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Seattle Film Critics name top Pacific Northwest Films of 2023

by Josh

For the second year, the Seattle Film Critics Society (SFCS) has nominated the best in Pacific Northwest filmmaking as part of their annual awards. The Pacific Northwest Filmmaking award, which went to Sweetheart Deal in its inaugural year, celebrates the filmmakers who call our region home and who produce work in Washington, Oregon, or Idaho. New this year — the SFCS is partnering with SIFF to give local audiences another chance to see these films on the big screen.

Each of this year’s nominees will screen at SIFF Egyptian next month. The nominees (and their screening dates) are …

  • EVEN HELL HAS ITS HEROES – Tuesday, December 5 (6:30pm)
  • RICHLAND – Wednesday, December 6 (6:00pm)
  • SHOWING UP – Wednesday, December 6 (8:00pm)
  • DREAMIN’ WILD – Thursday, December 7 (6:30pm)
  • FANTASY A GETS A MATTRESS – Saturday, December 9 (6:30pm)

Further information about tickets is available at siff.net/SFCS-Awards. The winner will be determined by a vote of the full SFCS membership and announced alongside SFCS’s other annual awards on January 6, 2024.

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT EACH OF NOMINATED FILMS from SFCS and their members

  • Dreamin’ Wild: Bill Pohlad’s narrative feature tells the unlikely true story of the rediscovery of Eastern Washington teenagers Donnie and Joe Emerson’s long-forgotten 1979 album by Light in the Attic Records in the early 2000s. In her review from its SIFF premiere, Kathy Fennessy (Seattle Film Blog) called it “A film to stand alongside other Pacific Northwest portraits of sibling musicians, like Ulu Grosbard’s Georgia and The Fabulous Baker Boys,” and Josh Bis (The SunBreak) wrote “Pohlad evocatively transports us into the complex emotional journey that comes with the tantalizing prospect of an unexpected midlife encore.”
  • Even Hell Has Its Heroes: Clyde Petersen’s unorthodox and wide-ranging meditation on drone metal band Earth, its visionary founder Dylan Carlson, and the changing face of the Pacific Northwest over more than three decades of music history. Calvin Kemph (The Twin Geeks) praised it as “a stunning documentary built out of its own melancholic vibe, full of grief, dulling memories of a sonic soundscape that defines a sense of place.” [See also, Chris’s review from SIFF 2023]
  • Fantasy A Gets A Mattress: Noah Zoltan Sofian & David Norman Lewis’s wildly eccentric and hyper-saturated look at a local rapper’s odyssey to book a gig and find a good night’s sleep in a city increasingly hostile to the arts. Sellout crowds and critics alike have been wowed by the Seattle-made production, saying it “underlines that Seattle is still a city worthy of making art in” (Jas Keimig, South Seattle Emerald) and praising the “ludicrous and endearing blend of Gregg Araki energy, Harmony Korine grime, and John Waters caricature … a microbudget miracle–a madcap ode to the brash Seattle pipe dreams that keep the city weird.” (Ryan Bordow, Sitting in the Cinema)
  • Richland: Irene Lusztig’s closely observed portrait of a community whose identity was forged by the nuclear age as it confronts the contradictions of a violent past that echoes into the present day. Celebrating the film’s Tribeca debut, Joan Amenn (In Their Own League) reflected that the documentary “lets the locals speak for themselves, which is brilliantly poignant and sometimes infuriating in their inability to grasp the human cost of their work at Hanford.”
  • Showing Up: In her fourth collaboration with Michelle Williams, Kelly Reichardt’s sensitively-rendered portrait of a working artist in Portland evocatively explores the rewards and challenges of pursuing a creative life even as the demands of work, family, a broken water heater, and a wounded bird compete for precious time. Chase Hutchinson (Collider) celebrated the film as one that “proves to be present and powerful in its accumulation of small moments that come together into something spectacular.” [See also, Josh’s review from this spring]