Between Goodbyes (2024 | USA | 96 minutes | Jota Mun)

Between Goodbyes tells the story of Mieke, who was adopted from her native home of Korea by a Dutch family and and reunites with her birth family in her adulthood. It’s not smoothest reunion because Mieke is a queer introvert who built a life of her own in Europe and is determined to maintain her boundaries while her family is (too?) eager to make up for lost time. Tears will be jerked; keep your Kleenex within arm’s reach.

• SATURDAY, MAY 24 – AMC Pacific Place – 6:45 PM
• SUNDAY, MAY 25 – AMC Pacific Place – 1:30 PM
• AVAILABILITY TO STREAM: YES
• Director Jota Mun scheduled to attend both screenings

Billy (2024 | Canada [Québec]  | 107 min. | Lawrence Côté-Collins)

Billy is one of the best documentaries at SIFF this year. It’s a deeply moving film where director Lawrence Côté-Collins recounts her friendship with Billy Poulin, a twenty-something videographer who suffers from schizophrenia that went undiagnosed for many years, and not until he committed a brutal murder. Director Côté-Collins traces her friendship, its falling out, her presence as a documentarian and friend during his recovery and hope for release.

AVAILABILITY TO STREAM: YES

Drowned Land (2025 | USA | 86 min. | Colleen Thurston)

Drowned Land documents the constant battle the Choctaw Nation (in Oklahoma) must fight to prevent developers from installing a dam on the Kiamichi River. By many accounts, it’s an ecological disaster that might cause further displacement of indigenous people. I found the footage of regulatory meetings to be the most fascinating, and aggravating, seeing people affected by this decision trying to persuade apathetic bureaucrats to reverse a decision that seems inevitable. Documenting something like this in real time is, of course, extremely difficult, but this movie feels premature because news continues to unfold and Drowning Land only captures part of the story.

Additional screenings / release / etc.

Freeing Juanita (2024 | USA | 74 minutes | Sebastián Lasaosa Rogers)

Juanita Alonzo was a Guatemalan migrant who was arrested in 2016 while trying to enter the United States. She was caught before crossing the border and spent seven years, without charges, in a Mexican prison. She was forced to sign a confession to human trafficking (an allegation that Mexico has failed to substantiate) and interrogated in a language she doesn’t speak (Spanish). This documentary is about her family’s struggle to travel from Guatemala to petition for her release. The movie is deeply emotional and affecting. Still, I found it frustrating that there was almost no explanation of how she became the accused. I had use Google to find an article in El Pais that said, “Together with 20 other people, she traveled 1,800 kilometers to the city of Reynosa in Tamaulipas. Exhausted and with a severe headache, she was unable to make the final crossing with the others. They left her waiting in a house a dozen kilometers from the border. At the house, there was a woman from El Salvador who asked Juanita for her cellphone. She used it to call 911 and warn authorities that she had been kidnapped. Police soon surrounded the house.”

AVAILABILITY TO STREAM: YES