This weekend, it's your last chance to catch the Seattle International Film Festival. See our complete SIFF guide for showtimes, trailers, and ticket links for each of the 400 films playing at the festival, as well as critics' picks and reviews. If you're just looking for the best movies to see this weekend, you're in the right place. If you'd like to see one of the best Iranian films ever, go to Taste of Cherry. If you'd prefer David Lowery's new supernatural relationship drama, check out A Ghost Story. To witness a perfectly executed space mission faux-documentary, don't miss The Landing. Click through the links below for showtimes and ticket links. For non-SIFF options, check out our complete movie times calendar.
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FRIDAY ONLY
My Journey Through French Cinema
For fans of Martin Scorsese’s essays on the cinematic histories of both America and Italy comes this like-minded clipfest by longtime SIFF fave Bertrand Tavernier (best known for Round Midnight, Coup de Torchon, and L.627). Footage from an astonishing breadth of films from the 1930s to the early 1970s, archival interviews with many of its greatest artists, and an overarching sense of personal thralldom to the form itself make this an absolute must-see for experts and newcomers alike. Bonus features: Investigations of French national identity feel more urgent than ever AND it’s useful to recall that no matter how important the New Wave was/is, it was only one chapter in a story that can truly be called epic. (P.S. There is reportedly an 11-hour version of this doc being shown on French TV, to which I say: Bring it on!) (SEAN NELSON)
SIFF Film Center
Susanne Bartsch: On Top
This documentary traces the influence that cultural icon Susanne Bartsch had on youth, nightlife, and New York City. Personalities of the party scene, including Amanda LePore and RuPaul, speak to Bartsch’s influence. As do Bartsch’s husband, gym owner David Barton, and her son, who help to reveal Bartsch for who she is when the lashes come off. The film also shines a spotlight on the AIDS epidemic, queer communities of the 1980s, and queer communities today. Come for the campy costumes, stay for the hypnotic montage of Bartsch, New York, and inclusive fun. (JESSICA FU)
SIFF Cinema Egyptian
FRIDAY-SATURDAY
A Ghost Story
As if Ain’t Them Bodies Saints hadn’t already established David Lowery as a must-see filmmaker with aesthetic imagination that reached far beyond his micro-budget roots, his miraculous reboot of Pete’s Dragon last year not only cemented his credentials, but also proved you can never take his next step for granted. Reunited with now-fully-starrified Saints stars Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck, Lowery ventures into a heretofore unexplored corner of the supernatural. (SEAN NELSON)
SIFF Cinema Uptown
FRIDAY & SUNDAY
The Landing
In an era when reality is defined by the pleasing lies of documentary filmmaking, the ability to seize that language to make fiction is a great artistic asset. The makers of this brilliantly speculative reconstruction of the fateful Apollo 18 moon mission utterly nail every formal note of the here’s-what-happened school of talking-head storytelling, and then assemble those notes into a smart, dark, disconcerting concerto on international conspiracy theory, big government cover-ups, and the eternal engine of jealousy. Like a NASA mission, every atom of this film had to be executed perfectly, and all systems are go. (SEAN NELSON)
SIFF Cinema Uptown
SATURDAY ONLY
In the Radiant City
Years after making a decision that tore his family apart, a haunted man (Michael Abbott Jr.) ventures back to his tiny Kentucky hometown. Director Rachel Lambert’s debut has some definite similarities with the work of Jeff Nichols (who produced), including an eye for convincingly lived-in detail and the sense that even the bit players have their own stories to tell. Scenes like the perfectly handled finale, meanwhile, suggest that she also has her own trails to blaze. Very well done, with a few unexpectedly lovely moments of grace, and some real, scary heat when the tightly clenched characters finally lay down their cards. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Revolting Rhymes
The thing about fairy tales is that they were never meant for children. They were filthy, violent stories adults traded back and forth after the third beer at the bar. Revolting Rhymes returns the fairy tale to its darker origins, and successfully so. A trickster wolf serves as this animated film’s primary storyteller. He tells the PG-13 version of the tales, brilliantly mixing and matching characters from other stories as he goes along. Pretty, funny, extremely British, and sophisticatedly feminist. (RICH SMITH)
SIFF Cinema Egyptian
*Taste of Cherry
The well-to-do, middle-aged Tehranian man has the saddest face ever, as he drives a Land Rover around the dusty city, looking for someone to bury him after he kills himself. This is the whole story. He offers a lift to a stranger, talks with them for a little bit, and then asks them to do this awful task (for money) after he puts a bullet in his head. He has already dug the hole, so the job will be pretty easy. All that needs to be done is to roll his corpse into the hole and cover it with dirt. The film enters the zone of existential philosophy when one stranger finally accepts the offer (he badly needs the money). It is not an exaggeration to say that this is one of the greatest Iranian films ever made, and its director, Abbas Kiarostami, who passed away last year, played a leading role in developing the program, tone, and mode of this country’s distinctive cinema. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
SIFF Cinema Uptown
The Turkish Way
El Celler de Can Roca is rarely mentioned without being followed by “one of the best restaurants in the world,” and this film follows the three brothers who helm it as they explore Turkey in search of culinary inspiration. It offers insight into the way great chefs process information into dishes and delves into some of the factors that led to Spain’s restaurant revival—and discusses how Turkey could follow—against the backdrop of Turkey’s sprawling landscapes, bustling markets, and best restaurants. (NAOMI TOMKY)
SIFF Cinema Uptown
SUNDAY ONLY
*Bad Black
The genius of Wakaliwood films, which are made in the slums of Kampala, the capital of the English-speaking African country Uganda, is that they cannot be improved. The way they look is exactly how they were made: with almost no money. The raw action scenes and stunts, the super-cheap CGI special effects (the kind you find on an iPhone), the poor quality of the sound, the disorderly editing, the crazy mesh of English and Swahili, and the improbable plots are precisely what make these films so enjoyable. Because the poverty of the production is so proud of itself, so brazen, so lacking in shame, it directly mocks first-world production values. If, say, the special effects were upgraded, then these films would lose a lot of their political and comic power. Another aspect of Wakaliwood films is their benshi (a performer who provides narration) bringing the whole mess together. If the benshi does not make you laugh until it hurts, then he has not done his job. Bad Black is a Wakaliwood masterpiece. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
SIFF Cinema Egyptian
Handsome Devil
A self-conscious teenage rebel (Fionn O’Shea) finds his views on male bonding shifting after his latest boarding school forces him to room with a handsome rugby star (Nicholas Galitzine). Director John Butler’s film keeps the life lessons mostly buried, concentrating instead on sheer breezy entertainment. Lots of fun throughout, featuring realistically witty dialogue, some very appealing give-and-take between the two leads, and a downright terrific supporting turn by Andrew Scott, as a teacher who sometimes seems wary of his own awesomeness. Blatant crowd-pleasing isn’t a bad thing when it works. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Hedi
Hedi is a car salesman, but people aren’t buying because of political instability. He is getting married, so he has to give up his bachelor pad in Tunis and move back into his bossy mother’s house. He is a pallid, limp sort of person: dispassionate about work, marriage, everything. On a business trip, he meets a new woman. They have fun together, talk about their dreams, and are physically affectionate. He is a different person when he is with her, able to break free from the strict societal expectations. Which brings us to the conundrum: Will he choose responsibility and family duty, or will he chuck it all for a life of freedom and uncertainty? (GILLIAN ANDERSON)
SIFF Cinema Uptown
The Oath
After a sojourn in Hollywood, actor-director Baltasar Kormákur returns to ReykjavĂk for this minor-key thriller. Finnur, a surgeon, has a beautiful wife and two beautiful daughters. After Anna (Hera Hilmar), the oldest child, takes up with sneering drug dealer Ottar, she drops out of college. When it becomes clear that she’ll never leave the bastard, Finnur takes matters into his own hands by bribing and then kidnapping him. The title comes from the Hippocratic oath “do no harm,” but you best believe harm ensues as the dad becomes as much of a lawbreaker as the boyfriend. (KATHY FENNESSY)
SIFF Cinema Egyptian
This Is Our Land
This Is Our Land is about a sweet, simple French nurse named Pauline. With a little nudging, she becomes convinced to run for mayor under the wing of a political leader that in both looks and politics imitates Marine Le Pen. The politicians/manipulators are “centrists” who “care about the French people.” At first, Pauline claims to be left-wing, but smiles her way through hateful conversations. The paranoid self-interest that defines her new party is easy to swallow because Arab groceries have stayed open while her favorite shops have closed. Director Lucas Belvaux captures the fear that sustains far-right politics, the way conservatives feel “persecuted,” the transformative effects of power, and how populist movements can embolden milquetoast people to the point of vocal bigotry. But the dramatic violence mutes the effects of policy. Hatred can snowball into bloody terror, but politicians don’t need skinheads with clubs to destroy lives. (JULIA RABAN)
SIFF Cinema Egyptian
* = Don't Miss
