Even a venerable event like the San Francisco Film Festival is facing challenges these days.
Like many festivals around the nation, SFFILM has to deal first and foremost with a drop in places to screen films. Since the pandemic, the Bay Area has been hit hard by the shuttering of key, numerous venues, either temporarily or forever.
As a result, the 67th annual SFFILM is leaner in 2024, — with a program that runs five days not 11 as in the past.
But regardless, the festival remains as special as always. It runs through April 28, with an encore program May 2-4 at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco.
The event opens with East Bay native Sean Wang’s Sundance Film Festival award-winner “Dìdi,” about a charismatic 13-year-old Taiwanese American who’s just about to enter high school. (It also screens May 2 at the Roxie.) The festival closes April 28 with Josh Margolin’s charmer “Thelma,” which stars 94-year-old June Squibb as a senior citizen going all Ethan Hunt on the jerk who scammed her.
Sandwiched in between this are a stellar batch of offerings including searing dramas, thought-provoking documentaries and even a romantic dramedy with two impossibly beautiful people snuggling up to each other.
There’s not a bad film in the bunch, and many works have Bay Area ties.
For SFFILM’s opening pick, programmers have again selected a work from an East Bay filmmaker. Last year, it was Oakland’s Peter Nicks who brought his “Stephen Curry: Underrated” to Oakland’s Grand Lake Theatre. This year, it’s Wang’s turn to shine with “Dìdi,” a film many fell in love with at its Sundance Film Festival premiere.
It’s easy to see why.
The Oscar nominee’s coming-of-age dramedy was filmed in Fremont and is set during the summer of 2008, a pivotal time in the life of 13-year-old Taiwanese American skateboarder Chris Wang (Izaac Wang, in a career-making performance). “Dìdi” touches on all-too relatable, growing-pain moments, such as awkward attempts at trying to impress someone you’re crushing hard on and hanging out with your bros and getting into trouble. Its best sequences, though, pertain to the brittle, tension-filled relationship of Chris and his exhausted mom (Joan Chen, who is also being honored April 25 with SFFILM’s Persistence of Vision award). They’re frequently at each other’s throats, but learn to better understand and appreciate each other over time.
“Dìdi” gets its encore screening 8:30 p.m. May 4 at the Roxie in San Francisco ($20; roxie.com). The film opens July 26 in area theaters.
Some of the best selections this year are in the documentary category. Here are some of our favorites.
“Sugarcane”: Former Oakland resident Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie direct an explosive, award-winning account of the horrific abuses that Catholic priests and nuns perpetrated upon young Canadian indigenous students at a boarding school. NoiseCat’s family’s legacy of pain gets woven into the film alongside the Williams Lake First Nation investigation of St. Joseph’s Mission. “Sugarcane” journeys to the darkest of places, but the trauma experienced gets treated with care and respect (a closing sequence accentuates that sensitivity; with NoiseCat and Kassie choosing to turn their cameras to an exterior shot rather than the wrenching conversation that takes place.)
Screening: 4:15 p.m. April 28 at the Premier Theater; NoiseCat and Kassie slated to attend.
“Black Box Diaries”: Japanese journalist Shiori Ito’s eight-year ordeal to attain justice after she was sexually assaulted by a veteran journalist with close associations to the prime minister fueled needed changes in judicial codes and societal structures. The difference in the telling of this fraught, harrowing uphill climb to hold that journalist accountable is that it’s Ito turning the cameras onto herself. It results in a candid portrait of a determined journalist and illustrates how the system continued to fail her. “Black Box Diaries” is about a courageous woman willing to put herself directly into the line of cruel public opinion in order to prevent others from enduring the hell she did.
Screenings: 6 p.m. April 26, Marina Theatre screening (Ito is slated to appear); and 2:15 p.m. April 27 screening at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
“Counted Out”: Sausalito’s Vicki Abeles addresses the nation’s deep-seated reluctance, even fear, of math, then shows why its applications can lead to better lives for everyone. Her eye-opening documentary travels from Alameda to New York and other locales to show math doesn’t need to be a daunting subject. “Counted Out” checks in with Wall Street Journal award-winning reporter Julia Angwin, who talks about why newsrooms, not only students, need to better grasp the numbers game so they can keep public and private entities more accountable. Abeles’ documentary talks to a swath of innovators and educators — including late civil rights activist Bob Moses — about formulating a better understanding of math, particularly those of us who have been told we just don’t have the head for numbers. As “Counted Out” suggests, everyone can prove those critics wrong, and then have the math to back them up on that statement.
Screening: 5 p.m. April 28, Marina Theatre; Abeles and others involved with the film are slated to attend.
“The Cats of Gokogu Shrine”: Cat lovers will purr over this meditative, measured documentary that looks at the scrappy but adorable felines congregating around a Shinto shrine in Ushimado, Japan. Those looking strictly for shots of cute kitties at play should be prepared: filmmaker Kazuhiro Soda is equally interested with the residents and the caretakers around them. Not everyone, as we discover, are enamored with these four-legged furry friends who are rather avid about using yards as their restrooms. Soda’s observations are languid and unhurried, along with insightful and, at moments, moving.
Screenings: 2:45 p.m. April 27 at the Marina Theatre; 7:15 p.m. April 28 at BAMPFA.
“Eternal You”: Directors Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck don’t just wade into the ethical debate about the various usages of AI, they plunge into it full force like a pair of cliff divers. The result is a provocative, at times shocking and unsettling, overview of a surge of startup businesses that use to technology to unite the living with their deceased love ones. Some connections come in the form of email exchanges, others through various high-tech means — including VR. Block and Riesewieck engage with various innovators and their grieving clients. In one of “Eternal You’s” most uncomfortable moments, a South Korean mother has a VR visit with her dead child. It rips your heart out.
Screening: 3 p.m. April 26 at Premier Theater; Block is slated to attend.
Meanwhile, there are some feature films worth seeking out.
“The Idea of You:” For those who all but swoon over romantic dramedies, pucker up for Michael Showalter’s funny, sexy and poignant entry. Anne Hathaway steals hearts as a SoCal owner of a small art gallery who stumbles into a relationship with the lead singer (Nicholas Galitzine) of a boy band after she runs into him at the Coachella festival. The two stars have great chemistry, and this enjoyable romp — based on a popular novel — touches on themes of ageism, social media cruelty and sexism. Yet it never loses track of the fact that it is first and foremost a sizzlin’ romance.
Screening: 8:15 p.m. April 27 at the Marina Theatre (and it is expected to sell out); also out May 2 on Amazon Prime.
“Sing Sing”: Director Greg Kwedar’s already hailed drama (it debuted to raves at Toronto International Film Festival and later at SXSW) follows inmates participating in a theater program in prison. It stars Colman Domingo — who showcased his acting chops at Berkeley Rep and other Bay Area theaters, and even met his husband in Berkeley — and Sean San José, the artistic director at San Francisco’s Magic Theater.
Screening: 8:30 p.m. April 25 at the Premier Theater, with Kwedar, San José and producer Monique Walton slated to attend.
“Mabel”: Nichola Ma’s family-friendly film is about a young girl captivated by her botany class and her experiments. It’s part of the Sloan Science in Cinema Initiative, which bolsters the voices of up-and-coming filmmakers whose works are pinned to science.
Screening: 5 p.m. April 27 at the Vogue Theatre.
Contact Randy Myers at soitsrandy@gmail.com.