SIFF is coming to Pacific Place
Tickets are on sale now for the 50th Annual Seattle International Film Festival taking place May 9-19. Celebrating the best in independent cinema from around the globe, a variety of films will be screened at AMC Pacific Place 11 including High & Low - John Galliano, Through Rocks and Clouds, Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano, and Luther: Never Too Much. This year’s line-up features 261 films representing over 80 countries. A festival kick-off party is scheduled for Thursday, May 9th at The Paramount Theater. Learn more about SIFF.
SIFF Films Screening at AMC Pacific Place 11
Friday, May 10
1:15 p.m. - All Your Faces - FRANCE - Adèle Exarchopolous (Passages) won a César Award for this moving ensemble drama about a restorative justice group, where criminals and victims meet face-to-face and learn together what it takes to heal, to evolve, and to forgive.
4:00 p.m. - High & Low - John Galliano -FRANCE- Fearless fashion designer John Galliano took the world by storm with his rock and roll style, only for his controversial opinions to irrevocably damage his career. Now, get the inside scoop from the lives he changed, for better or worse, and from the enfant terrible himself.
7:00 p.m. - Food Roots - USA - Documentarian Michele Josue (Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine) trains her camera on famed Chicago restaurateur Billy Dec as he journeys to the Philippines to rediscover his ancestral heritage one delicious recipe at a time.
9:00 p.m. - I’m Just Here for the Riot - CANADA - When the Canucks lost the final game of the 2011 Stanley Cup series to the Boston Bruins, the citizens of Vancouver took to the streets flipping over police cars and breaking windows. How did social media, smartphones, and mob mentality play a role in this chapter of NHL history?
Saturday, May 11
11:00 a.m. - The Queen of My Dreams - CANADA - Amrit Kaur (Bela on “The Sex Lives of College Girls”) stars as a rebellious, queer, Pakistani Canadian woman circa 1999 and, in flashbacks, her mother in 1969 Karachi, in this tremendous Bollywood-tinged comedy about the chasm between generations, continents, and upbringing.
1:45 p.m. - Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox - USA - In this blast of WA state science fiction co-starring Felicia Day (“Mystery Science Theater 3000”), Keith David (The Thing), and Seattle native Joel McHale (“Community”), a brilliant scientist invents a time machine and concocts a scheme to kill his younger self…with unintended consequences.
4:30 p.m. - I’m Just Here for the Riot - CANADA - When the Canucks lost the final game of the 2011 Stanley Cup series to the Boston Bruins, the citizens of Vancouver took to the streets flipping over police cars and breaking windows. How did social media, smartphones, and mob mentality play a role in this chapter of NHL history?
6:45 p.m. - Hesitation Wound - TURKEY - One tense day in the life of a Turkish criminal defense attorney (Tülin Özen) as she wrestles with legal and ethical questions in defending a factory worker accused of murder while also keeping her hospitalized mother on life support. From Selman Nacar, the director of Between Two Dawns (SIFF 2022).
9:15 p.m. - Voy! Voy! Voy! - EGYPT - How far would you go to change your life? In Egypt’s official Oscar® submission, Hassan is desperate to leave his home country. With few options left, he pretends to be blind so he can join a disabled soccer team headed to Poland. Inspired by an unbelievable true story.
Sunday, May 12
11:00 a.m. - Good One - USA - In India Donaldson’s painfully real feature debut, 17-year-old Sam goes on a Catskills camping trip with her father and his longtime friend. As the two men relive their glory days and past errs, Sam learns some hard truths about the helplessness of adulthood.
1:30 p.m. - Critical Zone - IRAN - With only the voice of his GPS to guide him, Amir drives through the underbelly of Tehran delivering hashish to his clients and friends. Winner of the 2023 Locarno International Film Festival Golden Leopard Award.
4:00 p.m. - Babes - USA - In her feature directorial debut, Pamela Adlon (“Better Things,” “King of the Hill”) joins forces with star/co-writer Ilana Glazer (“Broad City”) in this hysterical, no-holds-barred comedy about a woman who gets pregnant after a one-night stand.
6:30 p.m. - The Quiet Maid - SPAIN - What’s it like to work for the wealthy elite? In this drama of class conflict presented by Steven Soderbergh, Columbian maid Ana (Paula Grimaldo) has just arrived at the Costa Brava vacation estate of her rich new art collector employers, only to discover she’s being taken for a ride.
9:00 p.m. - In A Violent Nature - Sundance audiences went apeshit for this graphically violent, brutally gory deconstructed arthouse slasher that methodically follows a resurrected killer’s reign of terror through the remote northern Ontario wilderness. Now’s your chance to witness the carnage.
Monday, May 13
12:30 p.m. - Gloria! - ITALY - In Italian singer-songwriter Margherita Vicario’s beautiful and intense feature directorial debut, the mute maid at a Baroque-era, Venetian musical institute for girls discovers she’s a natural at the pianoforte and inspires the girls in her charge as they prepare for a visit from the Pope.
3:45 p.m. - The Major Tones - ARGENTINA - In Ingrid Pokropek’s magical realist feature debut, lonely 14-year-old Ana has had a metal plate in her arm since a childhood accident. But when that plate starts picking up messages, vibrating in Morse code, Ana and a young soldier must decipher their meaning.
6:30 p.m. - Mountains - USA - In Miami’s Little Haiti, demolition worker Xavier must tear apart the very neighborhood he called home if he wants to afford a new house for his working-class family. From Monica Sorelle, winner of the Someone to Watch Award at the 2024 Film Independent Spirit Awards.
9:00 p.m. - Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano - LEBANON - While shooting Costa Brava, Lebanon (SIFF 2022), the film crew’s world stopped when Lebanon’s Port of Beirut suddenly exploded, killing over 200 people and injuring thousands more. What does it mean to strive for human dignity and make art amid a country’s continuing turmoil?
Tuesday, May 14
1:45 p.m. - Through Rocks and Clouds - PERU - An eight-year-old alpaca shepherd, elated because Peru has a chance to qualify for the 2018 World Soccer Cup, finds his quiet world in peril when a mining company threatens to poison the water, destroy the region’s delicate ecosystem, and jeopardize the life and future of his community.
4:00 p.m. - Pigsy - TAIWAN - A fast-paced, action-packed animated science fiction extravaganza that takes cues from China’s centuries-old Monkey King legends, as a streetwise pig in a bustling future metropolis makes friends and foes in his quest to stop the Bull Demon King’s evil plans.
6:30 p.m. - The Ride Ahead - USA - 21-year-old wheelchair user Samuel Habib is itching to become an independent member of society, but he lives with a rare genetic mutation that necessitates 24/7 care. Witness how he sets out to manage a world that ignores the needs of Disabled people.
9:00 p.m. - The Mother of All Lies - MOROCCO - In Morocco’s official Oscar® entry, Asmae El Moudir weaves the story of her family with that of her nation as they converged during the 1981 Bread Riots, piecing together memories using a handcrafted scale model of her own Casablanca neighborhood.
Wednesday, May 15
12:30 p.m. - Close Your Eyes - SPAIN - In his first film in over 30 years, Víctor Erice (The Spirit of the Beehive) makes another masterpiece, an ode to cinema following a reclusive former filmmaker investigating the two-decades-old disappearance of one of his actors. Nominated for 11 Goya Awards.
4:00 p.m. - Grandpa Guru - CROATIA - You may have heard of or even met Srđan Gino Jevđević, but do you know his full story? After fleeing Sarajevo, Jevđevic found refuge in good ol’ Seattle and started the world-famous Balkan punk band Kultur Shock. Now it’s his 60th birthday, and he and his friends are pulling out all the stops.
6:30 p.m. - High & Low - John Galliano -FRANCE- Fearless fashion designer John Galliano took the world by storm with his rock and roll style, only for his controversial opinions to irrevocably damage his career. Now, get the inside scoop from the lives he changed, for better or worse, and from the enfant terrible himself.
9:15 p.m. - Grasshopper Republic - USA - Daniel McCabe (This is Congo) directs this verité doc set in the small Ugandan village of Bundibugyo, where workers harvest grasshoppers by any means necessary—sodium lights, flour, corrugated steel, barrels—and sell the culinary delicacy in open-air markets.
Thursday, May 16
1:00 p.m. - My Sextortion Diary - SPAIN - When film producer Pati Franquesa’s computer is stolen, she becomes trapped in a blackmail scheme when the hacker demands $2,400 or he will release a handful of lewd, private photos to her coworkers. Will the authorities help, or will she have to take matters into her own hands?
3:00 p.m. - Sujo - MEXICO - Sujo’s childhood is marked by devastating events. Now a teenager, he is forced to choose between repeating his family's history or breaking free from unwanted heritage. A humanistic and hopeful tale of alternative paths to violence.
6:00 p.m. - Merchant Ivory - USA - Over their 44-film partnership, Ismail Merchant and James Ivory brought decades of high-quality dramas to Seattle filmgoers. Now, join Ivory—still kicking at 95 years old—and a litany of the company’s greatest collaborators as they look back on the indelible mark they made on queer and arthouse cinema.
9:00 p.m. - Slow - LITHUANIA - There’s more than one way to love. Elena has hit it off big-time with Dovydas, an interpreter for the Deaf. But as their relationship blooms, he reveals that he is asexual, leaving the couple to explore new paths of intimacy and romance.
Friday, May 17
11:00 a.m. - The Missing - PHILIPPINES - In this mix of rotoscoped and hand-drawn animation, a mute gay animator sent to check in on his missing uncle encounters the alien who stole his mouth as a child. Co-starring Dolly de Leon (Triangle of Sadness and SIFF 2024’s Ghostlight).
1:15 p.m. - Holy Mother - SPAIN - In this stark historical drama set during the Early Middle Ages, Emma of Barcelona is a Catalan nun who defied the odds—both against her country’s enemies and her own clergy—in her God-granted mission to repopulate Spain’s embattled border territories.
4:15 p.m. - The Uncertain Detective - USA - In the new chapter of his indie webseries, director Gregg Lachow and a bevy of local talent go for broke in this metanarrative about a filmmaker making a detective neo-noir TV series with his family, only for the two worlds to intertwine.
6:30 p.m. - Valentina or the Serenity - MEXICO - Indigenous Mexican filmmaker Ángeles Cruz (SIFF 2021’s Nudo Mixteco) explores our complex relationship with loss through the eyes of a young Mixtecan girl who, in her heart, refuses to believe her recently deceased father has truly left this earthly realm.
9:00 p.m. - Tiger Stripes - MALAYSIA - In this surreal Malaysian coming-of-age drama with teeth, rebellious 12-year-old Zaffan has hit puberty early, except her physical and behavioral changes seem to be anything but normal, terrifying her family and her patriarchal Muslim school. It seems to be something…monstrous.
Saturday, May 18
11:00 a.m. - Empire Waist - USA - Lenore Miller’s size has always earned her teases and jeers in her school’s hallways, but this clothes-loving teenager is about to set the world on fire with her own line of inclusive fashion designs. Co-starring Rainn Wilson and Missi Pyle.
1:30 p.m. - Valentina or the Serenity - MEXICO - Indigenous Mexican filmmaker Ángeles Cruz (SIFF 2021’s Nudo Mixteco) explores our complex relationship with loss through the eyes of a young Mixtecan girl who, in her heart, refuses to believe her recently deceased father has truly left this earthly realm.
4:00 p.m. - We Strangers - USA - Commercial cleaner Ray (Kirby, “Killing Eve”) is in for an eye-opening experience when she accepts a high-paying job as a personal housekeeper and slowly, uncomfortably acclimates to high society. Costarring Sarah Goldberg (“Barry”) and Maria Dizzia (“Orange is the New Black”).
6:30 p.m. - All We Carry - USA - Mirna and Magdiel fled Honduras in search of a brighter future. After making their way north, including a months-long stint in a U.S. detention center, they found sanctuary in a Seattle synagogue, who showed mercy on them as they awaited asylum.
9:00 p.m. - Banel & Adama - MALI - In a tiny, drought-plagued village in northern Senegal, Banel and Adama are madly in love. But as their modern ways break from local traditions—Adama refuses to become chief, Banel doesn’t want children—their community take it as a curse.
Sunday, May 19
11:00 a.m. - Banel & Adama - MALI - In a tiny, drought-plagued village in northern Senegal, Banel and Adama are madly in love. But as their modern ways break from local traditions—Adama refuses to become chief, Banel doesn’t want children—their community take it as a curse.
1:30 p.m. - Luther: Never Too Much - USA - An absolutely stunning profile on the velvet-voiced R&B singer Luther Vandross, from his auspicious beginnings as a backup vocalist all the way to selling over 40 million albums before his passing in 2005, told through archival footage and the friends he made along the way.
4:00 p.m. - Tenement - CAMBODIA - An immersive and nightmarish journey into madness! When a manga artist returns to Cambodia with her boyfriend in tow to learn more about her late mother, she takes up residence in an old family apartment complex, only to learn it contains deep, dark secrets.
6:30 p.m. - In Flames - PAKISTAN - A widow, her adult daughter, and her tween-aged son are haunted by ghosts of the past and the patriarchy when their paternal grandfather dies in this heart-wrenching Middle Eastern Gothic and Pakistan’s official Academy Awards® entry for Best International Film.
