Festivals Reviews SIFF

SIFF 2025: Boong

Boong (Gugun Kipgen) is a precocious kid that lives for getting into playful trouble, more annoying than harmful, with his best friend Raju (Angom Sanamatum). He’s too smart for his own good sometimes, but he knows what’s important.

Festivals Reviews SIFF

SIFF 2025 Notebook: Northwest Connections Documentaries

Although “International” is right there in SIFF’s name, each festival also showcases a series of films made or set closer to home. This year’s Northwest Connections program includes five films. Here, we review of the two documentary features that’ll play throughout the festival: Suburban Fury and Wolf Land.

Festivals Reviews SIFF

SIFF 2025 Notebook: Some weird features

SIFF prides itself on its selection of offbeat films and for that, I am thankful. Man cannot subsist on documentaries about indigenous water rights and unfairness in the Mexican penal system alone. I don’t know if these are going to be the weirdest movies at SIFF (Fucktoys and Spermageddon issue some promises in their respective titles I expect them to deliver on), these are some of the notable, uhh, unique offerings so far.

Festivals Reviews SIFF

SIFF 2025 Notebook: Northwest Connections Features

Although “International” is right there in SIFF’s name, each festival also showcases a series of films made or set closer to home. This year’s Northwest Connections program includes five films. Here, we review of the two narrative features that’ll play throughout the festival: Evergreens and Monarch City.

Festivals Reviews SIFF

SIFF 2025: Opening Weekend Picks

The 51st Seattle International Film Festival kicks off tomorrow! 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 — with many getting online encore screenings the following week. Sorting through the whole program and/or film finder can help you to dial into your exact needs for a cinematic holiday (per SIFF’s vacation-themed, “Trip to the Reel World”), but we’re also here to help.

Last week, we gave you some quick picks in the wake of the press launch. Now, with some more time with the program and some screeners, we have a few more suggestions for how to spend the opening days of the festival.

Previews SIFF

SIFF ‘n Stitch at the Uptown this Sunday

People who know me IRL (mostly) know that I’m a cross stitcher. I spend dozens of hours a week on my couch, usually 2-3 hours nightly and more on weekends stitching. Outside of work and sleeping, it takes up the next biggest block of my time. I’ve even made some stitching projects that combine my hobby with movies. This is all to say that I am delighted that SIFF is offering one of their theaters for crafty movie fans this Sunday at noon, promising a place to congregate while the beloved (though not by me) movie Labyrinth plays on screen.

Festivals SIFF

Are We Not Film? SIFF DocFest returns this week

Tomorrow begins one of my favorite mini-festivals in Seattle: SIFF’s annual DocFest. It’s a week-long festival celebrating some of the best new-ish documentaries out there (and in true Seattle fashion, this week goes from Thursday to Thursday, so it is actually eight days long).

Festivals Reviews SIFF

Sweetheart Deal is a moving story of heartbreak and tragedy on Aurora Avenue

Sweetheart Deal is 98 minutes of tragedy and heartbreak but it also felt so vital and important to tell the stories of these women who suffer from so much abuse and marginalization. “Sex work is work” and “my body, my choice” are good, rhetorical, platitudes (that I believe) but they are also too vague to meaningfully represent anyone whose choice and autonomy are often taken out of the equation, often by situations far beyond their control.