SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL - April 24 - May 4, 2026

[Chris Knipp]

The SFIFF Introduction Fri, Apr 24 - May 4, 2026

This year's San Francisco International Film Festival will open on April 24 with an unprecedented double feature: Kent Jones's Late Fame, starring Willem Dafoe and Greta Lee, and Olivia Wilde's The Invite, starring Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz, and Edward Norton

[Chris Knipp]

GRETA LEE AND WILLEM DAFOE IN LATE FAME

KENT JONES: LATE FAME (2025)

Past self revisited

Willem Dafoe goes back to his low-keyed indie roots to play the lead in Kent Jones' sophomore directorial effort, Late Fame,, the story, loosely based on an 1890s satirical novella by Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler, of how a group of well-heeled young poetasters in today's NYC pluck a forgotten working class poet who produced one admired slim volume in the 1970s out of the post office where he's been sorting mail for 37 years and give him a moment of, not fame, of course - they, who anachronistically call themselves The Enthusiasm Society, abhor social media platforms - but of affirmation, a wistful hint of what might have been if he had gone on writing poetry over the last many decades, and a realization that that cannot be.