The film industry life cycle begins anew in the first quarter of every year as awards season comes to a close and festival season gains momentum. A time reserved for acknowledging the industry’s greatest achievements of the past year meets the period during which filmmakers rigorously strive to get their initial products noticed. Sundance and Berlinale kicked off the festival season earlier this quarter, SXSW has just wrapped, and now, SFFILM‘s San Francisco International Film Festival is on the horizon. Fellow filmgoers, we are officially in the thick of the festival circuit.
Consistently boasting one of the most diverse programs in the world, the 62nd annual festival, which runs from April 10 to April 23, could not have been possible without the tireless efforts of the SFFILM staff, led by Executive Director Noah Cowan and Director of Programming Rachel Rosen. The festival has steadily risen in scale and quality since Cowan and Rosen joined the organization within the last 10 years.
This year’s program features a total of 163 Films, including 46 narrative features, 40 documentary features, 4 new vision features, 3 episodic programs, 70 shorts, 52 countries represented, 36 languages, 12 world premieres, 5 North American premieres, 1 US premiere, and an impressive 72 women filmmakers. All told, nearly half of the films in this year’s program are directed by women.
Olivia Wilde leads an impressive lineup of directorial debuts with her film “Booksmart,” featuring rising stars Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein. Special tribute presentations include Laura Dern on April 14, accompanied by a screening of her new film, “Trial by Fire,” Claire Denis on April 11, accompanied by a screening of her new film, “High Life,” starring Juliette Binoche and Robert Pattison, Laura Linney on April 11, accompanied by a screening of “The Savages,” for which she was nominated for an Academy Award, and John C. Reilly on April 12, accompanied by a screening of “The Sisters Brothers.”
Following the premiere of his directorial debut “Sorry to Bother You” at last years SFFILM Festival, Bay Area native Boots Riley will deliver the State of Cinema Address on April 13. A conversation that discusses the present state of cinema, culture, and society, what better person to lead the discussion than the impassioned political activist?
The festival is bookended by Opening Night‘s “Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City,” starring Linney, Ellen Page, Paul Gross, and Olympia Dukakis, and Gavin Hood’s “Official Secrets,” starring Keira Knightly, Matt Smith, Matthew Goode, and Ralph Fiennes, on Closing Night. Lulu Wang’s “The Farewell,” starring the multifaceted Awkwafina, will be the festival’s Centerpiece film.
Check out the full line-up below and look for our coverage in April.
Awards + Tributes
Laura Linney: Tribute + “The Savages”
With many years still ahead of her, Laura Linney has thus far won two Golden Globe Awards and four Primetime Emmys. She has also received four Tony Award nominations, three Oscar nods, and a BAFTA nomination. It is an impressive list of accolades but one that also underlines her mastery of film, television, and the stage. Her breakthrough came on TV, when she first essayed the role of initially naïve, quick-study heroine Mary Ann Singleton in Tales of the City (1993), a character she would play three more times including in this year’s opening night Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City. Her cinematic breakthrough came in 1998, for her role as an unwitting reality TV star’s on-screen wife in The Truman Show. Two years later, she movingly inhabited the character of an overburdened single mom in You Can Count on Me (2000) and secured her first Oscar nomination. Roles in films like Mystic River (2003), Kinsey(2004), The Savages (2007), and Mr. Holmes (2015); TV series, such as John Adams (2008), The Big C (2010-13), and Ozark(2017-); plays like The Crucible (2002), Time Stands Still (2010), and The Little Foxes (2017) have followed, each revealing a new facet of Linney’s dazzling talent.
The Festival pays tribute to Linney with a conversation about her singular career and a screening of The Savages.
Claire Denis: Tribute + “High Life”
“For me,” says master filmmaker Claire Denis, “Cinema is not made to give a psychological explanation; for me cinema is montage.” Those who have experienced works like Beau Travail (Festival 2000), Friday Night (2003), The Intruder(Festival 2005), or her debut feature Chocolat (1988), know the singularity of Denis’ work. None of her films resembles one another, and yet there’s no one else on earth who could have made them. This very special tribute to a filmmaker long beloved by SFFILM audiences will feature a highlights reel from her career, an onstage discussion, and a presentation of her astonishing new film High Life. When asked about her new film’s look and design, Denis commented, “My aesthetic was simple: it’s a jail. I wanted the interior of the spaceship to look like a prison. That was my only radical beginning in terms of aesthetics.”
This tribute to Claire Denis includes a conversation with the director and a screening of High Life.
John C. Reilly: Tribute + “The Sisters Brothers”
John C. Reilly has established himself as one of the most versatile character actors working today, a performer capable of mining the depths of tragedy and cutting it up in the wildest comedy. That he was destined for a major career was apparent from his first film, Brian De Palma’s Casualties of War(1989) when he was promoted from extra to a major supporting part. Roles as diverse as a pornographic actor in Boogie Nights (1997), a crooked 19th-century cop in Gangs of New York (2002), and a cuckolded husband in Chicago (2002), for which he received an Oscar nomination, further established Reilly’s dramatic talent. Then in 2006, he played a dimwitted racecar driver in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), and moviegoers discovered a comic genius. Most recently, Reilly delicately balanced pathos and comedy to play his childhood idol Oliver Hardy in Stan & Ollie (2018), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination, and wore the black hat of an Old West assassin in Jacques Audiard’s The Sisters Brothers (2018).
This tribute to John C. Reilly and his brilliant career includes a conversation with the actor and a screening of The Sisters Brothers.
Madeline Anderson: POV Award + Short Films
The Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award honors a filmmaker whose main body of work falls outside the realm of narrative feature filmmaking. Madeline Anderson is a documentary filmmaker —a producer, director, and editor—whose career has been groundbreaking in numerous ways. Anderson is credited with being the first American-born Black woman to produce and direct a televised documentary film, the first to direct and produce a syndicated television series, and the first African-American woman to join the film editors union, among other firsts. Her films are passionate and innovative records of civil and social rights activists of the ’60s from a specifically feminist perspective. Join us for a career-spanning conversation with Madeline Anderson and screening of two of her seminal non-fiction films.
Integration Report 1, 1960, 20 min / I Am Somebody, 1970, 30 min
Laura Dern: Tribute + “Trial by Fire”
The daughter of two of the most acclaimed actors of their generation, Laura Dern has become one of the most acclaimed actors of her own. Her breakthrough role as a teenager in thrall of a seductive man in Joyce Chopra’s Bay Area-setSmooth Talk (1985) established how deeply under the skin she can sink into her characters. A year later, she began one of her most fruitful professional alliances when David Lynch tapped into her girl-next-door appeal, her presence a sharp contrast to the depravity around her, in Blue Velvet (1986). Most recently, Dern demonstrated another side of herself in collaboration with Lynch as Dale Cooper’s fierce secretary Diane in Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return (2017). Dern has two Academy Award nominations, as a young Southern seductress in Rambling Rose (1991) and as Cheryl Strayed’s devoted, dying mother in Wild (2014). More recently, she won an Emmy for her extraordinarily shaded performance as control-freak businesswoman Renata in the HBO series Big Little Lies. Recent and upcoming roles reveal Dern’s magnificent range: a big-hearted death-row prisoner’s advocate in Edward Zwick’s Trial by Fire (2018), valiant Vice Admiral Hondo in The Last Jedi (2017), literary hoaxer Laura Albert in Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy (2018), and genteel Marmee March in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women (2019).
This special afternoon will feature a conversation covering Dern’s singular career, followed by a screening of Trial by Fire.
Claude Jarman, Jr.: George Gund III Award + “Intruder in the Dust”
The longtime head of the San Francisco Film Society during its glamorous middle years (1965-1980) – made especially famous by day-long tributes to Hollywood legends and Board president Shirley Temple Black – Claude Jarman was also an accomplished child actor who worked with several legends, including the great John Ford (Rio Grande, 1950). According to those who came before and after, there would be no San Francisco Film Festival without him. Jarman’s exceptional life is chronicled in a recent book My Life and the Final Days of Hollywood. We salute him for his service to the film community and his unwavering commitment to the arts with a moderated conversation and screening of Intruder in the Dust (1949).
BBC Arena: Mel Novikoff Award + “Wisconsin Death Trip”
Under plangent chords written by Brian Eno, an empty bottle floats into view on dark blue water, coming closer, until we read the pink message–”Arena”–on the glass. No, it’s not a cola elixir or the best bottle of beer you ever threw away–but it’s the opening to one of the greatest television shows ever put together and sustained for 40 years. The show had its roots in theater and music, but it quickly reached out to literature and cinema. Over the years, Arena would deliver classic portraits of Luis Buñuel, Orson Welles, and Ingmar Bergman, all of which were notable for searching interviews that lasted several hours before being shaped and edited for the show. This year’s Novikoff award program will offer an onstage interview with Arena’s Series Editor and Executive Producer Anthony Wall followed by a screening of the 1999 Arena film Wisconsin Death Trip in 35mm. – David Thomson
Big Nights
Opening Night: Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City
Inspired by the books of Armistead Maupin, Netflix Original Series Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City begins a new chapter in the beloved story. Mary Ann (Laura Linney) returns to present-day San Francisco and is reunited with her daughter Shawna (Ellen Page) and ex-husband Brian (Paul Gross), 20 years after leaving them behind to pursue her career. Fleeing the midlife crisis that her picture-perfect Connecticut life created, Mary Ann is quickly drawn back into the orbit of Anna Madrigal (Olympia Dukakis) and her chosen family, the residents of 28 Barbary Lane.
Centerpiece Film: “The Farewell”
An ebullient tale that both celebrates and gently satirizes Chinese cultural traditions, The Farewell is impossible to resist for many reasons. Chief among them is the irrepressible Awkwafina (a breakthrough in Crazy Rich Asians, 2018), a broke Asian-American artist off to China to join her family to say goodbye to her dying grandmother. Except no one is willing to tell grandma she is sick – and to complete the ruse they force her male cousin to get married to a bewildered Japanese woman to explain why this zany family is getting back together at all.
Closing Night Film: “Official Secrets”
Gavin Hood’s rousing and riveting new film tells the true story of whistleblower Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley at her most impassioned), a British woman working for UK’s intelligence service, monitoring foreign correspondence. Morally distressed by a confidential staff email about coercing small countries to vote for a UN Iraq War resolution, she leaks the email to the British press and, after her identity is revealed, she is charged with treason. With a powerhouse supporting cast, including Matt Smith (The Crown), Matthew Goode, and Ralph Fiennes, Official Secretsjoins films like Vice (2018) and The Looming Tower (2018) to present the now undeniable case that the run-up to the Iraq War involved a disgraceful network of deception, coercion, and lies.
Dark Wave
The Death of Dick Long
Directed by Daniel Scheinert
USA | Fiction Feature | 110
Description:
Mystery and mishaps abound in this Fargo-esque comedy from Daniel Scheinert—one part of the team behind the cult-hit, Swiss Army Man (2016). Dick is dead and his bandmates, Zeke and Earl, are fumbling to cover up what really happened to their friend on the night of the strange incident that led to his passing. With possibly the best—and only?—use of a Nickelback soundtrack, The Death of Dick Long gets weird in small-town Alabama, where news travels fast and no one is an expert at keeping secrets.
Project Gutenberg
Directed by Felix Chong
Hong Kong/China | Fiction Feature | 131
Description:
Kinetic action and a mind-bending plot highlight this star-studded film about a counterfeiting network directed by Infernal Affairs (2002) writer Felix Chong. The film begins in the mid-’90s as detectives extradite Lee Man (Aaron Kwok) from a Thai prison. They believe he can assist in their search for his rumored associate, a mysterious mastermind named Painter (Chow Yun-fat). Unfolding in vivid flashbacks, Project Gutenberg unveils Lee’s history with the expert counterfeiter and their quest to make a perfect replica of the $100 bill, up to the breathtaking reveal of Painter’s final and most masterful forgery.
Monos
Directed by Alejandro Landes
Colombia | Fiction Feature | 102
Description:
Wild and unhinged, full of surrealistic visuals and a pulsing score, Monos brings a tense, disturbing twist to the war-film genre, with flavors of Apocalypse Now (1979) and Lord of the Flies (1990). A group of young soldiers, part of a rebel group called The Organization, is tasked to keep their hostage, “Doctora” (a bad-ass Julianne Nicholson), alive. When a military attack hits their base and she attempts escape, the codes they live by start to unravel as they venture deeper into the jungle and more hedonistic impulses take over. Winner Special Jury Award at Sundance.
The Nightingale
Directed by Jennifer Kent
Australia | Fiction Feature | 136
Description:
Harrowing, ambitious, and visually spectacular, Jennifer Kent’s (The Babadook, 2014) second feature, set in the wilds of 19th-century Tasmania, follows the epic journey of revenge undertaken by Irish former convict Clare (a riveting Aisling Franciosi) after a savagely cruel British lieutenant and his loutish underlings commit horrific acts against her and her family. Graphically violent, The Nightingale never shies away from the racist and colonialist attitudes towards the Aboriginal people, but delves deep into the mutual respect that grows between Clare and her Aboriginal guide Billy (Baykali Ganambarr).
