Vee Hua 華婷婷
40 Acres
(R.T. Thorne, 2024, Canada & United States, Narrative, 113 minutes, in English and Cree)
Thursday, May 16 @ SIFF Cinema Downtown @ 9:00pm
Wednesday, May 21 @ SIFF Cinema Downtown @ 3:00pm
Not Streaming Virtually
A post-apocalyptic, Afro-Indigenous-futuristic project that indeed references Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower early on in the film, 40 Acres is a satisfying, crowd-pleasing way. Set in a world where farmland is highly valuable following a global food chain collapse, the family in the film does their best to defend their resources from strangers who are going from farm to farm, plotting to take them over. For the family, it’s a survival film. For the audience watching it that might be exceptionally angry about the current state of race relations in the world, it might just be a revenge film. In the spiritual sense.
BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions
(Kahlil Joseph, 2025, United States, Narrative, 113 minutes, in English)
Sunday, May 18 @ SIFF Cinema Downtown @ 6:30pm
Monday, May 19 @ SIFF Cinema Downtown @ 4:00pm
Not Streaming Virtually
With BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, indie-legendary filmmaker Kahlil Joseph — originally from Seattle — builds once again upon his BLKNEWS art and film series with a new installment. This time, expect personal family narratives mixed in with non-linear Afrofuturist narratives, and plenty of archival footage.
Director Kahlil Joseph scheduled to attend.
Deaf
(Eva Libertad, 2025, Spain, Narrative, 99 minutes, in Spanish)
Saturday, May 17: SIFF Cinema Uptown @ 5:00pm
Sunday, May 18: SIFF Cinema Uptown @ 3:00pm
Monday, May 26 to Sunday, June 1: Streaming Virtually
High-stakes drama becomes the norm after a couple in love bears a daughter and discovers that her presence raises tensions between their differing sensory realities, given the fact that the wife is Deaf and the husband is hearing. When the truth is confirmed that their daughter has the ability to hear, both parents must navigate the difficulties of how that relates to how they will raise their daughter as well as how each of them will relate to her.
Free Leonard Peltier
(Jesse Short Bull [Oglala Sioux] & David France, United States, 2025, Documentary, 110 minutes, in English)
Saturday, May 17: SIFF Cinema Uptown @ 8:30pm
Sunday, May 18: SIFF Cinema Uptown @ 11:15am
Monday, May 26 to Sunday, June 1: Streaming Virtually
With President Joe Biden’s recent presidential pardon of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, Free Leonard Peltier, though clearly long in the works, suddenly became primetime viewing material. Peltier, who was involved with the American Indian Movement (AIM), was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences after he was accused of shooting two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The tale of his eventual liberation and the fight leading up to it is all the more potent, given the role of AIM in the Seattle area, which eventually led to the current-day formation of Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center.
Producer Jhane Myers scheduled to attend.
Hanami
(Denise Fernandes, 2024, Switzerland, Narrative, 96 minutes, in Cape Verdean Creole, English, Japanese, and French)
Friday, May 16: SIFF Cinema Uptown @ 3:30pm
Wednesday, May 21: SIFF Cinema Uptown @ 9:00pm
Not Streaming Virtually
Hanami is a visual delight set on a beautiful volcanic landscape, where nature is a character and the residents are heart-filled. Presented in a format that at times feels rooted in reality and at times feels like one has stepped into a tableau from a Solange video,
Khartoum
(Anas Saeed, Rawia Alhag, Brahim Snoopy, Timeea Mohamed Ahmed, Phil Cox, 2025, Sudan, Documentary, 80 minutes, in Arabic)
Monday, May 19: AMC Pacific Place @ 9:30pm
Wednesday, May 21: AMC Pacific Place @ 1:30pm
Not Streaming Virtually
Sudan: land of beauty, culture, and ongoing pains from the Sudanese Civil War. Khartoum, named after the major city of the same name in which much conflict has taken place, is a documentary that brutally and honestly reflects on the stories of five survivors and uses greenscreen technologies to reenact some of their memories while juxtaposing those memories with real-life footage.
Luz
(Flora Lau, 2025, Hong Kong, Narrative, 102 minutes, in Mandarin, French, and English)
Tuesday, May 20: SIFF Cinema Uptown @ 1:00pm
Thursday, May 22: AMC Pacific Place @ 6:30pm
Not Streaming Virtually
A truly bold vision that crosses continents and languages with ease, Luz uses the backdrop of a massive multiplayer game to connect two pairs of disparate, disconnected family members with one another. In China, a father attempts to reconnect with his camgirl daughter; in Hong Kong, a gallery owner tries to reach out to her distant stepmother in France. Along the way, viewers step in and out of virtual worlds into shiny cityscapes, in awe every step of the way by director Flora Lau’s expansive vision of future technologies.
Mongrels
(Jerome Yoo, 2024, Canada, Narrative, 110 minutes, in English and Korean)
Friday, May 16: SIFF CInema Uptown @ 8:30pm
Saturday, May 17: AMC Pacific Place @ 10:45am
Not Streaming Virtually
In Korean-Canadian filmmaker Jerome Yoo’s debut narrative feature film, Mongrels, Yoo depicts a family attempting to put back the pieces of their broken lives. Building invisible walls between one another, the Lee family’s desperate need for connection battles with the isolating effect of grief, which results in this spiraling tale that explores the depth and impact of love, loss, and, eventually, hope.
“I never wrote the film imagining grief would become such a central theme. I understood loss was a mutual experience that the family was undergoing, but wanted to focus more on each character’s unique situations, perspectives, trials and tribulations,” Yoo says, in an interview he did with Anna Brunner for REDEFINE magazine. “Later, I realized that grief actually further drives them into their own worlds of isolation, as they all need to cope in different ways apart from one another.”
Director Jerome Yoo scheduled to attend.
Remaining Native
(Paige Bethmann [Haudenosaunee], 2025, United States, Documentary, 87 minutes, in English)
Saturday, May 17: SIFF Cinema Uptown @ 2:30pm
Monday, May 18: SIFF Cinema Uptown @ 5:00pm
Monday, May 26 to Sunday, June 1: Streaming Virtually
Ku Stevens, an aspiring Paiute runner, desires to pursue his love for the sport but must contend with the reality that his beloved hometown may not hold the future that he desires. Along the way, his family and community support him despite their own struggles with Ku’s dreams of leaving. Remaining Native uses plenty of Ku’s own reflections to tell his own story of growth, but also makes front and center the harmful legacy of Native American boarding schools through the story of Ku’s grandfather, who had escaped from running away from them three times.
Director Paige Bethmann, producer Jessica Epstein, subject Ku Stevens, and executive producer Billy Mills (Olympic Gold Medalist) scheduled to attend.
Sons
(Gustav Möller, 2024, Denmark, Narrative, 99 minutes, in Danish)
Friday, May 23: SIFF Cinema Uptown @ 9:15pm
Sunday, May 25: SIFF Cinema Downtown @ 1:45pm
Not Streaming Virtually
After a seemingly kind female prison guard asks to be transferred to a maximum-security prison, one learns that she has positioned herself there to confront a young man from her past. Sons looks at the multiple sides of humanity — or lack thereof — from within prison walls, in a gripping, bitterly petty manner.
Sudden Outbursts of Emotions
(Paula Korva, 2024, Finland, Narrative, 97 minutes, in Finnish)
Sunday, May 18: SIFF Cinema Uptown @ 8:00pm
Monday, May 19: SIFF Cinema Uptown @ 3:30pm
Not Streaming Virtually
A realistic look into the life of a Finnish couple that becomes interested in opening up their relationship, Sudden Outbursts of Emotions is about the unpredictability of interpersonal dynamics once potential new romances are introduced into the mix. Playful, painful, and all of the above, the film certainly doesn’t have place judgments or have any answers — but it certainly captures an extended moment that many couples are facing in the modern age.
Writer/Director Paula Korva scheduled to attend.
The Things You Kill
(Alireza Khatami, 2025, Canada, Narrative, 113 minutes, in Turkish)
Sunday, May 18: SIFF Cinema Uptown @ 8:00pm
Monday, May 19: SIFF Cinema Uptown @ 3:30pm
Not Streaming Virtually
A dramatic psychological thriller set in Turkey, The Things You Kill is hair-raising, violent, and shows a family struggling to deal with an unexpected tragedy. When answers are distant, secrets are buried, and some would rather not know the truth, the line blurs easily between fiction and reality.
Tinā
(Miki Magasiva [Samoan], 2024, Aotearoa New Zealand, 124 minutes, in English)
Sunday, May 18: SIFF Cinema Uptown @ 2:30pm
Monday, May 19: SIFF Cinema Uptown @ 6:00pm
Not Streaming Virtually
A feel-good tale about a Samoan teacher who finds meaning in starting a choir at a school full of rich kids that come from a different world of New Zealand, Tinā exemplifies the power of culture and of art, when merged together in authentic but unpredictable ways.
Unclickable
Babis Makridis, 2024, Greece, Documentary, 74 minutes, in English and Portuguese)
Sunday, May 18: SIFF Cinema Uptown @ 2:30pm
Monday, May 19: SIFF Cinema Uptown @ 6:00pm
Not Streaming Virtually
Digital advertising fraud is something that has undoubtedly touched everyone’s lives, but few know or pay attention to how the “industry” works. Unclickable is a documentary that dives deep into the web, social media platforms such as Google and Facebook, and the millions or billions of dollars that drives it all. Most interestingly, the filmmakers take it upon themselves to make their own fraudulent networks in order to drive the story forward.
Director Miki Magasiva and subject Beulah Koale scheduled to attend.
Waves
(Jiří Mádl, 2024, Czech Republic, Narrative, 131 minutes, in Czech)
Wednesday, May 21: Shoreline Community College @ 8:30pm
Saturday, May 24: SIFF Cinema Downtown @ 9:00pm
Monday, May 26 to Sunday, June 1: Streaming Virtually (in WA State Only)
With freedom of press increasingly under threat throughout the world, Waves dramatically shows what happens in Czechoslovakia in 1967 when Soviets decide to attempt to censor the country’s most well-known radio station. What emerges are a series of personal decisions that get to the heart of how humanity might behave when under personal and collective threats.
Ω
