Summer moviegoing doesn’t have to mean blockbuster sequels or reboots, and that’s especially true in the Bay Area, where independent cinema thrives. Here’s what’s going on this week:
San Francisco Jewish Film Festival: The 45th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival gets rolling Thursday. Presented by the Jewish Film Institute, the annual multi-venue celebration of Jewish culture and the art of cinema is known for high quality, diverse (and sometimes boat-rocking) programming. Seventy films from 10 countries screen in 18 days.
“Coexistence, My Ass!,” one of several selections addressing Israeli-Palestinian relations, leads things off. Comedian-activist Noam Shuster-Eliassi, who grew up in the only village in Israel where Jews and Palestinians live together by choice, shares her feelings on the conflict, using humor as a peace tool, in filmmaker Amber Fares’ Sundance-honored documentary.
The Centerpiece Narrative is “Fantasy Life,” Matthew Shear’s very human dramedy about a recently fired paralegal who falls for the professionally and maritally disappointed mother of his psychiatrist’s granddaughters, whom he’s temporarily baby-sitting.
“Holding Liat,” Brandon Kramer’s intimately focused, politically charged film about a family whose daughter was abducted on Oct. 7, 2023, is the Centerpiece Documentary.
New York filmmaker Rachel Israel’s “The Floaters,” a Jewish summer-camp comedy, closes the festival.
The lineup also includes short films; a tribute to actor-musician Daveed Diggs; a “Local Spotlight” section; LGBTQ+ offerings; female stories; Holocaust stories; “When Harry Met Sally…,” and lots more.
July 17–Aug. 3 at Herbst Theatre; AMC Kabuki 8; Roxie Theater; Jewish Community Center of San Francisco; and Vogue Theater, San Francisco; and Landmark’s Piedmont Theatre, Oakland. Tickets are $30 for most films; up to $100 for special events. Visit jfi.org for details.
(Coco Van Oppens via Bay City News)
“Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight”: South African-American actor Embeth Davidtz’s filmmaking debut is an immersive, atmospheric child-centered drama set in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) during the final days of its fight for independence from British colonial rule.
The story follows a white farming family in 1980 as they come to acknowledge that the African country they have long considered home, which is undergoing a transition to Black majority rule, no longer belongs to them.
Davidtz focuses on 7-year-old Bobo (Lexi Venter), a feral-looking girl, as she navigates her turbulent war-torn environs. Bobo’s impressions largely echo her parents’ views; they also reflect her friendly interactions with Black servant Sarah (Zikhona Bali).
Davidtz, who adapted the screenplay from Alexandra Fuller’s memoir, and costars as Bobo’s alcoholic mother, has made a small, intimate film with little revelatory historical material or knockout drama.
But she creates an engrossingly realistic setting, delivers emotional credibility, addresses ever-relevant issues of land ownership and racial injustice, and, most significantly, draws an extraordinary performance from her 7-year-old star. Venter takes viewers into the world and mind of a child who is processing uneasy truths and makes this modest movie captivating.
Opens Friday at local arthouses. Not rated.
“Unicorns”: A conformist auto mechanic and an alluring drag queen transcend cliches in this radiantly romantic British drama, and celebration of sexual freedom, from directors Sally El Hosaini (“The Swimmers”) and James Krishna Floyd.
Written by Floyd, the story begins with an eyes-meet-on-a-dance-floor moment. Luke (Ben Hardy), a single dad who works at his father’s garage, wanders into a “gaysian” club in East London and finds himself besotted by Aysha (Jason Patel), a British Indian drag queen. Aysha has a second life, and a less happy one, as Ashiq, a closeted son in a traditional Muslim family.
After the initially repulsed Luke adjusts to the fact that Aysha isn’t the conventional female hookup he was seeking, the two grow close, lowering their guards and inspiring each other to confront personal realities about identity and need.
As the filmmakers tap into the emotional charge generated between the two protagonists and the committed actors playing them, the movie overcomes predictability, and dazzles.
Opens Friday at Landmark’s Opera Plaza in San Francisco. Not rated.
“To a Land Unknown”: Palestinian-Danish filmmaker Madhi Fleifel combines gritty realism and cinematic eloquence to stirring effect in this thriller about displacement and friendship, his narrative feature debut.
Echoing Fleifel’s documentary work, the film considers struggles of Palestinians in exile, in this case featuring an Athens setting and two Palestinian cousins whose journey began in a Lebanese refugee camp.
Chatila (Mahmoud Bakri), who is stable and in-charge, and Reda (Aram Sabbah), driven by a drug addiction, steal and hustle to survive. (Fleifel’s humanism shines in a scene in which Reda, finding a bottle of pills among the contents of a snatched purse, worries that their victim will suffer without her medication.)
In dire need of cash to buy fake passports and leave Greece for Germany, the two hatch a desperate plan to pose as traffickers and take hostages. Problems, of course, occur.
As a thriller, the film delivers requisite suspense. As a friendship story, it succeeds as a Palestinian buddy comedy and a poetically bleak journey that brings “Midnight Cowboy” to mind. As a social drama, it captures the isolation and anxiety experienced by refugees and exiles.
Both actors are charismatic and natural. Fleifel’s use of the closeup serves them well.
Opens Friday at the Roxie. Not rated.
Fundraiser for Women’s Building: On Sunday, the Roxie Theater hosts a fundraiser for the Women’s Building — its Mission District neighbor and a longtime source of support for Latina, immigrant and low-income women and families in San Francisco. Like many nonprofits, the 54-year-old organization is dealing with the effects of a federal funding freeze.
The event, at 1:45 p.m. July 20, includes a screening of the short asylum-themed documentary “No Separate Survival” in which asylum seekers share their perspectives as storytellers, and a panel with Shabnam Piryaei and film participants Irma Gallegos Chavez, Belvi Mikery and Juan Enriquez.
Tickets, about $7-$32, are at roxie.com.
“Hung Up on a Dream”: A touring presentation of “Hung Up on a Dream,” a new documentary by Rooney frontman Robert Schwartzman about the Zombies—the British Invasion band known for the 1960s hits “I’m Not There” and “Time of the Season”—comes to San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall at 7:15 p.m. Friday. Zombies vocalist Colin Blunstone appears in an unplugged set with Rooney.
Tickets are $38-$45 at gamh.com.
The post Movies: 45th SF Jewish film fest, ‘Dogs Tonight,’ ‘Unicorns,’ ‘To a Land Unknown,’ Women’s Building fundraiser, Zombies doc appeared first on Local News Matters.