Starting today, tickets and passes are now available to the public for the 51st Seattle International Film Festival. Download the whole program and flip through it on your lunch break or start clicking through the website to discover the cinematic riches heading our way. Running in person from May 15–25, the festival features 245 films playing in-person across the city — including daily programming at the recently-reopened Cinerama (officially SIFF Downtown) — with many getting online encore screenings the following week.

The SunBreak got a preview this week night at a reception for press and donors, but we are still soaking up the trailers, digesting the full lineup of 83 features, 35 documentaries, 3 archival presentations, 2 secret films and 122 shorts from 74 countries/regions. Although we got a head start on the list of films – which among the features include 19 world premieres, 27 North American premieres, and 13 US premieres. With a majority (60%) of the entries coming from first or second-time filmmakers, it’s a program rich for discovery. Just over half are directed by women/non-binary filmmakers and many of the films come from biopic (37%) or LGBTQIA+ (20%) communities. Further, most also don’t yet have US distribution (73%); so attending SIFF represents a chance to be among the first viewers to find some hidden gems!

First up, Opening Night. SIFF kicked off last year’s festival with Thelma, a complete charmer about the adventures of one older woman and her attentive grandson. This year, they take that winning formula, quadruple the senior citizens, and throw in a young gay Irish novelist as collective mommy-sitter. Directed by Darren Thornton, Four Mothers finds a YA novelist played by James McArdle left watching four aging women while all of his friends skip off to Maspalomas Pride. The film plays at the Paramount on Thursday May 15th, the party spills out onto 9th avenue complete with dancing to music mixed by DJ Derek Mazzone and Orion Entertainment and complimentary drinks and bites. (Tickets: $88 Non-Members $78 Members)

While we’re digging through the schedule and plotting our own agendas, we thought we’d start by each highlighting a film (or two) from the program that we’re most excited to see or recommend.

ROUNDTABLE: QUICK PICKS!

OTHER SPECIAL EVENTS

Along with the 3D feature mentioned above, other special programs include a a screening a one-time-only presentation of Jim Henson’s cult classic The Dark Crystal with a brand-new soundtrack mixed live by DJ NicFit (Tuesday May 20, 6:30 pm); and a midnight showing of a recently rediscovered and restored print of Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers, starring the groundbreaking trans actress Holly Woodlawn (Saturday May 24, midnight). All play at SIFF Downtown, whose gorgeous screen and addictive chocolate popcorn make every screening feel like a special event.

Finally, Secret Fest, SIFF’s most exclusive film club, is back. Buy a pass for $44 ($39) and get access to two Sunday morning movies that you’ll never be allowed to reveal that you saw. Allegedly/hypothetically/unconfirmed rumblings suggest that these can be anything from films promised to other festivals, rare archival presentations, or underground films rarely seen. The pass and an oath of secrecy get you in. 

Hyped yet? Let’s start memorizing this year’s trailer so that we can all quote along with it by Closing Night!

DEEP DIVES 

• Find your films: The festival is organized into multiple intersecting systems, suitable for satisfying various worldviews or problem-solving styles. For the analytic among us, Film Finder lets you search the program with simple queries or dizzying arrays of categorical complexity (not yet ChatGPT-enabled, though). Start with the fairly straightforward – Country/Region, Director, Genre – to narrow your choices. Film Finder shows you exactly which movies can be watched from home during the festival’s streaming encore week (note that a few are limited to Washington only).
• The Awards Race: If you’d rather match your tastes against expert juries, consider following one of the competitions and see if your favorite aligns with the pros. This year’s juried races include the Official Competition, Documentary, New American Cinema, Ibero-American, and New Directors competitions as well as Short Film competitions divided between documentary, narrative, and animated juries.
• Themes: Finally, SIFF has selected films as part of an an array of programs, grouped by geography/identity (African Pictures, Asian Crossroads, cINeDIGENOUS, Ibero-American Cinema, New American Cinema, Northwest Connections), themes (Culinary Cinema, Face the Music), appropriateness for younger audiences (Films4Families for kids of all ages; FutureWave for teens), degree of boundary-pushing (Alternate Cinema experimentations all the way to WTF), as well as format (Archival Films and Short Films). Yes, some of these programs have competitions within them. Others are festivals within festivals. SIFF contains multitudes!
• Trust the experts: If you’re still stuck, browse the expert advice of the Programmer Picks. This year, 18 tireless SIFF programmers collectively watched something like 6000 films to build the program. They then each identified top bets among the festival’s riches so that you could benefit from their expertise. You could either choose one programmer and follow their lead or go with the consensus!

PLANNING

• Plan ahead. Get to know the SIFF website. Browse the sortable searchable Film Finder to drill down on your heart’s desires.
• Guestwatch: Getting to hear from the filmmakers is one of the biggest perks of an in-person film festival! Keep an eye out for festival guests if you like the opportunity to hear a filmmaker’s take on their work or to have them answer your awkward question following the screening (kidding, but also not). Be sure to check ahead to see if guests will be at the screening for a Q&A, for timing and scheduling purposes, if not for celeb-watching.
• Technology is your friend! The SIFF app is no more, but you can keep an eye on the various SIFF Bluesky, Facebook, Letterboxd, TikTok YouTube, Instagram, and even LinkedIn (!) feeds as well as their News page for updates, so you’ll have the heads up before a screening sells out.
• This year’s festival has both in-person and virtual components. Some films will have encore screenings online after the main festival. We’ll try to make note of that in our coverage in case you might take that into account when deciding which lines are most worth your time. 
• The festival also posts daily updates to their online calendar, coding screenings as “limited availability” or “standby” to alert you to whether tickets are selling fast. 
• Festival Resources: The festival typically posts a page with all sorts of fun stuff like an Excel sheet of all the films, the film guide, and the whole schedule grid, suitable for printing on a couple sheets of paper and keeping in your back pocket for the whole event. Perfect for survivalists, Luddites, or people worried about being without the schedule in the case of a drained battery.

BUYING

• Consider buying in bulk. Individual tickets are $20 ($17 for members) for both in-person and online screenings. Although there’s nothing quite like the flexibility of joining the ranks of the passholders, even if you don’t want to spring for that level of commitment, you can still get ticket packages at the incredible value of six tickets for $80 ($68) to save a good amount of money. You can use up to two tickets per screening, so feel free to split with a buddy. 
• Go big: If you want to make a commitment to the passholder line, the Film Pass is still available for $670 ($470). That gets you access to daytime press/preview screenings May 5-14, all regularly priced in-person screenings, and access to everything on SIFF Channel during the online encore.
• Splurge: Want even more perks, the Platinum Pass runs $1660 ($1350) and also gets you into the Opening and Closing Night festivities, priority seating, plus parties and tribute events.
• Take a chance: If a film is sold out, all hope isn’t lost, but getting into a film via the standby line is a complete crapshoot — don’t count on it for a popular film. But if a miracle does occur, those tickets are full price and “cash preferred.”

VENUES

• The core venues for this year’s festival are: the newly-rejuvenated Cinerama (a.k.a. SIFF Downtown), SIFF Cinema Uptown (3 screens), the SIFF Film Center, and Pacific Place. (Sadly, Capitol Hill’s SIFF Egyptian is still out of commission). There will also be screenings up north at Shoreline Community College.
• If you’re trying to make a day of it, Lower Queen Anne offers you the closest thing to one-stop SIFF-ing. All three SIFF Uptown screens will be showing festival films, two blocks away the SIFF Film Center opens for weekend screenings.
• Pacific Place has the advantage of being on a Light rail stop. From there you’re at the mercy of downtown traffic or the monorail to zip over to Seattle Center; so plan accordingly and then double your transit estimates if you’re relying on the bus.

PRACTICALITIES

• If you’re particular about where you sit, there’s no such thing as arriving too early. In normal times, it was fair to expect every screening to have a long line and a full house. Still, as long as you have a ticket, you’ll have a seat. Ticketholders are usually let into the theater about 30 minutes in advance of showtimes, but SIFFgoers are a bunch who love to queue. Passholders get in first, but there are a limited number of seats set aside for them; so even with a pass, you should show up in time to secure a spot, particularly for movies with big buzz.
• Regarding those long lines: When you roll up, don’t be surprised to see a line stretching from the theater doors. Don’t panic, as long as you have a ticket and arrive ahead of time you should be fine. Instead, be prepared with an umbrella, sunglasses, sunscreen, a light jacket, and some reading material to pass the time. Layers and preparedness are core tenets of PNW culture.
• Bathrooms! One way to avoid the line is to either head straight to the restroom as soon as you get into the theater, or wait until the lights go down. From there, you’ve got about 7 minutes of ads, trailers, and announcements before the film begins.
• Consider subtitles. If your film has them and you’re not fluent, find a seat with a clear view of the bottom of the screen. Aisle left or right is generally a good bet, particularly if you’re worried about someone with great posture or above average skull circumference directly in front of you.

Finally, despite all of this strategic advice, it really never hurts (too much) to try your luck with whatever happens to be playing on whatever night you happen to be free. Not every screening has an interminable line, sometimes that scary-looking line is just hard-core SIFFers with time on their hands and/or an ingrained sense of promptness. Many many times you may walk right into a half-empty theater and end up seeing your favorite movie of the year. It’s the chance to experience seeing something you enjoy on some level, if only just a window to a different world/experience than what you’re used to. We look forward to seeing you at the movies!