By Dennis Hartley
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 2, 2026)
The 52nd annual Seattle International Film Festival opens May 7th and runs through May 17th. This year’s SIFF features a total of 203 shorts, documentaries, and narrative films in 71 languages.
SIFF has certainly grown exponentially since its first incarnation in 1976 (in case the math is making you crazy, festival organizers “skipped” the 13th event; you know how superstitious show people get about Scottish kings and such). Compare the numbers: In 1976, the Festival boasted a whopping 19 films from 9 countries, with one lone venue. Then again, there were only 13 people on the staff in 1976.
Regardless of how large or small the staff, the one constant over the decades has been the quality of the curation. Long before “sharing files” (or even making mix tapes) was a thing, SIFF’s annual lineup reflected that sense of joy in turning friends on to something new and exciting; instilling the sense there was a tangible film lover’s community (others who enjoyed being alone together, out there in the dark).
The first SIFF event I ever attended was a screening of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, in 1993. Linklater was there for a Q&A session afterwards. That was the first time I’d ever had a chance to ask the director of a film a question right after the credits rolled (I wasn’t writing about film yet-just a movie geek). I can’t remember what I asked (some dopey query about the 70s soundtrack), but I thought that was so fucking cool (I’d recently moved to Seattle after living in a cultural vacuum for a decade-what can I say?). Another memorable event I attended that year was a tribute to John Schlesinger (with the director on hand).
This will be the 34th SIFF I’ve attended (in one guise or the other). As (an alleged) film critic, I have been covering SIFF for Hullabaloo now for 20 years (since 2007), but as always, the looming question is – where to begin? The trick to navigating festivals is developing a 6th sense for films in your wheelhouse (I embrace my OCD and channel it like a cinematic dowser).
Let’s dive in!
This year’s Opening Night Gala selection is I Love Boosters (USA). Writer-director Boots Riley (Sorry to Bother You) incorporates themes of social justice into a modern-day Robin Hood story that concerns “a crew of professional shoplifters [who] take aim at a cutthroat fashion maven”.
Speaking of heists…let’s go do some crimes: Murder in the Building (France) is a comedy mystery about “a crime writer and his film professor partner [who] become caught up in a real-life mystery of their own when they witness a crime in the apartment across the courtyard of their Paris apartment building.” Also from France…Case 137, a police procedural drama that follows a female internal affairs officer as she investigates the unprovoked fatal police shooting of a young protester at a Paris demonstration (sounds depressingly familiar).
I’m particularly intrigued to see Phoenix Jones: The Rise and Fall of a Real Superhero (USA). The documentary recounts the story of Benjamin Fodor, a self-proclaimed crime-fighter who garnered local media attention when he donned a bullet-proof superhero-style costume and roamed the streets of Seattle in the 2010s “to deescalate dangerous situations and keep the peace until the police could arrive.” The SPD were not fans, labeling him a vigilante.
Another documentary that examines a “hero or criminal?” conundrum is Beat the Lotto (Ireland). Director Ross Whitaker goes back to the early 1990s to tell the story of “mathematician and avid stamp-collector” Stefan Klincewicz, who calculated a meticulously engineered method to beat the odds and (aspirationally) win Ireland’s National Lottery, involving a “syndicate” of participants who spent countless hours marking lotto cards.
Politics, politics…The documentary The Seoul Guardians (South Korea) delves into more recent history, recalling the astonishing events that unfolded after South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in December 2024 (spoiler alert: Democracy won!). In J.M. Harper’s documentary Soul Patrol (USA), members of the Vietnam War’s first all-Black special operations team reunite to illuminate “a chapter of American military history that has long gone unacknowledged.”
In the documentary Birds of War (UK), “Lebanese journalist Janay Boulos and Syrian activist and cameraman Abd Alkader Habak share their extraordinary love story, told through 13 years of personal archives spanning revolutions, war, and exile”. Life under fascism: Juan Pablo Sallato’s The Red Hangar (Chile) is a political thriller set In the aftermath of the 1973 Chilean coup d’état, and Amrum (Germany) is a coming-of-age drama set in a politically-divided German farming town on a North Sea island in the waning days of World War II.
SIFF’s special revival presentations are always a treat. This year, it’s Prisoners of the Earth (Argentina, 1939) Mario Soffici’s “gut-punching work of social realism”, in which “a group of desperate men are conscripted to labor on a treacherous plantation—a situation that boils over in an explosive act of rebellion”. Sadly, the exploitation of low-wage workers remains an evergreen theme.
More drama: Burn (Japan) centers on a runaway teen who flees her abusive parents and “lands in Tokyo’s Kabukicho district, where a loose-knit group of street kids offers her a fragile sense of belonging—one built on survival, impulse, and unspoken wounds”. In Three of a Kind (Denmark), “a mother and daughter’s cozy Christmas is upended when their estranged grandmother shows up at their cabin”. And no SIFF would be complete without at least one “oil and water” road movie…Crystal Cross is the story of “a quirky Christian singer and a suicidal loner [who] road trip across America, forging an unlikely bond”.
I’m always partial to films about the music biz: Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth’s documentary Broken English (UK) profiles icon Marianne Faithfull. The Best Summer (USA) is “a found footage documentary from a concert tour in 1995 featuring live performances, candid interviews, and a behind-the-scenes view of what it’s like to be on tour with Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Beck, Pavement, Rancid, The Amps, and Bikini Kill”. Cool! Edie Arnold is a Loser (USA) is billed as “an infectiously charming coming-of-age flick about a self-proclaimed loser starting a punk band at her Catholic high school”. And Power Ballad (Ireland) stars Paul Rudd as “a past-his-prime wedding singer” who befriends “a fading boy-band star” (Nick Jonas) who “turns one of [Rudd’s] songs into a hit, reigniting his career”.
I haven’t forgotten about the midnight crowd: Mārama (New Zealand), Taratoa Stappard’s feature debut, is “an anti-colonial horror story confronting oppression while honoring the strength and resilience of Māori women”. Tacoma-based filmmaker Zach Weintraub’s Assets and Liabilities (USA) concerns “a burnt-out suburban dad who is taken on a wild supernatural odyssey when he meets a skater kid at the park who reminds him of his younger, more idealistic self”. Lady (UK) is billed as an “absurdly hilarious mockumentary”, in which “a young filmmaker agrees to film the behind-the-scenes vanity project of the obnoxiously entitled Lady Isabella, only for something unseen and quite strange to happen”. And Another World (Hong Kong) is “a harrowing, arrestingly rendered epic of revenge and redemption that announces director Tommy Kai Chung Ng as a massive new voice in the world of animation”.
Midnight movie adjacent: The documentary Boorman and the Devil (USA) is David Kittredge’s examination (autopsy?) of what went horribly wrong with the production of Exorcist II: The Heretic, and how it nearly sunk director John Boorman’s otherwise stellar career (Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur, et.al.) I mean, what possessed him to…oh never mind.
This year’s Closing Night Gala selection is The Invite (USA). Starring Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton, Olivia Wilde’s film is about a couple with a rocky marriage who “invite their enigmatic upstairs neighbors for a dinner party”, during the course of which (wait for it)” the night spirals into unexpected places.”. Wilde is scheduled to attend.
Obviously, I’ve barely scratched the surface of this year’s lineup. I’ll be plowing through the catalog and sharing reviews with you beginning next Saturday. In the meantime, visit the SIFF site for full details on the films, event screenings, special guests, and more.
(You can explore 20 years of my SIFF reviews here)
