The first full week of the Seattle International Film Festival is coming in hot. We've already compiled a list of all of the picks for the full festival that you absolutely shouldn't miss, but, below, we've rounded up the movies for the week that our critics think are worth watching, like Rasmus Dinesen's Michelin Stars: Tales from the Kitchen, Claire Denis's Let The Sunshine In, and Desiree Akhavan's The Miseducation of Cameron Post. Follow the links below for showtimes, trailers, and ticket links, and check out our SIFF Guide for the full schedule, including Highlander with a live soundtrack by DJ NicFit, a party following Won't You Be My Neighbor?, and An Afternoon with Melanie Lynskey.

MONDAY ONLY
Beast
A perfect thriller has to have the right balance of suspense, threat of danger, lust and sex, and melodrama. Beast wonderfully has all of these things and a great cast. At the center of the plot is Moll, who lives at home with her controlling mother. While celebrating her birthday, which her family doesn’t seem to care about at all, she drifts into town, has a wild night of partying, and finds herself being rescued by the piercing-blue-eyed Pascal. The inexplicable attraction between these two damaged souls is immediate and palpable. Their euphoric rush of first love and sexual attraction is uncontrollable. Meanwhile, a string of murders across the island has the locals looking for a suspect, and Moll and Pascal both already have black marks against them. Beast utilizes a cinematic canvas that recalls the works of Jane Campion and Lynne Ramsay to create an intoxicating psychosexual journey unlike any other. (CARL SPENCE)
AMC Pacific Place

Disobedience
I didn’t expect Rachel Weisz would ever produce and star in a film with hot lesbian sex set in an Orthodox Jewish community. Ever. (Maybe I was misled by the fact that she is married to Daniel Craig, aka James Bond.) However, I wasn’t surprised that this film is directed by Sebastián Lelio, the award-winning director of the equally stirring A Fantastic Woman. Lelio has a proven knack for tackling stories with strong female characters. Loosely based on Naomi Alderman’s novel and co-scripted with playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Disobedience revolves around two passionate women torn apart by their secular and devout lives. Ronit (Weisz) is happily single and living a vibrant life as a photographer in New York, but she is estranged from her highly respected Orthodox rabbi father in London. When she comes back for her father’s funeral, the flame for her former lover Esti (Rachel McAdams) is reignited and threatens to upend their lives and the entire community. (CARL SPENCE)
Ark Lodge Cinemas

Green Days by the River
In 1950s Trinidad, Shell is a charismatic 15-year-old who has moved to a new rural community. It is a beautiful place, all shades of green with lovely meandering rivers. He faces the usual teenage dilemmas: which girl to like, what job to get, what he wants versus what his parents want for him. The culture of Trinidad is fascinating, with descendants of Africans and East Indians mixing it up together, and it all comes into play in the film when young people come together (speaking their lyrical English Creole). The story is centered on the characters; they exist only in this place, with little entering from the outside world—and the gorgeous soundtrack helps carry it all along. (GILLIAN ANDERSON)
AMC Pacific Place

MONDAY-TUESDAY
A Man of Integrity
Mohammad Rasoulof, a politically engaged director who has clashed with and is under indictment by Iranian authorities, shot this film clandestinely in rural Iran. It won the best film of the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival. Subsequently, Rasoulof was arrested and had his passport confiscated upon returning from the Telluride Film Festival. The heart, soul, and protagonist of the film is Reza, a former teacher who retreats with his wife and young son to raise goldfish in rural northern Iran. His refusal to participate in the endemic corruption and bribery necessary to succeed causes him to lose his money, car, and income. His rival is a vindictive farmer who has mastered the art of winning at any cost. The film has a slow burn until it ignites into a thriller with long-repressed violence expressed as a battle of good versus evil. (CARL SPENCE)
Majestic Bay

MONDAY & WEDNESDAY
Luna
Is Luna a shitty person, or is she just covered in the shit spatter from her toxic group of friends? The answer seems clear in the first 20 minutes of the film, when she steals a puppy, nearly gets into a catfight over her good-for-nothing boyfriend, and enjoys a night of frivolous partying that peaks with a horrible act committed almost off-handedly with her participation. She doesn’t distance herself from it exactly, but her actions come full circle soon enough, and she’s left questioning her judgment and decisions, and the people she’s chosen to surround herself with. Though it could have easily become a cautionary tale, Luna ends up being a powerful film about redemption and forgiveness. (LEILANI POLK)
SIFF Cinema Uptown

Michelin Stars: Tales from the Kitchen
The Michelin Guides were created in 1900 by a pair of cunning tire-salesmen brothers, who wanted to entice motorists and would-be motorists to take more trips by providing trusted recommendations for hotels and restaurants. Today, they’re a behemoth in the food world, able to decide the fate of any establishment when they add or retract a star from their ratings. This documentary balances the lightness and beauty within the pinnacle of the restaurant industry (like the thrilling shots of plates being obsessively composed with tweezers) with its shadowy undercurrent (abusive workplaces and chefs driven to suicide in the cutthroat environment). (JULIANNE BELL)
Lincoln Square Cinemas

MONDAY & FRIDAY
A Skin So Soft
Not much happens in this documentary essay by Quebecois filmmaker Denis Côte. The dialogue is sparse—there’s more heavy breathing than words—and the action is small, especially considering the characters’ physical size. The film portrays six bodybuilders in Canada as they go about their daily lives: waking up, eating breakfast, caring for children, brushing their teeth, taking selfies, and, of course, picking up heavy things and then putting them back down. These men are massive, with muscles built and maintained through hard work and protein powder, and their brute size belies their sometimes sensitive inner lives. In one scene, you see a colossal tattooed muscle man eating his breakfast and quietly crying at something playing on his laptop. What inspired this emotion, we don’t know, but that hardly matters: the tears of a giant, wiping his eyes before he heads out the gym, are deeply, strangely fascinating, as is this whole quiet film. (KATIE HERZOG)
SIFF Cinema Uptown

TUESDAY ONLY
First Reformed
Don’t make the mistake I made at the Telluride Film Festival when I skipped this unexpected magnum opus from the writer of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. Paul Schrader’s latest film is a return to form. Infused with elements from his Calvinist upbringing and 1950s art-house cinema (check out his newly reissued book Transcendental Style in Film on Bresson, Ozu, and Dreyer), First Reformed revolves around the Reverend Ernst Toller (portrayed with devastating restraint by Ethan Hawke). He is a former military chaplain ministering to a tiny congregation in upstate New York, and he can’t get past the deep grief and spiritual isolation caused by the ill-fated death of his enlisted son. When congregant Mary (Amanda Seyfried) asks him to counsel her troubled (and radical environmentalist) husband, Toller discovers his church’s distinguished financial savior is an amoral corporate polluter, and he becomes obsessed with saving a world he believes is destroying itself. The film also stars Cedric the Entertainer as a mega-church pastor and Toller’s overseer. (CARL SPENCE)
SIFF Cinema Uptown

Rust
It is known that teenagers do stupid things, but this Brazilian film reminds us that thoughtless actions can be irreversible and may even haunt kids, and their families, forever. A leaked sex tape, social-media bullying, and an irreversible act lead to tragedy that ripples through many lives. We first get a glimpse into the life of a popular high-school girl whose phone has fallen into the wrong hands, and then into that of a young man who has trouble making peace with himself and those around him. Both kids have secrets. Both have regrets. (KAIA CHESSEN)
Ark Lodge Cinemas

Three Peaks
I confess I have a movie crush on Bérénice Bejo. Maybe it’s because she has come to SIFF four times, maybe it is because she is married to Michel Hazanavicius, maybe it’s because she was nominated for an Oscar (for The Artist), or maybe it is because she served me bread and cheese at her flat in Paris. Or maybe it is because I know she is not really French but was born in Buenos Aires and has just completed a new movie by one of my favorite directors, Pablo Trapero. In any case, she stars as Lea in this ominous thriller, a woman with a possessive 8-year-old son Tristan and a Viking-like boyfriend named Aaron. They take a vacation high up in the mountains. Physical and psychological landscapes are at the center of the film as Aaron takes Tristan on a mountain hike, and the boy’s rebellion against his temporary father escalates to dangerous heights. (CARL SPENCE)
Majestic Bay

TUESDAY-WEDNESDAY
The Eternal Road
A Finnish man finds himself leading a dangerous double life on a Soviet collective farm in the 1930s. Director AJ Annila has a brawny, aggressive style (his earlier horror film Sauna maintained an impressively dreadful momentum), which gives this true story unusual amounts of kinetic oomph. Unfortunately, the content often seems to be weirdly at odds with the form, squandering more than a few sequences of potential energy by bogging down in standard bio-pic conventions. Still, this remains an interesting, largely unrepresented tale of reluctant heroism, even when you can feel it straining at the bit. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
SIFF Cinema Uptown

Three Identical Strangers
What starts off looking like a standard issue Netflix doc about a zany family—replete with insulting reenactments and that creeping sense that you’ve just signed on for two hours with people who only think their story is worth telling—rapidly becomes one of the most complex, even shocking adoption stories you’ll ever hear. Short version: Within the space of a couple of days in 1980, three 19-year-old triplets who have never even heard of one another’s existence, meet and become brothers, friends, and NYC media darlings. But the story of why they had never met—why, in fact, their existence was intentionally kept a secret—involves a conspiracy worthy of a psychological thriller. The ramifications of that conspiracy proved devastating, and continue to reverberate. As the story unravels (with perhaps one notch more manipulation than is required, but that’s a nit not everyone would pick), you become astonished by the layers of complexity and injustice these three guys have experienced. And it doesn’t take long before your initial impressions are totally forgotten: These guys aren’t just lovable doofballs telling well-rehearsed chestnuts about their kooky life. They’re people who have suffered unimaginable hardship and now bravely submit it to further public scrutiny in the hopes of solving the mystery at the center of their lives. (SEAN NELSON)
SIFF Cinema Egyptian

TUESDAY & FRIDAY
Edward II
The late Derek Jarman came fully, ragingly into his own with this adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s play about a king (Steven Waddington) who scandalizes his wife (Tilda Swinton, naturally), appalls the court, and sets palace intrigue in full-tilt motion by taking a male lover. This was truly one of the breakthrough works of contemporary queer cinema. And though you can see the 1991 on it, the performances, design, and whole sensibility of the film remain really magnificent. (SEAN NELSON)
SIFF Cinema Uptown

TUESDAY & SATURDAY
On Borrowed Time
It’s hard not to root for the elderly gentlemen of Yasir Al-Yasiri’s anti-ageist dramedy. In a culture that venerates family ties, the Four Musketeers are cut off from everyone except each other and the staffers, like lovelorn nurse Khaled, at their Dubai retirement home. When one man inherits a fortune, they rent a recording studio, buy sparkly new threads, and visit a disco, leading relatives and managerial types to treat them like unruly children, but the men get the last laugh. It’s Grumpy Old Men–style silly at times, but worth watching just for Saad Al Faraj’s sweetly sympathetic performance. (KATHY FENNESSY)
AMC Pacific Place

WEDNESDAY ONLY
Queerama
Contrary to popular opinion, most homosexuals don’t look any different from anyone else.” Thus begins this hour-long montage of queer news, cinema, and culture over the past 100 years. Beginning with 1919’s Different from the Others and moving through newsreels about underground gay communities, queer liberation, the AIDS crisis, the fight for marriage equality, trans rights, and more, the archival footage spans the evolution of queerness as a perversion—something secret, taboo, criminal—to something as ordinary as Seattle rain. Set to music by John Grant and Hercules & Love Affair, the film isn’t narrated so much as it is sung. Catch it if you like extended music videos—if not, skip it and head to the gay bar instead. (KATIE HERZOG)
Ark Lodge Cinemas

WEDNESDAY-THURSDAY
The African Storm
The African country in this very entertaining film is, like Black Panther’s Wakanda, fictional. Also like Wakanda, it’s run by an enlightened leader, played by the director Sylvestre Amoussou. But whereas the leader of Wakanda is in the process of opening his country to the world, the leader of Tangara wants to close his by nationalizing all the major industries and imposing capital controls. Western corporations hire a French economic hit woman to destabilize Tangara’s democracy and incite a civil war. Innocent people are raped and killed, politicians are bought, and the free press is threatened. Will Tangara’s experiment with black economic independence survive this ferocious attack? The film’s ending is as real as the country. (Those who watch this must also watch Silas.) (CHARLES MUDEDE)
Ark Lodge Cinemas

Ava
It’s not easy being a teenage girl in Iran. Girls are kept on a tight leash, and Ava fights against the constraints imposed on her by her school, her parents, and her society. The schoolgirls are watched closely for any “misconduct” by a maniacal principal and are berated and shamed for the smallest infraction. Also true, teenagers are annoying know-it-alls no matter where they’re from. Moody Ava doesn’t evoke much sympathy as she surrounds herself with melodrama, trying to exert herself in the narrow confines of what is allowed for her. Will she go too far in her rebellion or be scared straight? (GILLIAN ANDERSON)
Lincoln Square Cinemas

WEDNESDAY & FRIDAY
The Last Suit
An extremely handsome and well-dressed Holocaust survivor from Argentina embarks on what feels like a final adventure to Poland to fulfill a promise he made during the Shoah. Though he’s charming and sympathetic, our hero is also a stubborn old man who has deeply disappointed all he’s sired. The quality and variety of the silk cravats in this film is enough to recommend it. But powerfully good acting and the heart-melting story of a survivor reckoning with an incomprehensibly painful past makes the film a must-see. (RICH SMITH)
SIFF Cinema Uptown

WEDNESDAY & SUNDAY
Nervous Translation
An 8-year-old girl in Manila keeps herself occupied at home while her busy family becomes increasingly fragmented. This empathic tone poem enters the headspace of its central character within the first few frames and never zooms back out, successfully replicating how a tricky math problem or the fixing of a well-worn cassette tape can briefly encompass the entire universe. Not for all metabolisms, certainly—the narrative could maybe use just a bit more drama, manufactured or otherwise—but the mood it creates and sustains is impressive. Capturing kidhood without being cloying is no easy feat. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
AMC Pacific Place

THURSDAY ONLY
Prospect
Is this the first major work of Northwest science fiction? Indeed, it imagines a moon that is like the evergreen forests that surround Seattle. The whole planet is green—gothic green. And the light on this strange moon is sharply slanted like Northwest light. The superb film is about prospectors (a father and daughter) looking for a root-made gem that will make them rich. The daughter, however, is keen to get off the planet because the line to it is about to be shut down. But her father is money-mad. If he does not make it here, he will never make it anywhere in the galaxy. Translucent insects float through the air. There are other money-mad prospectors in the endless forest. You do not leave this planet without paying a big price. Money is the root of all evil. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
SIFF Cinema Uptown

THURSDAY-FRIDAY
Breath
An uncommonly strong coming-of-age story about two young best friends in early 1970s Australia who, under the tutelage of an older adept, become immersed in the itinerant, vaguely mystical, entirely hardcore culture of surfing (before it was a lifestyle available to weekend warriors). The film is based on a best-selling Australian book, and you can easily see why the story and characters would generate such broad appeal. It’s not quite as brainy as William Finnegan’s Barbarian Days, but not quite as cartoony as Point Break. And the surfing bits are killer. (SEAN NELSON)
SIFF Cinema Uptown

THURSDAY & SATURDAY
Love, Gilda
Another example of SIFF showing a very well-made documentary that nonetheless has the feel of a DVD or Blu-ray bonus feature. The story of Gilda Radner’s comedic brilliance, seemingly universal appeal, and unfairly early death is always worth revisiting, and this one does a good job of exploring both her own darkness and the prefeminist showbiz culture she arose from. The performance footage, the stuff about her childhood, and the story of her later relationship with Gene Wilder makes your heart melt. The rest is pretty conventional talking-headery courtesy of Saturday Night Live castmates, friends, and family members. If you love Gilda, you’ll love Love, Gilda. (SEAN NELSON)
SIFF Cinema Egyptian

FRIDAY ONLY
Angels Wear White
Remarkable youth performances anchor Vivian Qu’s rigorous procedural about the adults who exploit children—and the systemic misogyny that protects them. Mia, who is undocumented, is working at a seaside motel when a prominent citizen checks in with two underage girls. When their parents find out, the police launch an investigation, but at every turn, women take the blame for the actions of men. Even Wen’s mother holds the 12-year-old responsible, but these girls—like this film—are tougher than they look. (KATHY FENNESSY)
AMC Pacific Place

On Chesil Beach
I have two words on why you should see this film: Saoirse Ronan. She is radiant; she is a chameleon-like actor. Maybe you forgot she was in Atonement, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Loving Vincent. She was even in Lady Bird?! Based on Ian McEwan’s novella and directed by Dominic Cooke, longtime artistic director of the Royal Court Theatre, this is a film about British sex in the 1960s, just before the sexual revolution. On Chesil Beach is the story of Florence and Edward, young university graduates getting married without ever having slept in the same bed together. Billy Howle (Dunkirk) stars as the hapless husband-to-be. When they meet on their wedding bed, things do not go as planned and everything they’ve been keeping together emotionally for their entire lives unravels with devastating consequences. (CARL SPENCE)
Shoreline Community College

FRIDAY-SATURDAY
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Even though this movie deservedly won the top prize at Sundance, I wasn’t initially sure we needed another story about a teenage lesbian forced to go to pray-away-the-gay conversion camp. However, a hell of a lot has changed since 1999 when But I’m a Cheerleader came out. Cameron Post (Chloë Grace Moretz) is sent to the camp after being caught with her pants down with another girl on her prom night. The irony is that sending gay kids to the same place provides them with a sense of community and the ability to discover they are not alone in the world. While not all of the kids make it out unscathed, Cameron is able to form a secret support group to survive. Infused with humor without being campy, this is a sophisticated and refreshingly honest adaptation of the Emily M. Danforth novel of the same name. (CARL SPENCE)
SIFF Cinema Uptown

Unarmed Verses
A documentary about poetry, about growing up in the projects of Toronto, about a special girl, Francine Valentine, and the way in which she sees the world. Francine’s life is not easy. She’s had to grow up much too quickly, but her thoughtful approach to life seems to make her impervious to defeat. “On the streets, it’s not what you have. It’s what you make of what you have, and that’s that,” she writes. The film is in equal parts about a beautiful mind and how art saves the mind from a world that is not always so beautiful. (KAIA CHESSEN)
SIFF Cinema Uptown

FRIDAY & SUNDAY
The Captain
Breathtaking black-and-white cinematography enlivens and ennobles this unbelievably brutal, disturbingly brilliant psychological study of the corrupting influence of power. Two weeks before the end of WWII, a lowly, starving German soldier, probably a deserter, scavenges a meager existence near the front. He comes upon a suitcase that contains a captain’s uniform. Initially, he puts it on to help guard against the cold. Then he gets an idea, which sets him on a course of impersonation that grows darker, more violent, and, troublingly, more credible as his path through the nearly defeated Reich proceeds. Before long, his bluff becomes a more sinister kind of performance. He wears the mask long enough for it to become his face. Many people have expressed a desire in the past couple of years to understand not merely the fact of fascism, but the process of it. The Captain isn’t exactly easy to watch (though, again, nearly every frame is beautiful), but as a window onto that process—the way people wield, dread, and capitulate to power—it’s indispensable. (SEAN NELSON)
SIFF Cinema Egyptian

Waru
On first look, it might seem like this film is too depressing to watch. Its eight vignettes (all directed by Maori women) revolve around the death of a young child named Waru. Each character is either directly connected to the child (family member, teacher) or part of the indigenous community that is plagued by the problems that resulted in his death (poverty, substance abuse). Since each part has a different writer/director, there is a variation in the style and quality of the content. But overall, the women’s stories are affecting and really stay with you. (GILLIAN ANDERSON)
AMC Pacific Place

SATURDAY ONLY
After the War
When the political assassination of a professor puts Italian law enforcement on high alert, a former terrorist (Giuseppe Battiston) grabs his family and holes up somewhere off the map in France. It works—for a while. This is a provocative, tautly paced directorial debut, with a whopper of a lead performance. Battiston, normally a comedic actor, is just fascinating to watch as a man whose unlovely sense of pride only grows as his situation gets more desperate. Even during moments of quiet, he still hears the hounds. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Shoreline Community College

Happy Birthday
After encountering each other on opposite sides of a violent protest, a policeman and his rebellious daughter reach the Final Straw. When the rest of the family confines the two to their country house, they must decide if neutral ground still exists. The generational squabbles may feel cookie cutter at first—these kids and their phones!—but there’s some real heat to their throw downs, as well as more than a few instances where neither viewpoint seems to be all that correct. The story is intriguingly thorny, with lead performances that deepen as the gulf between the characters grows wider. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Lincoln Square Cinemas

SATURDAY-SUNDAY
Let The Sunshine In
Claire Denis has crafted an undeniably French pseudo-romantic comedy on middle-age love and desire from the female perspective. Be forewarned, a Claire Denis romantic comedy will not resemble anything close to Sleepless in Seattle. And this is a good thing! The radiant and beguiling Juliette Binoche tackles the role of a divorced artist who is also a perpetually sexually unsatisfied woman. She is having a hard time falling in love and finding Mr. Right. Maybe it is because she keeps allowing herself to be seduced by men who aren’t that good at helping her achieve an orgasm? As she moves elliptically from one emotional and romantic attachment to another, there is quite a bit of foreplay, sex, and illuminating banter in search of what is most elusive: love. (CARL SPENCE)
SIFF Cinema Egyptian

SUNDAY ONLY
The Charmer
This film, which is perfect until its final 15 minutes, is about a youngish Iranian man in Copenhagen who is trying to fuck his way to Danish citizenship. He is good-looking. His eyes are large and intelligent. His body is not too fit and not too flabby—in other words, it’s just right. The women love him, and it seems finding a match should not be a problem. But he doesn’t have much time—he needs a woman to be fucked so blissfully that she cannot say no to being his wife right quick. And the one Danish woman who is fucked in such a way, who will do anything for him, turns out to be married. He does not have enough time for her to get divorced and legally attached to him. She loses him and her mind. Another woman loses her mind during his desperate mission. She is also young and Iranian, and has citizenship. She falls in love with him. It’s a match made in heaven. But he has a secret, which turns out to ruin the end of this otherwise brilliant film. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
AMC Pacific Place

Cuban Food Stories
Food is inextricably linked to culture, to tradition, and to memory. Unfortunately for filmmaker and Cuba native Asori Soto, he was robbed of those memories as a child, when the economic crisis forced bereft cooks to scrimp on ingredients. In Cuban Food Stories, he returns to reclaim the flavors of his homeland—but don’t expect familiar meals like pork, rice, and beans. Instead, you’ll be introduced to dishes that live not in cookbooks or on menus, but through oral tradition, some of them in locations so isolated they can be reached only by horseback or raft. Like ceviche so fresh, it’s prepared still on the fishing boat, or coconut meat scraped out of the shell and drizzled with honey and rum at a remote countryside stand. Soto is a loving documentarian, and his dedication to Cuba is palpable in every frame. (JULIANNE BELL)
SIFF Cinema Uptown

Falling
While drying out in the Ukrainian countryside, an erstwhile musician has a chance encounter with a illusion-free woman. A very promising debut for director Marina Stepanska, where the emotional surges and deeply felt performances handily overcome the increasing predictability of the plot. (Somewhere, Anton Chekhov’s ears must be burning.) What lingers, ultimately, are the early scenes between the leads, which beautifully capture the thunderous, helpless rush of an instant connection. Every sideways glance crackles with potential energy. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Lincoln Square Cinemas

Half Widow
Being widowed is hard enough. But imagine if your husband disappeared and not knowing if he is alive or dead, or whether he will ever return. In the Muslim community of Kashmir, Neela and Khalid have a loving relationship, despite having met only once before their wedding. After her husband is taken away during the 1999 conflicts, Neela is left with no answers and the police won’t help: “I am in search of someone whom they say never went missing.” She can’t move on. And not to sound cold-hearted, but the story does drag a bit as Neela wanders around looking sad. But Half Widow is beautifully filmed and the story has an emotional resonance. (GILLIAN ANDERSON)
Lincoln Square Cinemas

Luk'Luk'I
This hauntingly beautiful and oddly compelling documentary follows unlikely figures living on the fringes, including a roller-skating street performer with delusions that she is world-famous and a dad so addicted to drugs that he has virtually no relationship with his adult son. The five characters live in Vancouver, BC, and their stories play out as the 2010 Winter Olympics are going on in the background. They are real people, but here they are acting for the camera as themselves—so you get the most intense, revealing, dramatic versions of them possible. It’s an uncategorizable film and a masterful piece of nonfiction art. (CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE)
SIFF Cinema Uptown

Marilyn
Marcos is the 18-year-old son of an Argentinian cattle rancher, and he likes to dress as his female alter ego, Marilyn. His family, and especially his mother, hate Marilyn, and this hatred is fodder for many sad plot points. The film is a slow burn, with perhaps too many shots of lingering, sorrowful glances from men with pretty eyes. Americans, who are becoming increasingly accustomed to queer films that are post-hate, could find the film’s humorlessness to be heavy-handed. But its payoff is worth it, and Marcos’s true story is one that deserves to be witnessed. (CHASE BURNS)
SIFF Cinema Uptown

The Oslo Diaries
It’s reasonable to ask why we need a documentary that chronicles a quarter-century-old peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians that has yet to achieve its aims. The answer is simple: In pretty much all realms, we need to relearn the kind of brave and fragile process that was at the heart of the 1993 Olso Peace Accords. “Part of what happens in negotiations,” says an American diplomat present for Oslo’s enemy-versus-enemy conversations, “is the humanization of the other side.” We are in an era in which new mediums, old demagogic tricks, and urgent problems have all conspired to produce a limitless supply of absolutist, non-negotiable answers from pretty much everyone to pretty much everything. Watch and learn how to compromise for the greater good, and how easy it is for nativists and nationalists to pounce on peaceful compromise at its most vulnerable moment. (ELI SANDERS)
AMC Pacific Place