San Francisco International Film Festival 2017

[Chris Knipp]

FESTIVAL COVERAGE THREAD

Links to the reviews:

Bending the Arc (Kief Davidson, Pedro Kos 2016)
Cinema Travelers, The (Shirley Abraham, Amit Madheshiya 2016)
Date for Mad Mary, A (Darren Thornton 2016)
Duet (Navid Danesh 2016)
El mar la mar (Joshua Bonnetta & J.P. Sniadecki 2017)
Family Life/Vida de Familia (Cristián Jiménez, Alicia Scherson 2016)
Heaven Sent/Tombé du ciel(Wissam Charaf 2016)
Invierno, El/The Winter (Emiliano Torres 2016)
Landline (Gillian Robespierre 2016) Opening Night Film
Long Excuse, The (Miwa Nishikawa 2016)
Maliglutit/The Searchers (Zacharias Kunuk,Natar Ungalaak 2016)
Mukti Bhwan/Hotel Salvation (Shubhashish Bhutiani 2016)
Next Skin, The/La propera pell/La proxima piel (Isa Campo, Isaki Lacuesta 2016)
Ornithologist, The/O Ornitólogo (João Pedro Rodriguez 2016)
Park (Sofia Exarchou 2016)
Score: A Film Music Documentary (Matt Schrader 2016)
Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu 2016)
Student, The/(M)uchenik (Kirill Serebrennikov 2016)
Tania Libre (Lynn Hershman-Leeson 2016)
Transfiguration, The (Michael O'Shea 2016)
World Without End (No Reported Incidents) (Jem Cohen 2016)
As well as these SFIFF films previously reviewed on Filmleaf:
Beach Rats (Eliza Hittman 2016)
By the Time It Gets Dark (Anocha Suwichakornpong 2016)
Challenge, The (Yuri Ancarani 2016)
Death of Louis XIV, The/La mort de Louis XIV (Albert Sera 2016)
Endless Poetry/Poesía sin fin (Alejandro Jodorovsky 2016)
Future Perfect, The/El fuuro perfecto (Nele Wohlatz 2016)
Heal the Living/Réparer les vivants (Katell Quillévéré 2016)
Human Surge, The/El auge del humano (Edoardo Williams 2016)
Lady Macbeth (William Oldroyd 2016)
Life After Life/Zhi fan ye mao (Zhang Hanyi 2016)
Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello 2016)
Paris Opera, The/L'Opéra (Jean-Stéphane Bron 2016)
Patty Cake$ (Geremy Jasper 2016)
Stopover, The/Voir du pays (Delphine, Muriel Coulin 2016)


Festival centerpiece: Patti Cake$ (Reviewed on Filmleaf in ND/NF 2017)



The Golden Gate Awards nominees. The selection focuses on emerging talents and global cinema.

2017 GGA NEW DIRECTORS (NARRATIVE FEATURE) COMPETITION

Duet, Navid Danesh, Iran (North American Premiere)
After a Tehran musician instigates an encounter with his college girlfriend in an attempt to address the poor end their relationship suffered, their lives and the equilibrium of their spouses are thrown into existential crisis. Navid Danesh's resonant and moving depiction of the impact the past has on the present lives of its protagonists is both culturally specific and universal in its reach.

Everything Else, Natalia Almada, Mexico/USA/France
Academy Award-nominee Adriana Barraza (Babel) gives a masterfully controlled performance as Doña Flor, a solitary bureaucrat whose lifelong service in a government office has left her markedly unsympathetic towards her clients. Shot with an attentive and deeply empathetic lens, documentarian Natalia Almada’s narrative debut is a starkly intimate portrait of a woman at odds with her life who may still have a chance to escape her isolation.



God’s Own Country, Francis Lee, UK
Filmed on the Yorkshire hillside where he grew up, Francis Lee's debut feature tells the rich and sexy story of John Saxby, a hard-drinking lad who keeps his emotions in check until an irrepressible Romanian immigrant comes to help out on the family farm and upends the young man's life. Full of gloriously captured details about the care and breeding of animals, God's Own Country is one of the year's most moving romantic dramas.

Godless, Ralitza Petrova, Bulgaria/Denmark/France
In post-Communist era Bulgaria, where the shadow of oppression drives selfish behavior and hidden economies, outwardly impassive Gana works as a home care nurse—a job which provides ample opportunity to supplement her income with stolen ID cards to maintain the morphine habit she shares with her boyfriend. When Gana’s actions threaten the one glimmer of hope in her fatalistic world, will she break the cycle of corruption or spiral deeper? Godless is a bold first feature from Ralitza Petrova.

Heaven Sent, Wissam Charaf, France/Lebanon
Absurdly funny sequences punctuate this stylized comedy drama from Lebanon. Omar is a heavyset bodyguard who gets the assignment of his dreams, protecting a gorgeous TV personality, though matters are complicated when his brother Omar, a former militiaman presumed dead, magically reappears. Charaf's surprising and inventive debut reflects on a country rife with absurdities and still reeling from its fraught history.

The House of Tomorrow, Peter Livolsi, USA (World Premiere)
When a sheltered teen named Sebastian meets an aspiring punk rocker and falls for the boy's older sister, the stage is set for a cheerful and energetic comedy that tackles matters of friendship, young love, and musical dreams with equal aplomb. Ellen Burstyn is once again wondrous as Sebastian's grandmother who is devoted to the life and scientific work of Buckminster Fuller.

The Human Surge, Eduardo Williams, Argentina/Brazil/Portugal
Eduardo Williams has steadily made a name for himself with a series of indelible shorts featuring young protagonists adrift in strange environments. In his debut feature, a prizewinner at Locarno, he takes the premise further, crafting a dreamlike three-part drama where youths from Argentina, Mozambique, and the Philippines are connected by invisible, electronic, or even subterranean means. Consistently inventive, The Human Surge burrows into three continents and finds surprising associations.



Life After Life, Zhang Hanyi, China
As the inexorable progress of industrialization in China makes its way into the lives of village residents Mingchun and his son Leilei, a surprise haunting by Leilei's dead mother, who has an impassioned plea for her husband, points to a time when more attention was paid to the earth and its bounty. Produced by Jia Zhang Ke, this evocative and poetic debut depicts a rapidly disappearing way of life with a gorgeous visual sensibility and a subtly wry humor. (Reviewed in ND/NF 2016)

Park, Sofia Exarchou, Greece/Poland
The formerly grand stadiums and swimming pools of the 2004 Athens Olympics have become modern-day Greek ruins, a place for disaffected kids who've come of age since the Games to run wild. First-time director Exarchou, working mostly with non-professional actors, develops a compellingly anarchic style where the threat of violence and socio-economic troubles are omnipresent and the young characters act out their frustrations through boisterous, sometimes dangerous, horseplay.

The Wedding Ring, Rahmatou Keïta, Niger/Burkina Faso/France (US Premiere)
The Wedding Ring is a rare achievement, a wondrously complex dramatic feature directed by an African woman that explores female desires and empowerment in a traditional Muslim society. Rahmatou Keïta tells the story of Tiyaa who returns to Niger with lingering romantic feelings for the handsome man she left behind in France while grappling with family members who wish to arrange her marriage.

2017 GOLDEN GATE AWARDS MCBAINE DOCUMENTARY FEATURE COMPETITION

Brimstone & Glory, Viktor Jakovleski, USA
Burning Man has nothing on Tultepec’s charging toritos and exploding castillos. Mexico’s weeklong National Pyrotechnic Festival is sheer unbridled madness. Scars that tourists take away from fireworks-exploding bulls and towering infernos are earned with pleasure, apparently, as this dynamic documentary keeps explanation to a minimum while maximizing the experiential through GoPro camera POVs and gorgeous abstractions. Filmmaker Viktor Jakovleski has created a visually rapturous, immersive, sensory experience of this extraordinary event, capturing the danger and mayhem in all its glory.

The Cage Fighter, Jeff Unay, USA (World Premiere)
With the emotional force and power of a Bruce Springsteen song, Jeff Unay's cinema vérité portrait of Joe Carman packs an emotional wallop. A family man who has promised not to return to competitive mixed martial arts fighting, the dangerous sport that gives him the most complete sense of purpose he's been able to find, Joe risks everything for one more chance in the ring.



The Challenge, Yuri Ancarani, France/Italy
Italian artist Yuri Ancarani melds his luminous cinematic vision with the ancient sport of Arab falconry in The Challenge, an evocative and visually dazzling portrait of a celebrated hunting competition set in the coastal deserts of Qatar. Modern technology, such as GPS, augments a practice dating to antiquity as participants track their prized raptors across the austere plains, reconnecting with desert custom in the shadow of a falcon’s wing. (Reviewed on Filmleaf in ND/NF 2017)

The Cinema Travellers, Shirley Abraham, Amit Madheshiya, India
A moving homage to the bygone era of celluloid, The Cinema Travellers exquisitely captures the splendor of the moving image through India’s traveling movie caravans. Shot over five years, this intimate documentary takes the viewer on a cinematic journey joining the undaunted technicians, the projectionists who create movie magic, and the boisterous, overflowing crowd that await at each stop.

Donkeyote, Chico Pereira, Spain/Germany/UK
A Spanish man’s quest to defy barriers and borders in search of the American West by planning a journey on the Trail of Tears with his donkey by his side is its own quixotic trail of laughter and tears. The understanding between man and animal has rarely been so intimately conveyed as it is in Chico Pereira’s winning tale, a stunningly photographed film that hovers between documentary and fiction, one inspired and performed by a real-life character with outsized dreams.

The Force, Peter Nicks, USA
For the powerful second film in his trilogy concerning the relationship between public institutions and the communities they serve, Peter Nicks (The Waiting Room) takes a powerful, immersive look at the Oakland Police Department. Filming from 2014-2016 with astonishing access, Nicks captures a particularly turbulent time in Bay Area law enforcement history. Intended as a catalyst for conversation and change, Nicks’ empathetic and observational style avoids easy generalizations and upends expectations, resulting in a rich, thought provoking real-time conversation about social justice and the mutual responsibilities of police officers and those they serve and protect.

Half-Life in Fukushima, Mark Olexa, Francesca Scalisi, Switzerland/France
Five years after the devastating 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, elderly farmer Naoto Matsumura struggles to restore his life in the radioactive red zone, wandering through an empty dystopian nightmare of concrete ruins; abandoned, weed-filled facilities; contamination cleanup crews; and the haunting fragments of a city swept away by tsunami. With minimal commentary and a graceful and sympathetic eye, Half-Life in Fukushima underlines the danger inherent in nuclear power in its depiction of Fukushima’s sinister remnants and Matsumura’s lonely last stand.

In Loco Parentis, Neasa Ní Chianáin, David Rane, Ireland/Spain
Irish filmmaker Neasa Nî Chianáin and David Rane present a charming and deeply intimate portrait of a year at Headfort boarding school in picturesque Kells, Ireland. Following devoted and wryly funny educators John and Amanda Leyden as they battle through another season of Latin, Shakespeare, and kids playing "Wild Thing," In Loco Parentis shows how the level of attention and concern the teachers have for their students lead[s] to remarkable transformations in everyone's lives.

Muhi – Generally Temporary, Rina Castelnuovo-Hollander, Tamir Elterman, Israel/Germany
(World Premiere)
Muhi, a cherubic Palestinian toddler with a life-threatening immune disorder, was transported to an Israeli hospital as a baby for emergency treatment. He and his devoted grandfather have lived there ever since, stuck in a bizarre no man’s land, with their extended family living on the other side of a fiercely guarded checkpoint. Their unique and moving story takes place within the crucible of the relentless Israeli-Palestinian conflict that impacts everyone in its orbit.

Serenade for Haiti, Owlsley Brown, USA
“Music is our refuge,” says a student at the Sainte Trinité Music School in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Shot over a seven-year period both before and after Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake, this vibrant tribute to the students and teachers of Sainte Trinité testifies to the role that art can play in creating community and sustaining hope under the most difficult of circumstances.

[Chris Knipp]

Closing Night Film 2017. Guy Madden collaborates with the Kronos Quartet.

FULL DESCRIPTION
The Festival closes with a glorious collaboration in celebration of its 60th anniversary when the world-renowned Kronos Quartet performs a new score by composer Jacob Garchik to accompany a visual collage by award-winning filmmaker and cultural iconoclast Guy Maddin and codirectors Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson.

Maddin, working with his Forbidden Room collaborators Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, set himself the challenge and constraint to remake Vertigo without using any footage from the Hitchcock classic, creating a "parallel-universe version," in his words. Using Bay Area-based footage from a variety of sources—studio classics, '50s noir, documentary, experimental films, and '70s prime-time TV—and employing Maddin's mastery of assemblage technique, seen in work like My Winnipeg and Brand Upon the Brain, the result exerts the inexorable pull of Hitchcock's twisted tale of erotic obsession while paying tribute to our fair city and the ways it looks and feels through the medium of cinema.

Composer Jacob Garchik, who was born in San Francisco and has worked with the Kronos Quartet since 2006, fashions a score that collides and converses with Maddin and Johnson's irreverent and loving footage to create a distinctive musical extravaganza. Both filmmakers and composer are excited to include a live Foley element, the “Old Hollywood” method of creating special sound effects.

San Francisco's Kronos Quartet have combined a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually re-imagine the string quartet experience for more than 40 years. They have collaborated with recording artists including Paul McCartney, Laurie Anderson, Jarvis Cocker, Patti Smith, and David Bowie, and have performed scores by Philip Glass live for the films Mishima (1985) and Dracula (1931). At the 58th SF International Film Festival, they performed to Bill Morrison's Beyond Zero: 1914–1918. They spend at least five months of each year on tour, so it's a pleasure and a privilege to have them on their home territory for this very special event.

The SFIFF is also going to honor Ethan Hawke with a special tribute. . .

In-Depth Conversation with Ethan Hawke Will Precede a Screening of His New Film, Maudie, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts April 8. Additional tributes for James Ivory (with a 30th anniversary screening of Maurice), John Ridley (with an early look at his new SHOWTIME series Guerilla), and Gordon Gund (profiled in the short documentary The Illumination).

[Chris Knipp]

Full program announced at this morning's opening press conference held at the new Dolby complex's posh theater in San Francisco.

Browse the full public program info at sffilm.org/festival

2017 SFFILM Festival by the Numbers:

181 Films
66 Narrative Features
36 Documentary Features
2 New Vision Features
2 TV Series
75 Shorts
51 Countries Represented
38 Languages
6 World Premieres
7 North American Premieres
2 US Premieres
57 Women Directors

Highlights from today's press conference included these announcements:

The Festival’s Opening Night selection is Gillian Robespierre’s Landline, starring Jenny Slate, Edie Falco, John Turturro, and Jay Duplass. Robespierre's previous feature was Obvious Child (ND/NF 2014)

The Festival’s 2017 award recipients include Eleanor Coppola (George Gund III Craft of Cinema Award), Tom Luddy (Mel Novikoff Award), and Lynn Hershman Leeson (Persistence of Vision Award). Luddy is known for the establishment and running of the Pacific Film Archive and the Telluride Festival and early on UC Berkeley film presentations by his F.W. Murnauu Film Society.

Special Tributes will be presented to film and stage actor, writer, and documentary film director Ethan Hawke (including a screening of his new film Maudie, directed by Aisling Walsh and costarring Sally Hawkins); James Ivory (with a 30th anniversary screening of Maurice); John Ridley (with an early look at his new Showtime series "Guerilla"); and festival benefactor Gordon Gund (profiled in the short documentary The Illumination).

The Festival will present a special screening of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, in connection with an onstage conversation with William Randolph Hearst III, whose grandfather inspired the film's title character, and film historian David Thomson about the film’s legacy.

Pixar and Disney Animation Studio President Edwin Catmull will deliver the Festival’s State of Cinema Address, kicking off an all-day Creativity Summit where influential figures in the vanguard of art, film, and tech will participate in in-depth discussions about how their work intersects. Read the full press release.

SFFILM is debuting Launch, a new boutique program designed to introduce a curated slate of films to screen for Festival audiences and select film industry representatives. Kicking off with five world premieres from the official Festival lineup, Launch serves as an experimental alternative to larger-scale film sales environments elsewhere in the US.

The SFFILM Screening Room has re-launched—where SFFILM members can stream some festival films in weeks following the public program. Streaming content is available on the web at sffilm.org/watch or on the new SFFILM app, available on iOs and Android devices.

Browse the complete list of Festival press releases HERE, including the previously-announced Centerpiece and Closing Night programs, the Golden Gate Award feature film competitions, the Festival’s Live & Onstage program featuring musical performances by Will Oldham, DeVotchKa, Terence Nance, and Asian Dub Foundation, among others.

[Chris Knipp]

Comments on SFIFF venues and first looks at some films.


Interior Dolby theater 1275 Market St., San Francisco

About the new Dolby theater on Market Street. The whole venue is suave, spacious, and quietly posh. It has big solid light grey leather seats. They look expensive and seem unusually comfortable. The banked theater is curved and the screen is curved (why do they do that? Don't they know it makes the images look wobbly?). You are not allowed to bring in food or drinks and the seats of course have no hooks for them. This is nice I guess; I like that in Paris people don't take food into cinemas much. They have class, the Parisian cinema goers, and it's nice to focus on the film and not the sound of crunching popcorn. But for film festival-goers, it's not comfortable to be unable to have food. You've got to eat. This is a nice thing about the Walter Reade at Lincoln Center: you can bring food and drink in. In the Dolby Theater, there here are 230 seats. The men's room has one toilet and one urinal. That's it, for 230 seats. There will be a few of the festival films at this theater the first week. Only a few. A rep of the festival told me we were lucky to come to this venue. No doubt. But the men's, however posh, is too small.

For many years most SFIFF films were shown at Sundance Kabuki Cinema (and were before it was part of the Sundance chain), a large, comfortable cineplex in San Francisco's Japantown. Now, alas, that is no longer the case and the festival screenings are dispersed over many smaller venues. Perhaps this has happened because the Sundance chain was bought by the Carmike chain which has been bought by the AMC chain. The Kabuki is not what it was. It's been a while since the Sundance makeover and it's beginning to go to seed (and has no more drinks in theaters or validated parking). Or is it actually getting better? The site is up in the air right now. That area was, for drivers, a good location; the new focus on South of Market may be better for users of public transportation. The large historic Castro Theater (1,400 seats) is still a SFIFF venue, as before, and more so.

First looks.


Maliglutit (Searchers), Zacharias Kunuk

I will be requesting some screeners, and here are my first five choices and some comments:

Family Life, Alicia Scherson, Cristián Jiménez, Chile, 81 min.
Maliglutit ( Searchers ), Zacharias Kunuk, Canada, 94 min.
The Ornithologist, João Pedro Rodrigues, Portugal/France/Brazil, 118 min.
Sieranevada, Cristi Puiu, Romania, 173 min.
The Student, Kirill Serebrennikov, Russia, 118 min

Scherson's 2005 Play was one of my favorite films of the 2006 SFIFF, the first one I covered for Filmleaf. Zacharias Kunuk's Atanarjurat was a fascinatingly intense ethnic exploration about Inuit people. This new one, inspired by John Ford's classic Western The Searchers, promises to be good too. There has been buzz about The Ornithologist, which debuted at Locarno. Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is the first film shown to press at my first NYFF, in 2005, so it has a special place in my memory. The Student sounds like a film of both intellectual and emotional power. Variety calls it "A stormy, swoon-inducingly shot bout of Russian moral wrestling that hits as hard and heavily as a nastoyka hangover." The Guardian calls it "elegantly choreographed" and "forceful and provocative." Okay?

I've gone over all the films listed in the stapled provisional program and I've seen about 15 of the films at other places - in Paris cinemas, at the Rendez-Vous and New Directors/New Films press screenings and at NYC commercial press screenings. That still leaves a lot I haven't seen.

[Chris Knipp]

Schedule.

The SFIFF is set over two weeks earlier than in previous years. Ir begins April 5; last year it began April 21. The aim is to position it more advantageously in relation to other festivals, two weeks earlier than Tribeca instead of almost at the same time, and now six weeks before Cannes.

[Chris Knipp]

SIERANEVADA (Creisti Puiu 2016)

A family gathering, for nearly three hours, 40 days after the death of a man, just after the Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris. The camera gawks and oscillates following people who move from room to room in a small apartment full of people and the flow of the talk never stops. This is a format found in plays from Eugene O'Neill to Tracy Letts, but here the point seems to be the sheer lack of any final drama.

His The Death of Mr. Lazarescu I reviewed in the first NYFF I covered, in 2005, and it was the first press screening they showed us, and I was entranced. In 2010 his Aurora was a strange drab three-hour account of a man committing several murders. It was unusual, and Puiu himself played the main role adeptly, but it lacked the moral fervor and black humor that made Mr. Lazarescu powerful. This third film by Puiu, one of the leading figures of the New Romanian Cinema, is remarkable and adept, and fascinating, but numbing and rather disappointing because it all never comes together. (173 mins)

This was part of the Main Slate of the 2016 NYFF but I didn't get to see it. Screened now as part of the upcoming 2017 SFIFF.

Showing: Pacific Film Archive/Berkeley Art Museum Tuesday, April 11 6:30 PM and SFMoMA April 16, 2017 8:00 p.m.

[Chris Knipp]

Links to the reviews (so far) :

FAMILY LIFE/VIDA DE FAMILIA (Cristián Jiménez, Alicia Scherson 2016)

The directors of Play and Bonsai, two of the more imaginative Chilean films of recent decades, team up on something light about a marginal man who housesits for a married cousin and gets involved with a single mom, telling her a lie to explain why he's living in a family house: "Family Life" is a game for them.


MALIGLUTIT/SEARCHERS (Zacharias Kunuk,Natar Ungalaak 2016)

This is the filmmaker who made the stunning, unique Atanarjurat: The Fast Runner,, the first feature film made in the world of the Inuit people, set at an earlier time. This one is similar, but owes something to John Ford - bad guys and good guys, rescue and revenge. Just watching the interiors, the amazing fur outfits, the stunning icy landscapes is intoxicating, even if the effect isn't quite as compelling as the first film or the followup, The Journals of Knut Rasmussen, which was in the NYFF of 2006 and reviewed here.


THE ORNITHOLOGIST/Ó ORNITOLOGO (João Pedro Rodriguez 2016)

Portuguese gay auteur Rodriguez has a secure festival following, but this is his most accessible film, strange and sui generis though it may be. It's a very original retelling of the life of St. Anthony of Padua starring French hottie Paul Hamy, who came to our attention in Katell Quillévéré's Suzanne. This shows what a very good filmmaker Rodriguez has become. The use of acting, narrative, cinematography, and music shows extraordinary command and originality and this is a work to debate and rewatch.


THE STUDENT/(M)UCHENIK (Kirill Serebrennikov 2016)

Serebrennikov is an important theatrical figure in Russia and this grows out of a theatrical piece about a young man who drives everybody crazy by using the Bible as a weapon to enforce retro views and restrictions. Think of him as Donald Trump as a Fundamentalist who looks good naked. I didn't buy it; it just felt like one long stunt to me. The cinematography glows, the main actor is bold, and it's original; but as a statement about corrupt institutions in modern Russia Zvyagintsev's Leviathan remains unmatched.


WORLD WITHOUT END (NO REPORTED INCIDENTS) (Jem Cohen 2016)[/b]

We know Jem Cohen from Museum Hours, in which he became virtually "mainstream" through combining his documentary elements into a narrative about a museum guard in Vienna and a woman who comes from Canada to visit a very sick friend. This is a commissioned work about what he describes thus: "Quite close to London, but a million miles away, Southend-on-Sea is a town along the Thames estuary." Cohen's exquisite eye is much in evidence, but this time he has interviews. They are as subtle, understated and original as you'd expect from this gifted and very independent filmmaker.

Plus (described above):

SIERANEVADA (Creisti Puiu 2016)

[Chris Knipp]

A DATE FOR MAD MARY (Darren Thornton 2016)

In his feature debut, Darren Thornton directs and (with his brother Colin) adapts Yasmine Akram's play to the screen. At the center of it is Mary (the vivd Seána Kerslake), justout of a short stint at Dublin's Montjoy Prison in time to be maid of honor for best friend Charlene (Charleigh Bailey). But everybody else has become grownup and respectable, while Mary has stayed an insecure troublemaker. That may change with the wedding, and Mary's new friend, musician and videographer Jess (up-and-coming charmer Tara Lee). This little film from Ireland transcends conventions and carves out its own little memorable niche.

[Chris Knipp]

THE CINEMA TRAVELERS (Shirley Abraham, Amit Madheshiya 2016)

A real labor of love about three men long engaged in the trade of showing celluloid films in tents at fairs to rural audiences once a year in India. Their machinery and lorries are rusting and cracking, and the big reels are getting harder to get, digital is taking over, and the audience may be dwindling. The filmmakers worked for eight years to record the fading institution. Nostalgic and sad. Bookended by stills of the haunting faces of children in the tent enchanted by the flickering screen.

[Chris Knipp]

MUKTI BHWAN/HOTEL SALVATION (Shubhashish Bhutian 2016)

A man in is seventies drags his harried accountant son off to Varanisi when he has a dream that makes him think he's about to die. This first film which won a UNESCO prize at Venice starts out as a comedy with Bollywood overtones and ends up as something more subtle. First-time director Shubhashish Bhutian is only 25.

This can be seen as a very Indian variation on the senior citizen Best Exotic Marigold Hotel comedies.

[Chris Knipp]

BENDING THE ARC (Kief Davidson, Pedro Kos 2016)

This is a sharply edited, passionately dedicated documentary about the international nonprofit PARTNERS IN HEALTH, narrated by its founders thirty years ago - still as energetic and inspiring now - Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl, and Jim Yong Kim. They started in rural Haiti; moved on to Peru, fighting TB in both places; later went to Rwanda. Two who were inspired by their work (the first might surprise you): George W. Bush, responsible for a grant of $10 billian a year for global health especially to Africa; and Barack Obama, who saw to it that in 2012 Jim Yong Kim became president of the hitherto stingy World Bank, making its vast funds available for global health just in time to fight the Ebola epidemic. The message: money-oriented people and rich organizations and people don't want us to believe the poor and seriously ill have the right to health. PARTNERS IN HEALTH believes it's a moral imperative. An inspiring film.

[Chris Knipp]

More SFIFF reviews coming.

DUET (Navid Danesh 2016). An Iranian drama somewhat in the spirit of Asghar Farhadi.

THE NEXT SKIN (Isaki Lacuesta, Isa Campo 2016) A tense drama set in the Spanish Pyrenees starring Sergi López, Emma Suárez, newcomer Àlex Monner,and Bruno Todeschini.

PARK (Sofia Exarchou 2016). Blank, lawless kids hanging out in the site of the 2004 Athens Olympics, with a mostly amateur cast.

HEAVEN SENT (Wissam Charaf 2016). In post-civil war Lebanon a heavyset bodyguard and bouncer in Beirut named Omar gets the gig of his dreams guarding a sexy female television presenter turned politician - a funny, and part mystical tale. (Cannes)

TANIA LIBRE (Lynn Hershman Leeson 2016). Tania Libre is a documentary film about internationally renowned Cuban artist Tania Bruguera by Lynn Hershman Leeson, narrated by Tilda Swinton.

[Chris Knipp]

DUET (Navid Danesh 2016)

A laconic, disquieting art film from Iran about past memories and uncomfortable relationships. It's short on nutritional value but has exquisite form - score, cinematography, sound design. Even the interiors of cars are beautiful to look at. Unlike his comrade Farhadi, with whom he may want to be in league, he's stingy with plot.

[Chris Knipp]

HEAVEN SENT/TOMBÉ DU CIEL (Wissam Charaf 2016)

Spotty, but a nice palate-cleanser after serious and straightforward stuff, a whimsical film from Lebanon focused on a brother who comes back from the dead after fighting in the civil war. I know it doesn't sound funny, but the manner is a mix of Elia Suleiman and Roy Andersson, a series of scennettes that follow two brothers through two kinds of macho. From the ACID series at Cannes, released recently in France.

[Chris Knipp]

THE NEXT SKIN/LA PROPERA PELL/LA PROXIMA PIEL (Isa Campo, Isaki Lacuesta 2016)

A lost boy of 17 or so is returned seemingly to his mother, having disappeared from their home in the Spanish Pyranees eight years earlier after the death of his father and now been found living in a French orphanage. But is Léo really Gabriel, as his mother, Ana (Emma Suárez of Julieta believes? The film keeps us guessing interestingly all the way through. Excellent performances by Àlex Monner as Léo/Gabriel; Sergi Lopez as the boy's uncle; Bruno Todeschini as Michel, from the orphanage, and Igor Szpakowski as Joan, the lost boy's former playmate, with whom he develops a new relationship. I didn't completely believe all this, but it kept me fascinated nonetheless. Dialogue in Catalan and French.