This year’s San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) opens tomorrow. SFFILM presents a wide-ranging slate of films from 37 countries. Here are four under the radar recommendations. Each has a female director. Each of the three narratives is the first feature film by its director, two from Mexico and one from Turkey.
- Martinez: In this sly portrait of a man isolated by his own routine, the titular character (Francisco Reyes of A Fantastic Woman) cannot suffer fools. That is a curse because no one can meet his standards, and he loathes every human interaction. His employer decides that forty years of Martinez is enough and decides to push him out the door. Then, a neighbor he has met only once dies, and Martinez unleashes some unexpected curiosity. The two co-workers who are his biggest irritants become more sympathetic as we – and Martinez – can see their vulnerabilities. Eventually, a life is changed. First-time director Lorena Padilla also co-wrote the docu-fable 499, a highly original contemplation of Mexico’s Original Sin of colonialism.
- Snow and the Bear: Asli (Merve Dizdar) is a young nurse assigned to a tiny village in the most remote mountains of northeast Turkey. She’s both compassionate and fearless, and a thoroughly modern woman plopped into a decidedly backward community. It’s brutally cold, isolated after every snowfall, and the menfolk spend the nights at noisy bonfires to ward off a human-hunting bear that they imagine lurks in the forest. The village’s blustery and selfish butcher reacts with hostility when Asli reinforces his pregnant wife’s need for bedrest. Asli finds the kindnesses proffered by the village’s animal-loving simpleton too creepy. The butcher disappears, setting up a slow-burn mystery. In her first feature, director Selcen Ergun brings us exteriors that will chill a California audience and moody, barely lit interiors – all visually captivating.
- I Have Electric Dreams: In this coming-of-age narrative brimming with authenticity, the spirited 16-year-old Eva (Daniela Marín Navarro) and her longsuffering mom are on each other’s very last nerve. Eva decides to go live with her father, who is decidedly not Parent of the Year material. For the first time, she gets an up-close-and-personal look at his inner demons, and an increasingly harsh immersion in human behavior. Daniela Marín Navarro’s performance in her first screen credit is incendiary, and she’s been piling up festival awards for best actress.
- Confessions of a Good Samaritan: Documentarian Penny Lane is known for her choice of offbeat subjects (Nuts!, Hail Satan?) and her unexpected takes on the familiar (Our Nixon, Listening to Kenny G). Here, she turns her camera upon herself as she decides to donate one of her kidneys to a person that she doesn’t know and will never meet. An in-depth exploration of both kidney transplants and altruism ensues – all from the very personal perspective of a person about to go under the knife herself. Lane is a delightful subject, and she courageously shares her most intimate feelings, making Confessions of a Good Samaritan ever more engrossing.
All my SFFILM coverage, including eventual full reviews, will be linked on my SFFILM 2023 page.