Hot Offerings at SF International Film Festival

Posted on Apr 28, 2015

The 58th SF International Film Festival now through May 7th with showings at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, Castro Theatre, Landmark’s Clay Theatre and the Roxie Theater in San Francisco and the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley are featuring great music films and hot new Latin cinema among their vast offerings this year.

Music films include Eden (which parallels the rise of France’s Daft Punk), The Theory Of Obscurity: A Film about the mysterious godfathers of experimental rock music,  The Residents and Beats Of The Antonov which focuses on musicians from civil war torn Sudan region in Africa are among the intriguing music films.  I heard great things about the “What Happened To Nina Simone” documentary which I missed  and will be available on Netflix according to reliable sources.   Several live music offerings pairing the hip hop infused electro pop of Cibo Matto with wild and abstract short films are playing the Castro on May 5th at 8 pm.  While the esteemed classical/New music icons Kronos Quartet providing instrumental backing to Bill Morrison’s Beyond Zero – World War 1 footage on Wed, May 6, 6:30 pm at the Kabuki.

Among the fine Latin films, the intriguing moral drama “El Cordero” from Chile, the heartfelt Mexican documentary “All Of Me” which focuses on the Patronas, a group of women who prepare food and water to hand out to men and women who ride a speeding train towards the US border,  “Magical Girl”, a Spanish/French production that is a heartbreaking tale of grief, a tense thriller and a deeply unsettling film noir, the Brazilian documentary “Sunday Ball” which is both a work of poetry and a sports doc that captures the spirit of a championship soccer game between rival teams from Rio De Janeiro’s impoverished Sampaio neighborhood, the nuanced romantic drama “Sand Dollars” from the Dominican Republic featuring Geraldine Chaplin and the engrossing “NN” from director Hector Galvez.  There are more Latin films in the festival line up! For more information on these films and the entire SF International Film Festival, visit www.festival.sffs.org.