We’re back for SIFF’s 50th birthday party, SIFFTY as they’re calling it, with an array of “surprising cinema,” as they’re also calling it, and some terrific recommendations from all corners of the cinematic gambit. SIFF remains our joyous local exhibition, a catch-up point for Seattle to see some of what has made it to the early festivals but also to highlight some stunning local regional filmmaking. Join us for another great year of movies, and most importantly, the festival experience that every film-loving city deserves.

The Black Sea

The small intimate moments are the big moments in Crystal Moselle’s pretty, interior, and soul-searching The Black Sea. The film is co-directed by Derrick B. Harden, who also stars and brings such a deep well of feeling to all the moments in between what happens. This searching, beating heart at the center of the movie drives the thematic visual language home, of a man lost in another country, finally finding his home. It’s a pretty and delicate movie made with nuanced detail, where small conversations feel big, acts of kindness are sincere and well-intentioned, and where it’s always Golden Hour, or looks like it. Pretty, well-directed, and subtly acted, The Black Sea is a heartfelt journey full of good vibes.

Fish War

Fish War is about the stewardship of fishing resources in the state of Washington. It revolves around a court case from fifty years ago, in which treaty-reserved rights were upheld for local tribes to enjoy co-management of fishing resources. It took a lot of local activism to protect what was already written into law, which the documentary traces back over, in a historic dispute that led to violence between police and local tribes and resulted in retained rights for the tribes, but also a standing reminder that local fishing rights are always on the table. The share of half of these essential local resources with area tribes is still taking half of a resource from the land that is rightfully theirs. The documentary strikes a chord and effectively tells its activist message, it’s well-considered and works as a local history of fishing rights which rightfully centers the communities most impacted by these rulings.

Hitchcock’s Pro-Nazi Film

Alfred Hitchcock’s famously fascist-leaning Lifeboat (1944), takes center stage. Whether Nazi-indulging by design or uncareful happenstance, the film says what it says, and the intent does not matter so much as that’s all that can be read from the characters in the film. It sucks, too, because Hitchcock adapting a John Steinback story sounds pretty good. It would have maybe been pretty good, too, and this documentary takes most of its interest in that possibility, a profile, actually, of John Steinback’s involvement with the film, which seemed to leap far away from his intent once it was brought to Hollywood. Hitchcock shot the film in a water tank housing two lifeboats, shooting from one boat to the other, giving it a forced scale and smallness that effectively makes it a kind of bottle episode. There is a little curiosity about this, a little curiosity about the film’s Nazi agenda, and a lot of curiosity about Canada Lee and Steinback. The film does not exactly so much have a thesis — it’s not what the title indicates anyway — so much as it relays a series of disconnected information about a weird film that holds an unfortunate status.

Grasshopper Republic

We must be more careful when venturing into unknown lands, pointing the camera at people, and filming them as though we are making a documentary about aliens. That’s how Grasshopper Republic feels, which is all the more shameful because it has such a striking visual motif — all this darkness and night-lit green, vibrant glowing, curious creatures. But it takes the oddness of the grasshopper, as it finds them, and extends it to the Ugandan people who harvest them as a special delicacy. The documentary makes it all seem so strange, and it’s not that strange, it’s just an industry based on something we have some preconceptions about (that the grasshopper is not an inherently valuable resource, but for them, it so clearly is). It’s a real missed opportunity because some footage is so beautiful. It’s shot with the uncozy lens of a colonist, looking into a culture from the outside, never integrating the camera and the crew, always feeling like voyeuristic documentary tourism. It would’ve just been easier not to frame everything that way, so it’s too bad.

Tenement

You will always see horror at a festival. Even if you think it’s nothing, you’ll have second thoughts, you’d better try it and see. Sometimes you don’t need to. Maybe you don’t especially need to see Tenement. You can see it in the way you’ll see any horror movie regardless of recommendation. You can do that. We won’t stop you. But there’s nothing new here and the approach to old ideas feels rusty. We cannot shame this rare Cambodian horror film for just falling into basic-ass Western horror tropes and clichés either, can we? Dozens of Western horror films do every year, there’s one every few weeks if you go looking. So, let’s cut the directors a break, who wanted to make something that reflected the system, but from their own cultural perspective. What we get is the promise of a good setting and an execution that finds nothing to fill it with.