After being one of the first festivals of 2020 to go into hibernation when confronted with the uncertainty of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Seattle International Film Festival is returning in (mostly) virtual format for 2021. Running from April 8-18 (early and abbreviated for SIFF, but still a long festival by most standards), most films will be available to at-home festival goers through the SIFF website or through the SIFF Channel app on Roku, FireTV, AndroidTV and AppleTV via individual tickets or passes that grant access to wide swaths of the programming (An all-access pass goes for $350, a film-only pass which omits some of the special events like opening and closing night costs $250).
While most films are available at all hours, the festival will have a handful of live events each day: Opening Night feature The Dry kicks things off at 6:30 pm on Thursday; every subsequent day of the festival has at least two live Q&As with filmmakers (5:00-6:00 pm and 8:30 – 9:30pm) and a filmmaker discussion panel (6:30 – 8:00 pm). Weekends have a few additional live events beginning at noon; Thursday April 15th has a tribute to Tom Skerritt; and the festival closes with Rosa’s Wedding on Sunday April 18 at 5:00 pm. While there aren’t any in-person opportunities to schmooze and scam free drinks, the SIFF Lounge also enters the virtual realm so dust off your VR headsets or video cards.
As far as I can tell, the only opportunities to see movies with a crowd are via a collaboration between the Indigenous Programming and two Drive-In Movie Theaters. Shelton’s Skyline Drive-In hosts Fruits of Labor and Beans on April 9th then plays Beans and Love and Fury on April 10th. The program then moves up to Oak Harbor’s Blue Fox on April 16-17th.
The whole Digital Program and Film Guide appeared on Wednesday evening with a Member’s Preview (never fear, a PDF version is available for print traditionalists). We’re all still turning the virtual pages to plan our our approach to our favorite massive film buffet, but we thought that the return of SIFF was occasion for a quick roundtable. Quick reactions from some of your SunBreak SIFF Squad below, with the usual reviews and recommendations to follow.
How does the virtual re-emergence of SIFF make you feel?
Chris: I’m happy, more or less, even though I’m finding it harder and harder to watch movies at home after being in quarantine for over a year now. I’m anxious to go back to theaters, as soon as it’s safe. But I’m starting to even miss the passholes, God help me. I don’t know how Josh has survived Sundance, SXSW, and SIFF, all from home.
Josh: Nor do I, Chris, nor do I. My eyeballs definitely glazed over at the prospect of another avalanche of films headed to my much-abused AppleTV, but I’m still stoked to see what SIFF has in store for us.
Tony: I too am glad–very glad–that SIFF is carrying on, and my pleasure is a pinch less guarded than yours, Chris. I’ve been streaming a lot as well, and yeah, at-home movie watching can be fatiguing. But there’s a key element fueling my enthusiasm here: This isn’t a streaming service like Netflix or Amazon that is engineered for obscene profit by metrics and bean-counting. A passionate non-profit, powered by people crazy in love with film, is sharing a couple hundred movies in a 10-day period. That has me pretty excited.
Josh: Fair point, Tony. I’ll definitely keep that level of optimism in mind as I scour through the catalog and scope out the Programmer Picks, a frequent source of how to narrow the often-overwhelming selections.
Tony: That said, of course it’s not the same as a typical SIFF Festival year. And I ache desperately to see a movie on a big screen, the instant it’s safe Sidebar: If Chris is actually getting nostalgia for the in-person presence of SIFF’s Passhole demographic, we’re just about at gnaw-off-your-own-limbs-to-stay-alive levels of desperation.
Morgen: I’ll echo all the guys’ sentiments here, I’m so excited that they’ve navigated the treacherous waters of the past year and made it work. There are a lot of things I’ll miss about SIFF that didn’t really apply to virtual festivals over the last year. Seeing my friends at premieres, the excitement in the theater as we made it into a sold-out showing, seeing a director speak about their passion project (you just don’t feel it the same in a Zoom discussion); this festival was palpable for me. I haven’t had the opportunity to physically go to SXSW Film festival or Sundance etc., so getting to “go” this past year to those festivals was a great experience. SIFF is my opportunity to engage in the film community both at large and in Seattle, and I’m going to miss it. It’s like having summer camp through a screen. Sure, you might learn some things, but it’s just not the same as being there. Also, all the delicious foods and drink at the opening party? I’m bummed out just thinking about it.
All that being said though, I’m excited to see all the local talent featured this year and look forward to next year when we’re back in theaters and waiting in those loooong lines.
Josh: I feel you, Morgen. To approximate the true SIFF experience, I might occasionally just sit on the sidewalk outside my apartment for a half hour between showtimes to get that old familiar feeling of waiting in a queue! I guess my biggest surprise was that there even in shortened form, there are somehow still 221 films (68 features) in this 10 day festival. SIFF is nothing if not super-sized! It also strikes me that SIFF remains a “discovery festival” (most of the films don’t yet have distribution) and one that’s strongly committed to representation (more than half of this year’s features are directed by women, for instance).
What jumps out to you about the program?
Josh: My first reaction is that they’re finally paying tribute to Tom Skerritt, the MVP attendee of so many Opening Night soirees. He’s starring in East of the Mountains, directed by SJ Chiro. (TW: injured dog, humans in peril, northwest nature).
Josh: My secondary reaction is that even abbreviated to 10 days, it’s still a very big program, which is both exciting and daunting. As my own stay-at-home isolation stretches into its second year, my attention span for virtual film festivals is definitely waning. With the virtual festivals to date, I’ve tended to do better with ones that force me to watch films at least on a certain day, even better at a fixed time window. But SIFF seems to be a wide open video library; so rather than try to pore through everything, I will probably pick a category or two and work my way through it, while keeping my ears open for anything that’s getting good reviews.
Tony: Damn, that’s a LOT of movies in a short timespan!
Chris: I had a similar reaction, Josh. I was surprised at how large the SIFF was. For a ten day festival, there’s still 93 features, which is a ton stretched over ten or eleven days.
Tony: Interestingly, one of the things that’s determined my past SIFF coverage has always been logistics. I would generally kick it old-school and pore over the Fest Film Guide, with special attention to (natch) genre efforts. Then from there, I’d see what was playing the same day/night, at the same venue or at one close enough for quick access, and roll the dice. With the big-screen experience and the need for theater-hopping gone this year, I may have to rethink my method. One thing I’m likely going to do more of: Implement Josh’s strategy of combing through the SIFF Programmers’ Picks.
Josh: I agree. The joys of a SIFF pass (thank you, ever-generous press office!) was being able to wing-it. Most nights of the in-person festival, I’d see a break in my day, decide how far I was willing to trek to a theater, and pick something that was playing that night, and then maybe stick around for whatever was next. With some method to this madness, this was an approach that blended catching things with good buzz and being open to pleasant surprises. I’ll have to impose some structure to make the online effort work.
Morgen: This is definitely not a brag, but I was able to watch seven films in a day and a half for SXSW so I think I can manage it? But… it will dominate my time and I liked the fact that I could leisurely watch all the films I was excited about over a month’s time in the past. Hmmm I’ll probably have to do a lot more research than in previous years and figure out my priorities before the fest actually starts so I don’t end up missing out.
How are you planning to approach this year’s festival?
Morgen: I’ll be honest, with all the other events I’ve been covering lately I didn’t catch on to how short they’d decided to make it. Most of the festivals I’ve covered this past year have felt short, so maybe it has to do with creating a bit of scarcity to allow for the films to get that coveted distribution and not feel played out already? Either way, it’ll be a little frustrating and a lot more hustling, but we’ll just have to make it work!
Chris: I’m not sure what my gameplan is yet, but I always end up watching a lot of documentaries and I try to watch all of the movies in the Northwest Connections series. We’ll see what my attention span allows for this time.
Tony: This region’s rich with a lot of filmmaking talent, so I’ll also likely frame many of my viewings around Northwest Connections entries.
Morgen: I also want to try to focus on Seattle directors, or at least folks from the Pacific Northwest. I also miss seeing art created in our community and Love & Fury brings both of these things together. It also features a musician that I fell in love with at SXSW in 2013 and had “forgotten about”, Micah P Hinson.
Josh: Since they started it a few years ago, the Official Competition has been a great collection that has an impressive survey of quality premieres from interesting filmmakers; so maybe trying to see all of the films in competition might be my primary target this year.
Any quick picks at first glance?
Tony: Josh sorta laterally pinned one of my most anticipated views via his discussion about Tom Skerritt and East of the Mountains. SJ Chiro’s directorial debut, Lane 1974, was one of my favorite locally-sourced SIFF discoveries ever. Scratch that: It was one of my favorite SIFF discoveries ever, period.
Chris: Truman and Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation looks like it’s targeting me specifically. The idea of two of the twentieth century’s best writers matching wits, being friends and rivals, is something I can’t let myself miss out on. The same goes for Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street. Like a lot of people, I have fond memories of watching “Sesame Street” as a ute. I’ve grown slightly since then. Elmo now gives me headaches, but I do love the Count. I’m ready to watch all 107 minutes in hopes that he says something funny about numbers.
Josh: I’m saw Street Gang earlier this year and am glad that it’s making the post-Sundance rounds. It’s a real charmer and I’m sure it’s going to win lots of nostalgic fans.
Morgen: I’m intrigued by genres more than individual films but I’ll give it a shot. My Missing Valentine looks really fun. While the trailer doesn’t seem to do the storyline justice and romantic comedies aren’t what I’m craving right now, the concept of a reverse Groundhog Day has got me excited. This Town is also a romantic comedy I’m interested in, but it’s Australian, involves a possible murder, and has a distinct Coen Brothers vibe so I’m crushing on this one especially.
Josh: Per my endorsement of the Official Competition slate, I remember being thrilled when Amanda Kernell’s Sami Blood won in 2017; so I was intrigued to see that she’s returning to SIFF with Charter, about a mother who whisks her kids away to from an icy Scandinavian winter to a tropical island in the midst of a custody battle. That’ll probably be high on my list. I also noticed that SIFF picked up a few from the Phantom Cannes 2020 lineup (which was a Very French way of having a virtual festival: simply releasing a list of official selections); so it might be fun to catch up with things like François Ozon’s Summer of ’85 which looks like a vaguely French take on Call Me By Your Name, except maybe with way more suspense and maybe murder? (It’s so hard to tell from trailers).
Tony: The other selection that leaped out at me on first blush is something most definitely, gleefully in my horror-huffing, genre-nerd wheelhouse. Censor delivers a horror movie framed around the UK’s Thatcher-era “Video Nasties” brouhaha. That real-life witch-hunt remains maddeningly relevant, and I love that director Prano Bailey-Bond is using it as a jumping-off point. Word around the horror-geek campfire (and Rotten Tomatoes) most definitely skews favorable.
Morgen: I seek out Science Fiction genre films in almost anything and while it looks like there’s not a ton of submissions this year, there are a couple that stand out that I’m looking forward to. The first, Pink Cloud, is eerily telling. Basically it’s the story of a years-long lockdown due to the presence of a toxic pink cloud in the sky. Hopefully this won’t keep folks away with a feeling of “too soon”. I want to see it as a catharsis rather than a downer; with the vaccine out there, yet so far from my phase. The other that caught my eye is Wyrm, a dark comedy with a great cast that looks at love, pressure from the outside world, and our expectations of ourselves. Just from the trailer it feels a lot like The Lobster but less off kilter and more quirky.
Josh: the Wyrm trailer was outstanding. I had left the SIFF member’s preview endless trailer reel running in the background while I was making dinner and snapped to attention as soon as that weird one rolled. They saved that one for last and I can see why!
With that, I wish everyone luck in their deep dives into the festival catalog and look forward to chatting with you all again once we’ve had a chance to actually start watching some of these movies and finding some hidden gems to celebrate!