59th San Francisco International Film Festival at BAMPFA
April 22–May 5, 2016
BAMPFA is the exclusive East Bay venue for the San Francisco International Film Festival, an annual showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation.
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Mr. Gaga
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Under the Sun
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Winter Song
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From Afar
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NUTS!
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Journey to the Shore
- Upcoming
Films - Past
Films - Past
Events
Past Films
Right Now, Wrong Then
Hong Sang-Soo
South Korea, 2015Friday, April 22 4 PMView DetailsA middle-aged artist, a young ingenue, existential crises, romantic fumblings and confessional drinkathons—like Monet and his water lilies, Hong Sang-soo keeps returning to the same core material and refining his pitch-perfect preoccupation with what fools lovelorn men can be.
The Return
Kelly Duane De La Vega, Katie Galloway
United States , 2016Friday, April 22 6:30 PMView DetailsAfter California voters reversed the state’s Three Strikes law, thousands of inmates became suddenly eligible for resentencing and release. This provocative and touching documentary chronicles what happened next.
The Apostate
Federico Veiroj
Spain, France, Uruguay, 2015Friday, April 22 8:45 PMView DetailsLooking for a fresh start, perennial philosophy flunk-out and sexually frustrated Madrid thirty-something Gonzalo (Álvaro Ogalla) demands the Catholic Church relinquish its symbolic hold on his misspent life by removing his name from the baptismal record.
Thirst
Svetla Tsotsorkova
Bulgaria, 2015Saturday, April 23 4:15 PMView DetailsWhen water becomes scarce due to drought, a laundress living in rural southwest Bulgaria with her husband and son invites a dowser and his spirited daughter to search for hidden springs on their property.
Les Cowboys
Thomas Bidegain
France, Belgium, 2015Saturday, April 23 6:15 PMView DetailsNoted screenwriter Thomas Bidegain brings the tough, tense attitude of his earlier scripts for A Prophet and Rust and Bone to a contemporary adaptation of John Ford’s The Searchers.
Neon Bull
Gabriel Mascaro
Brazil, Uruguay, Netherlands, 2015Saturday, April 23 8:30 PMView DetailsStrange and erotic, with an unexpected view of gender roles, this film is set in the macho world of bull wrangling yet its male protagonist is interested in fashion and designs dresses.
Between Us: Experimental Shorts
Sunday, April 24 4:15 PMView DetailsEight artist-made films explore things that pass between us. Songs, stories, and trinkets are handed down from one generation to the next.
The Event
Sergei Loznitsa
Netherlands, Belgium, 2015Sunday, April 24 6:30 PMView DetailsSergei Loznitsa (Maidan, SFIFF 2015) once again brings Eastern European history to vivid life with the inspired deployment of archival resources.
Chevalier
Athina Rachel Tsangari
Greece, 2015Sunday, April 24 8:15 PMView DetailsA slow-burn satire dubbed “a buddy movie without the buddies,” Chevalier brilliantly mines the comedy of the modern male competitive spirit.
Kanbar Award: Tom McCarthy | The Station Agent
Tom McCarthy
US, 2003Tuesday, April 26 7 PMView DetailsFinbar McBride (Peter Dinklage) looks forward to a life of solitude and endless solo walks along the railroad tracks when he inherits an abandoned and decrepit New Jersey train station in Tom McCarthy’s bewitching, closely observed drama.
Shadow World
Johan Grimonprez
Belgium, United States, 2016Wednesday, April 27 6:30 PMView DetailsDirector Johan Grimonprez deploys powerful and sinister imagery in this adaptation of journalist Andrew Feinstein’s ominous, important book on the global arms trade.
From Afar
Lorenzo Vigas
Venezuela, Mexico, 2015Wednesday, April 27 8:50 PMView DetailsA middle-aged single man who cruises his Caracas neighborhood for rough trade takes a tough young boy into his home, in this gritty exploration of a relationship.
Mr. Gaga
Tomer Heymann
Israel, Sweden, Germany, Netherlands, 2015Thursday, April 28 6:30 PMView DetailsA spectacular and celebratory investigation of a modern dancer’s creative process, this documentary tracks the four-decades-long career of renowned choreographer Ohad Naharin, the artistic director of Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company.
Home Care
Slávek Horák
Czech Republic, Slovakia, 2015Thursday, April 28 8:50 PMView DetailsDedicated home-care nurse Vlasta (Karlovy Vary winner Alena Mihulová) traipses around the south Moravia countryside on bus and foot tending to (and bantering with) patients too infirm or elderly to travel.
Paths of the Soul
Zhang Yang
China, 2015Friday, April 29 4 PMView DetailsChinese director Zhang Yang’s Paths of the Soul is a captivating and profound portrait of a small group of Tibetan villagers on an arduous, one-thousand-mile pilgrimage to the holy city of Lhasa.
Radio Dreams
Babak Jalali
United States, Iran, 2016Friday, April 29 6:30 PMView DetailsHamid, the often exasperated program director of a Farsi-language radio station based in San Francisco, awaits a much-anticipated meeting between Metallica and real-life Afghani band Kabul Dreams in his studio.
Sonita
Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami
Germany, Switzerland, Iran, 2015Friday, April 29 8:45 PMView DetailsSonita Alizadeh is like many teenagers—she loves hip-hop, argues with her mother, and gossips with her friends. She is also an Afghan refugee living under the tenuous protection of a Tehran homeless shelter, where she contends with the imminent risk of being sold into marriage under the Afghan system of “bride price.
Suite Armoricaine
Pascale Breton
France, 2015Saturday, April 30 2:50 PMView DetailsA Paris-based art historian returns to her native town of Rennes to teach a class. There, she encounters a troubled male student who is contending with an itinerant mother as well as the demands of university life.
Nuts!
Penny Lane
United States, 2015Saturday, April 30 6:15 PMView DetailsPenny Lane’s documentary—comprising archival material, animated sequences, and the occasional talking head—blooms into an incredible almanac of early twentieth-century quackery and innovation as she focuses on J. R. Brinkley, an early broadcasting baron, direct-mail pioneer, and an evangelical proponent of goat-testicle implants.
Sixty Six
Lewis Klahr
United States, 2015Saturday, April 30 8:30 PMView DetailsSixties pop-art heroines and DC comic-strip heroes are suffused with the passions of Greco-Roman gods in Lewis Klahr’s compilation spanning fourteen years of filmmaking.
Thithi
Raam Reddy
India, United States, 2016Sunday, May 1 3:15 PMView DetailsIn a small South Indian village, a cantankerous centenarian keels over and dies, setting the stage for a capricious comedy of errors among three generations of dissimilar sons.
Notes on Blindness
Peter Middleton, James Spinney
United Kingdom, France, 2016Sunday, May 1 6:15 PMView DetailsA taped journal that theologian John Hull (1935–2015) kept after the onset of blindness in 1980 forms the basis of this elegant and moving depiction of struggle and transcendence.
The Joneses
Moby Longinotto
United States, United Kingdom, 2016Sunday, May 1 8:40 PMView DetailsFilmmaker Moby Longinotto’s fascinating, thoroughly candid documentary invites audiences to pull up a chair at the never-dull family table in a Mississippi trailer-park home.
National Bird
Sonia Kennebeck
United States, 2016Tuesday, May 3 4 PMView DetailsExecutive produced by Wim Wenders and Errol Morris, this elegant and chilling documentary provides a glimpse of what the US government doesn’t want you to know about drone warfare by focusing on three veterans whose service experience caused them to question the use of drones in overseas combat.
Mountain
Yaelle Kayam
Israel, Denmark, 2015Tuesday, May 3 6:30 PMView DetailsYaelle Kayam’s debut feature is strikingly shot against the tombstones of Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives, where an Orthodox woman’s longing for her husband’s love sets in motion a transformational journey into a nocturnal world of pimps and prostitutes.
Journey to the Shore
Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Japan, France, 2015Tuesday, May 3 8:40 PMView DetailsThe secret wounds of a marriage unfold gently but surely as a shy piano teacher embarks on a mythic journey with her husband, returned from the dead.
And when I die, I won't stay dead
Billy Woodberry
United States, Portugal, 2015Wednesday, May 4 6:30 PMView DetailsBrilliant but largely unheralded Beat poet Bob Kaufman (1925–1986) is featured in this rich documentary tribute.
Winter Song
Otar Iosseliani
France, 2015Wednesday, May 4 8:45 PMView DetailsThe way Otar Iosseliani turns Paris on its head makes us think of a young Jean-Luc Godard—yet Iosseliani is eighty-two!
The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble
Morgan Neville
United States, 2015Thursday, May 5 4 PMView DetailsOn a quest to uncover Leonard Bernstein’s “universal language of music,” renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma gathers virtuoso musicians from around the globe to collaborate on new musical explorations.
Under the Sun
Vitaly Mansky
Russia, Latvia, Germany, Czech Republic, North Korea, 2015Thursday, May 5 6:30 PMView DetailsShot with the permission and supervision of North Korean authorities, Russian director Vitaly Mansky’s film turns a propaganda effort into a deep-cover documentary about life inside one of the world’s most repressive nations.
The Summer of Frozen Fountains
Vano Burduli
Georgia, Russia, 2015Thursday, May 5 8:40 PMView DetailsPeople fall in and out of love in this delightfully wistful romantic drama. Director Vano Burduli shares amusement and a profoundly deep affection for a changing Tbilisi and its flawed and beautiful inhabitants, guiding each of his characters like the conductor of an orchestra.