Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters, the opening night film at this year’s Seattle International Film Festival, confirms him as one of the few American filmmakers capable of turning political rage into genuinely original spectacle. Riley has not spent the eight years since Sorry to Bother You (SIFF 2018) moderating either his politics or his imagination.

For a movie featuring a giant rolling ball of unpaid bills that stalks its protagonist Corvette (the always wonderful Keke Palmer), portals used to move stolen goods between the U.S. and China, and a pyramid scheme called “Friends Helping Friends,” something even stranger happened between its SXSW premiere in March and its SIFF screening on May 14: shoplifting went mainstream.

A booster, you may have surmised, is slang for a shoplifter who resells stolen merch. In late April, The New York Times attempted to launder shoplifting into something chic, rebranding it as “microlooting” in a now-infamous podcast featuring Maus’s nepo baby, the most fashionable writer at The New Yorker, and a millionaire Twitch streamer all agreeing that theft was socially acceptable.

Anybody who can sit through hours of Hasan Piker and come away thinking they’ve encountered a serious political thinker deserves whatever happens to him, so let’s get back to I Love Boosters.

Corvette is an ambitious fashion designer, professional booster, and resident of an abandoned chicken restaurant. Her schemes generally involve a white woman feigning illness while Corvette and her crew stuff themselves into what resemble sumo suits made of stolen clothing before bewildered sales associates can figure out what’s happening. Her partners include Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige), though the operation evolves considerably once they encounter Jianhu (Poppy Liu), a young Chinese woman harboring a secret capable of emptying a department store in minutes.

Corvette eventually sets her sights on Christie Smith (Demi Moore), the world’s most recognizable designer and a woman incapable of speaking to another human being without dripping contempt. Appropriately, Smith operates out of a leaning tower whose floors tilt at absurd angles. Corvette wants both to destroy Smith and earn her approval, capturing the psychic contradiction at the heart of capitalism: even those who reject the system still crave validation from the people sitting atop it.

The film boasts a hilarious lineup of supporting performances, including Don Cheadle as Dr. John, the grinning head of the “Friends Helping Friends” MLM empire, and Lakeith Stanfield as a dangerously charming suitor hiding a monstrous secret. The funniest performance may belong to Will Poulter as Greyson, the techno-loving manager of a Metro clothing store who forces employees to pay for the outfits they are required to wear on the sales floor.

Metro, Christie Smith’s fashion brand, mandates that every outfit sold or worn in its stores remain strictly monochromatic. Greyson has no tolerance for last year’s monochrome appearing on this year’s sales floor, even when the colors are indistinguishable to the human eye.

Sometimes anti-capitalist messaging in movies can feel rote, even to those of us inclined to agree with it. Riley, however, earned his credentials years before socialism became a fashion accessory for podcast guests and people with Substacks. Long before “eat the rich” became an aesthetic, his hip-hop group The Coup had already recorded “5 Million Ways to Kill a CEO” and notoriously planned to release an album cover depicting the destruction of the World Trade Center in the fall of 2001.

Frustratingly, I Love Boosters often feels unfinished. Entire character tensions appear only to evaporate, particularly between Corvette and Sade. Naomi Ackie, the breakout star from last year in Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17, feels underused here. Riley also introduces brilliant ideas, like the unpaid-bills boulder, before abandoning them almost as quickly as he discovers them.

For all its flaws, I found it difficult to care. The movie runs only 105 minutes, and while Boots Riley may run out of time, he remains far from running out of ideas.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

I Love Boosters is now in wide-release.

SIFF Opening Night photos by Morgen Schuler. Movie still courtesy of Neon.

The post SIFF 2026 Notebook: <em>I Love Boosters</em> appeared first on The SunBreak.

Whether they’re trying or not, most horror movies reflect the times in which they’re made. 

Not surprisingly, the increased prominence of a certain toxic orange monster—and the Pandora’s Box of ignorance, cruelty, and racism said monster threw wide open about a decade ago—has inspired a lot of genre cinema that gives voice to the frustrations and fears of the disenfranchised. 

Mārama, a 2026 Seattle International Film Festival Jury Award winner starting its proper theatrical run today, taps into that zeitgeist brilliantly. It dresses some weighty themes in ornate period drag, only to tear that finery down with a ferocity that feels richly earned, masterfully suspenseful, and incredibly cathartic. 

It’s 1859, and Mary (Ariāna Osbourne), an orphaned young Māori woman, travels from New Zealand to England after receiving a letter from one Thomas Boyd. The correspondence promises revelations about the parents she never knew, but upon arriving in the UK, Mary discovers that Boyd died several months previous. Marooned in England with little hope of returning to her homeland, she accepts a job from wealthy whaling magnate Sir Nathaniel Cole (Toby Stephens) as governess to his young granddaughter Anne (Evelyn Towersley). 

Cole’s cultivated an obsession with Māori culture during his years whaling in the waters off New Zealand, filigreeing his estate with a massive collection of Māori artifacts and speaking the language fluently. Soon, it’s clear that his cultural appropriation skews to fetishization, that he’s likely hiding definitive (and potentially terrifying) answers to many of Mary’s most nagging questions. 

The setup portends a classic gothic melodrama (Stephens describes Mārama in interviews, not inaccurately, as “Jane Eyre on a bad acid trip”), and writer/director Taratoa Stappard uses that trope-worthy framework as a jumping-off point. Things feel elegant yet uneasy at first; then Mary gradually unpeels the layers of awfulness underneath, and things get more visceral, ugly, and sledgehammer-shocking. Along the way, Mary’s beset by vivid dreams and visions that hint at a deeper spiritual connection than she’s initially aware of. 

Stappard handles the buildup masterfully. The basic gist of the horror is divulged about halfway through, which makes Cole’s growing menace, the depth of the ethnic exploitation, and tattooed henchman Jack’s (Erroll Shand) loose-cannon monstrousness feel like horrific accidents in slow-motion.

By the time Mārama hits its final reel, things have hit a fever pitch, with the immaculately-appointed veneer of Cole’s massive estate giving way to blood, violence, and wholesale mayhem. It’s here that the movie well and truly kicks into horror high-gear, and the gusto with which it goes there can be understandably jarring (at least, that seems to be the one sticking point amidst the praise the movie’s received from critics). But Stappard’s script and direction sow the seeds of that descent into the nightmarish for much of the running time. 

Mary’s dawning awareness and embrace of her own heritage—and her anger over the horrors wrought on her and her people by colonialist exploitation—evolve as her (possibly supernatural) visions increase in intensity. You can’t ask for a better focal point or avatar for this than Osbourne, whose performance modulates brilliantly as things get heavier: When circumstances turn her into an Avenging Angel in a sumptuous red ballgown, Mary’s as visually iconic as she is ass-kickingly magnetic.  And if the movie wallows in righteous fury at the end, it does this while remaining true to Mary’s character and delivering some major catharsis for an audience.

Lest all of this sound like an over-intellectualized polemic, be assured that it doesn’t play that way. Taratoa Stappard takes on a lot of thorny issues in his debut feature film, but at its core, Mārama remains an incredibly well-engineered, gripping, and exhilarating piece of entertainment. Sometimes, a spoonful of sugar—or, in this case, a solid mix of succulent period detail, violence, shocks, and horror—really makes the medicine that is the message go down smoothly. 

Mārama opens today at the SIFF Cinema Uptown, AMC Alderwood 16, and Tasveer Film Center.
Images courtesy Watermelon Pictures/Dark Sky Films

The post <I>Mārama</I>: A Mesmerizing SIFF 2026 Award winner gets a proper run appeared first on The SunBreak.

A long time ago, on a streaming service too not far away from your couch, Disney+ brought live-action episodic Star Wars content onto your television. The Mandalorian was initially a simple Space Western about a bounty hunter named Din Djarin roaming the galaxy taking prisoners for cash in the topsy-turvy aftermath of reconstruction that occurred after the Rebels blew up the Death Star (the second one), killed the Evil Emperor (the first time), and everyone waking up with a Yub Nub dance hangover to piece together a New Republic. A low-stakes weekly diversion, the motivating premise was that the title hero wore armor so cool-looking that no one could possibly care that Pedro Pascal’s face would almost never appear on screen. Soon enough, he flips from hunting a rascally Baby Yoda to rescuing him from nefarious Imperial fetishist creepers obsessed with his Force-sensitivity. Like the audience who adored the little creature (the magic of puppetry), he eventually adopts the little fellow as his foster son and they get up to all kinds of adventures together. Now, after several seasons of increasingly complicated lore involving cults, factions, conspiracies, and space swords, and the revelation that the kid’s name is Grogu, the pair have made the leap from streaming to the big screen, but unfortunately it’s hard to call the result a movie.

Instead, it’s like gathering in a theater to binge-watch a few episodes of a television show you’d kind of forgotten about in the intervening years since the last season aired. Not the worst idea in principle — watching fun stuff with other people who also like it is a thrill of cinema going — but the major problem with the Mandalorian and Grogu is that the episodes they chose to smash together to cash in on ticket sales aren’t particularly good ones, let alone very special episodes in terms of theme, development, or effects. As individual episodes of a TV show, these would be among the more forgettable. As a Star Wars movie, the collection of episodes squished together is easily at the bottom of the pile.

On the bright side, director Jon Favreau (who co-wrote the script with Dave Filoni & Noah Kloor) cast aside almost entirely the mythology of the recent seasons, making the film a neutral entry point for new fans, especially younger ones. Everything is vastly simplified, likely in the hopes that parents will take their kids, those kids will love seeing Grogu doing silly things, and will get hooked on Star Wars. It’s not a terrible gambit, but the extreme degree to which the plot and script are catering to the shortest attention span makes for a gratingly long two hours. 

Opening amid some stilted extortion among Imperial loyalists, the movie sets off with a twenty-minute action sequence. It’s kind of cool if nonsensical, but will thrill anyone who ever dreamed of seeing an AT-AT stretch the limits of “all terrain” by navigating a comically narrow and perilous mountain switchback. Soon, the titular bounty hunter returns to a seaside tropical airbase to claim his fees and draw another assignment. We learn that with his parenting responsibilities, he’s become more selective, choosing only to work on rooting out the villainous scum still holding on from the scattered Empire. This quest, for a commander whose face is unknown, will lead him, his little friend, and a CGI-animated Grape Ape pilot to navigate some slimy family dynamics in service of rescuing a wayward kid to extract some information. There are some vaguely interesting new planets and environments to visit, each building to a bigger and bigger CGI fight sequence mostly involving gross-looking creatures and/or robots. 

The execution of the story is sloppy in service of simplicity. Villainous characters state their villainy so plainly that a neon sign expressing their motivations would have been too subtle. Then they repeat it word for clunky word a few beats later. Flatly delivered dialogue is so direct and mind-numbing that the much-derided talk of trade routes from the prequels is Shakespearean in comparison. Throughout, characters repeat their nefarious motivations multiple times in nearly the same words over the span of minutes, as if the writers expect viewers to be distracted while scrolling on their phones. The stakes are utterly negligible, in large part, because the only thing stronger than the Beskar Steel worn by Mandolorians is the plot armor protecting our title duo from harm.

Basic plot details seem to shift minute-to-minute as if re-writes were happening between shots. At one point, a New Republic commander played by Sigourney Weaver (one of the film’s few human characters to show her face, albeit while giving a performance that leaves no impression) gives Mando a brand-new spaceship (a replica of the old one) as advance payment for a bounty hunting job. A few scenes later, she tells him she can’t pay him for the work he just completed. Later, some enemies speechify about how they’ll revel in watching a humbled foe live out his years in perpetual shame while they hold his prized possession as a trophy, then toss him and that item into a pit to die immediately. These aren’t not a huge things individually, but they stack up as symptomatic of a shoddily written script and cobbled-together continuity. 

Worse, one of the pleasures of a mission-of-the-week format should be watching the hero figure things out through some combination of wit and charm. There’s none of that here. The Mandalorian gets an assignment to find a faceless someone or other, and going on no information beyond a location, stumbles into them in a matter of minutes entirely by chance. At one point, he tries bribing a simian-like cheesesteak street cart vendor (Martin Scorsese in his Star Wars debut!) for information, only to have it pointed out that he is surrounded by dozens of posters with that subject’s face on them. Bounty hunting used to be an art, now any idiot can do it.

I might be way out of the mainstream, but the stunning miscalculation of the film is just how much it overestimates an audience’s interest in Hutts. Rather than bring back or introduce any human characters, the plot pushes all of its chips in on squabbling power dynamics of a crime family of big, slimy, green worms best known for their patriarch having briefly enslaved Princess Leia into a metal bikini-clad figure of sexual awakening for an entire generation. If you thought that one big gangster worm was gross as a side character, just wait until you see a planet full of them! If the CGI addition of one in motion freaked you out in Lucas’s tinkered re-release of the original trilogy, you cannot possibly be prepared for an entire movie about these creatures, let alone Jabba the Hutt’s rebellious son who’s looksmaxxed his way into being a jacked, over-muscled, arena fighter working off his debts. Voiced unrecognizably by Jeremy Allan White, one can only assume he’s leveraging the work he put into having played another tortured wrestler with a menacing father in The Iron Claw, a movie that fewer people saw during its entire run than will see this one on opening night.

The core issue with the film is less the beat-to-beat plotting than that neither of our heroes are movie stars. They barely have any character traits, let alone the potential for development or growth. You’d hope that a feature-length film would be ideally suited for drama or overcoming conflict, but both headliners have been reset to blank slates, barely informed by several seasons of television. Din Djarin is by nature a man of few words, which minimizes Pedro Pascal’s voice acting, and the helmet means that his face-time is limited to a few contractually required minutes. With the stunt actors sharing top billing, it’s unclear how much time anyone spent on set. Grogu fits this Marvel/Disney mandate that these movies hinge on a plucky, mostly clueless child in perpetual peril as the primary plot device. He’s indeed very cute, but that’s a crutch best deployed in smaller doses. As the minutes tick on, is it so wrong for an audience who’s been watching for years to imagine that he’d grow into more than a stuffed animal? The little dude is adorable and will continue to sell tons of toys, but both he and the movie mostly seem to forget that he’s more than a stuffed animal until the plot absolutely requires him to remember that he’s essentially a superhero. At least he’s still a puppet, having escaped the plague of ugly CGI that surrounds him.

The film is both mostly harmless and also easily the worst Star Wars movie ever released. I loathed the dreadful ending of Rise of Skywalker, but at least it had characters and ideas, several that I wish I could forget. With Mandalorian and Grogu, I’m already struggling to remember anything aside from that Ludwig Göransson got to write a soundtrack with a sick techno-influenced space song for a grimy Blade Runner-style planet. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by the splendors of Andor in terms of the dizzying heights that Star Wars episodic storytelling can achieve. As much as I understand that there should always be a place for kids at the Star Wars table, this is not the way.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu arrives in theaters on May 22 and will be on Disney+ before you know it
Images courtesy Lucasfilm.

The post <i>The Mandalorian and Grogu</i>, or “This Is not The Way”. appeared first on The SunBreak.

Overall take on this SIFF … did you feel the SIFF Effect and achieve Optimal Cinelation?

Or, What number would you click on this year’s new QR-code scoresheet? 

Chris: You could definitely say I achieved maximum cinelation. I’ve been writing about SIFF for almost twenty years. I believe this was my eighteenth SIFF in nineteen years (damn you, COVID) and this was 100% my favorite. Even though there was only one party (that I didn’t attend), I thought this year was the strongest programming lineup in recent memory. I only saw a large handful of films this year but thoroughly enjoyed all of them. I believe only two films I saw were not on standby. The opening and closing night films both made my top five list. Plus, I had five minutes to geek out over two of my favorite movies with Olivia Wilde on the closing night red carpet because she has been outspoken about how they influenced her excellent new film The Invite.

Morgen:  This year I got my engines revving early with some at-home screeners because I had a BTS concert to get to during the second weekend of SIFF. I was a bit bummed about the timing, especially now that the whole festival only spans two weekends rather than a month like SIFFs passed. However, I feel like I got a great mix of films under my belt before I hopped the plane Friday. Cinelation? I don’t know about that, it was a smaller scale fest which of course made for fewer options. My initial feeling was that a lot of the films were dark, sad or stressful. That switched gears a bit later in the week when I focused on films that looked to be on the lighter side. I’ve not had to dig for funny, sweet or even romantic options in the past and so many films this year had a negative bent to them. That doesn’t mean the films were bad in any way, it was just exhausting to see more than one or two at a time.

Josh: Due to some competing travel and nagging allergy season I didn’t go full immersion in SIFF but the parts I saw merited a 3.5 to a 4.0. There’s something tough about a film festival close to home where it’s much easier for “real life” to intrude or distract from festival-going.

Still, between SIFF and Sundance, I saw over 20 features that played this year’s festival, and liked most of them. Overwhelmed by the sprawling program, I decided to see as much as I could of the Northwest Connections Program (incredibly solid — from very good to really great across the board from strong narrative features like Assets and Liabilities and world premiere sci-fi drama Again Again as well a knockout documentary collection headlined by Powwow People) and the Official Competition (much more of a mixed bag, a few standout favorites and a couple that just were not for me, which seems like the right mix for a collection that aims to challenge), plus a few other titles that caught my eye via festival buzz.

Tony: All told, my SIFF experience was good, and I even hit proper cinelation one day last week (more on that later). Over the last few years, the Seattle International Film Festival has morphed from a near-month-long monolith to a taut ten days. That very condensed experience made things feel inherently frenetic, especially when life and an increasingly demanding day job conspired to gum up the works for me. That said, I saw 14 movies over the course of the festival—the majority of which were good-to-great. And in a first-ever for my coverage of SIFF, I saw all of my festival selections in a theater as God and SIFF intended. 

I’d likewise give SIFF 2026 an overall 3.5 – 4 out of 5.

Let’s get into it, the Golden SunBreak Awards: Best Narrative Feature

Josh: My favorite narrative feature was probably Drunken Noodles, a series of vignettes stretching through a few days spanning two summers in the life of an arts graduate student, one during a stint petsitting for a cat while interning at a New York City gallery, another spending a weekend with his intimacy-challenged boyfriend in upstate New York. Seamlessly blending depictions of a handsome guy making fleeting erotic connections with other with surreal flourishes, it plays like a languid realistic fantasy with terrifically observed vibes. (Whether the degree to which casual encounters play out so effortlessly and rewardingly is fantastical or realistic also probably varies a lot, depending on how much someone looks like Laith Khalifeh, who makes for a very alluring protagonist, holding the screen and the attention of other characters with equal ease.) The fragments play out in reverse chronological order, each informing the previous with new depth, until they circle back to the present day with technology interfacing unexpectedly with the past. With its mix of careful observation, realist depictions, and intrusion of dreamlike qualities, it’s an excellent hang.

Morgen:  I have to mention Franz first. I’ve been a Kafka fan for a long time. It’s been ages since I read Metamorphosis but the emotional impact and flat-out weirdness of Kafka’s storytelling is what seared those stories into my brain. Typically, you know the editing is really impressive when you don’t notice it at all and the flow, the story and the actors all work seamlessly to create an experience. This is true of Kafka, but it was so well done, both the script and the editing, that I couldn’t help but notice. It was pieced together in a way that should not have worked. It wouldn’t have worked if it weren’t incredibly well thought out and organized. But the entire film, I felt like I was either in one of Kafka’s stories or being pulled along with one. It was so odd, so unconventional, yet perfectly fitting to the tell the story of a man who himself is odd and unconventional. I think Franz would have approved.

Chris: If there was a movie that was ever designed in a lab solely for me to enjoy, it would the closing night film, The Invite. Though I do bring some bias to this (see above), I believe the film stands on its own as the best of the fest. Updating Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf with a different comedic sensibility, the movie is tense, hilarious, well-acted, and incredibly potent. Olivia Wilde directs and stars in a one-location dramedy about a dinner party between two couples (Wilde and Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton) that goes disastrously off the rails and forces all parties to confront secrets that they’d rather keep dormant.

Tony: I saw a lot of great stuff this time around, but two movies really stood out, both of which were period dramas that dove down the rabbit hole of the very, very dark folk/fairy tale. Gaua marks the third feature film from Paul Urkijo Alijo. Based on his track record, he’s evolving into a singular auteur with an aesthetic that dwells somewhere between Guillermo del Toro and Robert Eggers, with a liberal dose of European absurdism and dark humor stirred in. Gaua ostensibly follows the adventures of young Kattalin (Yune Nogueiras) as she escapes her abusive husband in 17^th century Spain. But Alijo’s crammed everything includingthe kitchen sink into the mix; Kattalin’s search for agency (and escape from her monster of a husband); witches, demons, clandestine lesbian desires, black magic, and atmosphere thick enough to cut with a knife. It also boasts a pretty unique structure that represents an odd sorta-inversion of an anthology movie. Somehow, it all holds together in one fascinating, assured package. Easily the most immersive thing I saw all SIFF.

Josh: In terms of immersion, I’d also toss an honorable mention to the nearly three hour long Silent Friend, which played in the Official Competition. Another collection of loosely intertwined stories of isolation and connection, this one ostensibly follows a trio of academics whose foibles play out, separated by decades, in the general vicinity of a magnificent gingko tree on a German college campus. Tony Leung Chiu-wai gives a wonderfully soulful performance as a visiting neuroscientist whose time left (almost) all alone on the Marburg campus during the Covid-19 lockdown finds his interest turning to the thoughts of plants with remote assistance from Léa Seydoux and to the major annoyance of a reticent security guard. A story set decades earlier finds Enzo Brumm as an escaped farmboy studying literature who rediscovers an interest in plants over one languid summer while plant sitting a bourgeois geranium while his beautiful experimental botanist (Marlene Burow) flatmate decamps for a hiking vacation. A third story, set at the turn of the twentieth century and filmed in evocative black & white finds a brilliant young woman (Luna Wedler) overcoming stereotypes to find a place for herself in a deeply sexist scientific lab. That the film and the tree give the same weight to the resolution of these human arcs is Ildikó Enyedi’s greatest joke. For those who missed it, the Tree Movie opens this weekend at SIFF Cinema for a theatrical run that’s worth your time.

Tony: The other movie that really clicked for me was Taratoa Stappard’s Mārama. It represents an angrier, more blunt examination of a woman overcoming patriarchal abuse and exploitation, this time set in 1850s England. A young Māori woman, Mary (Ariana Osbourne, who’s just brilliant in the role), is invited to become a governess in North Yorkshire for the granddaughter of a wealthy whale hunter. As she gains her sea legs at the job, the gig quickly exposes the deep rot and malevolence of colonialism. Then Mary’s embrace of her heritage—and her outrage at  the pillaging of her culture—come to a head in an epic way. It’s shot, decorated, and lit with incredible lushness, which makes its hard turn into violence all the more brute-force effective. I see every misgiving that could put off some, but I was certifiably riveted.  

Best Documentary?  

Josh: Documentaries are always popular among SIFF audiences and it was invigorating to see so many truly great locally-connected ones. My favorite that I saw at the festival was The Life We Leave, a moving and compelling story of a local entrepreneur who’s part of a transformative movement toward human composting. On its face, the idea sounds instantly revolting, but getting to understand the process, witness the powerful work that trained funeral directors brought to inventing new customs for grieving, and seeing the effect on families who entrust their loved ones to their care was deeply moving in ways that I never expected. Please, consider this my advance directive that when my time comes, turn me to dirt!

Chris: I really loved two local documentaries, Radioheart: The Drive and Times of DJ Kevin Cole and Phoenix Jones: The Rise and Fall of a Real Life Superhero. The Kevin Cole documentary was incredibly moving about a fixture in the Seattle music community who has a lifetime of bringing people together through music. There were a handful of deeply moving scenes that required tissues.

The Phoenix Jones doc was much different but it captured a surreal time in Seattle lore. Jones is an enigmatic figure full of contradictions and I think director Bayan Joonam does a good job of unraveling the mystery.

Josh: Although I saw it at Sundance, while we’re mentioning local connections, I’d also mention Ghost in the Machine, an eye-opening and enraging AI documentary. Playing out in a series of chapters, it is deeply informative about the troubled roots of AI as well as deeply skeptical of almost all of its claims. It’s been at the top of my mind for months in terms of cutting through so much absolute idiocy in the field.

Tony: In a crowded field of docs that all sounded worthy, I wound up not catching a single one, so I shall initiate my own category of Best Mockumentary, and place Lady in the winner’s circle. It starts out as an amusing Grey Gardens riff, with BAFTA-nominated filmmaker Sam (Laurie Kynaston) shadowing rich, eccentric heiress Isabella (Sian Clifford of Fleabag fame). Then it becomes increasingly surreal—think a found-footage movie helmed by Dario Argento andLuis Bunuel. Clifford’s a distinctive, full-on presence, and director Samuel Abrahams trains his spotlight on her as she gradually reveals layers of vulnerability and passion beneath her oddball, shallow socialite exterior. Great stuff.

Morgen: I had a couple that really rose to the top. First of all The Seoul Guardians was quite an eye-opening experience. I mentioned this in our opening weekend picks; I had been following along what I thought had been most of the story when Seoul erupted into rallies and riots the night their president declared martial law (and swiftly was voted down and ousted). However, American news barely scratched the surface and this film picks up where that left off. From shaky footage captured by news anchors as they ran into the National Assembly Building before the cops blocked the entrances to civically sourced mobile video as citizens blocked the military invasion with their bodies, it was a truly heroic story of faith in justice, the power of the people and the right to question your leaders. It was beautiful, scary and hit too close to home.

Special mention for Best Performances?

Chris: I was really fond of April X, a sci-fi flick set in futuristic Eastern Europe, though part of the New American Cinema program. It got my first place vote in the Critics Poll. Connor Storrie stars as an Area Man who makes his living in the black-market body-parts industry but finds himself in too deep. He’s fine but his co-star Lilly Krug is phenomenal as his sister who mysteriously vanishes (and then reappears and reappears years later) after trying to get her brother out of his jam. Excellent work for someone who I hope has a big future ahead of her.

Morgen: Again, there were a few standouts in this category but I’ll keep it brief and narrow down to one. Lubna Azabal in Hot Water was absolutely outstanding. Playing the Lebanese-born Layal, at times she expressed a myriad emotions and personal demons without even saying a word. The playful, yet complicated relationship she has with her son, who is just touching the edges of adulthood, is so well reasoned I would have thought they really were actually related. The quirky moments flowed naturally, the arguments and tension-filled pauses didn’t feel forced and the story resolved in a way that seems true to life; almost nothing that happens to us is completely good or completely bad. The chemistry between her and her co-star/son Daniel Zolghadri contributed to the impact of her performance so he played a role in that as well. Hot Water could have ended up another downer of a film, but instead director Ramzi Bashour made an effort to inject silly moments but in an impactful way.

Josh: Drawing again from the stellar Northwest Connections program, I’d highlight the incredible performance of Again Again writer, co-director, and lead Mia Moore Marchant. She brings incredible depth and variety to portray a woman who’s been stuck in a single day time loop with her longtime best friend and sometimes girlfriend. It’s a deeply lived in performance that makes room for the fantasy of a perfect day, the frustration of having lived many imperfect ones, and the anxiety and ecstasy of having escaped it. An impressive debut, across the board.

I’d also mention Ariaana Osbourne from gothic horror Mārama, who plays an indigenous Maori woman who travels to England to uncover the mystery of her past, discovers deeply unsettling secret, and exacts suitably violent revenge. The movie didn’t entirely work for me as well as it did for Tony, but her performance was an unshakeable force.

Tony: Both of the leading ladies in Gaua and Mārama (Yune Nogueiras and Ariana Osbourne, respectively) blew me away, but I also wanted to give the leads in Roid, a quietly absorbing little folk tale/allegory from Bangladesh, a shout-out. Mostafizur Noor Imran’s naturalistic, restrained performance as the weary husband to Nazifa Tushi’s naïve, emotionally volatile, wildly unpredictable bride represented the most involving character arc I saw throughout SIFF 2026. 

SIFF’s juries and audiences have spoken … our reactions to the winners:

Along with SIFF’s audience awards, the Fool Serious film fanatics and Seattle Critics also released lists of festival favorites. Here’s how they compare:

Golden Space Needle
(Audience Award)

NARRATIVE:

1. Eddie Arnold is a Loser 
2. Happy Birthday
3. Meadowlarks
4. The Furious
5. Mārama

DOCUMENTARY:

1. The Life We Leave
2. RADIOHEART: The Drive and Times of DJ Kevin Cole
3. The Big Cheese
4. The Ascent
5. American Doctor

BEST DIRECTOR:
Ildikó Enyedi, Silent Friend 

BEST PERFORMANCE:
Inde Navarrette, Obsession 

JURY: Along with the audience awards SIFF’s juried competition winners included: Mārama (Official); The Garden We Dreamed (Ibero-American); Shape of Momo(New Directors); Lucky Lu (New American Cinema); Birds of War (Documentary).

Fool Serious
(Passholders)

NARRATIVE

1. Happy Birthday
2. Amrum
3. Trial of Hein
4. Silent Friend
5. Murder in the Building

DOCUMENTARY:

1. The Ascent
2. American Doctor
3. The Life We Leave
4. When a Witness Recants
5. Boorman and the Devil

Best Director: Fatih Akin, Amrum
Best Cinematographer: Gergely Palos, Silent Friend
Best Script: Remi Bezancon, Murder in the Building
Best Music: Primavera
Best Actor: Paul Boche, Trial of Hein
Best Actress: Lubna Azabal, Hot Water
Best “Guilty Pleasure”: Edie Arnold is a Loser

Critics Award
(Media)

OVERALL

1. Obsession
2. Mārama
3. I Love Boosters
4. Again Again
5. Silent Friend

Josh: I didn’t see a ton of these, but the people, pass holders, and critics all coming up with a different number one film is definitely interesting. I credit some of that to tastes and a bit to the different voting systems. It takes a lot of love to hang out and scan a QR code after a film … I appreciate that counting paper ballots must’ve been a nightmare, but I’d love to see SIFF implement something where you get an email after the screening reminding you to vote. Still, audiences agreeing with me about The Life We Leave is gratifying, Silent Friend breaking into critics and pass holders is notable given the runtime, and everyone loving Radioheart is no suprise given the subject matter and extra screenings. Mārama is also a worthy champion of the official competition; I wish I’d seen it in a theater instead of at home in bed!

Chris: I didn’t get to see many of these either, though I tried to prioritize the movies that were on standby over the ones that appealed to my niche tastes. I do appreciate that there really was no consensus

Morgen: I’m not surprised that Edie Arnold rose to the top for audiences. It was funny, entertaining and a somewhat unique story told in a way that felt authentic. However, it had some issues like throwing in some questionable behavior by some adults just to get a laugh, but glossing over how problematic that behavior was. I really enjoyed Trial of Hein and Again Again, so I’m glad those made someone’s list but there are so many that maybe weren’t hyped enough but didn’t get the attention they deserved. Oh well, that’s what we’re here for right?

Josh: I will say that I walked out of a screening at SIFF Uptown on Friday night (head spinning with what to make of Maddie’s Secret) to see a line of people waiting for autographs from from Again Again’s Mia Moore Marchant on the red carpet. Feels like this festival might’ve been the beginning of a star turn for both her and the film. I love it when SIFF can be a launchpad — for a world premiere, no less!

Final thoughts … Any wishes for SIFF’s future? 

Josh: I kinda get it that SIFF wanted to scale back on parties (in its place they coordinated various meetups at local establishments), but I confess that I missed the official closing night festivities as an official gathering to send off the festival. I also happened to be out of town for opening night and triple booked for the Golden Space Needle awards; so some of this is on me for not engaging more personally in achieving optimal Cinelation this time around. On the other hand, I live in the city and though I missed the light rail proximity of Pacific Place, I acknowledge that condensing the venues around SIFF’s campus and stocking the Downtown SIFF-erama and PACCAR IMAX with a variety of feature films was a pretty cool way of making the event feel like a festival village rather than a series of scattered screenings.

Morgen:  I really hope they’re able to lengthen the fest a bit more next year, but I understand that budgets are tight all around, especially for the arts, so I’ll take what I can get. Keep on keepin on, we love you SIFF and we are invested in keeping you around. Otherwise, I enjoyed myself both at home absorbing as many films as I could and surrounded by the energy of film-goers excited for something new. I even chatted with a few people here and there and all of them were having a fantastic time SIFF-ing.

Chris: I agree, Josh, about missing the closing night party (though I would’ve been insufferable at it), and, honestly, the opening night party too. It sold out before we knew it wasn’t included in our press tickets. Still, I very much enjoyed this festival more than in recent years. Last year seemed like a down year, from what I remember. There seemed to be a lot of key staff members who didn’t return this year and it felt like there were a lot of movies that I liked the politics of more than I liked watching the actual film. But this year felt like a more focused SIFF. A lot of the screenings I went to were sold out or nearly full and I suspect as many as four movies could be on my best of 2026 list (The Invite, April X, I Want Your Sex and I Love Boosters). I really appreciated this newly-focused SIFF and I hope they keep the same momentum next year.

Josh: The staffing challenges are definitely concerning and my fingers are crossed for SIFF to remain a vital part of Seattle’s filmgoing culture both through the annual festival and year round. They’ve built an impressive collaboration with Grand Illusion while that group’s daring curators seek a permanent home, too. So despite grumbling from some quarters about the festival shrinking, I very much appreciated how any behind-the-scenes constraints pushed for tighter and more rigorous curation of the festival itself. I’d pretty much always prefer a festival with slightly fewer titles so long as it means that the lineup is stacked with the best of the best. A ten day festival is tough to navigate, so slightly fewer films with more showings would be a welcome course correction. I did like how this year’s schedule left space for TBAs, allowing a wild surprise addition (Maddie’s Secret, what a trip!) as well as room for extra screenings to be added for films that sold out so quickly. Giving the stars of the festival more room to shine was a very welcome facet.

Tony: I fully respect that SIFF’s needed to tighten their belts some on the party front, but I too miss having a Closing Night Gala. And given the sprawling nature of past Opening Night Galas, I likewise understand the need to scale that back as well. 

Given the utter pummeling that nonprofits in general and arts nonprofits in particular are getting from the current administration, the fact that SIFF’s standing at all is a cause for celebration. And when it comes down to it, every quibble I harbored about SIFF 2026 (and there really weren’t many) largely seemed like a side effect of a lower budget. Blessedly, what really counts most at the Seattle International Film Festival—the film curation—remainspeerless. Things ran well overall, and the films I saw largely rocked my world: Long may SIFF survive and thrive. 

Josh: So say we all, congrats to everyone at SIFF from staffers to volunteers for pulling off another impressive edition!

The 2026 Seattle International Film Festival runs from May 7-17. Keep up with our reactions on social media (@thesunbreak) and follow our ongoing coverage via our SIFF 2026 posts

The post SIFF 2026 Roundtable: Festival Exit Survey, Golden SunBreak Awards appeared first on The SunBreak.

The hometown connection is obvious, but I think the reason this doc connected with audiences is because, frankly, it is just really good. Kevin Cole makes for a compelling subject because he has an uncanny ability to bring stories out of musicians who are used to answering the same questions over and over again. Plus, he has been a pivotal figure in music for more than fifty years, usually present at the moment of creation. He helped launch the influential Minneapolis music venue First Avenue, ran an innovative radio station that gave DJs complete autonomy over their playlists, and then moved to Seattle, where he helped launch Amazon’s music service before joining KCMU prior to its transition into KEXP.

I met up with directors Peter Hilgendorf and Andrew Franks at the KEXP Gathering Space for a wide-ranging, hour-long conversation. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Let me start with the genesis of this film. How did it come about?

Peter: I’ll start with this: I’ve known Kevin since back in the Minneapolis days. When he was at the radio station Rev 105, I was working at a newspaper, and we were planning to collaborate. Then all hell broke loose at Rev 105. A year or two later, I moved to Seattle and got a call from him saying, “Hey, Amazon’s going to start selling CDs on the internet.” That was exciting.

I convinced him that Seattle would be a great place for him. He wanted to know about record stores, clubs, and the radio scene (specifically if KEXP was for real). I assured him it was. I was playing in a band, working at Easy Street Records, and going out to clubs all the time. I told him, “The worst thing that happens is you leave after a year. You help Amazon get off the ground, and then you find a radio job.”

He loved Seattle, and he loved early Amazon because it was packed with absolute music freaks. He met his match with people who wanted to talk about classical, jazz, avant-garde, and country music around the clock. But radio is what Kevin truly loves. Throughout his career, he and I would constantly collaborate on fun, transitional projects for KEXP pledge drives. I was always a hard yes.

When it came time for him to step back from full-time drive time, he asked me what he should do. I suggested a ten-minute thank-you video for YouTube featuring Kevin and a few of his former bosses: Steve McClellan from First Avenue, Jen Cast from Amazon, and Tom Mara from KEXP. That was the original plan.

But during the interviews, those three wouldn’t stop talking because they kept telling these incredible stories. The camera and sound crew were wrapping up and saying, “I didn’t know Kevin did all that! How are you going to fit this into ten minutes?” I realized how deeply his former bosses saw his impact. Suddenly, we were looking at a twenty-minute story, which snowballed into 15 or 20 interviews. I asked Kevin, “How do you feel about a short film?” He asked, “Do people care?” I told him, “Everyone helping who doesn’t even know you is digging this, so yes.”

Jen Cast pulled me aside and noted that we’d need to raise money to hire a proper crew and make it really good. People came out in droves wanting to fund his story. Then the race was on. Footage was rolling in from out of state. I called Bob Mould’s manager, and thirty minutes later, Bob was in.

I got great advice from filmmaker Brian Lindstrom, who told me: “You’re making the movie for all the right reasons, but you need to find an editor who will save you from yourself. Otherwise, you’ll just include all the inside jokes you and Kevin love and miss the bigger picture.” Without that advice, it would have been a hot mess.

Like twelve hours long.

Peter: Exactly. I don’t have an ego about letting things go. I called Craig Brooks at Kontent Partners, a great video company in Seattle. He looked at the bones of the story and told me there was only one person for the job: Andrew Franks.

Andrew came on board in the fall of 2024. He looked at my beautiful mess of a rough cut and we really started editing in earnest by January 2025. Around that time, the Northwest Film Forum and Washington Filmworks came on board because they loved the project. Keeping it a hometown, all-Washington production team was a huge motivation. By then, Andrew had about 25 to 30 interviews to sift through.

Andrew: Originally, Peter and our producer, Rebecca Staffel, asked if I could do this in four months. I said it wasn’t impossible, but they came to me with a mountain of interviews that needed b-roll and archival footage we didn’t yet have. Only about 60 percent of it was shot when I started, so it ultimately took seven or eight months. Sifting through all those interviews was daunting. It was about navigating the scope without getting paralyzed by overwhelm.

I started by building what I knew. The first scene we put together was Iceland, because it was relatively simple. From there, we slowly picked off the interviews, took notes, and figured out which characters were shining through to tell the story. Along the way, Peter and Rebecca asked me to jump on as co-director.

Peter: He earned it.

Andrew: Editors aren’t always credited as co-directors, but with documentaries, so much of the film’s vision is truly found in the edit. I had never met Kevin before, but everyone I knew spoke so highly of him. I’ve never heard a single negative thing about him.

Peter: Honestly, that was a challenge. There was a version of the film where every single person just said, “Kevin’s incredible! I love Kevin!” But you want to barf if it’s just that. That’s not a movie. It’s just…

Hagiography.

Peter: Hagiography is exactly the word I did not want applied to our film.

How open was he about his struggles?

Peter: That was a struggle. He knew he needed to go there, but Kevin’s perspective was, “That stuff was back in ’88. I’ve been sober ever since and never relapsed. Why make it the focus of the film when I’ve done so much cool stuff since?”

Through the process of watching other documentaries, he came to understand why it was important. To capture those deeper moments, Andrew used some great directing techniques, like going tight on him or shooting on an old VHS camcorder to give it an intense, internal monologue feel.

Andrew: We were having a tricky time getting him to drop his guard and not give prepared interview answers. To get the deeper stuff, we tried a technique where we simulated a radio environment. We put headphones on him, had him talk directly into a mic, and made it so he couldn’t see who he was talking to. That loosened him up enough to get the connective tissue we needed for the film.

Peter: Meanwhile, the rest of us were literally laying on the floor of his home studio hiding behind boxes, whispering intense questions.

He was very conscious of his image. He said, “Yes, I struggle with depression and I have my meditation practices, but I don’t want people to think I’m just some depressed guy.” We told him, “Kev, nobody thinks that. Showing people that you actively work on your mental health sends an incredibly positive message.” He was down for it after that.

One of the things I took away from the film is that he became a vessel for other people to tell their stories, like his moving interview with Brandi Carlile about being disowned by her church when she came out.

Peter: Kevin is brilliant at getting people to open up. His feature Music Heals is all about encouraging that vulnerability. Yet, he sat on his own story for years. We were so lucky he finally shared it, and he didn’t just gloss over it; he got into the gritty details.

He never wanted to glamorize it. It was incredibly important to Kevin and to us that this didn’t feel like a VH1 Behind the Music episode that glorifies drug use. We wanted to take it seriously to show people that you can push beyond addiction, even when it’s incredibly difficult.

The one minor “flex” we included is a shot of a New York Dolls album signed by Johnny Thunders that reads, “Hey Kev, thanks for the fix.” That’s the most stylized version of it. If you’re going to be a bad boy, doing it with Johnny Thunders is as far as you can go.

I don’t think you glamorized it at all. I remember his partner, Shawn Stewart, speaking early in the film about how difficult he was during his addiction.

Andrew: Yeah, she gave a great example of him ghosting her for days and then casually showing up with beer like nothing was wrong. Say no more, because the audience immediately understands that dynamic.

I want to ask about what I thought was the big flex in the movie: when Prince asked Kevin to play one of his tracks while Kevin was DJing at a Minneapolis club.

Peter: Oh, yeah. That’s wild. We had two or three interviews of people recounting that night, and I knew it was gold because we could cut between perspectives and have Kevin wrap a bow around it.

Andrew: We knew it had to be a major scene, but as I edited it down, I realized just showing Kevin talking wasn’t exciting enough. We had incredible photos of Prince, but it didn’t match the epic nature of the story. I suggested to Peter that we animate the sequence. I wanted to give that legendary night the larger-than-life treatment it deserved.

Peter: It came together beautifully. I reached out to Pat Moriarity, a brilliant comics artist who used to work at Twin/Tone Records in Minneapolis but now lives here in Seattle. Because Pat is from Minneapolis, he knew Kevin, he knew the venue, and he could draw the vibe of the club straight from memory. He teamed up with our creative director, Eric Kassel, to animate it. It came out incredibly authentic. Pat knew exactly what records were stacked behind Kevin and what t-shirt he would have been wearing. Working with an illustrator who pours their own teenage memories into a project is a dream.

To me, the turning point for Kevin in the film was Rev 105, a great opportunity that ended abruptly when the station was sold and turned into a heavy metal format.

Peter: I was a listener back then, tuning in to Shawn on that final day. Andrew edited that scene beautifully. Interestingly, I expected Kevin to be deeply depressed about it in his interviews. He took it hard, but he refused to say it knocked the wind out of his sails. Instead, he dove into his journals and self-reflection. It pissed him off more than it dejected him, and he just leaned into his vision even harder.

Andrew: What made this film challenging from an editing standpoint is that it’s essentially the story of four or five startups across different eras. You have to give the audience enough context to understand the stakes. Rev 105 was particularly tough because it left a massive footprint on Minneapolis culture, but we had very little footage from the mid-’90s to show it.

Peter: We relied on a single promotional tape shot for a beer sponsor. It didn’t have booth shots of Kevin; it was mostly a promotional bus driving around ski resorts. But it did feature a shot of the Rev 105 sign and a camera walking into the elevator and up into the station. We stretched and used every single pixel of that footage.

So the startups were First Avenue, Rev 105, Amazon, and KEXP?

Peter: Yep, along with Music Heals within KEXP, and his work in Iceland, too. Going into this, I thought it would be a simple story about a guy obsessed with records. What we realized is that Kevin completely transformed these institutions.

First Avenue started as a disco club with swimming pools. We found old letters showing management trying to force Kevin to dress the staff up like the Village People. They actually fired him once for not having enough disco spirit. But Kevin knew disco wouldn’t last forever, and he pushed to bring in acts like The B-52s. At Amazon, they were a bookstore looking to break into music, and he built that audience. Later, Tom Mara wanted to transition KEXP from a basement college station into an influential FM and online signal. Paul Allen wanted the station to innovate with digital streaming tools. Kevin was the perfect tech-startup guy to poach for that.

He transformed these businesses, yet Kevin is the worst tech guy. He’s not a precision DJ; it pained him just to type in his digital ID. His true talent is cultural foresight. He knows where the hockey puck is going and skates to it.

The interview lineup was a murderer’s row of great storytellers: Jimmy Jam, Bob Mould, Jessica Dobson, Caroline Polachek. How did you narrow it down?

Peter: It was a simple formula: Who was there in the early Minneapolis days? Jimmy Jam and Bob Mould were essential. I knew Paul Westerberg would never do it, but Bob Mould was a pillar of the First Avenue scene. We needed Jimmy Jam to verify Kevin’s presence in the clubs with Prince. It took a year to schedule Jimmy, but we finally captured him in LA. He dropped a beautiful line: “People always remember how you treated them before they became a star.” That validated everything.

For Seattle, Jessica Dobson of Deep Sea Diver was a must because Kevin championed them early on. He similarly went all-in on Of Monsters and Men and Macklemore long before they blew up, and we had the behind-the-scenes footage to prove it. Kristin Hersh of Throwing Muses was another pivotal figure for the Rev 105 era. At the very last minute, a former Rev employee sent us an old photo album filled with pictures of Kevin alongside Frank Black and They Might Be Giants, which allowed us to match his audio drops perfectly with archival photos.

What I loved most is that the movie isn’t just about Kevin or the music; it’s about how someone finds profound human connection through music.

Peter: Exactly. Jessica Dobson and Caroline Polachek both noted that Kevin will pick out a hyper-specific element deep in a song and ask about it. Artists don’t expect that. They’re used to generic questions about tour dates and producers. When Kevin asks about a specific lyric change in the final chorus, artists realize he genuinely wants to understand their art. Ultimately, the film isn’t about Kevin; it’s about how he steps back to draw the audience closer to the artist.

Andrew: That was my biggest challenge entering the edit blind. Every artist kept saying how much they loved him, but I had to show why rather than just have them repeat it. I had to sift through decades of live sessions to find those unique, deep interview moments that would prove to the audience why his connection with musicians is so rare.

Tell me about the world premiere.

Peter: We premiered at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF). That was incredibly important to us. We could have aimed for Sundance or SXSW, but Kevin is a hometown boy. After everything Minneapolis has been through, and having grown up there myself, I wanted this film to be a love letter to the city. The festival embraced us completely, and there was a marching band playing down the sidewalk outside the theater. We had three sold-out screenings there. Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) followed suit, seeing the buzz we were generating on social media, and we sold out three screenings here as well.

Interviewer: Have you screened it for audiences in cities where Kevin hasn’t lived?

Peter: Not yet, because that’s our next big test. We know he won’t have a built-in hometown crowd everywhere. But we’ve already had viewers tell us they were dragged to the theater by a partner or parent, only to leave deeply inspired, moved, or in tears. That’s exactly who I edited the movie for: anyone. The most rewarding feedback is hearing from people who had no idea who Kevin Cole was, but walked out believing completely in what he stands for.

Radioheart just finished its run of three sold out screenings at the Seattle International Film Festival but you can check radioheartfilm.com or instagram.com/radioheartfilm for info on upcoming screenings.

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Radioheart: The Drive and Times of DJ Kevin Cole (2026 | USA | 83 minutes | Peter Hilgendorf, Andrew Franks)

KEXP’s Drive Time has become a part of the sonic wallpaper of the Pacific Northwest for decades, and via streaming, a soundtrack for discovering important new music around the world. For those os us in the listening range, the greatness of Kevin Cole is likely self-evident by now, but Peter Hilgendorf and Andrew Franks have committed the highlights to tape. 

Their candid and valedictory documentary profiles the stunning first half-century of Kevin Cole’s career. We come to understand his career trajectory by way of his early days in Minneapolis as an unlikely club DJ who snuck a few rock tracks into his sets at the iconic First Avenue disco. It was a stint that found him guiding the venue’s trajectory from franchise to independent, and that brought him into the orbit of an emerging local icon named Prince (he spun at his parties and, in turn, spun some of his records fresh off the pressing). Later, he and his Midwest cohort took a spin at inventing independent radio only to be gobbled up by a mega-corporation to eliminate their competition. Which, I suppose, makes his career transition from radio to an upstart online retailer called Amazon just as they were expanding their empire to include music just a little bit ironic. 

Later, the music obsessive and workaholic finds his way back to where we all know him best: finding a place as a pioneering leader who navigated KEXP’s giant leap from college station KCMU’s campus broadcast to a citywide phenomenon and later a global presence. Chocked full of cameos from musicians far and wide, testimonials from fellow DJs and artists whose careers were shaped by KEXP, and personal anecdotes, the film has little in the way of controversy (a digression from Sub Pop swerves into celebrating the insanity of a Mudhoney show on top of the Space Needle, some grumbles about KEXP’s broadcasts in other cities get swept away by the emotion of having created a viral moment for Iceland and Of Monsters and Men). Instead, it offers an in-depth portrait of an impressive life — including his own words describing a journey toward sobriety and living a life of purpose — that has been deeply motivated by sharing the power of music. It’s a beautifully filmed assembly of a local hero who’s certainly worthy of celebration.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

• SUNDAY, MAY 17 – SIFF Cinema Uptown – 8:00 PM
• Directors Peter Hilgendorf and Andrew Franks, plus Producer Rebecca Staffel and Subject Kevin Cole scheduled to attend.

The 2026 Seattle International Film Festival runs from May 7-17. Keep up with our reactions on social media (@thesunbreak) and follow our ongoing coverage via our SIFF 2026 posts

The post SIFF 2026 Northwest Connections Notebook: Radioheart: The Drive and Times of DJ Kevin Cole appeared first on The SunBreak.

Phoenix Jones: The Rise and Fall of a Real Life Superhero (USA |  2026 |  116 min. |  Bayan Joonam)

Recent transplants may find it hard to believe, but Seattle used to be much, much, weirder. In the early 2010s, a local guy donned a professional-grade superhero suit with the intention of making the city a safer place. Going by the alias “Phoenix Jones” (and later, dramatically unmasked as Benjamin Fodor), he assembled an illustrious crew of would-be superheroes who patrolled the streets looking for trouble. Whether they improved, exacerbated, or induced problems remains an open question.

Bayan Joonam’s documentary revisits those heady times in slick, subject matter appropriate comic book fashion, complete with dramatic shots of the hero by night, new and archival footage of him and his crew in action, and a series of candid interviews with the man himself. He also gets sometimes complimentary, sometimes conflicting perspectives from the likes of members of his crew/cult of personality, cultural critic John Ronson (who embedded with Jones in the early days and wrote a book about him), local celebrity Rainn Wilson (who pitched a MTV show about the local vigilante), members of the Seattle Police Department (who did not appreciate his efforts), and childhood best friend (and Seattle hip-hop artist) Sol Rosenberg with insights into Fodor’s past.

For those of us who lost track of the exploits of Phoenix Jones, the crisply-made documentary provides a pretty entertaining catch-up. The documentary serves up surprises in store for both supporters and skeptics (While appreciating the motivations, having seen the methods and results, I count myself in this camp). It’s not entirely a glossy portrait, especially as it reckons with a series of downfalls, from being witness to tragic gun violence, rustling up complicated situations for screen time, and putting strains on personal relationships. He later re-emerges during the CHAZ era and suffers a further fall from whatever grace via becoming embroiled in drug charges. Although Joonam approaches more than decade of exploits with a breezy optimism without allowing the film to be hypnotized past seeing the complications and complexities of a fascinating character.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

• SUNDAY, MAY 17 – SIFF Cinema Uptown – 2:00 PM
• Director Bayan Joonam, Producer Claire Chubbuck, Producer/Editor Duncan Dickerson, and Subject Phoenix Jones scheduled to attend.

The 2026 Seattle International Film Festival runs from May 7-17. Keep up with our reactions on social media (@thesunbreak) and follow our ongoing coverage via our SIFF 2026 posts

The post SIFF 2026 Northwest Connections Notebook: Phoenix Jones: The Rise and Fall of a Real Life Superhero appeared first on The SunBreak.

Powwow People (USA |  2025 |  88 min. |  Sky Hopinka)

Ferndale-born Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) illustrious career has spanned writing, filmmaking, and photography, for which he was a member of the MacArthur “Genius Grant” Class of 2022. He returned to Seattle in the summer of 2024 to organize and capture an intertribal powwow at the Daybreak Star Cultural Center in Seattle. Unfolding over the course of a single day of cultural celebration, immersive documentary invites audiences to experience the festivities along with the community. 

Soundtracked by the Black Lodge Singers and Cozad Singers drum groups with prodigiously constant patter from emcee Ruben Littlehead, we watch as vendors arrive to set up, a traditional tipi is pitched, and people from around the world arrive to celebrate and compete. Hopinka’s vérité-style camera wanders in and out of the day, sometimes at the periphery, other times in the heart of the dance competitions, whether it’s quietly taking note of essential details or preparation of speculation, blurring focus to capture a feeling of presence and immersion, or transporting us into the heart of friendly competition. From time to time, Ruben calls out Sky and his crew in the crowd, emphasizing their simultaneous documentation and participation in the event. Over an hour and a half, the effect becomes enthralling. 

As the events of the day transpire — welcoming flag ceremonies, children’s performances, donning of regalia — Hopinka intercuts narration from a collection of participants who reflect on the history, importance, and future of these events. We hear from Freddie Cozad, a singer and drummer whose recollections on the past, as well as Jamie John, a non-binary dancer describing their non-traditional journey toward acceptance and imagining the course of emerging new traditions. Other voices reflect on the changing of the guard and the handoff from generation to generation. As night falls, the film and event culminate in a stunning thirty-minute shot of a Northern Traditional dance special. Two songs at a time, dozens of competitors dance, interact, and are pared down to a field of three finalists. Eventually, one remains to claim the championship prizes, but the audience is the real winner for the privilege of having shared the company of so many talented people, the rich textures and engaging sonic environment of a powerful summer day’s gathering. 

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Powwow People screens again on SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2026 at SIFF Cinema Uptown at 4:30 PM, where Seattle Film Critics Society will present the 2025 John Hartl Pacific Northwest Spotlight award. Director Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) and Impact Producer Amber Morning Star Byars scheduled to attend.

The 2026 Seattle International Film Festival runs from May 7-17. Keep up with our reactions on social media (@thesunbreak) and follow our ongoing coverage via our SIFF 2026 posts

The post SIFF 2026 Northwest Connections Notebook: Powwow People appeared first on The SunBreak.

The Life We Leave (2026 | USA | 87 minutes | JJ Gerber)

It sounds like a punchline, because it was one, but it’s also true: Washington became the first state in the union to legalize human composting. A state accustomed to hydroelectric power, natural wonders, and complicated rituals at even coffeehouse recycling stations enabled an ecologically friendly way for citizens to literally return to the earth. 

In an enlightening and deeply moving documentary, JJ Gerber provides a window into the practice of “terramation” as an alternative to the entrenched typical customs of embalming, burial, or cremation (all of which come with harsh environmental consequences). The unlikely guide is Micah Truman, an entrepreneur who achieved financial success doing business in China. Seeing an opportunity for disruption, he became a pioneer of the human composting industry when he opened Return Home, a large-scale facility in Auburn.

The early parts of the film demystify the process by which a human body, aided by soil, alfalfa, and other organic ingredients, is transformed to usable soil within the span of months inside an austere vessel (spoiler: microbes, natural heat, and some mechanical tumbling are involved). With a fairly light tone, it confronts the natural visceral revulsion that we all feel at the certainty of death and decay as well as the resistance to new practices from the existing death care industry. We see those forces overcome as established funeral managers join Parsons’s team and provide the much-needed human element to end-of-life care. 

While there is an unexpected lightness to a film situated around death, it is candid about the financial and personal toll that a new venture takes on its founder’s life. Even more brutal, though, are the sensitively rendered portraits of the lives committed to the soil and the surviving families who entrust their loved ones to the care of the facility. From the youngest children to the eldest matriarch, each story is its own form of heartrending. 

What transpires is truly inspiring and transformative. We immediately see the change in Micah’s outlook and personal investment as people begin to entrust his new venture with the remains of their loved ones. The longer timescale for decomposition has unexpected consequences — loosely reminiscent of Cronenberg’s The Shrouds — as loved ones take opportunities to adorn the vessels with personal memorabilia. We see how, with the empathetic guidance of established funeral professional Brie Smith and Katey Houston, the business begins to reshape and reinvent the look, feel, and customs of the grieving process. 

Changing hearts and minds is extremely difficult, but I’d challenge anyone to not have their views moved by this emotionally potent, eye-opening, and deftly crafted film. I’m a convert. When the time comes, I hope someone turns me into dirt. 

Rating: 4 out of 5.

The Life We Leave screens again on SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2026 at SIFF Cinema Uptown at 1:00 PM. Director JJ Gerber and subjects Micah Truman, Brie Smith, and Katey Houston scheduled to attend.

The 2026 Seattle International Film Festival runs from May 7-17. Keep up with our reactions on social media (@thesunbreak) and follow our ongoing coverage via our SIFF 2026 posts

The post SIFF 2026 Northwest Connections Notebook: The Life We Leave appeared first on The SunBreak.

Again, Again (2026 | USA | 99 minutes | Mia Moore, Heather Ballish)

It’s not often that SIFF sees world premieres, let alone ones produced by a Wachowski sister. This Aberdeen-set romantic fantasy/sci-fi nightmare finds a woman caught in a time loop with a runaway bride girlfriend (think Groundhog Day or Palm Springs, but considerably less funny by design). As the film opens, night is falling on Aggie (co-director Mia Moore) as her 2863^rd spin through the exact same day is about to come to an end. Sharing an RV bed with Tess (Aria Taylor), her childhood best friend and love interest, she recounts both the day itself as well as all the versions of the same day they’d shared, with the melancholy knowledge that when morning comes only one of them will remember the decade of iterations on a theme.

When they wakes up the next morning to find the loop finally broken, it’s both freeing and unsettling. It’s a not-subtle but highly effective metaphor for Aggie’s frustrating journey of self-discovery and affirming realization experienced as a trans woman born into a boy’s body in a small town. Color footage captures the gloom and glory of Aberdeen’s industrial waterfront, downtown streets, coastal views, and even a demolition derby. Black-and-white flashbacks reveal different iterations of the looped day, highlighting the alternative versions of reality that Aggie confronted (and created) with the cursed safety net of knowing that each morning held the possibility of consequence-free reinvention. 

As the couple embraces the possibilities of a new day of normalcy, we get a deeper look into the paths that led to this precipitous point in their longstanding relationship. Refreshingly, Moore’s screenplay and performance allow her character to be both highly sympathetic yet relatably annoying (after all, having relived every permutation of the same day knowing that a reset button loomed would be highly annoying). The script also has some surprises in store as it reveals more insights about how the pair got into this supernatural tangle. Moore and Taylor are naturally the central focus, but the cast is populated with a collection of characters who make strong impressions with limited screen time. Anchored by the strong and affecting performances, the writer/director’s clear-eyed vision of human foibles, and a continually surprising story structure, this beautifully drawn character study is both an generally effective metaphor for the Trans experience while also being a moving and captivating story of two specifically drawn people navigating identity.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Again Again plays FRIDAY, MAY 15, 2026 at SIFF Cinema Uptown
at 8:00 PM. Director Mia Moore, Producer Cliff Noonan, and Executive Producer Ian Schrank scheduled to attend.

The 2026 Seattle International Film Festival runs from May 7-17. Keep up with our reactions on social media (@thesunbreak) and follow our ongoing coverage via our SIFF 2026 posts

The post SIFF 2026 Northwest Connections Notebook: Again, Again appeared first on The SunBreak.