi! stars Molly Gordon and Logan Lerman as a couple heading off to a countryside vacation rental for their first romantic getaway, which gets completely unhinged. It’s the sophomore feature for writer-director Sophie Brooks (The Boy Downstairs, SFJFF 2017).
Closing Night:The Floaters, an indie comedy about misfits at a Jewish summer camp.
Just before the fest, I’ll be publishing some recommendations. I’ve already screened an absurdly dark rom com and an unexpectedly wacky documentary. Check out the program and buy tickets at SFJFF. Here’s the trailer for Oh, My!.
Photo caption: Marion Barbeau in DRONE. Courtesy of Frameline.
Émilie (Marion Barbeau) is stalked through Paris by a mysterious drone, in Drone, a thriller that explores issues of privacy and the male gaze. A magnificent 4-minute opening sequence, introduces us to the vulnerability caused by the voyeur drone. Émilie is funding her architecture studies by working as a cam girl, a situation where she is physically detached and in control of her male customers. But there is no detachment or control whenever the paranoia-inducing drone suddenly appears.
There are exhilarating set pieces in a parking garage, a motorcycle chase and an abandoned factory, as writer-director Simon Bouisson and cinematographer Ludovic Zulli keep their drone camera in pursuit of the story’s stalker drone. In his first theatrical feature, Bouisson keeps the tension pounding, all the way to the ingenious ending.
Marion Barbeau in DRONE. Courtesy of Frameline.
Émilie is a recent architecture graduate from Lilles who has earned a high-powered fellowship in Paris. As her fellowship project, she chooses an adaptive reuse of an abandoned factory. Of course, even without the drone, we would fear for Émilie’s safety as she wanders around the dark, creepy, abandoned factory and takes long solo jogs through the city at night.
Who is flying the drone? Is it a camgirl customer who has hacked the firewall? Is it her toxic male classmate? Or her swaggering, entitled boss? Or, perhaps most terrifying, nobody at all?
Émilie is relationship-shy, but reluctantly intrigued by a DJ. Will the budding romance put both women in drone-jeopardy?
Marion Barbeau, a former ballet dancer, is superb as Émilie. Émilie, so vulnerable throughout the movie, is remarkably strong and determined, which lifts Drone above the ordinary woman-in-peril genre. Barbeau is able to project Émilie’s fundamental badassness.
I’ve listed Drone in the special Festival Films category of my Best Movies of 2025 – So Far. I screened Drone for Frameline (where it was my favorite film), and I’ll let you know when it has a theatrical or VOD release in the US.
Photo caption: Marion Barbeau in DRONE. Courtesy of Frameline and StudioCanal.
Frameline, the oldest and longest-running LGBTQ+ film festival in the world, opens tomorrow, June 18 and runs through June 28. The program includes 150 films from 40 countries, including 42 world, North American and US premieres. As always, it’s a very rich slate of films.
I’ve selected five international films to highlight. Let’s begin with two Must See directorial debuts from France and Italy.
Drone: Émilie (Marion Barbeau) is stalked through Paris by a mysterious drone, in a thriller that explores issues of privacy and the male gaze. A magnificent 4-minute opening sequence, introduces us to the vulnerability caused by the voyeur drone. Émilie is funding her architecture studies by working as a cam girl, a situation where she is physically detached from and in control of her male customers. But there is no detachment or control whenever the paranoia-inducing drone suddenly appears. There are exhilarating set pieces in a parking garage, a motorcycle chase and an abandoned factory, as writer-director Simon Bouisson and cinematographer Ludovic Zulli keep their drone camera in pursuit of the story’s stalker drone. In his first theatrical feature, Bouisson keeps the tension pounding, all the way to the ingenious ending. Must See.
Manfredi Marini (right) in Giovanni Tortorici’s DICIANNOVE. Courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories and Frameline.
Diciannove: The title is Italian for nIneteen, the age of Leonardo (Manfredi Marini), who is leaving his Palermo home for the first time to begin college in London. Ever restless, he is eager to embark on his life journey, but doesn’t know where to head, and, being nineteen, he won’t listen to anyone else. In mere days, Leonardo pivots from business courses in London to the study of Italian literature at a university in Siena. Nineteen is an age that most of us sample experiences, but Leonardo is an introvert, sometimes bratty, who refuses to socialize, and we wonder if he will ever forge relationships or act on his sexual urges. Diciannove is that highly original coming-of-age film in which even what Leonardo chooses NOT to do is interesting, and we can’t predict what could make his spirit soar at the end. Diciannove is the debut feature for writer-director Giovanni Tortorici, a protege of Luca Guadagnino, who produced the film. Tortorici and cinematographer Massimiliano Kuveiller (who has also worked with Guadagnino) maintain visual interest by throwing everything at the screen – disco scenes with an operatic score, slow motion, animated dreams and every kind of fancy cut. Diciannove is the singular and imaginative calling card of a new auteur; see it at Frameline before its US arthouse release later this year. Must See.
Bruce Pintos in KEEP COMING BACK. Courtesy of Frameline.
And here are three more highlights from Frameline’s menu of international cinema – from Uruguay, Croatia and Taiwan:
Keep Coming Back: In his first feature, director Sergio de León sends up the conventions of the underdog drama with deadpan drollery. In rural Uruguay, 18-year-old Emilio’s mother dies, leaving with a pile of debts and a collection of pigeons. The only way he can keep the family house is to win the great pigeon race. Staggered by grief, confounded by financial stress and with his hormones raging toward a sexual awakening, Emilio (Bruce Pintos) plunges ahead earnestly. Absurd hilarity ensues, including a very funny I’m sorry about your mom and the robust retelling of the story of Winkie, the historical hero pigeon. US Premiere.
Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day: Croatia’s official submission for the 2025 Academy Award for Best International Feature, this is an aspirational film with an epic sweep, passionate sex and profound tragedy, all the way to unexpected redemption. This searing critique of the Tito regime pits a man of principle and ideas against the repression of the small-minded. The heroic bravery that helps overthrow Nazi puppets is revealed to be no match for the homophobia and mindless adherence to the party line of post-war apparatchiks. Frameline hosts the International Premiere.
Silent Sparks: In this Taiwanese neo-noir, small time hood Pua is released from prison and checks in with the swaggering, exuberant local crime lord. The boss assigns him to a lieutenant, Mi-Ji, who happens to be Pua’s former cell-mate. But when Pua and Mi-Ji meet again, the encounter is a study in social awkwardness. Pua just wants to start earning money and working his way up in the syndicate, but Mi-Ji is surprisingly unhelpful. What explains Mi-Ji’s behavior toward Pua? As Silent Sparks smolders on, the risks escalate. Promising first feature for writer-director Ping Chu.
You can buy tickets for these films and peruse the entire program at Frameline. Here’s the trailer for Drone.
