This year’s San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) has just opened and runs through May 1. The menu at SFFILM includes 130 films from 56 countries, with 16 world premieres and 10 North American or US premieres. Once again, a majority of the films were directed by female and non-binary filmmakers, and a majority of the movie in this years program have BIPOC directors. Here are my three top picks – all from international cinema.
My favorite SFFILM film so far is the character-driven neo-noir Fire on the Plain, the first film for director and co-writer Zhang Yi (Ji Zhang on IMDb). Zhang takes us to northeastern China in1997, into a gritty industrial city whose tagline could be disappointment. Most of the adults seemed paralyzed by economic hopelessness. A serial killer is knocking off taxi drivers, and everyone is on edge. Shu (Liu Haoran) hangs out with his rowdy friends; he’s headed nowhere, and he’s OK with that. Only the spirited Fei (Zhou Dongyu) has a plan to escape the gloom. It looks like the story is building toward Fei emigrating with Shu, but a surprising murder occurs. The story reconvenes in 2005, and Shu and Fei are each in totally unexpected circumstances. Visually and thematically dark, Fire on the Plain winds toward a fittingly noir ending.
The think piece documentary La Guerra Civil is the feature directing debut for actress (and veteran TV director) Eva Longoria. It explores issues of identity through the rivalry between boxing champions Julio César Chávez and Oscar De La Hoya. Chávez came from an impoverished Mexican childhood to dominate boxing in the late 1980s and 1990s, breaking record after record; Chávez became especially revered by Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. Exploding from East LA into the 1992 Olympics, the handsome and media savvy Oscar De La Hoya had a similar rags-to-champion profile. One might expect Mexican-Americans to embrace De La Hoya, even as he climbed toward a face-off with Chávez . But it was much more complicated than that, and De La Hoya feels the need to verbalize that he’s “Mexican enough”.
One of the biggest films at SFFILM is anything but a first film – Both Sides of the Blade (also known as Fire) comes from French auteur Claire Denis (35 Shots of Rum, Let the Sunshine In). Sara (the ever rapturous Juliette Binoche) has built a ten-year relationship with Jean (Vincent Lindon) that has survived his prison sentence. Sara had previously been with François (Grégoire Colin), but left him because she valued Jean’s reliability, loyalty and decency. When François shows up again in their lives, Sara is drawn to him again. With Denis, Binoche and Lindon layering in all the complexities of these characters, this is not your average romantic triangle.
Here’s the trailer for Fire on the Plain.