All We Carry (2024 | USA,Mexico | 87 minutes | Cady Voge)

Beginning on a dangerous open air train ride hurtling toward the US’s southern border in 2018, Cady Voge’s exquisitely-observed documentary follows young asylum seekers Magdiel and Mirna to Seattle where they await a decision on their claim. Fleeing the brutal carnage of vicious narcotraffickers, the young couple leaps into marriage in Tijuana where Donald Trump’s beautiful wall juts into the sea, face forced separation in different detention centers, and eventually make their way into the surprising embrace of a West Seattle synagogue. We spend two years with them in this limbo: unable to work, unable to leave. Delicate editing incorporates self-documentary footage along with sensitively captured professional footage. Their family grows, their traumas linger, uncertainty hangs looms, the pandemic complicates everything. Although far from perfect, their landing spot in the northwest with relative comfort, incredible community support, and stunning views makes for a relatively inviting setting for sharing the emotionally tolling lived experience of waiting years for a judge to decide the course of your entire life.

• SATURDAY, MAY 18 – AMC Pacific Place – 6:30 PM
• SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2024 – SIFF Cinema Uptown – 2:30 PM
• Streaming MAY 20 – MAY 27, 2024

Rainier: A Beer Odyssey (2024 | USA | 124 minutes | Isaac Olsen)

Who’d have imagined that the history of Seattle could be told by a series of quirky ad campaigns? Isaac Olsen does something like that with this assemblage of some of the greatest hits of advertising for Rainier beer. Amid economic devastation of Boeing cutbacks in the 1970s, a beloved regional beer turned to an upstart creative agency to seize back dominance from Budweiser’s chokehold on the cheap beer marketplace. Along with his compatriots from the ashes of Seattle Magazine (the first one), Terry Heckler would go on to introduce the iconography of herds of beer bottles, crossing drizzly back roads, roaming through picturesque northwest settings, and eventually charging through Pioneer Square Mardi Gras crowds. They’d capture one perfect shot of a motorcycle buzzing into the distance, churn out a series of parodies with their finger on the pulse of pop culture, invent spokesfrogs decades before their competitors, and, most bizarrely enter into a series of absurdist ads featuring Mickey Rooney. Rather than simply being a tribute reel to Heckler’s staggeringly influential career, the documentary instead swerves to celebrate the region, its personality, and the talented cast of collaborators who ran wild with a beer company’s leniency to create an enduring brand still beloved by locals.

• MONDAY, MAY 13 – SIFF Cinema Egyptian – 6:30 PM
• THURSDAY, MAY 16 – SIFF Cinema Egyptian – 3:30 PM

Fish War (2024 | USA | 79 minutes | Jeff Ostenson, Charles Atkinson, Skylar Wagner)

Relying on the wording of the 1855 treaty ceding lands of the Pacific Northwest to the United States government, a landmark 1974 federal court decision vastly re-balanced the vitriolic conflict over fishing rights between the State of Washington and the Native Americans for whom salmon fishing is a cultural, spiritual, historical, and economic lifeblood. Assembling many of the people who fought so heroically, Fish War also contextualizes the implications of their victory in terms of civil rights, environmental stewardship, and building networks of cooperation. An important telling of PNW history, it’s also a refreshing and inspiring reminder that occasionally laws have consequences and words have meaning.

Fish War is available to stream on SIFF from MAY 20 – MAY 27, 2024

Sono Lino (2023 | USA, Italy, France | 76 minutes | Jacob Patrick)

When you think of Seattle Glassblowing, Lino Tagliapietra’s name might not be the first to pop into your head. Even if he doesn’t have the ubiquitous footprint of a certain eye-patched contemporary with his own museum under the Space Needle, the Venetian-born maestro of glass is nevertheless a transformational figure who launched his second act (and the glass fine arts movement) here in the Pacific Northwest. Having mastered his craft working in factories from the time he began working in the 1950s, a mid-career sabbatical at the Pilchuck School found him boldly inventing new techniques that pushed his medium to its limits. Jacob Patrick’s documentary follows Lino as he wearily approaches retirement at age 87 — uncertain what he is if he’s not a glassblower — in the lead-up to a gala retirement celebration at Tacoma’s Museum of Glass. Like Lino himself, we’re dazzled by the scope and achievement of his visionary artwork, but most moving are the candid interviews with Lino’s onetime protégées. Through their stories we come to understand the immense physical toll and exquisitely coordinated teamwork required to spin magic from molten glass. Even as they have developed careers of their own, the film portrays a complicated loving family of artistic legacy.

• THURSDAY, MAY 16 – SIFF Cinema Uptown – 6:30 PM
• FRIDAY, MAY 17 – SIFF Cinema Downtown – 4:00 PM
• Streaming MAY 20 – MONDAY, MAY 27

Ultimate Citizens (2023 | USA | 52 minutes | Francine Strickwerda)

The “Ultimate” in the title might refer to Hazel Wolf Elementary’s upstart frisbee team, but it also applies to their coach (and counselor) Jamshid Khajavi. An Iranian immigrant, successful businessman, extreme endurance athlete, and rescuer of roosters, he has also found fulfillment working with students at a school whose population have faced their own traumas of displacement. A sweet crowdpleasing sports doc, it manages to introduce his dedication to counseling through athletics, a few of the team’s standout stars, and the surprising success that they’ve achieved in regional competition in under an hour. No small task, though it feels like a little more time might have deepened the portrait of both the people and the issues they faced.

• TUESDAY, MAY 14 – SIFF Cinema Uptown – 4:00 PM
• Streaming MAY 20 – MONDAY, MAY 27

Grandpa Guru (2023 | Croatia,Bosnia and Herzegovina | 91 minutes | Silvio Mirošničenko)

After coming to Seattle from war-torn Sarajevo for a residency with Seattle Group Theater in the 1990s, would-be pop musician Srđan Gino Jevđević did a hard reboot and pivoted to rock-infused Balkan folk music. Playing in local bars and clubs, he attracted a devoted following of expat audiences and musicians to form Kultur Shock. The band rocketed to local, national, and eventually international fame. Now, approaching his 60th birthday, this documentary retells his decades-spanning story through the use of free-ranging interviews and a deep dive into a vast trove of video performance archives. It’s a portrait of an artist’s emergence as a political figure, the challenges of truly independent recording artists, and the constant struggles with one’s own inner demons (literally). While the film is a fascinating look into an overlooked corner of Seattle music history, it’s one that might be tough for those unfamiliar with the band to embrace but will no doubt be a welcome trip down memory lane for fans who grew up adoring the band and their rowdy shows.

• TUESDAY, MAY 14 – SIFF Cinema Uptown – 9:15 PM
• WEDNESDAY, MAY 15 – AMC Pacific Place – 4:00 PM
• Streaming from May 20-27th

Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox (2024 | USA | 103 minutes | Stimson Snead)

When does time travel ever turn out well? How often do time travel movies ever stick the landing and avoid getting buried in their own gravity wells of explanations? I can’t say that Stimson Snead’s zany high-concept locally filmed sci-fi comedy fully escapes the pitfalls it sets up for itself, but inventive set design, guest performances from the likes of Joel McHale and Danny Trejo, and humorous use of low-rent CGI elevate the premise beyond a scant budget. Most of all, Samuel Dunning’s acrobatic performances as dozens of slightly different versions of himself (many murdered instantly, for science!) is a tremendous feat that never fails to surprise.

No more SIFF screenings; so keep track of the film’s official website for wider release.