A sneak preview of the opening weekend at the oldest film festival in the Americas.
By Meredith Brody (April 23, 2025)
After a five-day iteration in 2024, SFILM returns in 2025 with eleven days stuffed with over 150 movies (narratives, documentaries, and shorts) from 50 countries, special events, workshops and talks, and awards. April 17-27.
Most screenings are in a clutch of four theaters in the picturesque (if difficult to park in!) Marina, but East Bay residents can access two movies on weekdays and four on weekends at Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive. Titles of festival films mentioned have links to descriptions and tickets.
I agree with what one of my favorite directors, Sean Baker, made a plea for at the Academy Awards in his Anora acceptance speech: “Watching a film in the theater with an audience is an experience,” Baker told the crowd. “We can laugh together, cry together, scream in fright together, perhaps sit in devastated silence together…It’s a communal experience you simply don’t get at home.”
And for me it’s a communal experience that’s even better at a film festival: you’re in an enthusiastic audience that’s guaranteed to be excited, respectful, and looking at the BIG screen, not the little one concealed somewhere on their person. I’ve flown as much as 6000 miles to enjoy the festival experience. We should support the festival that’s right in our backyards, to guarantee that it’ll return next year.
The Opening Night film is the Sundance hit Rebuilding (Thursday April 17that 7 pm at the Premier Theater in the Presidio; tickets include entrance to the Opening Night party; and 8 pm, Marina Theater, tickets for movie only). It boasts an interesting cast: versatile Josh O’Connor, star of both La Chimera and Challengers, surrounded by Megann Fahy and Amy Madigan. In unfortunately too-timely fashion, O’Connor loses his home and ranch to wildfires and must live in a FEMA camp while reconnecting with his ex-wife and daughter.
Several documentaries caught my eye on the first weekend: In Vivien’s Wild Ride (Friday April 18th at 6 pm at the beautiful Premier Theater at 1 Letterman in the Presidio, repeated on Saturday April 19th at BAM/PFA), famed local editor Vivien Hilligrove (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Henry and June) makes her directorial debut in an unconventional memoir, reminiscing about her career and life as she begins to deal with losing her sight.
If you think dating in the Bay Area is rough, imagine trying to find a partner in China, where the now-abandoned one-child policy and the preference for male children has created a society with 30 million more men than women. Filmmaker Violet Du Feng’s The Dating Game (Friday, April 18th, at 8:30 pm, The Marina Theater) follows dating coach Hao as he attempts to make his clients more attractive to women, some of whom prefer AI boyfriends – less muss and fuss. The director and several of her crew are expected to attend a post-screening Q&A.
How to Build a Library (Saturday, April 19th, at 12:30 pm, Marina Theater) is very intriguing to my bibliomaniac side, horrified by an epidemic here of book banning and racism. Two women in Nairobi take on the seemingly Sisyphean task of restoring a neglected formerly whites-only library over many years, inside and out. The two directors, married partners Chris King and Mai Lekow, are expected to be there for the post-screening Q&A.
Seminal feminist author Edna O’Brien is celebrated in Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story (Saturday April 19th at 2:45 pm at the Presidio Theater; Sunday April 20th at 11:30 am at BAM/PFA). O’Brien was both admired and reviled for her sexually frank novels and her lavish lifestyle, partying in London during the Swinging Sixties and elsewhere. Jessie Buckley reads excerpts from O’Brien’s diaries, and O’Brien herself sat for some poignant late-in-life interviews – still attractive and coquettish.
If you want to further your education in documentaries, there’s a free Festival Talk (Saturday April 19th at 4 pm in the SFILM Festival Lounge, online registration) called “Documentary Filmmakers on Style and Substance” that is right up your alley.
If you’re in the mood for narrative film, there are a number of intriguing titles to choose am to choose from:
Hot Milk (Friday, April 18th at 6 pm, Marina Theater; Sunday, April 27th at 7:45 pm, BAM/PFA) stars Sex Education’s Emma Mackey accompanying her wheelchair-bound mother Fiona Shaw on a summer trip to Spain, where they encounter seamstress Vicki Krieps. Director Rebecca Lenkiwicz has written with Pawel Pawlikowski on Ida and Steve McQueen on Small Axe, and is expected to attend Friday’s screening with several members of her crew.
On Saturday, April 19th, there’s the Centerpiece of the festival (7:30, Premier Theater at 1 Letterman), a Tribute to noted actor/producer Andre Holland (Selma, Moonlight). The Steven Soderbergh exec-produced romantic drama, Love, Brooklyn, a debut feature directed by Rachael Abigail Holder, screens as part of the tribute. Holland is torn between two beautiful women, his ex, a gallery owner, and a masseuse who’s a single mom.
Holland also stars at the Festival in The Dutchman (Sunday, April 20th, 5;45 pm, Marina Theater), another film production of the Ami Baraka play, co-starring Kate Mara and Zazie Beetz. Both Holland and director Andre Gaines, making his narrative film debut after directing acclaimed documentaries, are expected to be in attendance.
Acclaimed director of action and horror Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns to the Festival after accompanying many of his earlier films here with Cloud (Sunday April 20th, 8:30 pm, Marina Theater), chronicling the rise and fall of a savvy but unscrupulous online reseller whose early indiscretions catch up with him in violent and disturbing fashion.
If you’d prefer something lighter, there’s Operation Taco Gary’s (Sunday April 20th, 8:30 pm, Presidio Theater), a mashup of screwball comedy, action, and sci-fi starring San Francisco-born actor Simon Rex, accompanying his brother, Dustin Milligan, on a cross-country road trip to Milligan’s new job in Canada at the eponymous taco chain. But is Taco Gary’s actually a front for a global conspiracy?
There is another week to explore after this opening weekend through Sunday, April 27.
One special show we urge you to attend coming on Wednesday, April 23 is the Mel Novikoff Award being given to the Roxie Theater, San Francisco’s most creatively programmed cinema and one of the country’s most adventurous places to discover great movies from the past and present (and even the future). The Roxie is close to buying their building which will ensure their continued presentations for generations to come.
“For over 30 years, the SFFILM Mel Novikoff Award has been given to an individual or institution whose work has enhanced the film-going public’s appreciation of world cinema. One of the oldest continuously operating movie theaters in the United States, the Roxie is a Bay Area institution. Filmmaker Rodrigo Reyes will moderate a conversation about the theater’s past, present, and future, with Executive Director Lex Sloan and Director of Programming Isabel Fondevila. A screening of Akira Kurosawa’s multivalent Rashomon, celebrating its 75th anniversary, will follow.”
Visit the Roxie website and sign up for their weekly schedules.
Take a chance. Try something new, unknown, and intriguing at the Festival. And on the BIG screen!
The complete SF International Film Festival schedule and a downloadable pocket guide here.
If a ticketing page states tickets are “At Rush” keep checking back as seats are often released the day of show and even more at the venue.
Festival Program Director Jesse Fairbanks discusses the festival program on the “Storied” Podcast.
Meredith Brody, a graduate of both the Paris Cordon Bleu cooking school and USC film school, has been the restaurant critic for, among others, the Village Voice, LA Weekly, and SF Weekly, and has written for countless film magazines and websites including Cahiers du Cinema, Film Comment, and Indiewire. Her writings on books, theater, television, and travel have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Interview. She also contributes to EatDrinkFilms including her“Meals with Meredith,” where she talks about food and film with filmmakers at restaurants in northern California, writes about vintage cocktails and where she eats during film festivals at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. A selection of her EDF pieces are found here.
One could describe Meredith as “hooked on cinema” as she attends four-five films a day at many bay area and international festivals each year. Somebody has to do it. Read about her journey back to festivals after two years in pandemic mode.
eatdrinkfilms.com 