SIFF

SIFF 2019: SunBreak Index

The Seattle International Film Festival is a massive event that spans more than three weeks. We’ll be posting about it through the marathon of movies. To help you keep track, here’s a page with all of our coverage linked in one place.

Action! A whirlwind tour of the SIFF 2019 schedule, including highlights of special events, tributes, galas, and all of our tips and tricks for living your best festlife.

Roundtables

Opening Weekend: A mini-roundtable on Sword of Trust, plus a selection of early contenders for best-of-fest must-sees, and some speculative and well-informed picks for the coming weekend.

Week One Roundtable: festival favorites, spirited discussion about Running with Beto and The Nightingale, plus a true hygiene horror story!

  • Favorites: Phantom of the Opera, What She Said: the Art of Pauline Kael, A Faithful Man
  • Discussed: Running With Beto, The Nightingale, Shorts Fest, Kifaru, The Art of Self-Defense, Who Let The Dogs Out.

Knife + Heart Roundtable: Morgen, Tony, and Josh saw Yann Gonzalez’s mind-blowing murder meta-mystery and just had to talk about it.

Closing Weekend Roundtable: our latest favorites, some minor gripes, and thoughts heading into SIFF’s closing weekend.

  • Favorites: Lynch: A History, the Long Haul: the Story of the Buckaroos, Afterlife, Them That Follow, Nightmare Cinema, Sibel, I Am Cuba
  • Discussed: Ten Years in Thailand, Go Back to China, Ms. Purple, Botero, Enormous: the Gorge Story

Wrap Party Roundtable: A ranked list of everything we all saw at SIFF, reactions to the audience and jury awards, some gripes about jukebox musicals, and final comments on our SIFF 2019 experiences.

  • Favorably Reviewed: The Legend of the Stardust Brothers, In Fabric, and Cities of Last Things, Sons of Denmark, We are the Radical Monarchs, International Falls, The Extraordinary Journey of Celeste Garcia
  • Also Discussed: Yesterday, Blinded By The Light

Golden SunBreak Awards: We each pick our best of the festival for narrative features, documentaries, and acting.

  • Best Narrative Features: Sword of Trust, The Farewell, Knife + Heart, Remi Nobody’s Boy
  • Best Documentaries: Lynch: A History, Kifaru, Roll Red Roll, Funke
  • Best Acting: Marc Maron (Sword of Trust), Lorenzo Ferro (El Angel), Aisling Franciosi (The Nightingale), Julian Hilliard & Icee the Golden Retriever (Greener Grass)

Interviews

Picks

Quick Takes: Four highly speculative picks from your SunBreak Film Team as well as the most-recommended picks from the SIFF Programmers.

Picks for Week One: quick reviews and speculation on what to see in SIFF’s first full week.

Picks for Memorial Day Weekend: what we’re looking forward to seeing over the long weekend

Picks for Week Two: a few selections through Centerpiece Weekend.

Picks for Week Three: We’re in the home stretch now

Picks for Closing Weekend: it’s the end of SIFF as we know it and we feel mostly fine.

Reviews

Some Short SIFF reviews, part I

Chris reviewed a bunch of movies: David Crosby: Remember My Name, Enormous: The Gorge Story, The Farewell, Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story, The Nightingale, Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins, Roll Red Roll, Running with Beto, Stories of Us: Camp Second Chance, Sword of Trust, We Are the Radical Monarchs, Who Let the Dogs Out?, X: The eXploited

More Short Reviews:

Josh revisited his SIFF notebook. Some reviews:

They Come Back: The Dead Don’t Die, Ghost Town Anthology