If you’re anxiously waiting for your copy of 200 Cigarettes to come in the mail or you’re looking to fill the void after binging The Legend of Korra, local theaters have your back with some truly terrific streaming options this weekend, from the Northwest Film Forum’s Seattle Arab Film Festival to a SIFF screening of the Werner Herzog doc Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin. Take a gander at all of our top picks below, including some options from national platforms, like Class Action Park on HBO Max and Boys State on Apple TV+.
New & Noteworthy: Supporting Seattle Businesses
Epicentro
Along with the end of Spanish colonial rule in the Americas, the 1989 explosion of the US Navy Ship the USS Maine precipitated something else in Havana: a surge of on-screen propaganda painting Cuba as a utopian land. Oscar-nominated director Hubert Sauper (Darwin’s Nightmare) explores this point in Cuban history and “[interrogates] time, imperialism and cinema itself” in his latest film.
Available via Northwest Film Forum
Opening Friday
Ghost Tropic
Khadija, a Maghrebi cleaning woman living in Brussels in the wake of the fatal 2016 bombings, takes a long walk all the way across the city after falling asleep on the train one night. Those she encounters (a security guard, a convenience store clerk, a group of teenagers) punctuate Bas Devos’ portrait of the immigrant experience during a time when xenophobia was particularly potent in Belgium.
Available via Grand Illusion
Opening Friday
House of Cardin
The French Italian fashion designer Pierre Cardin is known for his avant-garde, retro-futuristic designs that our plebeian grasp of haute fashion wants to compare to The Jetsons. Because he featured female models in blocky geometric shapes that did little to incentivize the male gaze, he’s also credited as a feminist designer, and one who helped bridge the gap between couture and ready-to-wear. Todd Hughes and P. David Ebersole trace his career in this feature doc.
Available via SIFF
Opening Friday
Made in Bangladesh
After a factory fire kills one of her co-workers, a garment worker in Bangladesh dedicates herself to starting a union, despite opposition from her own friends and colleagues, in Rubaiyat Hossain’s film championing workers’ rights.
Available via SIFF
Opening Friday
Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival 2020
Postponed from its original date in March, the 15th edition of this fest presented by SIFF and MoPOP will highlight “illuminating and unconventional” animated and live-action science fiction, fantasy, and horror-tinged short films from around the globe for two days on the internet.
Available via SIFF and MoPOP
Saturday-Sunday
Mr. SOUL!
You’ve probably heard of SOUL!, the weekly TV hit that aired from the 1960s to the early-’70s that highlighted Black voices and performers across the nation. But how much do you know about its host, Ellis Haizlip? This documentary goes deep into the life of the highly influential progenitor of “America’s first Black Tonight Show.”
Available via SIFF
Opening Friday
No Hard Feelings
Parvis, the son of exiled Iranians, copes with life in his small hometown by indulging himself with pop culture, Grindr dates, and raves. After being caught shoplifting, he’s sentenced to community service at a refugee shelter where he meets siblings Banafshe and Amon, who have fled Iran. Faraz Shariat’s debut feature mirrors the director’s own experiences as an immigrant discovering his sexuality and cultural identity in Germany.
Available via Northwest Film Forum as part of Queer as German Folk
Friday-Sunday
Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin
Honoring the memory of his late friend Bruce Chatwin, the travel journalist and adventurer who died of AIDS in 1989, legendary German filmmaker Werner Herzog takes the rucksack gifted to him by the writer and travels from Patagonia to Wales to Australia exploring Chatwin’s favorite subjects: human restlessness and wandering, borders and exile, and art and objects.
Available via SIFF
Opening Friday
The Seattle Arab Film Festival
Emerging and established Arab filmmakers are front and center in this weeklong virtual festival of shorts and feature films grouped in themed blocks like “In the Diaspora,” “Youth in Focus,” and “Strong Female Lead.”
Available via Northwest Film Forum
New & Noteworthy: Nationwide
All Together Now
So now that one of the Beatles’ catchiest songs is stuck in your head simply by reading the title to this movie, see if you can get it out of your head by watching Netflix’s latest frothy, lighter-than-air, feel-good teen comedy, starring the voice of Moana, Auli’i Cravalho. If you’re a Portland transplant, you may even recognize some of the shots.
Available via Netflix
Premiering Friday
Boys State
Short of watching a bald eagle burst into flames and drop into the ocean, the closest you can come to emotionally preparing yourself for the November election is streaming Boys State on Apple TV+. Co-directed by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss, Boys State presents an allegory of American politics in its coverage of the titular event, a week-long boot camp designed by the American Legion to introduce high school boys to the fundamentals of elections and government. To that end, hundreds of teens convene on a campus, split into two parties (the Nationalists and the Federalists), build platforms from scratch, and run for various municipal and state offices. The governor’s seat represents the top spot. The program began in the late 1930s “to counter the socialism-inspired Young Pioneer Camps,” and now runs annually across the country. If you’ve ever looked at U.S. Senator Tom Cotton and thought, “Where the fuck did that goon begin his political training?” The answer, in part, is Boys State. Ditto Dick Cheney, Cory Booker, Michael Dukakis, Chris Christie, Garth Brooks, Michael Jordan, and Jon Bon Jovi. The film snagged the Grand Jury Prize for documentary at Sundance earlier this year for good reason. The directors mix fly-on-the-wall storytelling with insightful one-on-one interviews to build complex, compelling profiles of four major characters, all of whom reflect the best and worst aspects of our contemporary political discourse. RICH SMITH
Available via Apple TV+
Class Action Park
Directors Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott investigate the old cliche that in “the good ol’ days,” kids’ entertainment was a lot more fun because it was a lot more dangerous. Turns out that, according to them, it’s a cliche because it’s true. Their documentary Class Action Park looks at a New Jersey waterslide park that opened in 1978, became nationally famous for the sheer number of injuries (and deaths) that occurred there, and yet remained open until 1996.
Available via HBO Max
Cobra Kai
When YouTube was honestly trying to become an original content platform, it put out some…stuff, including a 30-years-after-the-fact sequel to The Karate Kid focused on Johnny (you know, the blonde asshole who got crane kicked in the face about 30 seconds before the credits rolled) as a middle-aged man running the Cobra Kai dojo. Nobody expected much from the low budget and the kinda off-putting premise. Which made it all the more surprising that Cobra Kai became a breakout success (relatively) and was also a very effective examination (and repudiation) of toxic masculinity in modern culture. Plus, you know… people kicking each other in the face! It’s made the move to Netflix, so you can binge all two seasons as fast as you can before the third shows up there soon.
Available via Netflix
Love Fraud
Directors Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, the team behind Jesus Camp, which is still stunning in how placidly disturbing it is, reunites for this four-part Showtime mini-series about a group of women who have all been financially and emotionally ripped-off by the same predatory asshole. They come together, they hire a bounty hunter (Carla the Bounty Hunter, specifically) and that’s when what seems like a standard true-crime doc becomes something that has way more in common with Kill Bill than it does 60 Minutes.
Available via Showtime
Premiering Sunday
I May Destroy You
If all you know of Michaela Coel is her work in Chewing Gum, the brilliant sitcom she created for BBC Two—and was subsequently streamed on Netflix—you will be ill-prepared for this British talent’s stunning second act, I May Destroy You. It wrapped up earlier this week, which means you can now binge it all in one go. We don’t know if that’s the best way to take in Coel’s masterpiece—but it’s your call. Maybe you want to spend an entire weekend having every last emotion wrung all the way out and thrown back at you at 95mph. To each their reach!
Available via HBO Max
Teenage Bounty Hunters
This is sorta like Cobra Kai in that you’ll probably come across it on Netflix one day and be like “How the hell is this even a show?” And then you remember you live in a world where something called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is inextricable from the cultural fabric after almost 40 years of constant refreshing and rebooting, and suddenly “teenaged bounty hunters” doesn’t seem that outlandish. That’s when you click on it and realize, much like Cobra Kai, the show is so much better than it had any right to be. Teenage Bounty Hunters isn’t just the serio-comic misadventuring of two Christian-schooled girls and old-Dwayne Wayne from A Different World. It’s also a pretty pointed skewering of religion and institutional oppression, while also being a solid coming-of-age (and coming-out) story at the same time. It’s almost like Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars were successfully fused together. But with Dwayne Wayne in it, too!
Available via Netflix
Last Chance to Stream: Films Ending This Week
Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
There are only 18 hours left until the Roaring ’20s, a dive bar off the Vegas Strip, closes for good—and its regulars hold out until the bitter end. “It’s less a portrait of a long goodbye to a drinking establishment than it is an exploration of the community that calls such places home and their fellow barflies family—and what happens when you take away that collective space after the very last call,” reads a Rolling Stone review. If you’re not already pining to reclaim your spot at your favorite watering hole, this’ll change that.
Available via SIFF
Thursday only
Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful
A quick flip through a retrospective of Helmut Newton’s work will reveal the legendary photographer’s core subject: subversive and provocative portrayals of mostly-naked ladies, many of whom (Catherine Deneuve, Grace Jones, Charlotte Rampling, Isabella Rossellini) are famous. Gero von Boehm’s documentary examines the artist’s influences and features some of his home movies.
Available via SIFF
Thursday only
A Poetics of Living: Biomimetic Blueprints
Billing itself as an “interactive community vision board,” Northwest Film Forum’s Seattle Design Festival program contemplates how we relate to our built and natural environments through a series of vignettes that champion a collaborative, connected, community-centered way of life. You’ll see Caroline Alder and Damien Faure’s “A Poetics of Living,” Heidi Duckler’s “For the Time Being,” and Jeff Frost’s “Ghosts of the Future.”
Available via Northwest Film Forum
Thursday-Sunday
River City Drumbeat
For three decades, the River City Drum Corp of Louisville, Kentucky has strived to connect Black youth to African art and cultural traditions. This documentary follows its new leader, Albert Shumake, and the student drummers who make up the band.
Available via Northwest Film Forum
Thursday-Friday
Ongoing: Supporting Seattle Businesses
Americana Kamikaze
NYC’s interdisciplinary performance group Temporary Distortion blends theater, film, and installation to freakily contort Japanese ghost stories and horror (aka J-Horror) through an American musical tradition. In a 2009 New York Times review of the play, Jon Weiss wrote, “Hard-core horror fans should take notice, because with Hollywood’s rarely risking something truly upsetting anymore, preferring funny zombies and by-the-numbers remakes, you might have to go to the theater to see death performed live to really test your limits.”
Available via On the Boards
Coup 53
Newly recovered 16mm footage and documents compiled by director Taghi Amirani and famed film editor Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now) supplement this account of Operation Ajax, during which the CIA and MI6 overthrew former Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh. The film happens to open on the 67th anniversary of the coup.
Available via SIFF
Desert One
Using archival footage and interviews with players on both sides, documentarian Barbara Kopple (Miss Sharon Jones!, Harlan County USA) explores a real-life secret mission to free hostages during the 1979 Iranian revolution.
Available via SIFF
The Fight
Five civil rights attorneys fight for justice on behalf of a migrant mother separated from her child, a transgender soldier at risk of losing his career, and basic reproductive and voting rights that face threats from the Trump administration. This Kerry Washington-produced documentary will absolutely give you a new sense of appreciation for the ACLU.
Available via Northwest Film Forum and SIFF
Her Effortless Brilliance: A Celebration of Lynn Shelton Through Film and Music
Acclaimed Seattle director Lynn Shelton died too soon, and the grief felt by her fans, collaborators, and loved ones comes through in this documentary by Shelton’s longtime friend Megan Griffiths. It’s free to watch on YouTube and features a star-studded lineup of appearances, including Emily Blunt, Kaitlyn Dever, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mark and Jay Duplass, Jeff Garlin, Joshua Leonard, Sean Nelson, Michaela Watkins, and Reese Witherspoon, as well as live music from her partner Marc Maron, Andrew Bird, Ben Gibbard, Laura Veirs, and Tomo Nakayama.
Available via YouTube
The Infiltrators
In this docu-thriller, two young immigrants purposely get themselves thrown into a shady for-profit detention center to dismantle the corrupt organization from the inside. Their detainers don’t know that they’re members of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, a group of radical DREAMers who are on a mission to stop unjust deportations.
Available via Northwest Film Forum
Jazz on a Summer’s Day
Filmed on a balmy night in Fort Adams State Park at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, this 4K-restored classic is believed to be one the first concert films ever recorded (!). It boasts Louis Armstrong, Thelonius Monk, Gerry Mulligan, Anita O’Day, Chuck Berry, Dinah Washington, and other legends among its lineup, closing with Mahalia Jackson’s rendition of “The Lord’s Prayer” at midnight.
Available via SIFF
John Lewis: Good Trouble
The late civil rights activist and Georgia congressman John Lewis fought for voting rights, gun control, healthcare reform, and immigration over the course of his long career. Using archival footage and interviews from his late years, Dawn Porter’s documentary Good Trouble explores Lewis’s childhood, his 1957 meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., and his lasting legacy on social justice movements of the present.
Available via Ark Lodge, SIFF, and elsewhere
Martin Margiela: In His Own Words
The influential Belgian fashion designer Martin Margiela, known by some as the “Banksy of fashion” for his public anonymity and his refusal to do interviews, went from Jean Paul Gaultier’s assistant to the creative director at Hermès to leading his own Maison Margiela in Paris. This is a rare look into the designer’s drawings, notes, and personal items.
Available via SIFF
Moroni for President
Every four years, the largest Native American tribe in the US, Navajo Nation, elects a new president to represent its people. This film follows the campaign of 2018 candidate Moroni Benally, whose background as a gay Mormon set him apart as an underdog.
Available via Northwest Film Forum
My Darling Vivian
Johnny Cash’s first wife, Vivian Liberto (for whom the country singer wrote his famous song I Walk the Line), has long been obscured in stories of Cash’s life (see: 2005’s Walk the Line, in which she’s played briefly by Ginnifer Goodwin). Matt Riddlehoover’s documentary, featuring interviews with Cash’s children and archival footage of Liberto, reframes her narrative.
Available via Scarecrow Video
Now I’m Fine
Sean Nelson wrote, “Ahamefule J. Oluo, of Stranger Genius Award winning band Industrial Revelation, remounts his autobiographical odyssey, a harrowing, hilarious personal story punctuated by astoundingly strong songs, brilliantly arranged and performed by several of the most talented musicians in Seattle.” Originally staged at On the Boards, Now I’m Fine received rave reviews during its recent New York run, and will now be screened online.
Available via On the Boards
Out Stealing Horses
In this scenic, flashback-filled film based on the novel by Per Petterson, an aging man reflects on his childhood summers when he discovers that his neighbor in his new countryside town—where he moves after the death of his wife—is a man he’s met before. These SIFF screenings include a post-film discussion between director Hans Petter Moland and Stellan Skarsgård.
Available via Northwest Film Forum and SIFF
Represent
Three women in different parts of the country and on different sides of the aisle (Detroit’s Myya Jones, Granville’s Bryn Bird, and suburban Illinois’ Julie Cho) fight to improve their communities in Hillary Bachelder’s feature-length documentary debut.
Available via Northwest Film Forum
Son of the White Mare
Described in press materials as a “swirling, color-mad maelstrom of mythic monsters and Scythian heroes, part-Nibelungenlied, part-Yellow Submarine, lit by jagged bolts of lightning and drenched in rivers of blue, red, gold and green,” this early-’80s Hungarian animation centers the battle between a massive cosmic oak tree that guards the underworld with the help of 77 dragons and a white horse whose godly offspring want to rid the world of evil.
Available via Grand Illusion and Northwest Film Forum
SPLIFF 2020
A new vibe of stoner entertainment is emerging—witness the rise of Broad City, High Maintenance, and basically every TV show created on Viceland. And, most importantly, The Stranger presents SPLIFF, your new favorite film festival created by the stoned for the stoned. Because we can no longer congregate in person, we’re rescreening 2020 festival hosted by Betty Wetter and Cookie Couture online! Got some weed on hand? Check it out from the comfort of your home. All contributions received will be shared with the filmmakers.
Available via The Stranger
Sunless Shadows
Like its 2016 predecessor Starless Dreams, Mehrdad Oskouei’s new film follows the lives of teenage girls in an Iranian juvenile detention center. This time, however, the characters are serving time for the same thing: the murder of a male family member. “In this film we see murder through the eyes of murderers, both mothers and daughters. I wanted to scrutinize their act of killing from various perspectives, understand their reasons and find out whether the act itself was a difficult task,” writes the director.
Available via Northwest Film Forum
A Thousand Cuts
“Just because you’re a journalist, you are not exempted from assassination,” stated Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016. In Ramona S. Diaz’s documentary, Maria Ressa, the executive editor of the news website Rappler, literally puts her life on the line to investigate the administration’s various anti-democratic injustices—most notably its violent anti-drug campaign—and to combat the misinformation that floods the news cycles.
Available via Northwest Film Forum and SIFF
The Tobacconist
A man named Franz walks into a Vienna tobacco shop frequented by Sigmund Freud et voila: a historically inspired fictional friendship is born. When Franz falls for music-hall dancer Anezka, he seeks advice from the renowned psychoanalyst, who admits that he, too, is baffled by the opposite sex. This film, which is being wide-released online, is based off of Robert Seethaler’s bestselling novel.
Available via Scarecrow Video
You Never Had It: An Evening with Charles Bukowski
No one can resist the intrigue of restored tapes that have been newly snatched from the lost and found, and they’re all the more exciting when they feature a household name. This documentary is based on a video of the iconic writer talking about sex, books, childhood, and life over clinking glasses of booze in his California home in 1981.
Available via Scarecrow Video
