Strap in film buffs, the full lineup for the 52nd annual Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) is officially out. This year’s fest, which runs from May 7-17, has its rough spots and feels scaled back at times, but also contains some of the more ambitious programming in recent memory. There’s a lot to dig into in the weeks before SIFF kicks off. To start, here are some highlights you won’t want to miss.
First up is local filmmaker Sky Hopinka’s stunning new documentary feature Powwow People. Shot entirely at the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center in Seattle’s Discovery Park, the film takes place over the course of three days and profiles multiple participants all taking part in a powwow, including the MC with a voice of gold Ruben Littlehead. Much like the director’s previous feature, małni—towards the ocean, towards the shore, it’s an immersive, illuminating film that’s made in deep collaboration with the people it observes. Powwow People is another wondrous, vérité-style work from Hopinka.
Next is Ghost in the Machine, the bold new documentary from the Seattle-raised filmmaker Valerie Veatch. It dives into the ongoing nightmare that is our AI-obsessed present and comes out the other side with a clear-eyed sense of what’s at stake. Taking on established tech companies like Microsoft just as it does the new upstarts trying to sell us on the lie that is AI, Ghost in the Machine is an unflinching and essential work about the many perils of our current reality.
Have you thought about dying recently? If you haven’t, Seattle filmmaker JJ Gerber’s thoughtful and subtly transcendent new documentary The Life We Leave will change that. It shadows one of the first companies in Washington to offer human composting. It’s a fascinating film that compassionately and refreshingly looks death right in the eyes while finding plenty of complex life of its own along the way.
Listen up transit heads, appreciators of architecture, or lovers of slow cinema, you’re going to want to get hyped for Eight Bridges. The latest film from minimalist filmmaker James Benning is an examination of multiple bridges—yep, eight of them—that brings viewers along for the ride. Eight Bridges may seem like a… boring one to sit through, but everything from the enveloping sound design and the precise framing makes it feel like a painting in motion. Plus, you get to learn a lot about bridges.
Still looking for more? Here are some other standouts to see: Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild], Barbara Forever, Drunken Noodles, If I Go Will They Miss Me, I Want Your Sex, I Love Boosters, The Invite, The Friend’s House is Here, The Furious, Phoenix Jones: The Rise and Fall of a Real Life Superhero, Silent Friend, and See You When I See You.
Tickets for the festival are currently available for SIFF members and go on sale for the general public starting Thursday at 10 a.m.