International cinema is everywhere this week.
The San Francisco International Film Festival, one of the big ones, launches its 69th annual edition Friday. Venues are the Castro Theatre, Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, Marina Theatre, Premier Theater at One Letterman and San Francisco Conservatory of Music, all in SF; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Archive in Berkeley; and the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland. Presented by SFFilm, the festival, which is the longest running film festival in the Americas, will show more than 100 films from more than 40 countries over 11 days this year. Featured artists will attend.
“Late Fame,” directed by Kent Jones (“Diane”), and “The Invite,” directed by Olivia Wilde (“Booksmart”), open the event, at 5:30 and 8:30 p.m., respectively, at the Castro Theatre, on April 24. Jones’ movie stars a marvelous Willem Dafoe as a forgotten New York poet who enjoys a taste of his former glory when a group of young creatives discover his work. Greta Lee costars. Wilde’s film is a bold and witty comedy about marriage, non-monogamy, two San Francisco couples and an unconventional dinner party. Penelope Cruz, Edward Norton, Seth Rogen, and Wilde star.
On Closing Night, May 4, at the Castro, “Star Wars: Episode V—The Empire Strikes Back” will screen, in honor of Star Wars Day.
In between are movies galore, from higher-profile fare like Boots Riley’s comedy “I Love Boosters” to dozens of international selections, including the coming-of-age drama “Renoir” (Japan), the political thriller “It Would Be Night in Caracas” (Mexico) and “from the vault” classics such as Agnes Varda’s “Vagabond” (1985, France).
Upcoming documentaries include Sara Dosa’s visually splendid “Time and Water,” about a eulogy written for an Icelandic glacier; Alysa Nahmias’ “Cookie Queens,” about Girl Scouts racing to sell tons of cookies; and Liz Garbus and Elizabeth Wolff’s “Give Me the Ball!,” about tennis trailblazer Billie Jean King.
Also on the bill are awards presentations, short-film programs and under-the-radar “little gems.” Specifics will appear in next week’s column. Shows are selling out quickly. Visit sffilm.org for ticket information and a schedule.
“Democracy Now!” host Amy Goodman deserves a deeper documentary than “Steal This Story, Please!” now in Bay Area theaters. But as a profile in courage and a celebration of independent and defiant journalism, the film has lots to offer. Directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal (“Trouble the Water”) cover the decades-long career of Goodman — the journalist, activist and progressive voice known for bringing little-known urgent stories to world attention through her reports on “Democracy Now!,” which airs on more than 1,500 public television and radio stations.
Early in the film, Goodman covers the massacre of 271 civilian protesters by Indonesia’s military in East Timor in 1991 — a tragedy that received only minimal coverage by corporate-owned media. Elsewhere, Goodman reports on Native American protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. She gets arrested along with two colleagues by riot police in Minnesota. She takes Bill Clinton to task, during an interview, for “shifting the Democratic Party to the right.”
The film is also a personal portrait, complete with home movies and details about Goodman’s Long Island childhood and Eastern European Jewish roots. It isn’t a penetrating profile. Goodman comes across a flawless hero. We learn little about what is going on in her head when she fearlessly covers a story, or how she has evolved over time. The film does, however, establish that the world needs more journalists like Goodman. Watching her in action over its 102 minutes is exciting and inspiring.
An eviction tragedy triggers an existential crisis in “Kontinental ’25,” writer-director Radu Jude’s latest droll, satirical, absurdist and inimitable portrait of modern Romanian life onscreen at the Roxie theater in San Francisco. Inspired by Roberto Rosselini’s “Europe ’51,” this atypically compact seriocomedy from Jude (“Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn”) follows a bailiff named Orsolya (Eszter Tompa) in Cluj, Transylvania. Orsolya crumbles from guilt after an eviction she oversees — of a destitute drifter named Ion Glanetasu (Gabriel Spahiu) — ends with the man’s suicide.
Desperate to convince others, and herself, that the incident wasn’t her fault, Orsolya, in a string of one-on-one conversations with her husband, her priest, a friend, a former student, and her unpleasant Viktor Orban-supporting mother, recounts her efforts to handle Ion’s case humanely, complete with deadline extensions. Still, she feels responsible for, and shattered by, Ion’s death.
Jude presents Orsolya’s crisis of conscience with his trademark dark humor and political edge. He addresses economic inequality (Ion, a former athletic champion, died in poverty, squatting in a building slated to be replaced by a luxury hotel); nationalism (Orsolya is trolled on social media because she is Hungarian); and the absurdity of modern life (laughably animatronic dinosaurs in a tree-filled park). It all adds up to a deftly crafted, dryly amusing parable set in a modern Romania where discontent prevails and people have no spring in their step. Tompa, too, deserves mention. Orsolya, who wants to qualify as a good person in a world where decency is not a method of operation, is a universally relatable protagonist, and Tompa portrays her seriocomically and superbly.
The Roxie will host a post-Earth Day screening of “Earth’s Greatest Enemy,” a documentary by Abby Martin about the U.S. military’s role as the world’s No. 1 industrial polluter, at 8:30 p.m. Thursday. Featuring testimonies from veterans, scientists and communities directly affected, the film addresses how military operations are poisoning ecosystems and inordinately contributing to the climate crisis.
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