A film festival celebrating the briny deep, plus Argentina’s Lucrecia Martel and two very different new releases are recommended this week.
The International Ocean Film Festival’s 23rd annual edition brings mighty waves, troubled waters, crusading conservationists and lots of photogenic aquatic animals to the screen. The locally produced event offers more than 30 independent films from around the world, with subjects ranging from puffins and penguins to extreme surfing. It unofficially kicks off Thursday with First Night screenings in Marin at the Smith Rafael Film Center. The main event takes place April 10-12 at in San Francisco in Fort Mason Center’s Cowell Theater.
Thursday’s presentation begins with an afternoon program with two seabird-themed short films and a suspenseful longer documentary, “13 Hours to Survive: Trapped in Low Tide.” On Thursday evening, “A Life Illuminated,” a documentary following marine biologist Edie Widder on a deep-sea expedition, screens. The Cowell Theater slate includes short films about dolphins, coral reefs and same-sex seagull nesting pairs on April 10, as well “Mission Sea Otter: Saving California’s Kelp Forests.” On April 11, the bill includes films about sharks, plastic pollution, seashells, climate and surfing, plus a surf party. Topics on April 12 include sea forests, coral reefs, salmon, conservationists, and sei whales.
Visit intloceanfilmfest.org for tickets ($20-$25 for most programs) and more information.
Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel — whose movies deal with colonialism and family trauma and are known for their oblique quality — is the subject of a 16-day retrospective at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley.
It begins Saturday with “La Cienaga” (2001), Martel’s disturbing drama featuring two stagnating families. Next up are Martel’s dryly comic “The Holy Girl” (2004), about the sexual awakening and confusion of a religiously raised teen, on April 9; and “Our Land/Nuestra Tierra” (2025), a documentary about the murder of indigenous leader Javier Chocobar on April 15. Completing the series are the Brazilian film “Canuto’s Transformation” (2023) on April 17; “Selected Short Films of Lucrecia Martel” (2010-2022) on April 18; “The Headless Woman” (2008) on April 18; and “Zama” (2017) on April 19.
Visit bampfa.org for more information.
An emotional bond that is built on self-deception turns out to be not as wrong as it seems in “Miroirs No. 3,” German filmmaker Christian Petzold’s humane, engrossing psychodrama about trauma and coping in theaters this week.
Paula Beer, in her fourth collaboration with Petzold (following “Afire,” “Undine” and “Transit”), plays Laura, a Berlin university music student with an unexciting boyfriend named Jakob (Philip Froissant) and a lost-soul look. When introduced, Laura is standing alone on a bridge, prompting concern and radiating mystery. After surviving a countryside car crash that kills Jakob, Laura finds herself recuperating at the home of a kindly older woman, Betty (Barbara Auer). The two share an uncanny connection as they shop, garden and paint a fairy-tale-like white picket fence together. Petzold keeps audiences wondering but doesn’t reveal whether something supernatural is occurring.
What Petzold does make clear in this ghost story is that Betty, who accidentally calls Laura “Jelena” at one point, is haunted by the loss of a loved one. Betty is spookily drawn to Laura, distressing Betty’s husband (Matthias Brandt) and son (Enno Trebs). But at the same time, they can’t deny that Laura’s presence makes Betty happy. (Laura can cook their favorite dish, Konigsberger dumplings, magnificently!)
While the plot of “Miroirs No. 3” sometimes suggests “Vertigo” and “Persona,” Petzold applies a lighter touch to the doppelganger obsessions and converging identities and presents his troubled characters in a heartening and sometimes sly, humorous light. Their journey is well worth watching. Petzold’s graceful direction and enigmatic tone, and Beer and Auer’s performances give the film resonant humanity and quiet power.
Two witchlike women struggle to use their powers wisely in “The Serpent’s Skin,” the latest release from Alice Maio Mackay (“So Vam”), a young Australian making a mark as a transgender voice and indie genre filmmaker. The film screens Thursday through April 8 at the Roxie, and April 11 at the Alamo Drafthouse in San Francisco.
Inspired by 1990s TV shows like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the story begins when Anna (Alexandra McVicker), a young trans woman with supernatural gifts, moves from her transphobic hometown to the big city. At a record store, Anna, using mind control, stops a robbery. This impresses Gen (Avalon Fast), a tattoo artist who possesses gifts like Anna’s. The two women become romantically involved. Horror happens when Gen inadvertently unleashes a vampiric demon in Anna’s neighbor and one-time fling Danny (Jordan Dulieu) while tattooing him. Anna and Gen must destroy the voracious spirit.
Mackay’s screenplay, cowritten with Benjamin Pahl Robinson, does nothing extraordinary with its evil-tattoo plot. But with a low-fi directorial style, Mackay gives her character-focused material a down-to-earth credibility beneath the neon visuals, and she doesn’t let genre tropes and effects eclipse the human story. The romance, buoyed by McVicker and Fast’s onscreen chemistry, unfolds engagingly and with charm. (The women get pranky and use their minds to burn anti-transgender flyers!)
At just 21, Mackay, has released six feature films, and is an exciting talent. Mackay will appear in a Q&A after the 8:40 p.m. Thursday Roxie screening.
The post Movies: International Ocean film fest, Lucrecia Martel, ‘Miroirs No. 3,’ ‘Serpent’s Skin’ appeared first on Local News Matters.