Festivals

Must See at NashFilm

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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.

Get Ready for NashFilm

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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.

Two Nuggets at this year’s SFJFF

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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.

Here’s the trailer for Oh, My!.

The SFJFF is back in 2025

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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 the Jewish 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 Shear stars 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!.

DRONE: stalked by a mystery

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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.

Frameline goes international again

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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.

Get ready for Frameline

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Photo caption: Olivia Coleman and John Lithgow in Sophie Hyde’s JIMPA, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Photo by Mark De Blok. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

Frameline, the oldest and longest-running LGBTQ+ film festival in the world, opens June 18 and runs through June 28. The 49th(!) Frameline brings us festival award-winners from Sundance to the Berlinale, with 150 films from 40 countries, including 42 world, North American and US premieres.

Films will screen at the Herbst Theatre and the ACT’s Toni Rembe Theater, as well as familiar arthouses like the Roxie, the Vogue, the New Parkway and, this year for the first time, the Rafael. Select films will be streamable after the in-person fest; (I’ll have more about that when I learn which films will be available online).

Here are some Frameline49 highlights:

  • The fest opens with John Lithgow and Olivia Colman starring in the Sundance indie Jimpa, about the Amsterdam reunion of a multigenerational queer Australian family. The HIV-positive patriarch (Lithgow) is visited by his daughter (Colman) and her non-binary child (Aud Mason-Hyde). Described as “funny and heartfelt”.
  • The closing night film is the dramedy Twinless. Two guys meet at a support group for people who have lost their twin – straight Roman (Dylan O-Brien) and gay Dennis (James Sweeney) – and form an unlikely connection. O’Brien won the best acting award at Sundance and the film, written and directed by Sweeney, won the best drama award. See it now, before its September release.
  • The program includes a whopping 25 documentary features. Given the strength of the docs in past Framelines (Loving Highsmith, Making Montgomery Clift), this looks like a rich slate of docs.

Some of the screenings are already selling fast and, although Frameline may add some screenings, it would be wise to get your tickets now. You can peruse the program and get passes and tickets at Frameline.

As in my Frameline coverage last year, I’ll be focusing on international cinema, especially directorial debuts. The Frameline programmers have a gift for finding the promising first films of new directors. In recent years, Frameline has presented Marion Desseigne-Ravel’s French coming-of-age story Besties, Marius Olteanu‘s innovative Romanian drama Monsters.(sic), Leon Le’s groundbreaking Vietnamese romance Song Lang, and Arantxa Echevarria’s Spanish sexual awakening tale Carmen y Lola. Last year, Frameline hosted the North American premiere of the third feature by Brazilian auteur Juliana Rojas, Cidade; Campo.

In this year’s program, I’ve already found some gems from Croatia and Taiwan – and a wowzer from France. Just before the fest opens, I’ll be coming back with specific recommendations.

Dylan O’Brien and James Sweeney in James Sweeney’s TWINLESS. Photo by Greg Cotten. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

Best of the SLO Film Fest

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Photo caption: The Gaelic thriller AONTAS. Courtesy of SLO Film Fest.

The 2025 SLO Film Fest opens tomorrow. I’ve screened over a dozen of the features, and here are four that you shouldn’t miss:

  • Aontas: This clever Irish thriller opens with three women donning balaclavas, brandishing guns and bursting into a credit union, a heist going wrong. Who are they? Who are they to each other? What is their plan? This is not techie Dublin. They are in a Gaelic-speaking western village, already on hard times when a smug sociopath loots the town by closing its last economic engine. In his second narrative feature, director and co-writer Damian McCann brilliantly unspools the story in a reverse chronology. Carrie Crowley and Brid Brennan are excellent as two estranged sisters with a shared horror in their past.
  • Made in Ethiopia: Businesswoman Motto is the face of a huge, new Chinese industrial park in Ethiopia. How huge? A factory with 3,000 workers is just one of its 130 businesses – and Motto is working on an 18,000-acre expansion. Motto is smart, zealous, charismatic and utterly non-ironic. Along with the other Chinese, she has drunk the Koo-Aid and sees the park as entirely benevolent – bringing large scale employment and investment to a poor and neglected society. A visiting Chinese official exclaims, “it’s just like China used to be!“. All of the workers are Ethiopian, who earn $50 per month in what is essentially a clean and gleaming sweatshop. All of the supervisors are Chinese who have left their families behind in China. The local farmers feel ripped off by their government, and an armed rebellion may be brewing. Apart from a global pandemic, what could possibly go wrong? In their first feature, directors Xinyan Yu and Max Duncan have created a brilliant exploration of clashing cultures and economic imperialism.
  • The Cigarette Surfboard: To raise consciousness about the environmental impact of cigarette butts (which is really, really bad), an activist builds and displays a functioning surfboard made out of 10,000 discarded cigarette butts picked up on the beach.  Backed by a community of surfers, scientists and surfer-scientists, he tours the world, seeking a ban on cigarette filters. Impressively, the Ciggy Board even survives Mavericks. The butt-gathering, surfboard building and local politics happens in Santa Cruz. This doc has racked up awards at many film festivals (even at one in Bulgaria).
  • Coastal: This film documents Neil Young’s most recent tour, a bus trip down and up the California coast for outdoor concerts in LA, San Diego and Berkeley. Young performs almost all new material, alone onstage except for his guitars, harmonica and a series of ancient pianos and an organ, each with its own back story. But the time on the bus is the most fun, featuring the banter between a wry, comfortable Young (with none of his renowned prickliness) and bus driver/raconteur Jerry Don Borden. This is director Daryl Hannah’s third Neil Young doc, and it’s an unusually intimate and authentic film. Neil Young and Daryl Hannah are expected to appear at the fest’s closing night screening at the Fremont Theater.
Neil Young in COASTAL. Courtesy of SLO Film Fest.

And here are two that I haven’t yet seen yet, but I think they’re pretty good bets:

  • The Baltimorons: A cracked tooth sends a guy to an emergency dentist and launches a nighttime adventure through Baltimore that could result in romance. We’re expecting The Baltimorons to reflect the sharp comic sensibility of writer-director Jay Duplass, who will appear to receive an award and present this film at the Fremont Theater. With his brother Mark, Duplass wrote and directed Baghead, Cyrus and Jeff Who Lives at Home, and has been busy directing/producing in television and acting (Transparent, Lynn Shelton’s Outside In). This is the first feature he has directed since 2012. At its world premiere just weeks ago, The Baltimorons won the Best Narrative Feature award at SXSW.
  • Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion: If ever a fashion designer dominated the Hollywood red carpet, it is Bob Mackie. Cher, Carol Burnett, Bernadette Peters, RuPaul and Tom Ford are all featured in this biodoc. After Monday’s screening at the Palm, Bob Mackie will appear to receive the festival’s King Vidor Award at the Hotel San Luis Obispo.

There are plenty more experiences at the fest, including features, workshops and six programs of shorts. Peruse the program and get your tickets at SLO Film Fest. Here are the trailers for Made in Ethiopia and The Cigarette Surfboard.

Surf and Skate at the 2025 SLO Film Fest

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Photo caption: Surf Nite in SLO. Courtesy of the SLO Film Fest.

This year’s SLO Film Fest, opening April 24, once again presents the richest Surf/Skate program that I’ve ever seen at a mainstream film festival. In fact, the SLO Film Festival dedicates its Friday night and Saturday night showcase screenings at the Fremont Theater to Surf/Skate events – that’s respect. Here are the highlights.

The always popular Surf Nite in SLO features three surfing short films with gnarly waves. Expect the Fremont Theater to be packed again with surfers enjoying drinks in the lobby and the Riff Tide surf band before the screening. The films are:

  • Making Waves: The Lakey Peterson Story profiles 805-native Lakey Peterson and her experiences on the World Surf League Championship Tour.
  • Creatures of Habit explores extreme cold water surfing,
  • NØ WAY involves even colder water and is described as “an antithesis to The Endless Summer“. It follows a band of surfers in the Barents Sea, which is between the northernmost coasts of Norway, Finland and Russia and the Arctic Ocean
Leandre Sanders in SKATEGOAT. Courtesy of SLO Film Fest.

For the second year, SLO Film Fest celebrates the culture and cinema of skateboarding with its Community of Skate program:

  • The feature film Skategoat profiles Leandre Sanders, whose passion for skateboarding led him to escape a crime-ridden and impoverished environment to become an international skateboarding superstar. Sanders will appear personally, along with the director, Van Alpert.
  • The short film Against the Current airs the reflections of skate icon and filmmaker Stacy Peralta on his own artistic journey. A surfer and one of the pioneers of modern skateboarding, Peralta, directed Dogtown and Z-boys and Riding Giants, wrote Lords of Dogtown, and founded the Powell Peralta skateboard product company. 
  • A post-screening panel with pro skaters Leandre Sanders and Chico Brenes, skate film director Aaron Meza, and Skategoat director Van Alpert.
  • An exhibition of skateboard designs and live-screen printing by the San Luis Obispo High School Advanced Graphic Design class. 
Photo caption: Jack Johnson in THE CIGARETTE SURFBOARD. Courtesy of SLO Film Fest.

The fest’s program also includes the enviro documentary feature The Cigarette Surfboard. To raise consciousness about the environmental impact of cigarette butts (which is really, really bad), an activist builds and displays a functioning surfboard made out of 10,000 discarded cigarette butts picked up on the beach.  Backed by a community of surfers, scientists and surfer-scientists, he tours the world, seeking a ban on cigarette filters. Impressively, the Ciggy Board even survives Mavericks. The butt-gathering, surfboard building and local politics happens in Santa Cruz. This doc has racked up awards at many film festivals (even at one in Bulgaria).

Check out the program and get your tickets at SLO Film Fest. Here are the trailers for Skategoat and The Cigarette Surfboard.

SFFILM Festival: three international gems

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Photo caption: Marina Fois in MAGMA. Courtesy of SFFILM.

This year’s San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) opens on Thursday and runs through April 27. There are plenty of big events, including the opening night Rebuilding starring Josh O’Connor (Challengers, La Chimera, The Crown) and Andre Holland appearing to receive an award and present his latest film Love, Brooklyn. However, don’t overlook the international cinema at SFFILM – here are three gems.

  • Magma: Marina Fois plays the leader of the scientific team that monitors the active volcano on Guadeloupe. She is seasoned, confident and not prone to panic. The government relies on her to counsel whether and when an upcoming eruption will force evacuation of island residents – and the politicians are not comfortable interpreting her probabilities. While no one wants to endanger lives, everyone remembers an evacuation that went horribly wrong in 1976. So, the stakes are high, and she is the public face of the decision to evacuate or not. When the government overreacts, her job gets much tougher. The clock ticks and the pressure builds in this taut 82-minute thrill ride, as director Cypriot Vial, who co-wrote, unspools the action. The performances by Fois and Theo Christine as her grad student assistant are fantastic. Magma won the SFFILM award for depicting science in a narrative film.
  • Triumph: Looking for a new role after the fall of communism, Bulgarian army leaders follow a psychic’s advice to burrow into the earth in search of a portal to a space alien’s mothership. If this seems farfetched, look up the historical event called “The Tsarichina Hole” (illustrated in the closing credits). Following the East European filmmaking tradition of exposing the absurdities in communist bureaucracy, directors and co-writers Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov pile on layers of droll hilarity. The psychic gets everyone to adopt pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo like “deactimation“. The army commander in charge brings his disturbed teen daughter (Maria Bakalova of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm), who has her own awakenings and begins to out-psychic the psychic.
  • Rains Over Babel: In her stunning debut feature, writer-director Gala del Sol takes us into an imagined world of Cali, Columbia, bars connected to the Underworld (not the just criminal underworld), ruled by a sexy loan shark who is the Grim Reaper. Among the denizens are a sleek and smarmy bartender, a prudish preacher, a gangland enforcer who’s been dead for twenty years, a talking salamander and more drag queens than you can shake a stick at. The story, fraught with desperation and Faustian bargains, flies by. Del Sol says she marries magic realism with gritty realism, and Rains Over Babel is visually orgiastic. The intricate production designs of the interiors could be by a demented Wes Anderson. The sound design is jarring and totally original. As an auteur, Gala del Sol is thinking so far outside of the box that you can’t tell that there’s a box.
Maria Bakalova in TRIUMPH. Courtesy of SFFILM and Bankside Films.

.The menu at SFFILM Festival includes 150 films from more than 50 countries. Peruse the program and buy tickets at SFFILM. Here’s the teaser for Rains Over Babel.