My Seattle International Film Festival recs

What I'm looking forward to at SIFF 2025

The Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) has announced their 2025 lineup,¹ with 83 new narrative features, 35 documentaries, and 14 short film programs. There are also a few special screenings of archival features and secret films.

I usually take a couple of days off work around SIFF, not so I can pack my day to the brim with screenings, but so I can watch one or two new movies a day and leisurely enjoy the spring weather while I let them linger.

After perusing this year’s SIFF program, researching dozens of the titles, and swapping intel with a few friends, here is what I’m most excited for at this year’s festival.

The 51st SIFF runs from May 15th to 25th. Select films from the festival are available to stream from May 26th to June 1st.

My SIFF 2025 musts

Cloud (Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

This is easily my number one priority of the festival. Kiyoshi Kurosawa is one of the greatest living filmmakers, and Cure is one of my favorite films of all time.

While he’s perhaps best known for his horror films, Kurosawa is an incredibly versatile filmmaker. Cloud is billed as a “genre-bending potboiler” about an internet fraudster. I don’t really want to read much more about this movie than that before seeing it, but sign me the fuck up!

Plays May 19th and 25th.

By the Stream (Dir. Hong Sang-soo)

The prolific filmmaker Hong Sang-soo has had a film at almost every SIFF since I’ve lived in Seattle. His signature style features long, meandering conversations that gradually unveil profound emotional truths.

This latest outing features two of the director’s regular collaborators, Kim Min-hee and Kwon Hae-hyo. Kim plays a textile artist struggling with putting on a play with university students. She enlist’s Kwon’s character, her estranged actor uncle, for help. Pour the soju!

Plays May 20th and 21st.

Meeting with Pol Pot (Dir. Rithy Pahn)

When I went to the Toronto Film Festival in 2018, the first film I saw was Rithy Pahn’s documentary Graves Without a Name. I was not familiar with the director or his career-long focus on the genocidal horrors of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime, but I thought the film was exceptional and deeply haunting.

All this to say, I am eager to see more of his work. Meeting with Pol Pot chronicles a 1978 meeting between French journalists and Khmer Rouge leaders. It uses “reenactments, historic footage, and an extensive maquette with small figures of the people involved to tell the story of the journalists' realization of the horrors perpetrated against the Cambodian people.”

Plays May 18th and 20th.

Invention (Dir. Courtney Stephens)

This docu-fiction hybrid follows a woman who is caught in a conspiracy-filled experimental health wormhole while attempting to understand her estranged late father.

I added Courtney Stephens’ film to my list because of The New Yorker’s Richard Brody, who writes, “Invention proves to be nothing less than an up-to-the-minute report on the American state of mind—on the epidemic inability to distinguish fact from fiction.”²

Plays May 16th and 17th.

April (Dir. Dea Kulumbegashvili)

This sophomore feature from Dea Kulumbegashvili follows a Georgian obstetrician under investigation for providing illegal abortions.

I know very little else about this film other than it won the Special Jury Prize at last year’s Venice Film Festival, and I’m keeping it that way!

Plays May 16th and 17th.

BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions (Dir. Kahlil Joseph)

This Afrofuturist odyssey is the feature directorial debut of Kahlil Joseph, a multimedia artist who has directed music videos for Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, and FKA Twigs.

His music video resume alone was enough to pique my interest, but then I saw that this film was shot by Bradford Young (Arrival, Where is Kyra?). I will be seated.

Plays May 18th and 19th.

The Glass Web (Dir. Jack Arnold)

SIFF usually shows a few older films during the festival, and this 1953 noir instantly grabbed my attention.

Presented in a new restoration, The Glass Web features a blackmail plot and Edward G. Robinson. That was enough for me, but the film is also being shown at the Cinerama and was one of only a few noirs made to be seen in 3D. Fun!

Plays May 18th.

Other SIFF films I’m interested in

The Things You Kill- Alireza Khatami won this year’s Best Director prize at Sundance for his surreal mystery, which follows a university professor’s revenge plot. Plays May 23rd and 24th.

Fucktoys- SIFF invoked John Waters in promoting this sex worker comedy from Annapurna Sriram. I hope they aren’t doing so lightly! Plays May 16th and 17th.

Souleymane’s Story- Boris Lojkine’s drama follows a Guinean immigrant in France as he prepares for a pivotal moment: Deciding which story to tell in his government citizenship interview. Plays May 22nd and 24th and is available to stream May 26th-June 1st.

Sons- I’m naturally drawn to thrillers, so this “pulse pounding and morally gray” one from Gustav Möller, about a guard and a young man from her past who is transferred to her prison, sounds right up my alley. Plays May 23rd and 25th.

The Gloria of your Imagination- This off-kilter documentary from Jennifer Reeves sounds very intriguing. It explores parenthood and gendered power relationships through footage of Gloria, a woman who agreed to be filmed working with three different therapists in 1963. Plays May 19th and 20th.

Luz- Isabelle Huppert! Plays May 20th and 22nd.

Waves- Like I said, I’m drawn to thrillers. This one, set in 1967 Czechoslovakia in the days leading up to the Warsaw Pact invasion, is about high-stakes journalism and increasing surveillance. Plays May 21st and 24th and is available to stream (for Washington state residents only) May 26th- June 1st.

Viktor- Olivier Sarbill’s “wholly immersive and terrifying” documentary follows deaf Ukrainian war photographer Viktor Korotovskyi during the early days of the Russian invasion. Darren Aronofsky is among the film’s producers. Plays May 17th and 19th and is available to stream (for Washington state residents only) May 26th- June 1st.

Seattle subscribers (or out-of-town visitors!): What are you looking forward to most at this year’s SIFF? I’m still very open to suggestions 💫

1. View the full SIFF lineup and get more information on the festival

2. “Invention Probes the American Mind in the Post-Truth Era” by Richard Brody