PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL XL
PIFF XL Festival Program Welcome to the Northwest Film Center’s 40th Portland International Film Festival. This program is arranged by section with the films in each section listed alphabetically. Showtimes and theater locations are listed at the bottom of each film descriptions. We hope the sections outlined below help you navigate your PIFF experience.
Festival Venues ADVANCE TICKET OUTLET
1119 SW Park Avenue at Main (inside the Portland Art Museum’s Mark Building)
NW FILM CENTER (WH)
Whitsell Auditorium 1219 SW Park Avenue at Madison (inside the Portland Art Museum)
REGAL FOX TOWER (FOX)
846 SW Park Avenue at Taylor
LAURELHURST THEATER (LH) 2735 E Burnside Street
CINEMA 21 (C21) MASTERS
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Exciting new works from some of the leading voices of national and world cinema.
VALLEY CINEMA (VC)
9360 SW Beaverton Hillsdale Hwy
NEW DIRECTORS
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New and emerging filmmakers who represent the new generation of master storytellers.
GLOBAL PANORAMA
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ANIMATED WORLDS
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Fresh perspectives on the world we live in and the fascinating people, places, and stories that surround us.
Animated features and shorts that have charmed audiences world-wide.
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Film lovers of all ages will be entertained by these films suitable for younger viewers.
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For the cinematically adventurous and nocturnally inclined, genre-bending films that push the boundaries.
WAYS OF SEEING
1945 SE Water Avenue 3702 SE Hawthorne Boulevard
DOCUMENTARY VIEWS
PIFF AFTER DARK
EMPIRICAL THEATER AT OMSI (OMSI)
BAGDAD THEATER (BAG)
Award-winning films that tell stories that resonate beyond the unique cultures from which they emerge.
FILMS FOR FAMILIES
616 NW 21st Avenue at Hoyt
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Bold, original new works exploring the possibilities of form and personal expression.
Cinema 21, Valley Theater, Bagdad Theater, and Laurelhurst Theater are all 21+ venues for films taking place after 5pm. Please check film times before bringing minors to screenings at these venues. No outside food or beverages is allowed in any theater. As a security policy, the Portland Art Museum and Regal Fox Tower require a bag check. Food and drink are not allowed in the Whitsell Auditorium.
Tickets GENERAL: $12 PAM MEMBERS, STUDENTS, SENIORS (65+): $11 SILVER SCREEN CLUB FRIEND & SUPPORTER: $9 (one discount
per film, per screening)
5 TICKET BUNDLE: $50
(Must be purchased in advance at the Advance Ticket Outlet. One bundle ticket per screening.)
FESTIVAL PASS: $350 GENERAL, $200 STUDENT (with ID) OREGON TRAIL CARD TICKET: $7
SHORT CUTS
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Short programs featuring over 50 memorable snapshots from around the world and here in Oregon.
(Must be purchased in advance at the Advance Ticket Outlet)
OPENING NIGHT FILM & PARTY: $25 GENERAL, $20 SSC FRIEND & SUPPORTER MEMBERS
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PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL XL
Opening Night Celebration The Northwest Film Center and Regal Cinemas invite you to join us after the February 9 Opening Night screening of Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro (see film description on page13). Celebrate this year’s festival with co-hosts Elk Cove Winery, Montinore Estate, Pike Road Wines, Sierra Nevada Brewing, World Foods Portland, and the World Affairs Council of Oregon.
FILM: 7pm Whitsell Auditorium & Regal Fox Tower RECEPTION: 9pm Schnitzer Sculpture Court, Portland Art Museum OPENING NIGHT TICKETS $25 General, $20 Silver Screen Club Friend & Supporter Members. Admission is free for Silver Screen Club Director, Producer, Benefactor, and Sustainer members.
The Fine Print THE 10 MINUTE RULE Seats for advance ticket and pass holders are held until 10 minutes before showtime, at which time any unfilled seats are released. Advance tickets or passes ensure that you will not have to wait in the ticket purchase line but do not guarantee a seat in the case of arrival after the 10-minute window has begun. Your early arrival also helps the screenings start promptly. Advance ticket holders who arrive within the 10-minute window but are not seated may exchange their tickets for another screening at the Advance Ticket Outlet or obtain a refund at the theater. There are no refunds or exchanges for arrivals after showtime or for missed screenings.
VOUCHERS Please be aware that a voucher may not be used for admission. It must be redeemed—in person at the Advance Ticket Outlet—for a specific film screening at least one day in advance of the screening date. Tickets are subject to availability.
TICKETS On sale January 30-February 25 ONLINE: nwfilm.org/piff ADVANCE TICKET OUTLET: noon-6pm PHONE: 503-276-4310 noon-6pm DAY-OF-SHOW: If still available, tickets can be purchased at the Advance Ticket Outlet until three hours prior to showtime, then at the venue’s box office (rush line) beginning as early as 30 minutes prior to showtime. Even if advance tickets are sold out, rush tickets are offered a few minutes prior to showtime. We accept cash and credit at all venues and at the Advance Ticket Outlet. All orders are final. There are no refunds or exchanges except as noted. If a screening is canceled, tickets must be returned to the Advance Ticket Outlet within a week of the canceled screening date for refund or exchange.
ACCESSIBILITY The NW Film Center is committed to accommodating audience members with accessibility concerns. We allow and encourage early seating for persons with mobility constraints.
Founded in 1971, the Northwest Film Center is a place where individuals find and cultivate their personal voices as storytellers and image makers, and audiences explore our region and the world through the art of film. Watch. Through year-round exhibition programs surveying cinema past and present, audiences and filmmakers come together to explore our region and the world through the moving image arts. This includes circulation of outstanding work by regional artists; sponsorship of special festivals, including the Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival (November), Reel Music Festival (January), Portland Jewish Film Festival (June), Fresh Film Northwest (November), and Portland International Film Festival (February). Learn. Individuals find and cultivate their personal voices as storytellers through education programs and innovative community
Please make yourself known to the theater house manager for assistance. Most venues (except Valley Cinema, which does not have accessible restrooms) have accessible seating and restrooms. The Whitsell Auditorium, Regal Fox Tower, and Bagdad Theater offer assisted listening devices.
FESTIVAL PASSES An allotment of seats is reserved at every screening for passholders, who are guaranteed admission until 10 minutes prior to showtime or until the passholder allotment has been reached. Early arrival is recommended; although exceedingly rare, passholders may not always be able to attend a film at their first choice of screening times. Director, Producer, Benefactor, Sustainer, and Premiere Circle members receive free admission to all films (including opening the opening night film & party), and access to the SSC Member lounge with their valid Silver Screen Club cards.
Film Center scrip and comps, Portland Art Museum passes, and Regal, student, and other regular passes or discount admission tickets are not valid during the Festival.
AUDIENCE AWARDS As always, you get to be the judge in deciding the Audience awards for Best Film, Director, New Director, Documentary, Short, and other recognitions that may emerge from the voting. Your ratings and comments about the films and the Festival are much appreciated by the filmmakers and everyone involved in making PIFF the best it can be. Head for the Northwest Film Center website and make your vote count.
LANGUAGES All films are screened in their original languages with English subtitles unless otherwise noted.
PARKING Please visit the Festival website: nwfilm.org/piff
collaborations which advance media literacy and engage the next generation. Our education programs include diverse classes and workshops for children and adults, including Summer Film Camps for 3rd-12th graders and a certificate program in film production. Make. Regional filmmakers are supported as artists, educators, mentors, connectors, and community leaders, strengthening cinema’s place in the creative, social, and economic community sectors. Regional services include the administration of the Oregon Media Arts Fellowship and low-cost equipment access program. The Film Center is funded in part by the support of The James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Oregon Arts Commission, Regional Arts and Culture Council, The Ted R. Gamble Film Endowment, Henry Lee Hillman, Jr. Foundation, and the support of numerous corporate program sponsors, Silver Screen Club members, exhibition series donors, and friends.
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MASTERS Exciting new works from some of the leading voices of national and world cinema—filmmakers whose singular bodies of work makes each new film a cause for special anticipation. Sponsored by
Pat & Trudy Ritz
After the Storm
Afterimage
The Commune
HIROKAZU KORE-EDA | JAPAN
ANDRZEJ WAJDA | POLAND
Ryota, a novelist who struck it big with his first book, struggles to come to terms with estrangement from his wife and child, a gambling addiction, and the fact that he’s not finishing his second book. Further complicating his writer’s block and overall malaise, the private detective work Ryota had taken on as research has settled into being a part of his day-to-day existence. After the Storm is a deftly told, intergenerational story about change, loss, forgotten dreams, and what it is to begin picking up the pieces after one’s life has fallen apart. (117 mins.)
The final film of illustrious Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda (Kanal, Man of Iron), who died last year, charts the passionate life of avant-garde artist and teacher Władysław Strzemin´ski. Considered a peer of Kandinsky and a pioneer of the Polish Constructivist avant-garde of the 1920s and ’30s, Strzemin´ski clashed with an autocratic Stalinist system, endangering the lives of himself and his daughter. Like his subject, Wajda continues to masterfully depict how systems of power can dehumanize and destroy us. This year’s Polish submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. (98 mins.)
THOMAS VINTERBERG | DENMARK/SWEDEN/ NETHERLANDS
2/20 4:15 | VC 2/25 6:00 | WH
2/15 8:30 | WH 2/20 6:15 | LH3 Sponsored by Polish Library Building Association
When Eric’s father dies and the grand family house in Copenhagen must be sold, he and his wife Ann, who can’t afford to live in it, hatch a plan to live there with a collective of friends and strangers. It’s the 1970s and such a utopian adventure seems possible, but the challenges of dueling philosophies and politics, not to mention romantic adventures, are bound to take a toll. Full of warmth, humor, chaos, and pain, a winning ensemble cast brings to life a story loosely based on Vinterberg’s (The Celebration) own childhood. (112 mins.)
2/15 5:45 | WH 2/17 5:45 | FOX Sponsored by Nordic Northwest and the Consulate General of Sweden in San Francisco
Death in Sarajevo
The Death of Louis XIV
Frantz
Graduation
DANIS TANOVIC´ | BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA/FRANCE
ALBERT SERRA | FRANCE/PORTUGAL/SPAIN
FRANÇOIS OZON | FRANCE
CRISTIAN MUNGIU | ROMANIA/FRANCE/BELGIUM
Tanovic´’s deft and dizzying thriller satirically illuminates the conflicts that have torn the Balkans apart for a century. On the centenary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, the event that precipitated World War I, dignitaries have arrived at the luxe Hotel Europa to commemorate. But the hotel is in chaos. The staff is about to strike, and the manager is courting gangsters at the hotel nightclub for strong-arm help. Everywhere else, tensions of all sorts seem to be reaching climax. This year’s Bosnian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. In Bosnian and French with English subtitles. (85 mins.)
Versailles, August 1715. The Sun King (Jean-Pierre Léaud) feels pain in his leg. Fever erupts, marking the beginning of the agony of the greatest King of France. Surrounded by a horde of doctors and his closest counselors who come in turn sensing the impending power vacuum, Louis struggles to run the country from his bedchamber. Based on extensive medical records and memoirs, Serra’s contemplative, candlelit chamber drama is a wry portrait of aristocratic façade. In Latin and French. “Reminiscent of the historical films of Visconti and Rossellini as the modernist literary adaptations of Rohmer and Oliveira.”—Film Comment. (115 mins.)
2/24 8:30 | WH 2/25 6:30 | FOX Sponsored by TV5Monde
2/12 5:00 | FOX 2/17 8:30 | LH Sponsored by TV5Monde
A year after his death in 1918, Anna is mourning her fiancé Frantz, a German soldier killed in the war. One day she sees a man laying flowers on Frantz’s grave and is surprised to learn he is French and was Frantz’s friend at music school in Paris before the war. Anna and the mysterious Frenchman find comfort in each other, and their relationship soon evolves into something stronger, yet undefined. When he returns to France and a letter she sends is returned, she decides to find him and come to terms with her own grief. (113 mins.)
2/11 5:15 | FOX 2/13 8:30 | OMSI Sponsored by TV5Monde and Alliance Française
Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days) won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival for this keenly observed depiction of the insidious ramifications of corruption. A street assault has left Eliza somewhat shaken on the eve of finals that will pave her way to Cambridge University. Her father, anxious for her to escape their corruption-plagued country, becomes concerned that she might not perform well and, knowing a few of the right people, arranges that she will do well on the tests. Mungiu’s social thriller of moral dilemmas big and small resonates on societal and parental levels. (128 mins.)
2/10 5:45 | WH 2/13 5:45 | LH3 Sponsored by the Romanian American Society
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MASTERS
I Am Not Madame Bovary
Land of Mine
Ma’Rosa
FENG XIAOGANG | CHINA
MARTIN ZANDVLIET | DENMARK/GERMANY
BRILLANTE MENDOZA | PHILIPPINES
Land of Mine surfaces a little-known story that took place in 1945 as the five-year Nazi occupation of the country ended. The Germans left behind more than a million land mines that needed to be removed. Who better to sacrifice for the hazard than untrained teenage German POWs? On a barren beach on the west coast, Zandvliet unfolds a gripping story that explores issues of post-war retribution and culpability while shifting perceptions of perpetrators and victims. This year’s Danish submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. In Danish and German with English subtitles. (101 mins.)
In the slums of Manila, you pay the police, or you go to jail, if not your grave. Based on true events, Mendoza’s film mixes drama and documentary-like scenarios to tell the story of Ma’Rosa, a shopkeeper who helps make ends meet by selling small quantities of drugs under the counter. When the police arrest her and her husband, their children are forced to pay a high price for their release. A sometimes wry dispatch from the war on the poor, Ma’Rosa, this year’s Philippine Oscar submission, examines the price of survival in a society governed by corruption and violence. (110 mins.)
Superstar actress Fan Bingbing stars in this searing and fearless satirical comic drama about a cafe owner’s epic battle with the bureaucracy over the wrongs of her swindling ex-husband. As she doggedly fights a “fake divorce” from the provincial courts all the way to Beijing, Li manages to flummox every male government functionary in her path to justice. FIPRESCI prize at the Toronto Film Festival and Golden Shell award at the San Sebastian Film Festival. “Sublime visual eloquence . . . part Scarlet Letter, part Keystone Cops, part miniature landscape painting—all with plot twists worthy of Thomas Hardy.”—Screen. (137 mins.)
2/21 5:45 | WH 2/23 5:45 | FOX
2/12 2:30 | C21 2/18 5:45 | WH
2/20 12:15 | LH3 2/23 8:30 | VC
Nagasaki: Memories of My Son YOJI YAMADA | JAPAN Nagasaki: Memories of My Son is a heartbreakingly beautiful study of war, love, and family. On August 9, 1948, Nobuko, a midwife in Nagasaki, stands before the grave of the son, Koji, she lost when the atomic bomb was dropped three years earlier. She tells herself, “In that instant, he was gone. It’s time to let him go.” Returning home she is stunned to find Koji waiting for her. His ghostly visits continue, they reminisce over happy times, and gradually Nobuko comes to term with her loss. Meanwhile she watches over Koji’s girlfriend, Machiko, as her life also progresses beyond grief. This year’s Japanese submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. (130 mins.)
2/10 5:45 | FOX 2/12 5:00 | WH Sponsored by the Consular Office of Japan in Portland
The Olive Tree
Paradise
Personal Shopper
A Quiet Passion
ICÍAR BOLLAÍN | SPAIN/GERMANY
ANDREI KONCHALOVSKY | RUSSIA/GERMANY
OLIVIER ASSAYAS | FRANCE/GERMANY
TERENCE DAVIES | UK/BELGIUM
In 1942, while working as a fashion editor for Paris Vogue, Russian émigré Olga becomes involved with the French Resistance and agrees to harbor two Jewish children in her flat. She is apprehended by French Nazi collaborator Jules, who agrees to stall her punishment, but soon Olga is placed in the same concentration camp as the children she tried to rescue. In a twist of fate, she comes face to face with an ex-lover, a man who is now an SS guard and therefore her captor. This year’s Russian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. In French, German, and Russian with English subtitles. (131 mins.)
“Kristen Stewart is the medium, in more ways than one, for this sophisticated genre exploration from director Assayas (Clouds of Sils Maria). As a fashion assistant whose twin brother has died, leaving her bereft and longing for messages from the other side, Stewart is fragile and enigmatic—and nearly always on screen. From an opening sequence in a haunted house with an intricately constructed soundtrack to a cat-andmouse game on a trip from Paris to London and back set entirely to text messaging, Personal Shopper brings the psychological and supernatural thriller into the digital age.”—New York Film Festival. (105 mins.)
2/15 8:30 | C21 2/20 3:15 | LH3
2/18 8:30 | WH 2/21 8:30 | VC
This engaging, warmhearted fable encapsulates the wider story of modern Spain within a very personal narrative. Alma’s family has deep roots in Castellón, Spain, having produced olive oil there for generations. But tough times led them to sell their prized thousand-year-old olive tree and transition to chicken farming. The grief was too much for Alma’s beloved grandfather, and his health declined. Determined to save her family’s fortunes and reverse her grandfather’s deteriorating condition, Alma sets off on a quixotic quest to return the family heirloom—planted somewhere else in Europe—to its proper place. “…rooted in the best cinematic soil there is—emotional truth—The Olive Tree gets its hooks in early on, and then never lets up.”—The Hollywood Reporter. (100 mins.)
2/20 8:30 | WH 2/23 6:00 | WH Sponsored by Southpark and the Lamb-Baldwin Foundation
Sponsored by TV5Monde and the French American Cultural Society
A Quiet Passion is the life story of the celebrated American poet Emily Dickinson (Cynthia Nixon), from her youth as a headstrong schoolgirl through to her reclusive adulthood, where poetry was solace. “You will see no more beautiful a film this year—beautiful in its sumptuous photography, but also in the respect and love that it brings to its subject. The internal lives of poets are hard to visualize, yet Davies, a magician when it comes to understanding the most sensitive of minds, has created an extraordinarily moving account of Emily Dickinson’s particular genius.”—Toronto International Film Festival. (125 mins.)
2/11 8:00 | WH 2/15 8:30 | LH Sponsored by Steven Smith Teamaker
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MASTERS
Sieranevada
Staying Vertical
The Teacher
Yourself and Yours
CRISTI PUIU | ROMANIA/FRANCE/ BOSNIA & HEZEGOVINA
ALAIN GUIRAUDIE | FRANCE
JAN HRˇEBEJK | SLOVAKIA/CZECH REPUBLIC
HONG SANGSOO | SOUTH KOREA
In a labyrinthine Bucharest apartment, a cantankerous extended family has gathered 40 days after its patriarch’s death for a memorial service. Dark truths of the family’s past slowly emerge as everyone wrestles with the patriarch’s complicated legacy. As claustrophobia mounts, heated, humorous exchanges— about the old Communist days and the present age of terror—coalesce into a fascinatingly observed portrait of Romanian family life and personal and social disquiet. This year’s Polish submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. (173 mins.)
Léo, a filmmaker in search of a project, is scouting in the south of France when he is seduced by Marie, a free-spirited and dynamic shepherdess. Months later, after Marie gives birth to their child, she abandons both Leo and their child without warning. Through a series of unexpected and unusual encounters, Leo finds inspiration for his next film amid his new life as a single parent and explorer of his own sexuality. With vivid, pastoral imagery, the story plays out like a fairy tale but with a dark, explicit twist that filmmaker Alain Guiraudie (Stranger by the Lake) is known for. Adult audiences. (100 mins.)
2/18 7:45 | FOX 2/22 6:30 | LH
2/23 6:00 | LH 2/25 8:45 | WH
In this intelligent and funny meditation on totalitarianism, the arrival of a new teacher at a Bratislava school in 1983 sparks a moral dilemma. As the highest-ranking Communist official in town, Mrs. Drazdeˇchová has power, and she uses it to blackmail her co-workers, students, and their parents for her personal gain. But the tide begins to turn when a few brave parents decide to speak up. A universal parable and a taut morality tale grappling with a recent Communist past, it smartly exposes the insidious and far-reaching effects of corruption at all levels of society. (102 mins)
“Hong Sangsoo boldly and wittily explores the painful caprices of modern romance. Painter Youngsoo hears that his girlfriend, Minjung, has recently had (many) drinks with an unknown man. A quarrel seems to end their relationship. The next day, Youngsoo sets out in search of her, at the same time that Minjung—or a woman who looks exactly like her and may or may not be her twin—has a series of encounters with strange men, some of whom claim to have met her before . . . A break-up/make-up comedy unlike any other, suffused with sophisticated modernist mystery.”—New York Film Festival. (86 mins.)
2/10 8:45 | WH 2/13 8:15 | LH2
2/12 7:45 | FOX 2/14 6:00 | LH
Sponsored by TV5Monde
Sponsored by Higgins
NEW DIRECTORS While this year’s Festival is rich with new works by established masters, discovering the work of emerging talents is part of the discovery, too. These debuts and second features indicate that new cinema talents are thriving worldwide and hold great promise. Sponsored by
Delta Airlines
Aloys
Apprentice
Barakah Meets Barakah
TOBIAS NÖLLE | SWITZERLAND/FRANCE
JENFENG BOO | SINGAPORE/ GERMANY/FRANCE/HONG KONG
MAHMOUD SABBAGH | SAUDI ARABIA
Aloys, a reclusive private investigator, experiences life from a safe distance. After a night of heavy drinking, he wakes up to find that his camera and surveillance tapes have been stolen. Soon after, a mysterious woman calls. She offers to return the tapes if he will try an obscure Japanese invention called “telephone walking.” Captivated by her intriguing voice, Aloys agrees to follow her down a mysterious path of redemption and self-discovery. Nölle’s debut feature is a love story told with striking images, bleak humor, and touching emotion. Critics’ Prize, Berlin Film Festival. In German with English subtitles. (91 mins.)
Aiman, an ambitious 28-year-old correctional officer, is transferred to the Singapore territory’s top prison. He strikes up a friendship with Rahim, who is revealed to be the chief executioner of the prison, and one of the world’s most prolific. Can Aiman overcome his conscience and a past that haunts him to become the executioner’s apprentice? “Fraught with tension . . . A story that conflates the deeply intimate and the political while exploring what family ties mean and how they relate to national and professional relationships and obligations.” —Hollywood Reporter. This year’s Singaporean Oscar submission. (97 mins.)
In Saudi Arabia, physical contact and meeting the opposite sex in public without a chaperone are prohibited, which makes this lightly subversive romantic comedy so unexpected. Barakah, an amiable Jeddah municipal law enforcement officer of humble origins, falls for Bibi, a rebellious beauty and Instagram star from a wealthy family. As the young would-be couple attempts to get to know each other better, Sabbagh acerbically suggests that repressive traditions could be outpaced by a modern world of smartphones and social networking, even if there is still a ways to go. This year’s Saudi Arabian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. (88 mins.)
2/18 5:00 | FOX 2/23 8:45 | FOX
2/17 8:30 | VC 2/20 3:30 | FOX
2/16 6:15 | LH2 2/21 3:30 | FOX Sponsored by the Consulate General of Switzerland in San Francisco
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NEW DIRECTORS
Clash MOHAMED DIAB | EGYPT/FRANCE Set in the midst of the 2013 riots in Cairo pitting Egypt’s pro-military supporters against the Muslim Brotherhood of the ousted President Morsi, Clash unfolds almost entirely within the claustrophobic confines of a police van packed to bursting with detainees from different social and political backgrounds, including rival activists, journalists, and mere bystanders. The construct allows Diab to explore his country’s divided, post-revolution society in a non-judgmental way by highlighting all the characters’ common humanity as they battle for the future of their nation. “A ferociously well-made film right through to the bitter end.”—The Guardian, London. This year’s Egyptian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. In Arabic with English subtitles. (97 mins.)
2/14 6:00 | C21 2/18 6:00 | VC
The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki JUHO KUOSMANEN | FINLAND/SWEDEN/GERMANY Winner of the Prix Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival and this year’s Finnish Oscar submission, Kuosmanen’s debut feature charmingly recounts the tale of legendary Finnish boxer Olli Mäki and his bid for the 1962 World Featherweight title in Helsinki. Small-town hero Olli trains hard to win against his American foe and endures the hyped-up limelight pressures, but there’s one punch he can’t duck: he’s fallen in love. Suffused with quirky Nordic humor and shot in a luminous black and white that celebrates the period and genre, this is not your standard boxing film. In Finnish with English subtitles. (92 mins.)
Hedi
Indivisible
MOHAMED BEN ATTIA | FRANCE/GERMANY/QATAR/ TUNISIA/UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
EDOARDO DE ANGELIS | ITALY
Resigned to his fate, Hedi is stuck selling cars, a job he hates, and engaged to a woman he barely knows and doesn’t love. An obedient son, he has spent his life doing exactly what’s expected of him. But when he meets Rim, a free-spirited tour guide and dancer at a beach hotel just a week before his arranged marriage, Hedi is ready to give up everything. Attia’s debut feature is a poignant story of personal dilemma and a metaphorical observation of Tunisia itself in its struggle between tradition and modernity. In Arabic with English subtitles. (89 mins.)
2/10 8:30 | LH2 2/20 3:45 | LH2
Indivisible is a beguiling poetic fairy tale that plays with the idea that we carry our loved ones with us wherever we go. Daisy and Viola are conjoined twins. Beautiful and talented teenagers who sing at weddings, they are exploited by their mother and father, who see them as their meal ticket. A visiting doctor tells them what their parents have kept secret: because they are literally joined at the hip, they could be safely separated. For the rebellious Daisy, this could mean the freedom she’s always wanted. For the meeker, dependent Viola, the idea of separation is terrifying. (104 mins.)
2/10 6:15 | LH3 2/12 8:00 | WH
2/12 7:30 | C21
Kati Kati
Kills on Wheels
Life After Life
Life+1Day
MBITHI MASYA | KENYA/GERMANY
ATTILA TILL | HUNGARY
ZHANG HANYI | CHINA
SAEED MALEKAN | IRAN
Kaleche, a young woman with no memory of her life or death, wanders into the otherworldly village of Kati Kati, not knowing who she is or how she got there. She finds a community of eccentrics led by the charismatic Thoma, to whom she is inexplicably drawn. As the residents begin to discover what is keeping them there, and the living and the dead ominously intersect, the film becomes a magicalrealist reflection on the legacy of violence and survival in Kenya. Masya’s debut film won the International Critics’ Prize, Toronto International Film Festival. In Swahili with English subtitles. (75 mins.)
In this exuberant coming-of-age crime comedy, two aspiring comic book artists with disabilities become embroiled in the schemes of an enigmatic wheelchairusing hitman named Rupaszov. Recruiting the pair as his accomplices, Rupaszov initiates them into the fast-paced world of gangsters, guns, and Serbian crime lords. The action-packed journey leads to a more tender tale in which the lines between reality and fantasy defy expectation at every turn. With stellar cinematography, a mix of live action and animation, and a dark sense of humor, Till’s debut Kills on Wheels mashes genres as it rolls crazily along. This year’s Hungarian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Hungarian Oscar submission. (105 mins.)
A young boy becomes possessed by his late mother, whose spirit has wandered Shanxi Province’s disintegrating cave homes for years. With the help of his supernatural-phenomenon-accepting father, they set out to replant a special tree before she can depart the world. In ethereal, beautifully composed sequences of a barren rural-industrial village on the edge of collapse, Zhang captures the spectral gap between life and the hereafter. “A Chinese ghost story with a difference, its characters—man or ghost—struggling in an absurd world at once strangely hilarious and eerily terrifying.”—Hollywood Reporter. (80 mins.)
Somayeh is at a loss. Her only desire is to leave her family and take her life into her own hands, but her sick mother needs her help. When her brother introduces her to an Afghan man who wants to marry her and take her to Afghanistan, it may be the only way to escape. But then, at the very last minute, she discovers the hidden face of the marriage proposal. “The idea for this film came to me when I met a pregnant woman ready to sell her baby to buy a few grams of drugs . . . I talked a lot with other addicts. The poignant stories irrigate the film and give it life.”—Saeed Malekan. Winner of the Best Film, Director, Screenplay, and First Film Awards at the Fajar Film Festival. (115 mins.)
2/19 1:30 | VC 2/21 6:30 | LH2
2/10 5:45 | LH2 2/16 8:30 | C21
2/19 2:45 | FOX 2/22 6:00 | VC
2/18 2:30 | FOX 2/20 6:45 | LH2
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NEW DIRECTORS
Nakom
Old Stone
One Week and a Day
Panamerican Machinery
T.W. PITTMAN, KELLY DANIELA NORRIS | GHANA/US
JOHNNY MA | CHINA/CANADA
ASAPH POLONSKY | ISRAEL
When his father suddenly dies, Iddrisu, a promising medical student, leaves the university in the Ghanaian capital of Accra to travel home to the titular rural village, hoping to settle his father’s estate. He arrives only to find that his father had considerable unsettled debt and a farm desperately in need of innovation. To turn the family’s fortunes around, Iddrisu digs in and begins working the land, but as time passes must face the choice of preserving tradition with his relatives in the village or following a new path in the modern world. In Kusaal with English subtitles. (90 mins.)
Chinese taxi driver Lao Shi is thrown into a Kafkaesque nightmare where no charitable act goes unpunished. When a drunken passenger causes him to hit a motorcyclist, he stops to help the injured man. But in taking the victim to the hospital, he finds himself on the hook for the man’s medical bills. Faced with the possibility of losing everything for his selfless act, he is driven to desperate measures. Beginning as a gritty socialrealist drama before morphing into a noir psychological thriller, Ma’s debut feature examines a society where life is cheap and compassion can cost you all. In Mandarin with English subtitles. (80 mins.)
Eyal and Vicky spend a week sitting shiva after the death of their 25-year-old son. While Vicky returns to teaching, Eyal steals his dead son’s medical marijuana and proceeds to get high. As the world refuses to accommodate their sensitivities during their time of bereavement, the two grieving parents find themselves acting in outlandish ways as they attempt to regain a sense of control over their lives. Winner of eight awards at the Jerusalem Film Festival, including Best First Film and Best Israeli Feature, Polonsky’s comedy about the aftermath of loss is both touching and funny. (98 mins.)
JOAQUÍN DEL PASO | MEXICO/POLAND
2/20 7:00 | VC 2/21 9:00 | LH2
2/22 8:30 | VC 2/23 3:30 | FOX
2/19 5:00 | FOX 2/22 8:30 | WH
Panamerican Machinery may be the happiest place in the world to work. Workers and management get along like one tight-knit family as they celebrate birthdays with cake and are encouraged by daily motivational messages. But when the company president suddenly dies, the façade quickly crumbles. Refusing to let go of the dream, the workers lock themselves in the factory, vowing to do whatever it takes to uphold their boss’s legacy. “Del Paso’s first feature is a witty and comedic examination of Mexico’s dysfunctional system where attempts to find a collective voice often lead to more chaos and division.”—AFI Fest. (86 mins.)
2/21 6:00 | LH3 2/24 8:30 | FOX Sponsored by Tilde Noticias
Parting
Rara
The Son of Joseph
The Stopover
NAVID MAHMOUDI | IRAN/AFGHANISTAN
PEPA SAN MARTÍN | CHILE/ARGENTINA
EUGÈNE GREEN | FRANCE/BELGIUM
DELPHINE COULIN, MURIEL COULIN | FRANCE/GREECE
Navid Mahmoudi’s debut feature is a migration story that has not only war, but love at its core. Fereshteh and Nabi are in love, but Fereshteh has to follow her parents and leave Afghanistan to find refuge in Tehran. Nabi decides to illegally cross the border, find her, and take her through Turkey towards Europe and a better life. They meet with the human traffickers who arrange their illegal passage to Europe and embark on a bitter trail in search of a better life. Mahmoudi’s timely story summons clarity of feeling about a puzzling and painful world. In Persian and Dari with English subtitles. (78 mins.)
Twelve-year-old Sara has a warm and supportive home with her sister, mother, and her mother’s partner, and is taking her first steps into a new world of high school and boys. But when her father starts to take issue with her household, the possibility of having her family torn apart becomes real. A fresh and surprising coming-of-age film that doesn’t shy away from issues faced by many families headed by same-sex parents, Rara does so without resorting to message and resonates for anyone who has fought to keep their spirits up in the face of intolerance. (82 mins.)
Wry visual humor, playful religious subtext, and a note of farce inform a coming of age story that takes aim at French cultural pretensions. Vincent, a discontented high school student in Paris, lives with his mother, who won’t tell him who his father is. Despite her efforts, he sets out to find him on his own. The search leads him to Oscar, a narcissistic, womanizing publisher who shows no interest in Vincent and stirs rage. But an encounter with his father’s brother, Joseph, provides the missing father figure, and together the two begin to explore Paris with new eyes. (113 mins.)
Aurore and Marine are given three days of “decompression leave” with their unit, among tourists, at a five-star resort in Cyprus. But it’s not that easy to forget the war and leave violence behind. Childhood friends who left Brittany to see the world and saw much more than they bargained for, the two respond differently to the program, and tensions surface. Inspired by real experiences, this sometimes surreal film about trauma, gender, sexism, and friendship is “cuttingly observed, fraught, and bleakly funny.”—Variety. In French and Greek with English subtitles. (102 mins.)
2/11 3:00 | FOX 2/25 3:30 | WH
2/10 8:30 | C21 2/18 3:45 | LH3
2/21 6:00 | FOX 2/22 3:30 | FOX
2/15 6:00 | OMSI 2/17 6:30 | LH3
Sponsored by TV5Monde
9
NEW DIRECTORS
Suntan
Ten Years
The Women’s Balcony
Wùlu
ARGYRIS PAPADIMITROPOULOS | GREECE/GERMANY
NG KA-LEUNG, JEVONS AU, CHOW KWUN-WAI, FEI-PANG WONG, KWOK ZUNE | HONG KONG
EMIL BEN SHIMON | ISRAEL
DAOUDA COULIBALY | FRANCE/SENEGAL
Forty-something doctor Kostis arrives for his new posting on the island of Antiparos during the quiet winter months, which suits the introverted Kostis fine. But summer brings the tourists and party people, including the uninhibited young beauty Anna, with whom Kostis becomes infatuated after treating her for a sprained ankle. Longing for lost youth, he becomes obsessed with trying to be part of her life, no matter the humiliation suffered. Papadimitropoulos crafts a calculatedly provocative morality tale about the siren call of hedonism, the aching desires of middle age, and the intoxicating cult of youth and beauty. (105 mins.)
2/11 8:00 | FOX 2/15 5:45 | C21
Despite being branded a “virus of the mind” by China’s state organ Global Times, Ten Years won Best Film at the Hong Kong Film Awards, an indication of its resonance and power. An anthology of five short films, each by a different director, they collectively imagine Hong Kong ten years from 2015, a year that saw the thawing and taming of the democratic Umbrella Movement of the year before. “The 2025 of these short films is chilling, numbing, frustrating, infuriating, and energizing . . . A smoke grenade lobbed down Hong Kong’s corridors of power.”—The Guardian. (103 mins.)
Emil Ben Shimon’s feature debut is a comical feminist narrative about finding the right path to happiness and the subjectivity of righteousness. When the women’s balcony of the synagogue collapses in the middle of a bar mitzvah, nobody assumes that the cause was anything more than bad architecture— that is, until Rabbi David announces that it was actually a message from God. The charismatic young rabbi warns that the men of the Sephardic congregation haven’t done enough to ensure the modesty of their women, creating a rift between the community’s men and women that puts faith, friendships, and traditions to the test. Hebrew with English subtitles. (96 mins.)
2/11 8:15 | LH 2/13 8:30 | FOX
2/16 6:00 | WH 2/19 7:30 | LH
Set in Mali’s capital city of Bamako, Coulibaly’s debut feature offers perspective on the country’s enduring political turmoil. When low-level transit employee Ladji misses out on a potentially lucrative promotion, it’s time to move on. He uses his connections to earn money as a drug runner, at which he thrives. It’s not long before he is rising in the ranks, but as he does his control of events spin out of control and he’s soon embroiled in conflicts that stretch from Mali’s government all the way to Al Qaeda. In Bambara and French with English subtitles. (95 mins.)
2/11 12:30 | FOX 2/15 6:15 | LH2 Sponsored by TV5Monde
Sponsored by the Institute for Judaic Studies
GLOBAL PANORAMA Capturing the imagination and praise of audiences world-wide, these compelling films tell stories that resonate beyond their borders, while offering insight into the unique cultures from which they emerge. A showcase of festival prizewinners, submissions for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, and the critically acclaimed for cinema lovers of all persuasions.
El Acompañante
After Love
The Age of Shadows
PAVEL GIROUD | CUBA/PANAMA/ FRANCE/COLOMBIA
JOACHIM LAFOSSE | BELGIUM
JEE-WOON KIM | SOUTH KOREA
Cuba 1988. The Castro regime has established “Los Cocos,” a sanatorium in Havana’s suburbs where HIV patients are confined under military watch and assigned a “companion.” Horacio, a former Olympic boxing champion involved in a doping scandal, must earn his redemption by serving as companion to Daniel, one of Los Cocos’ most defiant patients. A strained relationship between these fallen heroes gradually materializes into one of solidarity and friendship. Winner of the Audience Award at the Miami Film festival. This year’s Cuban submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. (104 mins.)
Marie and Boris, married for 15 years, are going through the emotional turmoil of divorce in front of their twin daughters. At the center of the dispute is the house that Marie purchased but Boris has renovated, and both want. Without a steady job, Boris can’t afford to move so the two must share the house stalemated by domestic standoffs and complex turns, which only continues to drag out the divorce proceedings. Lafosse’s intimate, emotional movie looks at what it means to be a couple, while also exploring the dichotomy of two stubborn people who must figure out a way to peacefully coexist for their children when love is gone. (100 mins.)
A cat-and-mouse game unfolds between a group of resistance fighters trying to bring in explosives from Shanghai to destroy key Japanese facilities in Seoul, and Japanese agents trying to stop them. A talented Korean-born Japanese police officer, previously in the independence movement himself, is thrown into a dilemma between the demands of his reality and the instinct to support a greater cause. “The irresistible pull of a spy thriller, the heightened stylishness of a 1920s setting, and terrific technical specs make The Age of Shadows an unabashed delight.”—Variety. This year’s South Korean Oscar submission. (140 mins.)
2/19 7:30 | FOX 2/21 8:30 | FOX
2/10 8:30 | OMSI 2/11 3:00 | C21
2/11 8:00 | C21 2/14 8:15 | LH2
10
GLOBAL PANORAMA
The Distinguished Citizen
Glory
GASTÓN DUPRAT, MARIANO COHN | ARGENTINA/SPAIN
KRISTINA GROZEVA, PETAR VALCHANOV | BULGARIA/GREECE
Daniel (Oscar Martinez), a Nobel Prize-winning author, accepts an invitation to visit his hometown in Argentina for the first time in 40 years. The small town of Salas and its residents have been the inspiration for all of his books and now they want to extend him their “Distinguished Citizen” award. After a hero’s welcome, he soon learns to expect the unexpected from the real people whose lives he used to create the characters in his novels. Duprat’s sharp, witty film is this year’s Argentine submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. (117 mins.)
When a reclusive railway worker finds bags of cash on the tracks, he does the right thing and calls the police. Hailed as a model citizen by the propaganda-hungry Ministry of Transport, he is rewarded with a new watch and promptly hustled into the spotlight. Amid the media circus, the reluctant hero’s beloved old watch goes missing. When his struggle to reclaim it is ignored by the Ministry’s calculating PR queen, a darkly comedic, sharply satirical, and completely unexpected morality tale ensues that offers a savvy dissection of class and power in contemporary Bulgaria. (101 mins.)
2/14 8:30 | C21 2/16 5:45 | FOX
2/11 2:45 | LH 2/13 6:00 | FOX
It’s Only the End of the World
The King’s Choice
XAVIER DOLAN | CANADA/FRANCE
The King’s Choice looks at a seminal moment in modern Norwegian history: the days in 1940 when King Haakon faced the momentous decision about whether or not to cooperate with the invading German army. Threatening to abdicate if the government chose cooperation, he advocated all-out resistance, placing himself and his family in great danger, and guaranteeing his place in the annals of Norwegian history. Poppe’s (Eggs, Hawaii, Oslo) epic film about the real events that turned a brave man into the peoples’ king is this year’s Norwegian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. (133 mins.)
Winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival and this year’s Canadian Oscar submission, Dolan’s visually and emotionally powerful melodrama follows terminally ill writer Louis (Gaspard Ulliel), who returns home to break the news of his debilitating condition to his estranged family. Once there, old wounds and deep-seated frustrations surface as Louis struggles to rekindle relationships and articulate the real reason for his unexpected visit. An all-star cast, including Marion Cotillard, Léa Seydoux, and Vincent Cassel, bring to life a family burdened with buried memories and heavy sadness, but ultimately profound love for each other. (99 mins.)
2/17 6:00 | WH 2/23 8:30 | WH
ERIK POPPE | NORWAY
2/12 2:00 | WH 2/18 3:00 | VC Sponsored by the Royal Norwegian Consulate General in San Francisco
Sponsored by TV5Monde
Like Crazy
The Long Excuse
Lost in Paris
Maliglutit
PAOLO VIRZÌ | ITALY/FRANCE
MIWA NISHIKAWA | JAPAN
ZACHARIAS KUNUK | CANADA
Paolo Virzì’s (Human Capital ) bittersweet comedy recounts a Thelma & Louise-like adventure between two women on the run in Tuscany. Meeting as patients at the Villa Biondi, a progressive psychiatric facility, Beatrice (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) is a motor-mouthed fantasist, a self-styled billionaire countess who likes to believe she’s on intimate terms with world leaders. Donatella (Micaela Ramazzotti) is a tattooed introvert, a fragile young woman locked in her own mystery. An unpredictable and moving friendship develops between the two as they flee captivity in search of love and happiness in the open-air nuthouse—the outside world. (118 mins.)
Celebrated novelist Tsumura is married to Natsuko, but their passion for each other has long disappeared. When she dies in a bus crash, he feels no sadness and has to feign grief in public. To his embarrassment, his calculated displays catch the attention of Omiya, the genuinely devastated husband of another of the crash victims, and Tsumura finds himself mysteriously drawn into the lives of the bereaved man and his two children. Nishikawa’s touching drama, laced with humor, tells the story of a self-centered man who finally finds connection outside himself. (123 mins.)
DOMINIQUE ABEL, FIONA GORDON | FRANCE/BELGIUM
2/11 5:30 | LH3 2/13 5:45 | C21 Sponsored by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura San Francisco
2/16 5:45 | C21 2/20 1:30 | VC Sponsored by the Consular Office of Japan in Portland
Fiona, a hapless Canadian librarian, visits Paris for the first time after receiving a letter of distress from her 88-year-old Aunt Martha. When she arrives, Aunt Martha has disappeared within the depths of the city. In an avalanche of spectacular disasters, Fiona meets Dom, a seductive homeless man who won’t leave her alone. Their awkward, gentle romance provides an excuse for director and actor pair Dominque Abel and Fiona Gordon (The Fairy) to show off their quirky devotion to the art of slapstick comedy in a charming ode to Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Tati, and Buster Keaton. Très French. (84 mins.)
2/10 9:00 | LH3 2/12 5:00 | C21 Sponsored by TV5Monde, Elk Cove Vineyards, Montinore Estate, and Pike Road Wines
Kunuk’s (Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner) poignant film, shot in the spectacular Arctic, is set in 1913 and inspired by John Ford’s classic The Searchers. In a harrowing story of brutality, kidnapping, and revenge, Kuanana returns from a caribou hunt to discover that marauders have attacked his igloo, his wife and daughter have been abducted, and the rest of his family murdered. A loon named Kallulik, the spirit helper of his father, sets Kuanana—driven by both light and dark forces—on a course to overturn fate and reunite his family. In Inuktitut with English subtitles. (94 mins.)
2/21 6:00 | VC 2/23 8:30 | LH3
11
GLOBAL PANORAMA
Nocturama
The Ornithologist
The Sense of an Ending
Soul on a String
BERTRAND BONELLO | FRANCE
JOÃO PEDRO RODRIGUES | PORTUGAL/FRANCE/BRAZIL
RITESH BATRA | UK
ZHANG YANG | CHINA
Based on British author Julian Barnes’s Booker-prize winning novel about memory, jealousy, aging, and self-delusion, this film follows Tony (Jim Broadbent), a semi-retired and divorced curmudgeon wryly skilled at subjectively ordering his own history. The possibility of an alternate reality arises when the diary of his best friend, Adrian, is bequeathed to him after his mysterious suicide. But Veronica (Charlotte Rampling), who was Tony’s love before Adrian, won’t let him have it and he can’t figure why. As he sleuths and obsesses with his jaded ex-wife (Harriet Walter), the past comes due for new acknowledgment. (108 mins.)
After discovering a sacred stone in the mouth of a deer, Taibei, a Tibetan cowboy, embarks on a mission: to bring it back to the holy Mountain of Buddha’s Handprint. Pursued by traders who seek the priceless artifact for themselves, as well as two brothers seeking vengeance for the death of their father, Taibei’s journey will be a long and difficult one—even before it is thrown off course by strange, mystical events. With sweeping cinematography of Tibet’s majestic steppes and sprawling deserts, Yang’s unconventional Asian Western pairs swordfights with the Buddhist philosophy of letting go. “. . . visually stunning. It shares a high elevation and the spirit of revenge with The Revenant.”—Screen International. (142 mins.)
Bonnello’s (Saint Laurent) latest provocation is a film in two distinct and gripping parts: first, a procedural in which we follow a group of Parisian young people, crucially of varying backgrounds, as they carry out a sure-to-be-controversial, city-wide, premeditated terrorist plot; second, a waiting game, oscillating between tense, languid, and bizarre, and which clearly reveals the absolute brutality of the mass media and the militarized state apparatus. A 21st-century thriller of the moment, Nocturama asks impossible questions and alludes to geopolitical issues with a profoundly troubling yet thrilling wink. “A bravura feat of filmmaking.” —The A.V. Club. (130 mins.)
2/12 2:15 | LH 2/16 8:30 | FOX
Winner of the Best Director award at the Locarno Film Festival, Rodrigues’s The Ornithologist follows a man’s journey on a remote river in Portugal in search of rare birds. When his kayak capsizes, he is saved by two Christian Chinese women on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. They are but the first of a cast of strange characters who will engage him in a transformational spiritual and metaphysical journey through sprawling, often psychedelic forests. Rodrigues’s exotic, pastoral meditation on landscape, ethnography, and personal transcendence is a visually ravishing, profoundly hypnotic experience. In Portuguese, English, Mandarin Chinese, Mirandese, and Latin with English subtitles. Adult audiences. (118 mins.)
2/24 6:00 | WH 2/25 4:00 | FOX Sponsored by Travel Portland
2/18 12:00 | LH3 2/19 6:00 | VC
2/14 5:45 | FOX 2/19 5:00 | WH
The Student
Tonio
Train Driver’s Diary
Truman
KIRILL SEREBRENNIKOV | RUSSIA
PAULA VAN DER OEST | NETHERLANDS
MILOS RADOVIC´ | SERBIA/CROATIA
CESC GAY | SPAIN/ARGENTINA
Statistics show that during their professional career, most train drivers will inadvertently kill 20 to 30 people. Their victims are usually suicidal, careless, drunk, or just absent minded. In Radovic´’s deadpan black comedy, the Todorovic´ clan—train drivers for generations—keeps a respectful running body count, and visit the graves from time to time. Grouchy old Ilija (28 kills!) knows it’s not “if” but “when” his son Sima will run over a suicide, and the lad knows it too. It’s a foreboding that complicates his apprenticeship, and the old man resolves to make it easier on him. This year’s Serbian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. (86 mins.)
Goya Winner for Best Film, Director, Actor, and Screenplay, Truman is a warm tale of friendship in the face of imminent mortality. Julián (Ricardo Darín), diagnosed with terminal cancer, is making the most of the time left to him. Tomás (Javier Cámara), who lives in Toronto, returns to Madrid unsure of how he can best serve his old friend. The two men wander old haunts, recall the past, try putting right a few old wrongs, and most important of all, seek a new owner for Julián’s beloved bullmastiff, Truman. Their rapport brings gentle laughter in a very moving story. (108 mins.)
This scathing, pitch-black satire, set in the coastal city of Kaliningrad, follows Veniamin, a high school student who, as a reaction to the spiritual and material depravity he perceives around him, suddenly embraces Russian Orthodox Christian fundamentalism. He believes that everyone around him is morally bankrupt and confronts them with fanatically cited bible verses, bordering on extremism. His ideas seem harmless at first, but slowly they start to influence others around him and he manages to turn the whole system upside down, save his atheist biology teacher, the only one willing to take him on. (119 mins.)
2/18 8:30 | VC 2/20 12:45 | LH2
Based on the best-selling autobiographical “requiem novel” by one of the country’s most renowned writers, A.F.Th. van der Heijden, this warm and understanding drama explores the lives of the Amsterdam novelist and his wife after the death of their 21-year-old son, Tonio. Cutting back and forth between vignettes from the boy’s life, the shock of his sudden biking accident, and their coming to grips with the loss, van der Oest movingly conveys the parents’ fathomless sadness and profound powerlessness. This year’s Dutch Oscar submission. (100 mins.)
2/17 6:00 | VC 2/19 2:30 | LH2
2/10 8:45 | FOX 2/13 8:30 | C21
2/17 8:30 | WH 2/19 5:00 | LH
12
DOCUMENTARY VIEWS This year’s non-fiction showcase offers fresh perspective on the world we live in and the fascinating people and stories that surround us. Some are masters, some emerging, but they share a passion to tell entertaining and enlightening stories from fascinating places. Sponsored by
the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
Alive & Kicking
All These Sleepless Nights
SUSAN GLATZER | US/SWEDEN
MICHAŁ MARCZAK | POLAND/UK
STEVE JAMES | US
Some dance styles and crazes endure. For many who love music and dance, the lindy hop, jitterbug, shag, and other mid-century “swing” dances are more than alive and kicking in the hip-hop era. Glatzer’s joyous, action-packed film attributes the revival to the advent of VHS tape, which allowed pause and rewind to memorize the steps from old films. “She’s more attentive to the sense of family among enthusiasts . . .The action [the film] captures is so transfixing, one marvels that dancers can keep it up for five years, much less five decades.” —The Hollywood Reporter (88 mins.)
“Many of us know the freedom of our twenties—unfettered by responsibilities or mortality, inventing ourselves in the rush of the moment. All These Sleepless Nights viscerally summons that feeling, chronicling a Warsaw summer when art school classmates Kris and Michal resolve to experience life to the limit. Who will they meet, and what will they discover about relationships and themselves? What existential realities will thwart them? Marczak paints a picture of a Warsaw suspended between its traumatic past and a new generation bursting with energy . . . this story of youthful adventure, like a picaresque novel, is timeless.” Sundance Film Festival. (100 mins.)
The incredible saga of the Chinese immigrant Sung family, owners of Abacus Federal Savings of Chinatown, New York, elicits both outrage and humor. Accused of mortgage fraud by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., Abacus, with just six branches catering to small businesses and families, became the only U.S. bank to face criminal charges in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The indictment and subsequent trial forced the Sung family to defend themselves— and their bank’s legacy in the Chinatown community—over the course of a five-year legal battle. A suspenseful story of justice and America on trial. (88 mins.)
2/11 5:15 | WH 2/12 7:30 | LH
2/18 6:30 | LH 2/20 3:30 | WH Sponsored by Higgins Restaurant
2/12 6:00 | OMSI 2/18 9:15 | LH2 Sponsored by KBOO
Sponsored by the Oregon State Bar International Law Section
Austerlitz
Behemoth
Burden
Buzz One Four
SERGEI LOZNITSA | GERMANY
ZHAO LIANG | CHINA
MATT McCORMICK | US
Filmed on the sites of former Nazi concentration camps, Loznitsa’s (Maidan, In the Fog) Austerlitz is a stark observation of the hordes of tourists who visit these memorial sites every year. Why do they go there? What are they looking for? How is it that such profoundly tragic sites have wound up as almost theme parks for the memory-less? “Marx said: ‘History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.’ The disquieting theme of Austerlitz is that in our epoch, history—no matter how tragic—tends to repeat itself as tourism.”—Screen Daily (94 mins.)
You can’t un-see political documentarian Liang’s cinematic allegory, which draws inspiration from The Divine Comedy in fashioning a simultaneously intoxicating and terrifying glimpse at the ravages wrought upon Inner Mongolia by its coal and iron industries. A poetic voiceover speaks of the insatiability of desire, overarching stunning images of decimated landscapes, spectacular machines, and people (and the toll of their labor). A wholly absorbing guided tour of exploding hillsides, mine shafts, frightening factories, and vacant cities, Behemoth combines exposé with a painterly vision of a social and ecological nightmare otherwise unfolding out of sight. (90 mins.)
TIMOTHY MARRINAN, RICHARD DEWEY | US/UK/BELGIUM/SWEDEN
2/11 6:00 | OMSI 2/13 6:00 | WH
2/20 8:30 | FOX 2/24 6:00 | FOX
One the most intriguing, boundary-pushing artists of his generation, Chris Burden guaranteed his place in art history in 1971 with a period of often dangerous, provocative, and at times nervous-making performances. After having himself shot, locked up in a locker for five days, electrocuted, and crucified on the back of a VW bug, Burden reinvented himself as the creator of truly mesmerizing installations and sculptures, from a suspended gigantic flywheel that seemingly spins on its own, to a much-admired assemblage of antique streetlights rewired for solar energy and illuminated outside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (86 mins.)
Buzz One Four chronicles the ill-fated flight of a Cold War B-52 Stratofortress loaded with two 3-4-megaton nuclear bombs that crashed 90 miles from Washington DC in 1961. Information suggests that detonation came closer than official reports indicated. The full details of the crash have remained classified and otherwise repressed by the Air Force, but the filmmaker, Portlander Matt McCormick, grew up with this story because the pilot was his grandfather. As McCormick recounts the history of the era, aspects of this crash, and other little-know nuclear-weapons accidents, he leaves us wondering if the U.S. was in greater danger of nuking itself than of being attacked by the Russians. (60 mins.)
2/11 3:00 | WH 2/14 8:45 | LH3
2/15 5:45 | LH3 2/18 12:00 | WH
Sponsored by SundanceNow
Sponsored by Oregon Film
13
DOCUMENTARY VIEWS
Fire at Sea
Forever Pure
I Am Not Your Negro
Kedi
GIANFRANCO ROSI | ITALY/FRANCE
MAYA ZINSHTEIN | ISRAEL/UK/RUSSIA/NORWAY
RAOUL PECK | US/FRANCE/ BELGIUM/SWITZERLAND
CEYDA TORUN | TURKEY/US
Beitar Jerusalem, an intensely nationalist soccer team in the Israeli Premier League, inspires as much extreme fandom as it does controversy. When the team owner, a provocative Russian arms trafficker, signed two Chechen Muslim players, it pushed many Beitar fans over the edge and pitted longtime players against each other. More a portrait of the divisions in Israeli society than a soccer film, Forever Pure provides an eye-opening account of the intersection between politics, racism, and sports and the underlying attitudes that shape the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Best Documentary, Jerusalem Film Festival. In Chechen, Hebrew, and Russian with English subtitles. (87 mins.)
Based on the text of Remember This House, James Baldwin’s final, unfinished novel, Peck’s urgent essay film is a reflection on what it means to be Black in America. Focused around the lives and assassinations of his friends Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr., I Am Not Your Negro uses archival footage of the civil rights and Black Power movements to explore the racial violence that continues to permeate American culture. Tying past and present together, the film narrates the absurd— and deeply tragic—relationship between the United States and skin color. (93 mins.)
The island of Lampedusa, between Sicily and Tunisia, is a major destination point for refugees fleeing Africa and the Middle East. In recent years hundreds of thousands of immigrants seeking a better life have landed there with the literal shirts on their backs. Rosi spent a year on the island experiencing the reality for the fishing families living there, an Italian coast guard swamped with a massive human crisis, and the heart-wrenching stories of people driven to desperation. Rosi’s moving documentary reveals the subtle connections between the micro and macro realities of our globalized world. This year’s Italian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. (114 mins.)
2/9 7:00 | WH 2/9 7:00 | FOX
Cats (“kedi”) have an exalted status in Turkish culture, and caring for them is both a social and religious obligation, if not a pleasure. Istanbul, one of the world’s oldest, largest, and most spectacular cities, is home to hundreds of thousands of street cats that have freely roamed since before the Ottoman Empire, despite their increasingly modernized urban environment. Torun’s splendid film—employing keen observation, patience, and some impressive technical wizardry—captures the colors, textures, and grandeur of the city and its devoted cat guardians from a cats-eye view. “More than just another example of cute kittens on camera, Kedi bubbles over with charm and insight that millions of YouTube videos can’t match.”—Screen Daily. In Turkish with English subtitles. (80 mins.)
2/12 11:30 | LH 2/15 8:30 | FOX
2/12 5:15 | LH 2/15 6:00 | FOX
Sponsored by SundanceNow and Adelina Books
Sponsored by the Consulate General of Israel to the Pacific Northwest in San Francisco
The Land of the Enlightened
Obit
Raising Bertie
Starless Dreams
VANESSA GOULD | US
MARGARET BYRNE | US
MEHRDAD OSKOUEI | IRAN
PIETER-JAN DE PUE | BELGIUM/ IRELAND/NETHERLANDS
Who makes it on the obituary page of the paper of record? Both a peek into the inner workings of a familiar but misunderstood journalistic realm and a thoughtful meditation on memory and mortality, Obit delves into the world of obituary writing by following several writers for the obituaries section of the New York Times. With sometimes just hours remaining before deadline, a life must be condensed into a handful of pithy paragraphs. No pressure. “Death, the great haunter, hovers at the foot of this film, but is examined in a way that is surprisingly inspirational, uplifting, and often hilarious.”—The Upcoming. (93 mins.)
What happens in the lives of young people caught in the complex interplay of generational poverty, educational inequity, and race? Reginald, Davonte, and David are black teenagers in rural Bertie County, North Carolina. Raising Bertie documents their trials and triumphs over six years as the young men repeat grades, search for jobs, and persevere. Along the way, they are aided by activist Vivian Saunders, whose innovative alternative high school, The Hive, provides a much-needed resource for an underserved community. In the spirit of other longitudinal portraits such as Steve James’ Hoop Dreams and Michael Apted’s Up series, identity and opportunity play major roles in the process of coming of age. (102 mins.)
Starless Dreams plunges us into the lives of teenage girls at a juvenile detention center on the of Tehran. The seemingly innocent young women reveal, with surprising candor, the circumstances behind their incarceration—from pick pocketing, drug dealing, and bank robbery to patricide. As these young women share their stories, hopes, and dreams, perhaps it is the crimes against them, and what they have to look forward to, that are the most moving. “Roger Ebert once called the movies ‘a machine that generates empathy,’ and Starless Dreams . . . is just such a machine. With the conceptual rigor and emotional directness associated with the best of Iranian cinema, Oskouei simply listens to the stories of those who have never been listened to before.”—Variety. In Farsi with English subtitles. (76 mins.)
Shot over seven years, De Pue’s debut, a hybrid of documentary and fiction, paints a whimsical yet haunting look at conditions in Afghanistan. De Pue follows a group of children as they roam the landscape searching for undetonated explosives to sell or trade with other children. Some mine semi-precious gemstone lapis lazuli by hand, others steal opium from passing caravans, and this informal mercenary system of lost boys controls the territory in ways the U.S. military could only admire. As the young gang lords cheer the news of American troops withdrawing, their future—and the nation’s—can only be imagined. In Persian and English. (87 mins.)
2/14 8:30 | WH 2/18 12:00 | FOX
2/10 6:00 | C21 2/14 6:00 | WH Sponsored by Willamette Week and SundanceNow
Opening night film. See page 3 for details.
2/11 5:30 | C21 Sponsored by Provenance Hotels
2/21 8:30 | LH3 2/22 5:45 | WH
2/19 4:00 | VC 2/23 9:00 | LH2
14
PIFF XL SCHEDULE THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9 7:00 WH 7:00 FOX
MINUTES PAGE #
I Am Not Your Negro (US/France/Belgium/Switzerland) 95 I Am Not Your Negro (US/France/Belgium/Switzerland) 95
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13
13
5:45 LH3
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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10 5:45 WH 5:45 FOX 5:45 LH2 6:00 C21 6:00 OMSI 6:15 LH3 8:30 LH2 8:30 C21 8:30 OMSI 8:45 WH 8:45 FOX 9:00 LH3 10:30 BAG
Graduation (Romania/France/Belgium) 128 4 Nagasaki: Memories of My Son (Japan) 130 5 Life+1Day (Iran) 115 7 Obit (US) 93 13 Dead Slow Ahead (Spain/France) 97 18 Indivisible (Italy) 100 7 Hedi (France/Germany/Qatar/Tunisia/United Arab Emirates) 88 7 The Son of Joseph (France/Belgium) 113 8 After Love (Belgium) 100 9 The Teacher (Slovakia/Czech Republic) 102 6 Train Driver’s Diary (Serbia/Croatia) 85 11 Lost in Paris (France/Belgium) 83 10 The Invisible Guest (Spain) 117 17
6:00 FOX 6:00 OMSI 6:15 LH2 8:15 LH2 8:30 WH 8:30 FOX 8:30 C21 8:30 OMSI 8:45 LH3
12:00 LH 12:30 WH 12:30 FOX 12:45 C21 2:45 LH 3:00 WH 3:00 FOX 3:00 C21 5:15 FOX 5:15 WH 5:30 LH3 5:30 C21 6:00 LH2 6:00 OMSI 8:00 WH 8:00 FOX 8:00 C21 8:15 LH 10:30 BAG
Heidi (Germany/Switzerland/South Africa) 111 16 Short Cuts 1: On Art & Artists() 84 19 Wùlu (France/Senegal) 95 9 My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea (US) 75 16 Glory (Bulgaria/Greece) 101 10 Burden (US/UK/Belgium/Sweden) 88 12 Rara (Chile/Argentina) 88 8 After Love (Belgium) 100 9 Frantz (France) 113 4 Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (US) 88 12 Like Crazy (Italy/France) 118 10 Kedi (Turkey/US) 105 13 The Dreamed Path (Germany) 86 18 Austerlitz (Germany) 94 12 A Quiet Passion (UK/Belgium) 125 5 Suntan (Greece/Germany) 104 9 The Age of Shadows (South Korea) 140 9 Ten Years (Hong Kong) 104 9 We Are the Flesh (Mexico) 79 17
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12 11:30 WH 11:30 LH 12:00 FOX 12:30 C21 2:00 WH 2:15 LH 2:30 C21 2:45 FOX 5:00 WH 5:00 FOX 5:00 C21 5:15 LH 6:00 OMSI 7:30 LH 7:30 C21 7:45 FOX 8:00 WH 10:30 BAG
Short Cuts 2: Family Ties() 93 19 Fire at Sea (Italy/France) 114 13 Half Ticket (India) 112 16 My Life as a Zucchini (Switzerland/France) 66 16 The King’s Choice (Norway) 133 10 Nocturama (France) 130 11 Land of Mine (Denmark/Germany) 100 5 Louise by the Shore (France) 75 16 Nagasaki: Memories of My Son (Japan) 130 5 The Death of Louis XIV (France/Portugal/Spain) 115 4 Lost in Paris (France/Belgium) 83 10 Forever Pure (Israel/UK/Russia/Norway) 85 13 All These Sleepless Nights (Poland/UK) 100 12 Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (US) 88 12 The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki (Finland/Sweden/Germany) 92 7 Yourself and Yours (South Korea) 86 6 Indivisible (Italy) 100 7 A Dark Song (Irelanad/UK) 113 17
Graduation (Romania/France/Belgium) 128 4 Like Crazy (Italy/France) 118 10 Austerlitz (Germany) 94 12 Glory (Bulgaria/Greece) 101 10 My Life as a Zucchini (Switzerland/France) 66 16 My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea (US) 75 16 The Teacher (Slovakia/Czech Republic) 102 6 Eldorado XXI (Portugal/France) 125 18 Ten Years (Hong Kong) 104 9 Train Driver’s Diary (Serbia/Croatia) 85 11 Frantz (France) 113 4 The Dreamed Ones (Germany/Austria) 89 18
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14 5:45 FOX 6:00 WH 6:00 LH 6:00 C21
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11
MINUTES PAGE #
8:15 LH2 8:30 WH 8:30 FOX 8:30 C21 8:45 LH3
The Ornithologist (Portugal/France/Brazil) 117 11 Obit (US) 93 13 Yourself and Yours (South Korea) 86 6 Clash (Egypt/France) 97 7 The Age of Shadows (South Korea) 140 9 The Land of the Enlightened (Belgium/Ireland/Netherlands) 87 13 All the Cities of the North (Serbia/Bosnia & Herzegovina/Montenegro) 97 18 The Distinguished Citizen (Argentina/Spain) 117 10 Burden (US/UK/Belgium/Sweden) 88 12
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15 5:45 WH 5:45 LH3 5:45 C21 6:00 FOX 6:00 OMSI 6:15 LH2 8:30 WH 8:30 FOX 8:30 LH 8:30 C21 8:30 OMSI
The Commune (Denmark/Sweden/Netherlands) 111 4 Buzz One Four (US) 75 12 Suntan (Greece/Germany) 104 9 Forever Pure (Israel/UK/Russia/Norway) 85 13 Parting (Iran/Afghanistan) 78 8 Wùlu (France/Senegal) 95 9 Afterimage (Poland) 98 4 Fire at Sea (Italy/France) 114 13 A Quiet Passion (UK/Belgium) 125 5 Paradise (Russia/Germany) 130 5 Dead Slow Ahead (Spain/France) 97 18
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16 5:45 FOX 5:45 LH3 5:45 C21 6:00 WH 6:15 LH2 8:30 WH 8:30 FOX 8:30 LH 8:30 C21
The Distinguished Citizen (Argentina/Spain) 117 10 Eldorado XXI (Portugal/France) 125 18 The Long Excuse (Japan) 124 10 The Women’s Balcony (Israel) 96 9 Aloys (Switzerland/France) 91 6 Short Cuts 7: Return to Landscape() 100 22 Nocturama (France) 130 11 The Invisible Guest (Spain) 117 17 Life+1Day (Iran) 115 7
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17 5:45 FOX 6:00 WH 6:00 LH2 6:00 VC 6:30 LH3 8:30 WH 8:30 FOX 8:30 LH 8:30 VC 10:30 BAG
The Commune (Denmark/Sweden/Netherlands) 111 4 It’s Only the End of the World (Canada/France) 97 10 The Dreamed Path (Germany) 86 18 Tonio (Netherlands) 100 11 Parting (Iran/Afghanistan) 78 8 Truman (Spain/Argentina) 108 11 The Human Surge (Argentina/Brazil/Portugal) 100 18 The Death of Louis XIV (France/Portugal/Spain) 115 4 Barakah Meets Barakah (Saudi Arabia) 88 6 The Eyes of My Mother (US) 76 17
15
PIFF XL SCHEDULE SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18 12:00 WH 12:00 LH3 12:00 FOX 12:30 LH2 2:30 WH 2:30 FOX 3:00 VC 3:15 LH2 3:45 LH3 5:00 FOX 5:45 WH 6:00 VC 7:45 FOX 6:30 LH 8:30 VC 8:30 WH 8:45 LH3 9:15 LH2 10:30 BAG
MINUTES PAGE #
Buzz One Four (US) 75 12 Soul on a String (China) 142 11 The Land of the Enlightened (Belgium/Ireland/Netherlands) 87 13 Half Ticket (India) 112 16 Short Cuts 5: Made in Oregon() 100 21 Kills on Wheels (Hungary) 105 7 The King’s Choice (Norway) 133 10 Louise by the Shore (France) 75 16 The Son of Joseph (France/Belgium) 113 8 Apprentice (Singapore/Germany/France/Hong Kong) 115 6 Land of Mine (Denmark/Germany) 100 5 Clash (Egypt/France) 97 7 Sieranevada (Romania/France/Bosnia & Herzegovina) 173 6 Alive & Kicking (US/Sweden) 88 12 The Student (Russia) 118 11 Personal Shopper (France/Germany) 105 5 Revengeanece (US) 71 16 All These Sleepless Nights (Poland/UK) 100 12 Daguerrotype (France/Belgium/Japan) 140 17
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19 12:00 WH 12:30 FOX 1:30 VC 2:30 LH2 2:45 WH 2:45 FOX 3:00 LH3 4:00 VC 5:00 WH 5:00 FOX 5:00 LH 6:00 VC 7:30 FOX 7:30 LH 7:45 WH
Short Cuts 6: Animated Worlds() 80 21 The World of Us (South Korea) 95 16 Life After Life (China) 80 7 Tonio (Netherlands) 100 11 Revengeance (US) 71 16 Kati Kati (Kenya/Germany) 75 7 Kékszakállú (Argentina) 72 18 Starless Dreams (Iran) 76 13 The Ornithologist (Portugal/France/Brazil) 117 11 One Week and a Day (Israel) 98 8 Truman (Spain/Argentina) 108 11 Soul on a String (China) 142 11 El Acompañante (Cuba/Panama/France/Colombia) 104 9 The Women’s Balcony (Israel) 96 9 Window Horses (Canada) 85 16
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21 3:30 FOX 5:45 WH 6:00 FOX 6:00 LH3 6:00 VC 6:30 LH2 8:30 FOX 8:30 LH3 8:30 VC 8:45 WH 9:00 LH2
MINUTES PAGE #
Aloys (Switzerland/France) 91 6 I Am Not Madame Bovary (China) 128 5 The Stopover (France/Greece) 102 8 Panamerican Machinery (Mexico/Poland) 90 8 Maliglutit (Canada) 94 10 Life After Life (China) 80 7 El Acompañante (Cuba/Panama/France/Colombia) 104 9 Raising Bertie (US) 102 13 Personal Shopper (France/Germany) 105 5 Short Cuts 8: In Pursuit() 91 22 Nakom (Ghana/US) 90 8
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22 The Stopover (France/Greece) 102 8 Raising Bertie (US) 102 13 6:00 FOX The Human Surge (Argentina/Brazil/Portugal) 100 18 6:00 VC Kati Kati (Kenya/Germany) 75 7 6:30 LH Sieranevada (Romania/France/Bosnia & Herzegovina) 173 6 8:30 WH One Week and a Day (Israel) 98 8 8:30 FOX The Dreamed Ones (Germany/Austria) 89 18 8:30 VC Old Stone (China/Canada) 80 8 3:30 FOX
5:45 WH
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23 3:30 FOX 5:45 FOX 5:45 VC 6:00 LH 6:00 WH 8:30 LH3 8:30 WH 8:30 VC 8:45 FOX 9:00 LH2
Old Stone (China/Canada) 80 8 I Am Not Madame Bovary (China) 128 5 Daguerrotype (France/Belgium/Japan) 140 17 Staying Vertical (France) 98 6 The Olive Tree (Spain/Germany) 100 5 Maliglutit (Canada) 94 10 It’s Only the End of the World (Canada) 99 10 Ma’Rosa (Philippines) 110 5 Apprentice (Singapore/Germany/France/Hong Kong) 115 6 Starless Dreams (Iran) 76 13
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24 The Sense of An Ending (UK) 109 11 Behemoth (China) 95 12 8:30 WH Death in Sarajevo (Bosnia & Herzegovina/France) 85 4 8:30 FOX Panamerican Machinery (Mexico/Poland) 90 8 10:30 BAG Without Name (Ireland) 105 17 6:00 WH
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20 12:15 LH3 12:45 WH 12:45 LH2 1:00 FOX 1:30 VC 3:15 LH3 3:30 WH 3:30 FOX 3:45 LH2 4:15 VC 6:00 WH 6:00 FOX 6:15 LH3 6:45 LH2 7:00 VC 8:30 WH 8:30 FOX 8:45 LH3
Ma’Rosa (Philippines) 110 5 Heidi (Germany/Switzerland/South Africa) 111 16 The Student (Russia) 118 11 The World of Us (South Korea) 95 16 The Long Excuse (Japan) 124 10 Paradise (Russia/Germany) 130 5 Alive & Kicking (US/Sweden) 88 12 Barakah Meets Barakah (Saudi Arabia) 88 6 Hedi (France/Germany/Qatar/Tunisia/United Arab Emirates) 88 7 After the Storm (Japan) 117 4 Short Cuts 3: Viewpoints() 85 20 Window Horses (Canada) 85 16 Afterimage (Poland) 98 4 Kills on Wheels (Hungary) 105 7 Nakom (Ghana/US) 90 8 The Olive Tree (Spain/Germany) 100 5 Behemoth (China) 95 12 All the Cities of the North (Serbia/Bosnia & Herzegovina/Montenegro) 97 18
6:00 FOX
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25 1:00 WH 3:30 WH 4:00 FOX 6:00 WH 6:30 FOX 8:45 WH 8:45 FOX 10:30 BAG
Short Cuts 4: Distant Tales() 100 20 Rara (Chile/Argentina) 88 8 The Sense of An Ending (UK) 109 11 After the Storm (Japan) 117 4 Death in Sarajevo (Bosnia & Herzegovina/France) 85 4 Staying Vertical (France) 98 6 Kékszakállú (Argentina) 72 18 The Autopsy of Jane Doe (US) 86 17
THEATER KEY WH - Whitsell Auditorium FOX - Regal Fox Tower LH - Laurelhurst Theater C21 - Cinema 21
VC - Valley Cinema Pub OMSI - Empirical Theater at OMSI BAG - Bagdad Theater
16
ANIMATED WORLDS
Louise by the Shore JEAN-FRANÇOIS LAGUIONIE | FRANCE Louise, an old woman, sits on the beach at a French resort town enjoying the last days of summer and writing in her diary. But when she misses the last train home, she winds up having to stay there alone through the winter. She builds her own cabin, grows her own vegetables, goes for long walks, philosophizes with her diary, and finds Pepper, a lost dog who shares her conversation and solitude. Laguionie’s endearing animated film weaves together a moving story of how being left behind forces us to confront the things and people we have left behind. “With her humour, quiet determination and lack of fear of the future, Louise is a delight–a Robinson Crusoe in pearls and a panama hat.”—Screen International. (75 mins.)
2/12 2:45 | FOX 2/18 3:15 | LH2 Sponsored by LAIKA and TV5Monde
My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea
Revengeance
Window Horses
BILL PLYMPTON, JIM LUJAN | US
ANN MARIE FLEMING | CANADA
DASH SHAW | US
Former Portlander Bill Plympton comes home for this special pre-release screening of his eighth feature, which tells the story of low-rent bounty hunter Rod Ross, the One Man Posse. Rod gets tangled in a web of seedy danger when he takes on a job from Deathface, an ex-biker, ex-wrestler turned US senator. Rod has to find what was stolen from the senator and find the girl who stole it. Soon, Rosse finds there’s more than meets the eye to this dirty job. “A madcap romp through a 1970s Los Angeles underbelly of bikers, wrestlers, strippers, cult members, bounty hunters, and corrupt politicians… in an explosion of anarchic, satirical insanity.”—British Film Institute. (76 mins.)
Vancouver animator Ann Marie Fleming’s first feature is an extraordinary tale of art, history, and family. Rosie (Sandra Oh), a young poet of Chinese and Persian descent, lives with her overprotective but loving Chinese grandparents but dreams of an artistic and glamorous life in Paris. An invitation to a poetry festival in Shiraz, Iran, thrills her, and though she has never travelled on her own, she embarks on a trip that will change her life. Integrating a range of animation styles, Flemings tells a universal multicultural tale. Best British Columbian Film and Best Canadian Film, Vancouver International Film Festival. (85 mins.)
“The title tells the tale in this inventive, beautiful, and more than a little bizarre animated feature debut from acclaimed graphic novelist Dash Shaw—surely the most delightful disaster movie in cinema history. To say that My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea is like John Hughes fused with The Poseidon Adventure makes for a snappy pitch—and it’s true—but it doesn’t prepare you for the sheer originality of Dash’s vision. Jason Schwartzman, Lena Dunham, Maya Rudolph, Susan Sarandon, and Reggie Watts supply voices for this story about what it takes to survive adolescence. Literally.”—Toronto International Film Festival. (75 mins.)
2/11 12:45 | C21 2/13 6:15 | LH2 Sponsored by LAIKA and the Lamb-Baldwin Foundation
2/18 8:45 | LH3 2/19 2:15 | WH
2/19 7:45 | WH 2/20 6:00 | FOX Sponsored by LAIKA
Sponsored by LAIKA
FILMS FOR FAMILIES
Half Ticket
Heidi
My Life as a Zucchini
The World of Us
SAMIT KAKKAD | INDIA
ALAIN GSPONER | GERMANY/ SWITZERLAND/SOUTH AFRICA
CLAUDE BARRAS | SWITZERLAND/FRANCE
GA-EUN YOON | SOUTH KOREA
Johanna Spyri’s classic children’s novels return to the screen for a new generation. Our heroine Heidi is sent to live with her cantankerous grandfather in the mountains of Switzerland after the death of her parents, only to have her world turn upside down once more, when she is dispatched to Frankfurt by her aunt. As he tells the story of Heidi, Gsponer allows us to see the hardships of nineteenth-century life, while celebrating the fresh air and magical landscape of the Swiss mountains. This is a timeless story of knowing who you are and remaining true to yourself, no matter where you might be. In German with English subtitles. Best Children’s Film, German Film Awards. (105 mins.)
Barras’s funny and brightly colored stop-motion film tells the story of nine-year-old Icare, known to his friends as Courgette (Zucchini). When he loses his mother due to tragic circumstances, young Zucchini is left all alone. Friendly police officer Raymond brings him to a home for children who have lost their parents. Although initially intimidated by the unusual, sometimes harsh place, Zucchini gradually opens up and finds there a new family and true love. Winner of the Best Feature and Audience prizes at the Annecy Animation Film Festival. This year’s Swiss submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. (66 mins.)
Half Ticket is a story of the “Have Nots” struggling to survive in a world of “Haves.” Fascinated by the arrival of a pizza parlor in their slum neighborhood in Mumbai, two mischievous young boys have one goal in mind: to taste this new delicacy. The pizza is wildly beyond their means, but they are determined to find a way. As we watch them navigate the hardship and poverty of their world, how they go about the challenge and what fate has in store will charm all ages. “The scenario is reminiscent of Italian and Iranian neo-realist fables like Bicycle Thieves and The White Balloon, but the energy and vibrancy is unmistakably Indian—there’s a dash of Slumdog Millionaire in here, for sure.” —Variety. In Marathi with English subtitles. (100 mins.)
2/12 12:00 | FOX 2/18 12:30 | LH2 Sponsored by the Lamb-Baldwin Foundation and World Foods Portland
2/11 12:00 | LH 2/20 12:45 | WH Sponsored by the Lamb-Baldwin Foundation
2/12 12:30 | C21 2/13 6:00 | OMSI Sponsored by the Lamb-Baldwin Foundation, LAIKA, TV5Monde, and the French American International School
At an age when perhaps friends mean more than moms, 10-year-old Sun is an outcast at school. During summer vacation, she meets Jia, who is new to town. As Sun shows Jia around the neighborhood and they play at each other’s houses and share secrets, they become best friends. However, when the new semester starts, Jia notices a strange vibe between Sun and the other kids. Jia tries to get into the cool kids’ group and starts to distance herself from Sun. Inside the complex and delicate world of children, the two girls end up hurting and getting hurt by each other. (95 mins.)
2/19 12:30 | FOX 2/20 1:00 | FOX Sponsored by the Lamb-Baldwin Foundation
17
PIFF AFTER DARK Our late night series at the Bagdad Theater offers special treats for adventurous devotees of genre, and genre-bending films that provocatively push boundaries. The latenight thrills for those who think they’ve see it all start at 10:30 pm and may keep you up even later.
The Autopsy of Jane Doe
A Dark Song
Daguerrotype
ANDRÉ ØVREDAL | UK/US
LIAM GAVIN | IRELAND/UK
A father (Brian Cox) and son (Emile Hirsch) coroner team delve into the mystery of a body discovered at a site of multiple murders. Unlike the other casualties of the crime, the corpse delivered to them is untouched by the multiple traumas visited upon the other victims. The deeper the two dig into this fleshy puzzle, the more disturbing secrets, residing tantalizingly below the surface, are revealed. (86 mins.) Short: Limbo, Will Blank, US. Stranded in the desert, a man is given a chance to wish for anything he wants. (8 mins.)
A grieving mother hires a man well versed in the occult to help bring her son back to life. The genius of Gavin’s film is how it paints its character’s attempts to break on through to the other side as humorous, highly questionable, and above all, time consuming. Favoring the notion that the journey is just as important as the destination, A Dark Song upends audience expectations of how horror films about people trying to resurrect their loved ones ought to operate. (100 mins.) Short: The Man from Death, Stephen Reedy, US. A manic homage to spaghetti Westerns, video game iconography, and ADHD. (13 mins.)
KIYOSHI KUROSAWA | FRANCE/BELGIUM/JAPAN
2/25 10:30 | BAG
2/12 10:30 | BAG Sponsored by Shudder
Horror master Kurosawa’s elegantly rendered ghost story set in modern-day France. Jean (Tahar Rahim) is hired as the assistant to Stéphane, a former fashion photographer who wallows in grief for his late wife while stubbornly clinging to the antiquated, long-exposure process of daguerreotype photography. As Jean learns the ropes, he begins to fall for Stéphane’s daughter Marie who endures, as her mother did in the past, the painful and physically demanding role of modeling for her father’s images. (131 mins.) Short: Overtime, Craig D. Foster, Australia. Workplace stresses conspire to bring out the inner beast when mandatory overtime comes into play. (9 mins.)
2/18 10:30 | BAG 2/23 5:45 | VC Sponsored by TV5Monde
The Eyes of My Mother
The Invisible Guest
We Are the Flesh
Without Name
NICOLAS PESCE | US
ORIOL PAULO | SPAIN
LORCAN FINNEGAN | IRELAND
A young girl named Francisca witnesses a terrible act of violence perpetrated by a stranger upon her mother. Years later, the child has grown into a solitary woman whose life on the same farm where those events occurred has devolved into a cycle of caring for her family’s livestock and a mysterious figure sequestered away in the barn. “If Ingmar Bergman had helmed The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, it might look something like this exquisite nightmare.”—The A.V. Club. (76 mins.) Short: The Dog, Hallvard Holmen, Aleksander Nordaas, Norway. A child watches as a squabble between neighbors unfolds. (10 mins.)
As a suspect is prepped for court testimony, the story of the crime, a murder in a hotel room where only two people— the accused and the victim—were present, deepens as new details emerge with each retelling. Paulo’s (The Body) film is Rashomonic in structure, but keeping the action centered entirely on one person’s shifting account of the abominable act. An exquisitely intelligent and tense thriller crafted for adult audiences. In Spanish with English subtitles. (106 mins.) Short: Manoman, Simon Cartwright, UK. A man undergoing primal scream therapy releases his own Mr. Hyde, and then hits the town with him. (11 mins.)
EMILIANO ROCHA MINTER | MEXICO
2/17 10:30 | BAG
2/10 10:30 | BAG 2/16 8:30 | LH
The most transgressive film in this year’s program, Minter’s trance-inducing feature concerns a brother and sister drawn into an underground sanctuary inhabited by a lone stranger. In return for shelter, the man demands they push themselves into a series of shocking ritualistic actions. “His thoroughly arresting vision could squat quite comfortably alongside Hieronymus Bosch’s depiction of hell.” —Variety. (79 mins.) Adult Audiences. In Spanish with English subtitles. Short: Judy, Ariel Gardner, Alex Kavutskiy, US. “A film about male entitlement and the role of women in society—a smart and funny movie that says a whole lot in ten minutes.”—Birth. Movies. Death. (11 mins.)
2/11 10:30 | BAG Sponsored by Shudder
Eric, a surveyor, is hired to assess a large plot of ancient forest. Superstitious warnings from the locals about the area, a handwritten book with half-mad ravings about ominous trees, and a shadowy figure have Eric on edge. Finnegan’s eco-horror tale not only offers up the most vivid dose of paranoia tied to location since Polanski’s The Tenant, it also throws down the gauntlet for the creepiest trees captured on film this decade. (93 mins.) Short: Strangers in the Night, Conor McMahon, Ireland. While protecting his grandmother from a banshee, Damien is overcome by unexpected feelings for the creature. (12 mins.)
2/24 10:30 | BAG
18
WAYS OF SEEING Bold, original, and aesthetically inventive new works pushing against the borders of cinematic expression, which in the process challenge our assumptions about the possibilities of image and sound, form and narrative.
All the Cities of the North
Dead Slow Ahead
The Dreamed Ones
DANE KOMLJEN | SERBIA/BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA/MONTENEGRO
MAURO HERCE | SPAIN/FRANCE
RUTH BECKERMANN | GERMANY/AUSTRIA
Built around origin myths and mysteries from a not-so-distant past, Komljen’s debut is set in an abandoned, hotel complex near the Montenegro/Albania border. Two men squat there in a singularly idyllic arrangement: wordless, contemplative, tender, yet soon interrupted by a unobtrusive interloper. Woven between these scenes are the documented histories of State-style planning, utopian in their idiosyncratic ways, texts from Simone Weil, Jean-Luc Godard, and classical Serbian poetry which complicate and reconfigure. “Anything is possible, and somehow, it all softly collides into one solid consummation that drifts deeply under the skin.”—Brooklyn Magazine. In Serbian with English subtitles. (100 mins.)
Despite new technology, the transport of physical goods continues to rely on age-old means. Herce’s film is a hypnotic and warmly austere trip aboard an cargo ship, the Fair Lady, endlessly traversing oceans with no apparent destination. The ship groans under pressure, engines clatter, waves crash, lightning strikes, and the workers sing karaoke between bouts of cleaning cavernous and unending holds while the world waits for its next delivery. In Tagalog with English subtitles. (74 mins.) Short: Night Without Distance, Lois Patiño, Portugal/Spain. On the Portugal/Galicia border, smugglers wait as night becomes palpable through technological means. (23 mins.)
2/10 6:00 | OMSI 2/15 8:30 | OMSI
2/14 8:30 | FOX 2/20 8:45 | LH3
In 1948, Paul Celan, a concentration camp survivor and esteemed post-war poet, met Ingeborg Bachmann, a writer whose father was a Nazi. They met again on just one more occasion, nonetheless generating almost 20 years of long- distance correspondence before Celan’s suicide in 1971. Inspired by fact and fiction, where document and literature intersect in the letters, Beckerman’s film is a cross between observational documentary and essay film. She kept the camera rolling between takes of two actors reading the letters, capturing palpable on-screen chemistry and evoking a contemporary romance from the historical source material. (89 mins.)
2/13 8:45 | LH3 2/22 8:30 | FOX
The Dreamed Path
Eldorado XXI
The Human Surge
Kékszakállu
ANGELA SCHANELEC | GERMANY
SALOMÉ LAMAS | PORTUGAL/FRANCE
EDUARDO WILLIAMS | ARGENTINA/BRAZIL/PORTUGAL
GASTÓN SOLNICKI | ARGENTINA
Set at 18,000 feet in the Peruvian Andes and focused on a community of exploited miners in the small village of La Rinconda, Lamas’s probing and uniquely-structured film questions both the means and the ends of material extraction—from both the earth and from the people who do the work. In the aural collage of the film’s first half, troubling personal testimony intermingles with the “official word,” creating a subtle cacophony of conflict. Later, scenes of intense natural beauty in the highest human settlement in the world are complicated by the presence of brutal manual labor, but in the end Lamas’s searching work has a profound empathy written all over it. (125 mins.)
Work and leisure—particularly in the “developing” world—has inexorably shifted to a quasi-industrial, quasi-service hellscape where everything is commodified and interpersonal relations have taken on many new forms. Williams’s shape-shifting network narrative (or is it documentary?)—jumping from Buenos Aires to Mozambique to the Philippines in three linked parts all revolving around listless youth—deeply understands these dynamics and presents us with a mysterious, languid yet wholly invigorating vision of precarious employment in the age of automation. Winner of the Golden Leopard for new filmmakers at the Locarno Film Festival. In Spanish and Portuguese with English subtitles. (100 mins.)
Influenced by the ethos of legendary French director Robert Bresson, The Dreamed Path is a riddle of a film and one of the year’s most exacting and precise works. In mid-80s Greece, two young lovers, Theres and Kenneth, sing on street corners to finance their travel while a revolution sputters in the background. Thirty years on in Berlin, a successful couple, Ariane and David, negotiate a painful split; David begins seeing Kenneth—now homeless—outside his apartment window. Meanwhile, Theres has also made her way to Berlin. “A glorious existential sucker punch.”—4:3. In German and English with English subtitles. (86 mins.)
2/11 6:00 | LH2 2/17 6:00 | LH2
2/13 8:30 | WH 2/16 5:45 | LH3
2/17 6:00 | FOX 2/22 6:00 | FOX
Loosely based on Béla Bartók’s 1918 opera “Bluebeard’s Castle” and largely constructed out of improvised scenes featuring non-actors, Solnicki’s film follows a group of young women embarking on life away from their parents’ watchful eye, and into an oscillation between a perplexing existence in a Uruguayan resort town and drab days in Buenos Aires. Shot with a formalist rigor (you may not see a more outwardly beautiful film this year) and edited toward the symbolic and elliptical, Solnicki’s exactingly stunning film is “a challenging, invigorating vision of cinema’s continued vitality.”—Sight & Sound. In Spanish with English subtitles. (72 mins.)
2/19 3:00 | LH3 2/25 8:45 | FOX
19
SHORT CUTS 1: On Art & Artists 2/11 12:30 | WH Total running time: 84 mins.
Hold On
Mining Poems
CHARLOTTE SCOTT-WILSON | NETHERLANDS
CALLUM RICE | SCOTLAND/UK
A young cellist has to overcome her fears in order to keep her position in an orchestra. (22 mins.)
Let’s Dance: Bowie Down Under RUBIKA SHAH | AUSTRALIA/UK The remarkable, forgotten story behind “Let’s Dance,” David Bowie’s biggest hit record. (11 mins.)
Robert, an ex-shipyard welder from Scotland, reflects on his newfound compulsion to write. His retrospective poetry reveals a man who is trying to achieve a state of contentment through words and philosophy. (11 mins., documentary)
HOLD ON
Brillo Box 3¢ Off LISANNE SKYLER | US Four decades ago, Skyler’s family paid $1,000 for a bright yellow Andy Warhol Brillo Box; now they bring millions at auction. As Skyler recounts her personal tale of the family’s Brillo Box she offers a fascinating perspective on the course of the art world over the last half century. (40 mins., documentary)
MINING POEMS
BRILLO BOX 3¢ OFF
SHORT CUTS 2: Family Ties 2/12 11:30 | WH Total running time: 93 mins.
Glove ALEXA LIM HAAS, BERNADO BRITTO | US The true story of a glove that’s been floating in space since 1968. (5 mins., animation)
It Was Yesterday VALENTINA PEDICINI | ITALY Giò, 13, is the head of a boys’ gang and is secretly in love with Paola. To win her heart, Giò is ready to compete with her male opponents. Then, in the last day of summer, innocence ends. (15 mins.)
A Done Deal
Five Boys and a Wheel
SIMON LAMARRE-LEDOUX, PIERRE DROUIN | CANADA
SAID ZAGHA | PALESTINE/JORDAN
Remy, a hitman for a small-time Montreal mobster, has to kill Fernand, an old associate who talks too much. The plan is simple: invite him for coffee, offer him a ride, and shoot him in the alley. Easy! A done deal . . . (10 mins.)
How Was Your Day? DAMIEN O’DONNELL | IRELAND A woman is excited about the approaching birth of her first child. (14 mins.)
In this Arabic-language adaptation of Raymond Carver’s “Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes,” a schoolteacher in Aqaba, Jordan, has to gain his young son’s confidence and admiration through an act of violence. (19 mins.)
GLOVE
Thanks for Dancing HENRIK MARTIN DAHLSBAKKEN | NORWAY A sweet and deeply moving testament to lifelong love, told through the story of two elderly men. (18 mins.)
Edmond NINA GANTZ | UK
HOW WAS YOUR DAY?
A man with questionable eating habits reflects on his life, and searches for the origin of his perverse desires. (10 mins., animation)
EDMOND
20
SHORT CUTS 3: Viewpoints 2/20 6:00 | WH Total running time: 85 mins.
The Procedure
Irregulars
CALVIN REEDER | US
FABIO PALMIERI | ITALY
A man is captured and forced to endure a strange experiment. (4 mins.)
Against the backdrop of a mannequin factory, one refugee tells his harrowing story. (9 mins., documentary)
Deer Flower KANGIN KIM | SOUTH KOREA/US A boy and his family visit a deer farm, where the boy has some peculiar experiences. (8 mins., animation)
The Chop LEWIS ROSE | UK In this “kosher comedy,” a skilled and charming Jewish butcher must expand his horizons after he loses his job. (17 mins.)
Home DANIEL MULLOY | KOSOVO/UK A young, happy family seems to be going on holiday but is instead on a journey similar to millions of others. (20 mins.)
The Goodbye CLARA ROQUET | SPAIN
DEER FLOWER
A Bolivian maid attempts to honor her late mistress’s last wishes. (14 mins.)
9 Days: From My Window in Aleppo FLOOR VAN DER MEULEN, THOMAS VROEGE | SYRIA Syrian photographer Issa Touma spent nine days holed up in his apartment, recording what was happening outside his window. The result? An unprecedented glimpse into a war that has been raging for three years now. (13 mins., documentary)
IRREGULARS
THE GOODBYE
SHORT CUTS 4: Distant Tales 2/25 1:00 | WH Total running time: 80 mins.
Borrowed Time ANDREW COATS | US A weathered sheriff returns to the remains of an accident he has spent a lifetime trying to forget. With each step forward, the memories come flooding back. (7 mins., animation)
The Trader MANUEL ALVAREZ DIESTRO, SERGIO BELINCHON | SPAIN A busy executive has a very unlikely commute to work. (12 mins.)
The Boy by the Sea
Morium
VASILY CHUPRINA | LATVIA/NETHERLANDS
MARK OLEXA, FRANCESCA SCALISI | BANGLADESH/SWITZERLAND
The story of an unlikely friendship between a young boy and an old lighthouse keeper. (7 mins.)
A beautiful but strange young woman says her parents must be punished for holding her prisoner and torturing her. They have a different story. (12 mins., documentary)
The Last Journey of the Enigmatic Paul W.R
Gods Acre
ROMAIN QUIROT | FRANCE
KELTON STEPANOWICH | CANADA
Mankind’s only hope of salvation rests upon the shoulders of the enigmatic Paul WR, the most talented astronaut of his generation. Mysteriously, a few hours before the mission launch, Paul has disappeared. (13 mins.)
Frank lives alone on his family’s ancestral Cree lands, but water levels are rising due to climate change, and evacuation seems more necessary every day. (15 mins.)
Eden Hostel
BORROWED TIME
MORIUM
GONZAGA MANSO | SPAIN Hanging on the wall in a humble hostel room has been a life-fulfilling experience for a statue of the Virgin Mary. A sly, black comedy from a unique perspective. (14 mins.)
FILM TITLE
21
SHORT CUTS 5: Made in Oregon 2/18 2:30 | WH Total running time: 94 mins.
Individual NATHAN SONENFELD | PORTLAND An animated meaning-of-self in a new world. (1 min.)
Your Move ROLLYN STAFFORD | PORTLAND Chess is the international game of strategy and tactic, but can it also be a beacon for love? (9 mins.)
The Cutting Shadow VU PHAM | PORTLAND Two Vietnamese brothers pay a visit to their drug-dealing cousin, discovering chaos, temptation, and a sinister other lurking behind the wall. (15 mins.)
Ascendant
Kuwepo
LEAH BROWN | PORTLAND
JAN HAAKEN | PORTLAND
Seven mysterious women sit around a table quietly dining until one woman disrupts the silence. (4 mins.)
Women’s health providers in Kenya must negotiate access, class, and religion in a nation striving to overcome its problems. (23 mins.)
These Flowers NOAH LAMBIE | LINCOLN CITY Flipbook and time-lapse animation interpret a poem of the same title by Hungarian poet Sandor Petofi. (3 mins.)
Carnal Orient MILA ZUO | CORVALLIS A dark and strangely surreal snapshot of sexual desire aimed at the exotic. (9 mins.)
Bare the Sun JESSE WIDENER | KLAMATH FALLS A man wanders through a scorching desert with only the precious water in his canteen, and a bandanna full of seeds he plants along the way. (10 mins.)
The Child and the Dead
THESE FLOWERS
KARINA & MARC RIPPER | PORTLAND In this quiet thriller, a father and his son and girlfriend are left stranded on a forest road after a car accident with a stranger. (14 mins.)
Incendio SLATER DIXON | PORTLAND
CARNAL ORIENT
Mexican food can be spicy, and sometimes, with a powerful punch, it can inflame passions we did not know existed. (6 mins.) Sponsored by Oregon Film, World Foods Portland, and OMPA
THE CHILD AND THE DEAD
SHORT CUTS 6: Animated Worlds LAIKA’s Mark Shapiro attends animation festivals from Annecy to Zagreb and has hand picked this collection of diverse works that showcase sparkling international talents. 2/19 12:00 | WH Total running time: 80 mins.
One, Two, Tree
Analysis Paralysis
Paniek!
YULIA ARONOVA | SWITZERLAND/FRANCE
ANETE MELECE | SWITZERLAND
JOOST LIEUWMA, DAAN VELSINK | NETHERLANDS
A tree takes the opportunity to borrow the boots of a hiker sleeping under its boughs and embarks on an adventurous excursion. (7 mins.)
A Head Disappears FRANCK DION | CANADA/FRANCE Jacqueline has lost her head, but who cares! For her trip to the seaside, she’s decided to take the train alone, like a big girl. (8 mins.)
Life Is Hard SIMON SCHNELLMANN | GERMANY/SWITZERLAND Life is not fair. In brief episodes, a few strokes are all it takes to get to the heart of various absurd moments. (3 mins.)
An Ordinary Blue Monday NAOMI VAN NIEKERK | SOUTH AFRICA One Monday morning, a girl gets ready for school, but in the ghetto neighborhood where she lives, violence is part of everyday life. (4 mins.)
Anton is lost in his own head until one day a yellow boot brings him to an exit. (9 mins.)
Blind Vaysha THEODORE USHEV | CANADA Vaysha is not like other little girls. Her left eye only sees the past and her right, only the future. But she can’t see the present. (8 mins.)
Sous Tes Doigts (Under Your Fingers) MARIE-CHRISTINE COURTÈS | MOROCCO When her grandmother dies, dance and traditional rituals in honor of the deceased allow young Emilie to retrace and relive the story of the women in her family. (13 mins.)
Au revoir Balthazar RAFAEL SOMMERHALDER | SWITZERLAND Freed from its fixed existence by a storm, a scarecrow leaves its unlived life behind and follows its desires. (10 mins.)
Marja’s imaginary mistakes grow to absurd proportions. (6 mins.)
Accidents, Blunders and Calamities JAMES CUNNINGHAM | NEW ZEALAND A father possum reads a bedtime story to his kids—an alphabet of the most dangerous animal of all—humans! (5 mins.) Sponsored by LAIKA
22
SHORT CUTS 7: Return to Landscape 2/16 8:30 | WH Total running time: 87 mins. Part of Ways of Seeing. Please see page 18 for section details.
An Aviation Field
Irradiant Field
JOANA PIMENTA | PORTUGAL/US
LAURA KRANING | US
“An aviation field in an unknown suburb. The lake underneath the city burns the streets. The mountains throw rocks into the gardens. In the crater of a volcano in Fogo, a model Brazilian city is lifted and dissolves.”—JP. (14 mins.)
“A visual and sonic portrait at the intersection of nature and machine— a desert mirage of light, wind, water, and metallic reflection.”—LK. (10 mins.)
Burning Mountains That Spew Flame
TERRA LONG | CANADA
SAMUEL M. DELGADO, HELENA GIRÓN | SPAIN A mysterious voyage into the depths of one of the longest volcanic tunnels in Europe to excavate an idiosyncratic history of resistance. (14 mins.)
As Without So Within MANUELA DE LABORDE | MEXICO/US/UK “Mapped as a contemplative film, it is the result of conceptual concerns and examinations on the act of going to the cinema, as well as the experiences offered, in particular, by author filmmaking.” —MDL. (25 mins.)
350 MYA
AN AVIATION FIELD
“Traces of unrelenting wind and the edges of harsh light create tangible and illusory shapes within space in the Tafilalt region of the Sahara Desert, which used to be the bottom of a prehistoric ocean.” —TL. (5 mins.)
Engram of Returning
BURNING MOUNTAINS
DAÏCHI SAÏTO | JAPAN “An epic 35mm CinemaScope meta physical travelogue that reveals a supernal world which pulses and flickers with formal patterns and deep hues.” —DS. (19 mins.)
ENGRAM OF RETURNING
SHORT CUTS 8: In Pursuit 2/21 8:45 | WH Total running time: 91 mins. Part of Ways of Seeing. Please see page 18 for section details.
025 Sunset Red
Cilaos
Old Hat
CAMILO RESTREPO | FRANCE
ZACH IANNAZZI | US
“To keep a promise made to her dying mother, a young woman goes off in search of her father, a womanizer she has never met . . . explores the deep and murky ties that bind the dead and the living.”—CR. (13 mins.)
Flying forward one minute, lying down the next—the past confronts the present. “Whatever the difficulty of finding a way forward, film does nothing but.”—Max Goldberg. (8 mins.)
LAIDA LERTXUNDI | SPAIN
Indefinite Pitch
“A kind of quasi-autobiographical reckoning. An indiscernibility of then and now. Recollection and immediacy. Delicacy and virility. The elusive and the haptic. The Basque Country and California.”—LL. (14 mins.)
JAMES N. KIENITZ WILKINS | US
Ha Terra!
Luna E Santur
ANA VAZ | BRAZIL
JOSHUA GEN SOLONDZ | US
“An encounter, a hunt, a diachronic tale of looking and becoming. As in a game, as in a chase, the film errs between character and land, land and character, predator and prey.”—AV. (13 mins.)
“Hooded figures, violent passion, and stroboscopic tenderness brought on by a paranormal encounter I had in the summer of 2015.”—JGS. (11 mins.)
“A pathetic movie pitch set in Berlin slips into the murkiness of memory and into histories best forgotten or purposely ignored.”—JNKW. (25 mins.)
Answer Print
CILAOS
MÓNICA SAVIRÓN | US “The fading that devastates color films occurs in the dark. It is accelerated by high temperatures and, to a lesser extent, relative humidity. Dye fading is irreversible. Once the dye images have faded, the information lost cannot be recovered”—Image Permanence Institute. (5 mins.)
INDEFINITE PITCH
OLD HAT
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PUBLIC & SUSTAINING
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PIFF XL FILM INDEX
Feature Films ARGENTINA
The Distinguished Citizen
FINLAND
ISRAEL
SINGAPORE
The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki
Forever Pure Maya Zinshtein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 One Week and a Day Asaph Polonsky . . . . . . . . 8 The Women’s Balcony Emil Ben Shimon. . . . . . 9
Apprentice Jenfeng Boo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Juho Kuosmanen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
FRANCE
ITALY
All the Cities of the North Dane Komljen. . . . . 18 Death in Sarajevo Danis Tanovic´ . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Sieranevada Cristi Puiu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Apprentice Jenfeng Boo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Clash Mohamed Diab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Daguerrotype Kiyoshi Kurosawa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Dead Slow Ahead Mauro Herce. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 The Death of Louis XIV Albert Serra . . . . . . . . . 4 Death in Sarajevo Danis Tanovic´ . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 El Acompañante Pavel Giroud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Eldorado XXI Salomé Lamas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Fire at Sea Gianfranco Rosi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Frantz François Ozon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Graduation Cristian Mungiu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Hedi Mohamed Ben Attia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 I Am Not Your Negro Raoul Peck . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 It’s Only the End of the World Xavier Dolan. . 10 Like Crazy Paolo Virzì. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Lost in Paris Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon . . . 10 Louise by the Shore Jean-François Laguionie. . 16 My Life as a Zucchini Claude Barras. . . . . . . . . 16 Nocturama Bertrand Bonello . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 The Ornithologist João Pedro Rodrigues. . . . . . 11 Personal Shopper Olivier Assayas . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Sieranevada Cristi Puiu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 The Son of Joseph Eugène Green . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Staying Vertical Alain Guiraudie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 The Stopover Delphine Coulin, Muriel Coulin. . . 8 Wùlu Daouda Coulibaly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
BRAZIL
GERMANY
The Human Surge Eduardo Williams. . . . . . . . . . 18 The Ornithologist João Pedro Rodrigues. . . . . . 11
Apprentice Jenfeng Boo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Austerlitz Sergei Loznitsa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 The Dreamed Ones Ruth Beckermann. . . . . . . . . 18 The Dreamed Path Angela Schanelec. . . . . . . . . 18 The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki
NORWAY
Gastón Duprat, Mariano Cohn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
The Human Surge Eduardo Williams. . . . . . . . . . 18 Kékszakállu Gastón Solnicki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Parting Navid Mahmoudi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Rara Pepa San Martín . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Truman Cesc Gay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 AUSTRIA
The Dreamed Ones Ruth Beckermann. . . . . . . . . 18 BELGIUM
After Love Joachim Lafosse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Burden Timothy Marrinan, Richard Dewey. . . . . . . 12 Daguerrotype Kiyoshi Kurosawa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Graduation Cristian Mungiu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 I Am Not Your Negro Raoul Peck . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 The Land of the Enlightened Pieter-Jan De Pue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Lost in Paris Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon . . . 10 A Quiet Passion Terence Davies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Son of Joseph Eugène Green . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA
BULGARIA
Glory Kristina Grozeva, Petar Valchanov. . . . . . . . . 10 CANADA
Juho Kuosmanen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Rara Pepa San Martín . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Hedi Mohamed Ben Attia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Heidi Alain Gsponer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Kati Kati Mbithi Masya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Land of Mine Martin Zandvliet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Olive Tree Icíar Bollaín . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Paradise Andrei Konchalovsky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Personal Shopper Olivier Assayas . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Suntan Argyris Papadimitropoulos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
CHINA
GHANA
It’s Only the End of the World Xavier Dolan. . 10 Maliglutit Zacharias Kunuk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Old Stone Johnny Ma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Window Horses Ann Marie Fleming. . . . . . . . . . . . 16 CHILE
Behemoth Zhao Liang. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 I Am Not Madame Bovary Feng Xiaogang. . . . 4 Life After Life Zhang Hanyi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Old Stone Johnny Ma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Soul on a String Zhang Yang. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 COLOMBIA
Nakom T.W. Pittman, Kelly Daniela Norris. . . . . . . . 8 GREECE
Glory Kristina Grozeva, Petar Valchanov. . . . . . . . . 10 The Stopover Delphine Coulin, Muriel Coulin. . . 8 Suntan Argyris Papadimitropoulos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
El Acompañante Pavel Giroud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
HONG KONG
CROATIA
Apprentice Jenfeng Boo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Ten Years Ng Ka-leung, Jevons Au, Chow Kwun-
Train Driver’s Diary Milos Radovic´. . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Wai, Fei-Pang Wong, Kwok Zune . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
SOUTH AFRICA
JAPAN
The Age of Shadows Jee-woon Kim. . . . . . . . . . . 9 The Invisible Guest Oriol Paulo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 The World of Us Ga-eun Yoon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Yourself and Yours Hong Sangsoo . . . . . . . . . . . 6
After the Storm Hirokazu Kore-eda. . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Daguerrotype Kiyoshi Kurosawa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 The Long Excuse Miwa Nishikawa. . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Nagasaki: Memories of My Son Yoji Yamada. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
KENYA
Kati Kati Mbithi Masya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 MEXICO
Panamerican Machinery Joaquín Del Paso. . . 8 We Are the Flesh Emiliano Rocha Minter . . . . . . 17 MONTENEGRO
All the Cities of the North Dane Komljen. . . . . 18 NETHERLANDS
The Commune Thomas Vinterberg. . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Land of the Enlightened Pieter-Jan De Pue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Tonio Paula van der Oest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Forever Pure Maya Zinshtein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 The King’s Choice Erik Poppe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 PANAMA
El Acompañante Pavel Giroud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 PHILIPPINES
Ma’Rosa Brillante Mendoza. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 POLAND
Afterimage Andrzej Wajda. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 All These Sleepless Nights Michał Marczak. . 12 Panamerican Machinery Joaquín Del Paso. . . 8 PORTUGAL
The Death of Louis XIV Albert Serra . . . . . . . . . 4 Eldorado XXI Salomé Lamas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 The Human Surge Eduardo Williams. . . . . . . . . . 18 The Ornithologist João Pedro Rodrigues. . . . . . 11 QATAR
Hedi Mohamed Ben Attia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 ROMANIA
Graduation Cristian Mungiu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Sieranevada Cristi Puiu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 RUSSIA
HUNGARY
El Acompañante Pavel Giroud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Kills on Wheels Attila Till. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
CZECH REPUBLIC
INDIA
Forever Pure Maya Zinshtein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Paradise Andrei Konchalovsky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Student Kirill Serebrennikov. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
The Teacher Jan Hrˇebejk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Half Ticket Samit Kakkad. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
SAUDI ARABIA
DENMARK
IRAN
Barakah Meets Barakah Mahmoud Sabbagh. . 6
The Commune Thomas Vinterberg. . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Land of Mine Martin Zandvliet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Life+1Day Saeed Malekan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Parting Navid Mahmoudi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Starless Dreams Mehrdad Oskouei. . . . . . . . . . . 13
SENEGAL
Clash Mohamed Diab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
IRELAND
A Dark Song Liam Gavin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 The Land of the Enlightened
Pieter-Jan De Pue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Without Name Lorcan Finnegan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
The Teacher Jan Hrˇebejk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Fire at Sea Gianfranco Rosi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Indivisible Edoardo De Angelis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Like Crazy Paolo Virzì. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
CUBA
EGYPT
SLOVAKIA
Wùlu Daouda Coulibaly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 SERBIA
All the Cities of the North Dane Komljen. . . . . 18 Train Driver’s Diary Milos Radovic´. . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Heidi Alain Gsponer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 SOUTH KOREA
SPAIN
Dead Slow Ahead Mauro Herce. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 The Death of Louis XIV Albert Serra . . . . . . . . . 4 The Distinguished Citizen Gastón Duprat, Mariano Cohn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
The Olive Tree Icíar Bollaín . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Truman Cesc Gay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 SWEDEN
Alive & Kicking Susan Glatzer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Burden Timothy Marrinan, Richard Dewey. . . . . . . 12 The Commune Thomas Vinterberg. . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki Juho Kuosmanen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
SWITZERLAND
Aloys Tobias Nölle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Heidi Alain Gsponer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 I Am Not Your Negro Raoul Peck . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 My Life as a Zucchini Claude Barras. . . . . . . . . 16 TUNISIA
Hedi Mohamed Ben Attia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 TURKEY
Kedi Ceyda Torun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Hedi Mohamed Ben Attia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 UNITED KINGDOM
The Autopsy of Jane Doe André Øvredal. . . . . 17 Burden Timothy Marrinan, Richard Dewey. . . . . . . 12 A Dark Song Liam Gavin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Forever Pure Maya Zinshtein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 A Quiet Passion Terence Davies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Sense of an Ending Ritesh Batra. . . . . . . . . 11 UNITED STATES
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail Steve James. . 12 Alive & Kicking Susan Glatzer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 All These Sleepless Nights Michał Marczak. . 12 The Autopsy of Jane Doe André Øvredal. . . . . 17 Burden Timothy Marrinan, Richard Dewey. . . . . . . 12 Buzz One Four Matt McCormick. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 The Eyes of My Mother Nicolas Pesce. . . . . . . 17 I Am Not Your Negro Raoul Peck . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Kedi Ceyda Torun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea Dash Shaw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Nakom T.W. Pittman, Kelly Daniela Norris. . . . . . . . 8 Obit Vanessa Gould. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Raising Bertie Margaret Byrne. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Revengeance Bill Plympton, Jim Lujan. . . . . . . . . . 16
27
PIFF XL FILM INDEX
Short Cuts
PALESTINE
AUSTRALIA
PORTUGAL
Let’s Dance: Bowie Down Under
Rubika Shah. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Five Boys and a Wheel Said Zagha . . . . . . . . . . 19 An Aviation Field Joana Pimenta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 SCOTLAND
Mining Poems Callum Rice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
BANGLADESH
Morium Mark Olexa, Francesca Scalisi . . . . . . . . . 20 BRAZIL
Ha Terra! Ana Vaz. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 CANADA
350 MYA Terra Long. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Blind Vaysha Theodore Ushev. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 A Done Deal Simon Lamarre-Ledoux, Pierre Drouin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
A Head Disappears Franck Dion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Gods Acre Kelton Stepanowich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 FRANCE
Cilaos Camilo Restrepo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 A Head Disappears Franck Dion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 The Last Journey of the Enigmatic Paul W.R Romain Quirot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 One, Two, Tree Yulia Aronova. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
FILMMAKER SERVICES MANAGER
SOUTH KOREA
EXHIBITION PROGRAM MANAGER & PROGRAMMER
Naomi van Niekerk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Deer Flower Kangin Kim. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 SPAIN
025 Sunset Red Laida Lertxundi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Burning Mountains That Spew Flame Samuel M. Delgado, Helena Girón. . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Eden Hostel Gonzaga Manso. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 The Goodbye Clara Roquet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 The Trader Manuel Alvarez Diestro, Sergio Belinchon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
SWITZERLAND
SYRIA
IRELAND
9 Days: From My Window in Aleppo
JAPAN
Engram of Returning Daïchi Saïto. . . . . . . . . . . . 22 JORDAN
Five Boys and a Wheel Said Zagha . . . . . . . . . . 19 KOSOVO
Home Daniel Mulloy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 LATVIA
The Boy by the Sea Vasily Chuprina. . . . . . . . . . . 20 MEXICO
As Without So Within Manuela De Laborde . . 22 MOROCCO
Sous Tes Doigts (Under Your Fingers)
Marie-Christine Courtès. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
NETHERLANDS
The Boy by the Sea Vasily Chuprina. . . . . . . . . . . 20 Hold On Charlotte Scott-Wilson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Paniek! Joost Lieuwma, Daan Velsink. . . . . . . . . . . 21 NEW ZEALAND
Accidents, Blunders and Calamities
James Cunningham. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
NORWAY
Thanks for Dancing
Floor Van Der Meulen, T homas Vroege . . . . . . . . 20
SWITZERLAND
20 Irregulars Fabio Palmieri It Was Yesterday Valentina Pedicini . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
EDUCATION DIRECTOR
An Ordinary Blue Monday
Life Is Hard Simon Schnellmann. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Bill Foster Ellen Thomas
GERMANY
ITALY
NORTHWEST FILM CENTER DIRECTOR
SOUTH AFRICA
Analysis Paralysis Anete Melece . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Au revoir Balthazar Rafael Sommerhalder . . . . 21 One, Two, Tree Yulia Aronova. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
How Was Your Day? Damien O’Donnell. . . . . . . 19
Film Center Staff & Faculty
Life Is Hard Simon Schnellmann. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Morium Mark Olexa, Francesca Scalisi . . . . . . . . . 20 UNITED KINGDOM
As Without So Within Manuela De Laborde . . 22 The Chop Lewis Rose. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Edmond Nina Gantz. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Home Daniel Mulloy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Mining Poems Callum Rice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 UNITED STATES
An Aviation Field Joana Pimenta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Answer Print Mónica Savirón. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 As Without So Within Manuela De Laborde . . 22 Ascendant Leah Brown. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Bare the Sun Jesse Widener . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Borrowed Time Andrew Coats. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Brillo Box 3¢ Off Lisanne Skyler. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Carnal Orient Mila Zuo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 The Child and the Dead Karina & Marc Ripper. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
The Cutting Shadow Vu Pham. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Deer Flower Kangin Kim. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Glove Alexa Lim Haas, Bernado Britto. . . . . . . . . . . 19 Incendio Slater Dixon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Indefinite Pitch James N. Kienitz Wilkins . . . . . . 22 Individual Nathan Sonenfeld. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Irradiant Field Laura Kraning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Kuwepo Jan Haaken . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Luna E Santur Joshua Gen Solondz . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Old Hat Zach Iannazzi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 The Procedure Calvin Reeder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 These Flowers Noah Lambie. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Your Move Rollyn Stafford. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Ben Popp Morgen Ruff PR & MARKETING MANAGER
Benna Gottfried PUBLICITY & PROMOTIONS MANAGER
Nick Bruno EDUCATION PROGRAMS MANAGER
Mia Ferm DEVELOPMENT MANAGER
Rachel Record EQUIPMENT MANAGER
Edward Davee MEMBERSHIP & DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE
Bailey Cain THEATER MANAGER
Micah Vanderhoof HEAD PROJECTIONIST
Arika Oglesbee ADMINISTRATIVE COORDINATOR
Sergei Khlopoff EDUCATION SERVICES COORDINATORS
Stephanie Hough, Andrew Price, Miles Sprietsma ENCORE FELLOW
Jennifer Newman PIFF VOLUNTEER COORDINATOR
Felisha Ledesma PRINT TRAFFIC COORDINATORS
Jeffrey Sundin, Erik McClanahan PRODUCTION DESIGN
Tricia Chin, Michael Smith, Denise Brem WEB DESIGN
Sam Miller
PIFF THEATER STAFF
Scott Braucht, Zoe Cohen, Meg Cook, Nikki Cormaci, Khai East, Oktay Ege Kozak, Jaden Fooks, Ryan Fox, Rachel Haigh, Robert Ham, Wilhelmina Hayward, Brandon Horne, Alesha Judd, Jennifer Knop, Dustin Krcatovich, Danielle Lathrop, Jesse Liams-Hauser, Claire Lindsay, Mick Mangold, Emily Mercer, Claudia Meza, Adam Neve, Jason Longwell, Joshua Rossman, Chase Spross, Megan Hattie Stahl, Miriam Talus, Abigail Thompson, Christine Valentine, Ian Westmorland, Christof Whiteman, Injoong Yoon, Iris Young, Amanda Zogby FACULTY
Dan Ackerman, Kyle Aldrich, Steve Amen, Bushra Azzouz, Scott Ballard, Patricia Baum, Andy Blubaugh, Steve Doughton, Mark Eifert, Beth Federici, Sean Grasso, Brenda Grell, Paul Harrod, Courtney Herman, Randall Jahnson, Emile-Rose Kalin, Alain Letourneau, Brian Lindstrom, Maddie Loftesness, Pamela Minty, Gary Nolton, Amy O’Brien, Mark Orton, Dan Schaefer, Dave Slay, Jean Margaret Thomas, Melissa Tvetan, Will Vinton, Wayne Woods OFFICE INTERNS & VOLUNTEERS
Austin Fontenot, Abigail Thompson, Omar Rivera, Paul Hansen, Vincent Warne, John Heun, Tuesday Blue, Kellen Rear, Levy Wang, Conner Vanloo, Danielle Lathrop, Geoff Vrijmoet, Lucas Ospina, Nathan Sonenfeld, Ian Westmorland PORTLAND ART MUSEUM BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Janet Geary, Chair; Richard Louis Brown, Vice Chair; Laura Meier, Secretary; H. Pat Ritz, Treasurer NORTHWEST FILM CENTER COMMITTEE
Linda Andrews, Alix Meier, Yale Popowich, Bob Warren, Don Van Wort PORTLAND ART MUSEUM MARILYN H. & DR. ROBERT B. PAMPLIN JR. DIRECTOR
Brian Ferriso
EDUCATION PROGRAM ASSISTANTS
Injoong Yoong, Scott Braucht, Rose Holdorf, Iris Young, Natalie Carroll, Jordan Ros, Zuszsanna Mangu, Molly Preston, George Gibson NWFC THEATER STAFF
Katie Burkart, Mitchell Glidden, Rose Holdorf, Stephanie Hough, Erik McClanahan, Shannon Neale, Tony Olsen-Cardello, Ilana Sol, Lisa Tran, Veronica Vichit-Vadakan, Larisa Zimmerman
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Identification Statement Publication Title: Northwest Film Center Portland International Film Festival Issue Date: February, 2017 Statement of Frequency: Published six times per year Authorized Organization Name and Address: Portland Art Museum, Northwest Film Center 1219 SW Park Ave., Portland, Oregon 97205 Issue Number: Volume 45, Issue 2
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