Whether you're looking to fully skeddadle—if only for a couple hours—from our current reality with the beautiful and trippy Hungrarian animation Son of the White Mare Past Event Like List , learn about the Navajo Nation presidential nomination process with Moroni for President Past Event Like List , or witness archival footage from a secret rescue mission during the Iranian revolution with Desert One Remind Like List , local theaters like SIFF, Grand Illusion, and the Northwest Film Forum Like List are coming through this week with some great new films to stream. We've rounded them up below, along with some fun options from national platforms. Longing for the big(ger) screen? Check out our guide to drive-in movie theaters in the Seattle area, or check out our guide to streamable shows that received Emmy nominations.

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Jump to: New & Noteworthy: Supporting Seattle Businesses | New & Noteworthy: Nationwide | Last Chance to Stream: Films Ending This Week | Ongoing: Supporting Seattle Businesses

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New & Noteworthy: Supporting Seattle Businesses

Country Noise Past Event Like List
Shot in the style of a Heimatfilm—a genre that roughly translates to "homeland films" that enjoyed popularity in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria in the 1940s and '70s—Lisa Miller's Country Noise follows a woman in her late 20s who, in the midst of a quarter-life crisis, moves from the city to the small town where she grew up. There she meets Rosa, who rescues her from her malaise with moped rides and late-night shenanigans.
Available via Northwest Film Forum Like List as part of Queer as German Folk Past Event Like List
Friday-Sunday

Coup 53 Past Event Like List
Newly recovered 16mm footage and documents compiled by director Taghi Amirani and famed film editor Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now) supplement this account of Operation Ajax, during which the CIA and MI6 overthrew former Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh. The film happens to open on the 67th anniversary of the coup.
Available via SIFF

Desert One Remind Like List
Using archival footage and interviews with players on both sides, documentarian Barbara Kopple (Miss Sharon Jones!, Harlan County USA) explores a real-life secret mission to free hostages during the 1979 Iranian revolution.
Available via SIFF
Opening Friday

Festival of (In)Appropriation #9 Past Event Like List
The annual Festival of (In)Appropriation highlights artistic, innovative, and inappropriate uses of existing film or video footage. This encore from last year includes "a riotous YouTube reaction video mash-up, an exquisite found-footage ready-made, a queer Asian American homage to Hollis Frampton, and a pseudo-documentary (or is it?) about the lost work of an early-Soviet scientist dedicated to the exploration of ‘human mental projection.’”
Available via Northwest Film Forum Like List
Friday-Sunday

Indigenous Showcase: Moroni for President Past Event Like List
Every four years, the largest Native American tribe in the US, Navajo Nation, elects a new president to represent its people. This film follows the campaign of 2018 candidate Moroni Benally, whose background as a gay Mormon set him apart as an underdog. 
Available via Northwest Film Forum Like List
Opening Friday

The Return of the Living Dead Past Event Like List
It's a classic about two medical supply warehouse employees who accidentally release a deadly gas into the air that causes those who inhale it to turn into zombies. "But that's okay, darlin', because I love you, and that's why you have to let me EAT YOUR BRAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIINS!" 
Watch party available via MoPOP as part of It's Coming from Inside the House!
Friday only

Son of the White Mare Past Event Like List
Described in press materials as a "swirling, color-mad maelstrom of mythic monsters and Scythian heroes, part-Nibelungenlied, part-Yellow Submarine, lit by jagged bolts of lightning and drenched in rivers of blue, red, gold and green," this early-'80s Hungarian animation centers the battle between a massive cosmic oak tree that guards the underworld with the help of 77 dragons and a white horse whose godly offspring want to rid the world of evil. 
Available via Grand Illusion and Northwest Film Forum Like List
Opening Friday

Virtual Moving History – City as Character Vol. 2 Past Event Like List
If you're not native to Seattle and your impression of the city was shaped by media—be it movies, books, TV, or articles and pictures—some of these archival clips might remind you why you moved here. If you are from here, maybe they'll remind you why you stuck around. 
Available via Northwest Film Forum Like List
Sunday only

New & Noteworthy: Nationwide

The 24th Remind Like List
The title refers to the Third Battalion of the 24th United States Infantry Regiment, whose all-Black members played a pivotal role in the Houston Riot of 1917. It's directed by Kevin Willmott, the Oscar-winning co-writer of BlacKkKlansman.
Available via various platforms

Chemical Hearts
Developed by and starring Riverdale's Lili Reinhart, this romantic drama tells the story of a transfer student who settles into a job at her school's newspaper, where she becomes the object of a co-editor's affections. 
Available via Amazon Prime Video

Cut Throat City
Directed by the Wu-Tang Clan's RZA, this thriller follows a group of young people in New Orleans who get caught up in a heist after Hurricane Katrina. "While not pursuing the cinematic pyrotechnics of the films and filmmakers mentioned in the opening scene, RZA tells this story (from a screenplay by Paul Cuschieri) with deliberation and imaginative daring," writes Glenn Kenny for the New York Times.
Available via VOD (and in select theaters starting Friday)

High Score
This documentary mini-series about the history of gaming is maybe not as educational as it probably could be, but the nostalgia comes fast and furious in every episode, and only the staunchest of sourpuss nerds could complain in the face of all these warm and fuzzy wood-paneled and plasticine memories getting their due, from King’s Quest, to Doom and all the best, most fondly remembered (and some less-remembered) steps, jumps, and bonks along the way. 
Available via Netflix

I May Destroy You Season Finale Remind Like List
If all you know of Michaela Coel is her work in Chewing Gum, the brilliant sitcom she created for BBC Two—and was subsequently streamed on Netflix—you will be ill-prepared for this British talent’s stunning second act, I May Destroy You.  In her new series, [Coel] turns muted and enraged, introspective and terrified, but still no less confused about the world at large. And the London that Coel and director Sam Miller put on camera in Destroy is far more true to its current densely-populated state. The streets and interiors feel claustrophobic at times, lending an added sense of discomfort to its more harrowing moments. One ugly scene in particular is the catalyst for the entire 12-episode series. Coel’s character Arabella, a young writer with a major online presence, is back from a trip to Italy where she was supposed to produce a manuscript for a new book. Returning with nothing, she plans an all-nighter to finish up her draft. But an invitation from her buddy Simon (Aml Ameen) proves too tempting and she’s soon out for a night of karaoke, coke bumps, and dancing. It’s at Arabella’s last stop that her drink is spiked and she is sexually assaulted by a stranger. From that point, everything in Arabella’s life begins to unravel. She struggles to remember the details of her assault even as she’s reporting it to the police. (CW: The scenes of this incident are hazy at first but, as Arabella starts to piece the story together, they become more graphic in later episodes of the series.) She attempts to maintain a long-distance connection with Biagio (Marouane Zotti), a handsome drug dealer she made a deep connection with in Italy. And her book project keeps slipping further and further into the distance. ROBERT HAM
Available via HBO Max
Premiering Monday

John Was Trying to Contact Aliens
Netflix is known for a lot of things: buzz-worthy series, blockbuster action, paradigm-upending business moves that laid waste to conventional Hollywood thinking, that sort of thing. But lately they’re also being known for their forays into short documentary, and their latest, John Was Trying to Contact Aliens, tells the oddly-touching, poignant story of a man who spent 30 years basically DJing ambient sets for broadcast into outer space.
Available via Netflix

Lovecraft Country
Over HBO, you can catch the second episode of Misha Green's new show, set in the mid-century South where unspeakable horrors and cosmic terrors lurk and plot beneath the surface; but monsters aren't really that scary when the surface they lurk beneath is crawling with the sort of nihilistic white supremacy that was (and still is) everyday life in America. These folks are fighting the most monstrous aspects of humanity every day. Cthulhu can take a number and get in line.
Available via HBO Max

Love in the Time of Corona
Oh god, this is already happening, huh? Well, might as well lean into it. It’s not like this is going anywhere, hahahaha fuck. This Freeform miniseries focuses on the lives of people who are still out there trying to make connections and find love (or just get laid) while a runaway pandemic throws a big wet (and lethal - thanks Trump, you fucking shitbag) blanket over the proceedings. Leslie Odom Jr. (Aaron Burr in Hamilton) stars, which is enough to check out at least one episode, at least. Sorta like how Zoe Kravitz was enough to check out the first episode of High Fidelity. 
Available via Hulu

Queen & Slim Like List
Queen & Slim was maybe the best—and almost certainly the Blackest—film of 2019, and is perhaps most poignant for its gorgeous, complex, and multifaceted portrayal of the Black experience, where sparks of joy and love exist alongside pain, struggle, and oppression. One of the reasons director Melina Matsoukas and screenwriter Lena Waithe's made the film with Universal Pictures was their guarantee that Matsoukas and Waithe would have say over the final cut—a choice Waithe says was to ensure the film wasn’t influenced whatsoever by the white gaze. They only did one test screening, with an all-Black audience; the result is a new American romance/drama written in the Black American language, told via a fully Black lens, and including a diverse array of characters who show that Black people are not a monolith.
HBO Max
Starting Saturday

Tesla
Don't worry, Elon Musk and his line of electric vehicles have nothing to do with Michael Almereyda’s (Marjorie Prime) new film—it stars Ethan Hawke as Nikoli Tesla, the renowned inventor who helped create the modern alternating current electricity supply system. 
Available via multiple platforms

The Vow
HBO viewers itching for more of that true crime goodness they OD’d on with I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, looks like you won’t have to wait long for your next hit. The first episode of this new documentary series from directors Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer stares hard at the sordid and thoroughly disturbing story of NXIVM, a “self-improvement” cult led by Keith Raniere, whose members ended up being charged with racketeering and sex-trafficking.
Available via HBO Max

Last Chance to Stream: Films Ending This Week

Amulet Past Event Like List
Seeking refuge in London from an ambiguous foreign conflict, an ex-soldier (played by Alec Secăreanu of God’s Own Country) finds room and board as a repairman in the decrepit estate of a mysterious young woman and her dying mother, who stays locked in a room in the attic and may or may not be possessed by an evil spirit. Romola Garai (Atonement) classifies her directorial debut as "feminist horror."
Available via Northwest Film Forum Like List
Thursday-Sunday

Carmilla Past Event Like List
The residents of a vast country estate (a teenage girl, her father, and a strict governess) become the unexpected caretakers of a mysterious girl (spoiler: she is a vampire) after she gets in a gnarly carriage accident. Inspired by Joseph Sheridan's 1872 gothic vampire novel Le Fanu, Emily Harris's film looks spooky. And hot!
Available via Grand Illusion
Thursday only

A Girl Missing Past Event Like List
When the nephew of a home-care nurse is arrested for kidnapping the daughter of the family she has long worked for, the woman's relationship with her employers is (understandably) threatened. 
Available via SIFF
Thursday only

Song Without a Name Past Event Like List
The newborn baby of Georgina, an Indigenous Andean woman, is stolen from the clinic at which it was born and is never returned. When she's met with indifference by the Peruvian legal system, Georgina goes to a journalist, who uncovers an epidemic of fake clinics and abductions in 1980s Peru. Melina Leon's thriller is based on true events.
Available via Northwest Film Forum and SIFF
Thursday only

2020 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour Past Event Like List
See six short films selected from this year's Sundance Film Festival, including Malaysian director Diffan Sina Norman's "Benevolent Ba," about a devout woman's path to sacrificial slaughter, and Ashley Williams's "Meats," about a pregnant vegan's newfangled craving for meat.
Available via Northwest Film Forum Like List
Thursday-Friday

The Wild Past Event Like List
Documentary filmmaker Mark Titus (The Breach) returns to the Alaskan wilderness, where the people of Bristol Bay and the world's largest wild salmon runs are in danger of environmental devastation from Pebble Mine, a massive copper mine slated for construction.
Available via SIFF
Thursday only

Ongoing: Supporting Seattle Businesses

Americana Kamikaze
NYC's interdisciplinary performance group Temporary Distortion blends theater, film, and installation to freakily contort Japanese ghost stories and horror (aka J-Horror) through an American musical tradition. In a 2009 New York Times review of the play, Jon Weiss wrote, "Hard-core horror fans should take notice, because with Hollywood’s rarely risking something truly upsetting anymore, preferring funny zombies and by-the-numbers remakes, you might have to go to the theater to see death performed live to really test your limits."
Available via On the Boards

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets Remind Like List
There are only 18 hours left until the Roaring '20s, a dive bar off the Vegas Strip, closes for good—and its regulars hold out until the bitter end. "It's less a portrait of a long goodbye to a drinking establishment than it is an exploration of the community that calls such places home and their fellow barflies family—and what happens when you take away that collective space after the very last call," reads a Rolling Stone review. If you're not already pining to reclaim your spot at your favorite watering hole, this'll change that.
Available via SIFF

The Fight
Five civil rights attorneys fight for justice on behalf of a migrant mother separated from her child, a transgender soldier at risk of losing his career, and basic reproductive and voting rights that face threats from the Trump administration. This Kerry Washington-produced documentary will absolutely give you a new sense of appreciation for the ACLU.
Available via Northwest Film Forum Like List and SIFF

Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful Remind Like List
A quick flip through a retrospective of Helmut Newton's work will reveal the legendary photographer's core subject: subversive and provocative portrayals of mostly-naked ladies, many of whom (Catherine Deneuve, Grace Jones, Charlotte Rampling, Isabella Rossellini) are famous. Gero von Boehm's documentary examines the artist's influences and features some of his home movies.
Available via SIFF

Her Effortless Brilliance: A Celebration of Lynn Shelton Through Film and Music
Acclaimed Seattle director Lynn Shelton died too soon, and the grief felt by her fans, collaborators, and loved ones comes through in this documentary by Shelton's longtime friend Megan Griffiths. It's free to watch on YouTube and features a star-studded lineup of appearances, including Emily Blunt, Kaitlyn Dever, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mark and Jay Duplass, Jeff Garlin, Joshua Leonard, Sean Nelson, Michaela Watkins, and Reese Witherspoon, as well as live music from her partner Marc Maron, Andrew Bird, Ben Gibbard, Laura Veirs, and Tomo Nakayama.
Available via YouTube

The Infiltrators
In this docu-thriller, two young immigrants purposely get themselves thrown into a shady for-profit detention center to dismantle the corrupt organization from the inside. Their detainers don't know that they're members of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, a group of radical DREAMers who are on a mission to stop unjust deportations.
Available via Northwest Film Forum

Jazz on a Summer's Day Past Event Like List
Filmed on a balmy night in Fort Adams State Park at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, this 4K-restored classic is believed to be one the first concert films ever recorded (!). It boasts Louis Armstrong, Thelonius Monk, Gerry Mulligan, Anita O'Day, Chuck Berry, Dinah Washington, and other legends among its lineup, closing with Mahalia Jackson's rendition of "The Lord's Prayer" at midnight.
Available via Grand Illusion and SIFF

John Lewis: Good Trouble Past Event Like List
The late civil rights activist and Georgia congressman John Lewis fought for voting rights, gun control, healthcare reform, and immigration over the course of his long career. Using archival footage and interviews from his late years, Dawn Porter's documentary Good Trouble explores Lewis's childhood, his 1957 meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., and his lasting legacy on social justice movements of the present.
Available via Ark Lodge, SIFF, and elsewhere

Martin Margiela: In His Own Words Past Event Like List
The influential Belgian fashion designer Martin Margiela, known by some as the "Banksy of fashion" for his public anonymity and his refusal to do interviews, went from Jean Paul Gaultier's assistant to the creative director at Hermès to leading his own Maison Margiela in Paris. This is a rare look into the designer's drawings, notes, and personal items. 
Available via SIFF

My Darling Vivian
Johnny Cash's first wife, Vivian Liberto (for whom the country singer wrote his famous song I Walk the Line), has long been obscured in stories of Cash's life (see: 2005's Walk the Line, in which she's played briefly by Ginnifer Goodwin). Matt Riddlehoover's documentary, featuring interviews with Cash's children and archival footage of Liberto, reframes her narrative. 
Available via Scarecrow Video

Now I'm Fine
Sean Nelson wrote, "Ahamefule J. Oluo, of Stranger Genius Award winning band Industrial Revelation, remounts his autobiographical odyssey, a harrowing, hilarious personal story punctuated by astoundingly strong songs, brilliantly arranged and performed by several of the most talented musicians in Seattle." Originally staged at On the Boards, Now I'm Fine received rave reviews during its recent New York run, and will now be screened online. 
Available via On the Boards

Out Stealing Horses Past Event Like List
In this scenic, flashback-filled film based on the novel by Per Petterson, an aging man reflects on his childhood summers when he discovers that his neighbor in his new countryside town—where he moves after the death of his wife—is a man he's met before. These SIFF screenings include a post-film discussion between director Hans Petter Moland and Stellan Skarsgård.
Available via Northwest Film Forum and SIFF

A Poetics of Living: Biomimetic Blueprints Past Event Like List
Billing itself as an "interactive community vision board," Northwest Film Forum's Seattle Design Festival Past Event Like List program contemplates how we relate to our built and natural environments through a series of vignettes that champion a collaborative, connected, community-centered way of life. You'll see Caroline Alder and Damien Faure's "A Poetics of Living," Heidi Duckler's "For the Time Being," and Jeff Frost's "Ghosts of the Future."
Available via Northwest Film Forum

Represent Past Event Like List
Three women in different parts of the country and on different sides of the aisle (Detroit's Myya Jones, Granville's Bryn Bird, and suburban Illinois' Julie Cho) fight to improve their communities in Hillary Bachelder's feature-length documentary debut.
Available via Northwest Film Forum

River City Drumbeat Past Event Like List
For three decades, the River City Drum Corp of Louisville, Kentucky has strived to connect Black youth to African art and cultural traditions. This documentary follows its new leader, Albert Shumake, and the student drummers who make up the band. 
Available via Northwest Film Forum

SPLIFF 2020 Remind Like List
A new vibe of stoner entertainment is emerging—witness the rise of Broad City, High Maintenance, and basically every TV show created on Viceland. And, most importantly, The Stranger presents SPLIFF, your new favorite film festival created by the stoned for the stoned. Because we can no longer congregate in person, we're rescreening 2020 festival hosted by Betty Wetter and Cookie Couture online! Got some weed on hand? Check it out from the comfort of your home. All contributions received will be shared with the filmmakers.
Available via The Stranger

Sunless Shadows Past Event Like List
Like its 2016 predecessor Starless Dreams, Mehrdad Oskouei's new film follows the lives of teenage girls in an Iranian juvenile detention center. This time, however, the characters are serving time for the same thing: the murder of a male family member. "In this film we see murder through the eyes of murderers, both mothers and daughters. I wanted to scrutinize their act of killing from various perspectives, understand their reasons and find out whether the act itself was a difficult task," writes the director.
Available via Northwest Film Forum

A Thousand Cuts Past Event Like List
"Just because you’re a journalist, you are not exempted from assassination," stated Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016. In Ramona S. Diaz’s documentary, Maria Ressa, the executive editor of the news website Rappler, literally puts her life on the line to investigate the administration's various anti-democratic injustices—most notably its violent anti-drug campaign—and to combat the misinformation that floods the news cycles.
Available via Northwest Film Forum and SIFF

The Tobacconist Remind Like List
A man named Franz walks into a Vienna tobacco shop frequented by Sigmund Freud et voila: a historically inspired fictional friendship is born. When Franz falls for music-hall dancer Anezka, he seeks advice from the renowned psychoanalyst, who admits that he, too, is baffled by the opposite sex. This film, which is being wide-released online, is based off of Robert Seethaler's bestselling novel.
Available via Scarecrow Video

You Never Had It: An Evening with Charles Bukowski Remind Like List
No one can resist the intrigue of restored tapes that have been newly snatched from the lost and found, and they're all the more exciting when they feature a household name. This documentary is based on a video of the iconic writer talking about sex, books, childhood, and life over clinking glasses of booze in his California home in 1981. 
Available via Scarecrow Video