* = Reviewed by The Stranger

MONDAY (APRIL 18)

107 Mothers
Like List SIFF Says: In this striking docufiction meditation on motherhood, Slovakia’s Oscar® submission blends real-life interviews and thinly fictionalized narrative as a recently incarcerated woman navigates the ins and outs of a Ukrainian women’s correctional facility.
(Pacific Place, 1 pm; also available to stream)
Also playing Tuesday

*Zero Fucks Given
Stranger Says: Like List This excellent debut feature from writer-directors Emmanuel Marre and Julie Lecoustre stars the captivating Adèle Exarchopoulos as Cassandre, a young woman unspooling from a personal tragedy while trying to navigate a capitalist hellscape. Cassandre spends her days in the air, hawking perfumes and cleaning sky-toilets. Her nights on the ground are a blur of heavy drinking and rando hook-ups. The verité-style film balances the absurd and heartbreaking, all grounded by a layered performance from Exarchopoulos. JAS KEIMIG
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 3:30 pm; also available to stream)

Riotsville, USA
Like List SIFF Says: After the social upheaval of the ’60s, the U.S. government spent millions building model towns where newly militarized police forces could practice quashing street protests. Find out how and why in this doc built from actual archival footage.
(SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 4 pm)
Also playing Thursday

Bernstein’s Wall
Like List SIFF Says: Perfectly timed after Spielberg’s recent remake of West Side Story, this portrait of its composer Leonard Bernstein, conqueror of both Broadway and the concert hall, captures his genius and his voracious, even self-destructive, appetite for music and for life.
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 5:45 pm)
Director Douglas Tirola scheduled to attend.
Also playing Tuesday

*Nothing Compares
Like List Stranger Says: Kathryn Ferguson’s documentary Nothing Compares makes several mistakes in its noble mission to recover the mostly unhappy pop career of the Irish-born singer Sinéad O’Connor, who now goes by Shuhada Sadaqat. Its main mistake is to connect O'Connor's cancelation in 1992 for ripping a picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live with the pink pussy hats movement that erupted with Trump's defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016. There is little to almost no live wire between the two forms of protest.... Lastly, the documentary fails to fully appreciate the greatness of O'Connor's talent, which did not stop growing after the United States canceled her (she still had a major following in Iceland and, curiously enough, Poland). The music that made her famous in the 1980s, and that got her a history-making spot on Saturday Night Live in 1992, was only a point of departure. For example, what one finds in "What Your Soul Sings," the second track on Massive Attack's 2003 100th Window, is an O'Connor now in the second half of her 30s, whose genius is far from exhausted. Most pop stars have nothing new to say or offer after a few years in the business. This wasn't the case with O'Connor. Late in a career that started when she was barely not a girl, 19, the Irish singer possessed a voice that was more haunting and beautiful and tender and vital than ever before. O'Connor, who lost her son recently, joy still belongs to you. CHARLES MUDEDE
(Shoreline Community College, 6 pm; also available to stream)
Director Kathryn Ferguson scheduled to attend.

The Duke
Like List SIFF Says: Oscar® winners Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren star in this funny and moving drama about the out-of-work taxi driver who stole a Goya portrait from London’s National Gallery. The final film of the late director Roger Michell (Notting Hill).
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 6:30 pm)

*Sweetheart Deal Like List
Stranger Says: Do not miss this documentary. It's Seattle noir at its finest. Raindrops on windows, long nights, dusky downtown, the underworld of Aurora Avenue. The moody documentary is about four women who, for a considerable length of time, sold sex on the street to pay for drugs. We see them walking Aurora, entering cars, shooting up. We also see them exploited by an elderly man who dressed like a hippy but turned out to be a monster. CHARLES MUDEDE
(AMC Pacific Place, 6:30 pm; also available to stream)
Director Elisa Levine and producers Peggy Case and Tracy Rector scheduled to attend.
Also playing Wednesday

Miss Viborg
Like List SIFF Says: A former beauty queen, crushed dreams, and an unexpected friendship with the neighbor’s rebellious daughter make up this countryside drama, set in the Danish provincial town of Viborg, about daring to start living again.
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 7 pm; also available to stream)

Flux Gourmet
Like List SIFF Says: Peter Strickland (In Fabric, The Duke of Burgundy) is back at SIFF with this delectably vulgar provocation, starring Gwendoline Christie and Asa Butterfield, about an institution-based arts collective devoted to culinary and alimentary performance.
(SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 9 pm)
Also playing Thursday

*Petite Maman
Like List Stranger Says: Céline Sciamma's Petite Maman ("little mother") follows eight-year-old Nelly, who temporarily moves to the countryside so her parents can clear out her late grandma's home. Unable to deal with the loss, Nelly's mom suddenly leaves, and later that day, Nelly meets an eight-year-old girl who looks just like her in the woods outside her home (*wink wink*). Sciamma's tale of grief holds a quiet, spellbinding magic. It'll make you want to call your mother immediately. JAS KEIMIG
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 9 pm)

TUESDAY (APRIL 19)

Bernstein’s Wall
Like List Read more above.
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 3 pm)
Also playing Monday

Klondike
Like List SIFF Says: A raw and current tale set on the lonely border of Ukraine and Russia in the natural resource-rich Donetsk District, following pregnant Irka and her husband as their self-sufficient life is threatened by encroaching civil war.
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 5:45 pm; also available to stream)

*Know Your Place
Like List Stranger Says: LA/206 director Zia Mohajerjasbi's debut feature Know Your Place is a film that everyone in Seattle (and all other major cities) should (must) watch. It is a packed work, and so unpacking it all is nothing but impossible within the obvious attentional limits imposed on blog posts. But, I will begin by saying the star of this film is, above all, Seattle. But this star has two important and different parts. One: the city that's becoming, class wise, homogenous. This kind of city has less and less space for the working classes. Two: the city that's losing its color. Black Americans were the first to go. Now it's black Africans. Next will be East Asian Americans. Know Your Place takes place in the now. CHARLES MUDEDE
(Ark Lodge Cinemas, 5:45 pm; also available to stream)
Director Zia Mohajerjasbi scheduled to attend.

Hit the Road
Like List SIFF Says: A tender, tense, and touching road trip movie as a family of four drive across the Iranian countryside and into the mountains. The feature debut of Panah Panahi, son of acclaimed, SIFF-favorite Iranian director Jafar Panahi (The White Balloon, Taxi, 3 Faces).
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 6:30 pm; also available to stream)
Also playing Wednesday

One Second
Like List SIFF Says: A movie-obsessed escaped convict, a female vagabond, and a sought-after film reel are the focus of this exquisite ode to the magic of movies, the newest from internationally acclaimed filmmaker Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern, Shadow).
(SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 6:30 pm)
Also playing Friday

Sublime
SIFF Says:  Like List Shy teen musician Manu finds himself pining for his lifelong best friend Felipe just as his family life buckles and music becomes his one salvation in this raw, tender coming-of-age debut film from writer/director Mariano Biasin.
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 6:45 pm)
Director Mariano Biasin scheduled to attend.
Also playing Wednesday

*In Front of Your Face
Like List Stranger Says: The South Korean director Hong Sang-soo, an art house and film festival celebrity, makes the same move over and over and over. It's always about a famous director/novelist/poet with an ego and desires that are not honorable, and a beautiful but vulnerable actress/painter/film student; and they always take place in a bar or cafe or near a cinema house or gallery or theater. But despite this repetition, which stretches all the way back to the beginning of this century's first decade, his films never fail to engage (and sometimes even enchant) us. The same can be said about In Front of Your Face, one of four films he completed throughout this pandemic. CHARLES MUDEDE
(AMC Pacific Place, 8:30 pm)
Also playing Thursday

107 Mothers Like List
Read more above.
(Ark Lodge Cinemas, 8:45 pm; also available to stream)
Also playing Monday

*Piggy
Like List Stranger Says: A year before the pandemic, director Carlota Pereda earned a lot of attention in Spain after winning a Goya Award for her short film Piggy. It notably starred newcomer Laura Galán, who gave a remarkably tragic and funny performance as Sara, a rural butcher's daughter who the local mean girls viciously mock for her size and lack of confidence. When those mean girls get kidnapped by a different kind of butcher, Sara must decide if and how to help her tormenters. Thankfully, Pereda's now given that short film a startling and squeamish makeover into a feature film, with Galán returning to her role. This full-length Piggy is Carrie-esque, eventually plunging into gory grindhouse territory. (Watch the trailer.) Trigger warnings abound here—rape, murder, fat-shaming, blood blood blood—but that's expected, considering its set-up. It's due for an October theatrical release in Spain, with Magnolia Picture's Magnet Releasing dropping it in North America at a TBA date. CHASE BURNS
(SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 9 pm)

WEDNESDAY (APRIL 20)

*Sweetheart Deal
Like List Read more above.
(AMC Pacific Place, 6:30 pm; also available to stream)
Director Elisa Levine and producers Peggy Case and Tracy Rector scheduled to attend.
Also playing Monday

*Tug of War
Stranger Says: Like List It is not an accident that one of the most fascinating pop stars of the 20th century, Freddie Mercury, was born in Zanzibar. This island, which is a part of the nation of Tanzania, is one of the most fascinating places on earth. And so there is no surprise in the fact that one of the few features from Zanzibar, Amil Shivji’s Tug of War, contains no scene or actor who does not hold our fascination. The film, which concerns the island's post-war revolutionary period, follows the fate of two young rebels (one black African, one South Asian African) who fall in love in an interesting time and place. CHARLES MUDEDE
(AMC Pacific Place, 1 pm; also available to stream)

Hit the Road
Like List Read more above.
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 3:30 pm)
Also playing Tuesday

Sublime
Like List Read more above.
(AMC Pacific Place, 3:45 pm)
Director Mariano Biasin scheduled to attend.
Also playing Tuesday

I’ll Show You Mine
SIFF Says: Like List An author who has made her career by examining her own trauma interviews her nephew about his history of exploitation as a gender-nonconforming model and pansexual poster boy. But to get to the most hidden parts of his story, she must reciprocate by digging into areas she has scrupulously managed to avoid in her own. Read The Stranger's interview with director Megan Griffiths.
(AMC Pacific Place, 4:15 pm)
Director Megan Griffiths, actor Casey Thomas Brown, writers Tiffany Louquet, Elizabeth Searle, and David Shields, producers Ashley Edouard, Mel Eslyn, and Lacey Leavitt Gray, cinematographer Jeremy Mackie, and composer Tomo Nakayama scheduled to attend.

Alien on Stage Like List
Stranger Says: What an absolute charmer Alien on Stage is. The affectionate documentary centers on a group of small-town theater hobbyists who create a live panto version of the movie Alien, and then, through a twist of fame, have an opportunity to perform their show live on the West End, complete with their delightfully homemade special effects. Comparisons to Waiting for Guffman are inevitable, but this is its own creature with a wonderful, wholesome, and very modest heart. MATT BAUME
(Shoreline Community College, 6 pm)
Also playing Friday

Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story
SIFF Says: Like List Experience the Big Easy on the big screen through 50 years of the funky and fabulous New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, featuring performances from and interviews with Herbie Hancock, Aaron Neville, Al Green, Bruce Springsteen, and Earth, Wind & Fire.
(Ark Lodge Cinemas, 6 pm)

Doula Like List
SIFF Says: Chris Pine (Star Trek) produces and Troian Bellisario (“Pretty Little Liars”) stars in this delightfully dry and witty comedy about a pregnant couple who reluctantly hires a bizarre male doula after their original choice kicks the bucket.
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 6:30 pm)
Also playing Thursday
Director Cheryl Nichols scheduled to attend.

Inu-Oh
SIFF Says: Like List This magnificent and sonorous journey, based on a true story and directed by Japanese animation superstar Masaaki Yuasa (Mind Game, Ride Your Wave), fictionalizes the collaboration between Inu-kong, a 14th-century masked performer, and a blind biwa player.
(SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 6:30 pm)
Also playing Saturday
Pre-show mass Exquisite Corpse game with underground arts & comics space Push/Pull.

Coffin Homes
SIFF Says:  Like List Auteur Fruit Chan (Made in Hong Kong, Dumplings) sets his satiric sights on the Hong Kong real estate crisis, intertwining three humorous, horrific tales of housing filled with ghosts, gonzo gore, and contract law.
(Ark Lodge Cinemas, 8:30 pm)

THURSDAY (APRIL 21)

Moneyboys
SIFF Says: Like List A young man from rural China leaves his village (and his closeted married lover) to become a male escort in the city in this stylish drama, a rare and daring depiction of gay life in China.
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 12 pm)
Also playing Saturday

*In Front of Your Face
Like List Read more above.
(AMC Pacific Place, 1:30 pm)
Also playing Tuesday

Flux Gourmet
Like List Read more above.
(SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 3:45 pm)
Also playing Monday

Doula
Like List Read more above.
(Shoreline Community College, 6 pm)
Also playing Wednesday

Neptune Frost
Like List SIFF Says: An Afrofuturist sci-fi punk musical set in Rwanda from slam poet/actor/composer Saul Williams and co-director Anisia Uzeyman about an intersex runaway hacker and a coltan miner, whose progeny begins a revolution.
(Ark Lodge Cinemas, 6 pm)
Also playing Friday

Riotsville, USA
Like List Read more above.
(SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 6:30 pm)
Also playing Monday

The Territory
SIFF Says: Like List As their lush rainforest homeland is decimated by illegal settlers, a Brazilian tribe fights for their land, culture, and very right to exist in an increasingly authoritarian nation in this riveting new Sundance-winning documentary from Alex Pritz.
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 6:30 pm)
Director Alex Pritz and producers Gabriel Uchida and Bitaté Uru-eu-wau-wau scheduled to attend.
Also playing Friday

FRIDAY (APRIL 22)

One Second
Like List Read more above.
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 1 pm)
Also playing Tuesday

Voice of Silence
SIFF Says:  Like List Two men, a young mute and a religious old man, who work as the clean-up crew for a crime organization receive an unusual mission to look after an 11-year-old girl.
(AMC Pacific Place, 1 pm)

Neptune Frost
Like List Read more above.
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 3 pm)
Also playing Thursday

The Territory
Like List Read more above.
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 3:30 pm)
Director Alex Pritz and producers Gabriel Uchida and Bitaté Uru-eu-wau-wau scheduled to attend.
Also playing Thursday

Daughter of a Lost Bird
SIFF Says:  Like List An adult Indigenous adoptee and actress, Kendra Potter, sets out to reconnect with her birth mother, her Lummi heritage, and the land of her people after 34 years of living in white suburbia.
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 6:30 pm; also available to stream)
Director Brooke Pepion Swaney, and Kendra Mylnechuk Potter scheduled to attend.
Also playing Saturday

*Fire of Love
Stranger Says:  Like List Fire of Love is composed purely of archival footage, most of which was shot by Katia and Maurice on their travels to sites like Mount Stromboli in Italy, Nyiragongo in Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Mount St. Helens in Washington. With their red caps and space age-lookin' heat suits, the Kraffts resemble characters in a Wes Anderson movie. Or perhaps the French New Wave is a better comparison—the couple's documentation of volcanoes often veered into the poetic and impressionistic, stitched together by Dosa to reflect not only the marvels of volcanoes but the power of love. But not in a cheesy way! JAS KEIMIG
(SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 6:30 pm; also available to stream)
Also playing Sunday

A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces
SIFF Says: Like List Filmed from 2016 to 2019—i.e., largely pre-pandemic—this poetic portrait of Wuhan, China, opens with scenes from the lockdown and poignantly travels backward from there, with the Yangtze an ever-present metaphor for the passage of time.
(SIFF Film Center, 6:30 pm; also available to stream)
Also playing Saturday

Warm Blood Like List
SIFF Says: Red, a runaway in the 1980s, returns to the outskirts of her NorCal hometown to track down her wayward father and falls in with a young drifter in this grungy, politically subversive mix of narrative, documentary, and trash B-movies about the underbelly of America.
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 7 pm)
Director Rick Charnoski, producers Stephen Fitzgibbon and Coan Buddy Nichols, cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt, and actors Haley Isaacson, Ryan Toothman, John Veit and Andy Roy scheduled to attend.
Also playing Saturday

*Alien on Stage
Like List Read more above.
(SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 9:15 pm)
Also playing Wednesday
DIY costume contest: Wear your best/worst Alien-inspired costume for a chance to win a pair of tickets to MoPOP.

*I Love My Dad
Stranger Says: Like List What would you do to reconnect with your son? Call him every day to check in? Send him money? Pose as a hot girl on the internet and unintentionally become his online girlfriend, winning his trust in the most fucked up way possible? I Love My Dad boldly tries to answer that question. Patton Oswalt plays Chuck, a schlubby divorced dad whose son, Franklin (writer and director James Morosini), just returned home from a psychiatric hospital after trying to commit suicide. Franklin has blocked Chuck on all his social media platforms, digitally forming a boundary between his father and himself. Desperate to reconnect, Chuck catfishes his son by pretending to be "Becca," a hot and sexy fake-person whom lonely Franklin immediately falls for. Somewhat incredibly, the movie is based on the true story of Morosini's real-life father catfishing him—the film even opens with the line, "The following actually happened. My dad asked me to tell you it didn’t." A touching mix of comedy and drama, I Love My Dad took home the Jury and Audience Awards in the Narrative Feature Competition at the 2022 SXSW film festival. This strange-but-sweet family dramedy should be on your list. JAS KEIMIG
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 9:30 pm)
Director James Morosini scheduled to attend.
Also playing Saturday

SATURDAY (APRIL 23)

Maika
SIFF Says: Like List The first-ever Vietnamese sci-fi family film, this charming mix of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and The Goonies follows an eight-year-old boy and the magical alien friend he meets as he helps her find her lost companion.(SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 11 am)

Daughter of a Lost Bird
Like List Read more above.
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 12:30 pm; also available to stream)
Director Brooke Pepion Swaney, and Kendra Mylnechuk Potter scheduled to attend.
Also playing Friday

Warm Blood
Like List Read more above.
(AMC Pacific Place, 1 pm)
Director Rick Charnoski, producers Stephen Fitzgibbon and Coan Buddy Nichols, cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt, and actors Haley Isaacson, Ryan Toothman, John Veit and Andy Roy scheduled to attend.
Also playing Friday

*I Love My Dad
Like List Read more above.
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 2:30 pm)
Director James Morosini scheduled to attend.
Also playing Friday

Execution in Autumn
SIFF Says: Like List In ancient China, a man sentenced to death and waiting for an autumn execution is affected by his fellow prisoners, his jailer, and the loving woman his grandma sends to hopefully get an heir before he dies. From prolific Taiwanese filmmaker Hsing Lee.
(AMC Pacific Place, 3 pm)

Inu-Oh
Like List Read more above.
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 3 pm)
Also playing Wednesday

A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces
Like List Read more above.
(SIFF Film Center, 4 pm; also available to stream)
Also playing Friday

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Like List SIFF Says: Dean Fleischer-Camp and Jenny Slate’s popular short films, stop-motion mockumentaries about an adorable one-eyed, one-inch-tall seashell, get the big-screen treatment as Marcel contends with his sudden internet fame.
(SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 6:30 pm)
Also playing Sunday

Moneyboys
Like List Read more above.
(AMC Pacific Place, 8:30 pm)
Also playing Thursday

SUNDAY (APRIL 24)

*The Ghastly Brothers
Stranger Says:  Like List Stranger Things meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Ghostbusters in this delightful kid-friendly romp about ghost-hunters at a boarding school. Lively humor and puppets are a hoot (and often quite gross), and ghosts are a neat metaphor for wrestling with emotional demons of impending adolescence. Copious Dutch puns are valiantly localized with varying levels of success. (Haunted bird: “Poultrygeist.” Haunted refrigerator: “Frightdge.”) Young viewers may balk at having to read subtitles, and parents at the occasional profanity. MATT BAUME
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 11 am; also streaming)

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Like List Read more above.
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 11:30 am)
Also playing Saturday

*Fire of Love
Like List Read more above.
(SIFF Cinema Uptown, 2 pm; also available to stream)
Also playing Friday

Call Jane
SIFF Says: Like List When her pregnancy leads to a life-threatening condition, a suburban housewife in 1968 Chicago joins the Janes, an underground organization providing safe abortions.
(SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 6 pm)
Closing night gala at MOHAI after the screening