53rd San Francisco International Film Festival 22 April - 6 May 2010
FILMS
- To Die Like a Man
-
-
A Lisbon drag queen has long lived as a woman, but as she struggles with fading stardom, relationship troubles and the leaking breast implants destroying her health, she faces the possibility of dying as a man in this extravagantly stylized melodrama.
-
- João Pedro Rodrigues
- World Cinema
- Portugal/France
- 2009
- Vengeance
-
-
This French and Hong Kong coproduction offers neo-noir fans and newcomers a genre-busting gem populated by a hit man turned chef, family men moonlighting as assassins, and earnestly official, androgynous women detectives. And for good measure, it stars French crooner, Johnny Hallyday.
-
- Johnnie To
- World Cinema
- Hong Kong/China/France
- 2009
- Wake in Fright (Outback)
-
Watch
-
In this freshly rediscovered and restored cult classic from the director of Fun with Dick and Jane (1977) and Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (SFIFF 1978), a civilized schoolteacher gets trapped in a brutal mining town in the Australian Outback.
-
- Ted Kotcheff
- World Cinema
- Australia
- 1971
- White Material
-
-
Claire Denis returns to Africa for the first time since her masterpiece Beau Travail (SFIFF 2000) with this dark story of a Frenchwoman (Isabelle Huppert) who refuses to uproot her family from an African country on the brink of civil war.
-
- Claire Denis
- World Cinema
- France
- 2009
- The White Meadows
-
Watch
-
An old boatman moves among the otherworldly salt islands of Iran’s Lake Urmia collecting people’s tears and observing their sorrows in this timeless Swiftian fable—and surreal political satire of contemporary Iran—from the director of Iron Island (SFIFF 2006).
-
- Mohammad Rasoulof
- World Cinema
- Iran
- 2009
- Wild Grass
-
Watch
-
A found wallet triggers an unlikely obsession in the latest film by the masterful Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad). An ode to uncontrolled impulses and effervescent possibilities, it’s a thriller, a romance, a screwball comedy—and something else entirely.
-
- Alain Resnais
- World Cinema
- France/Italy
- 2009
- Woman on Fire Looks for Water
-
Watch
-
From one of Malaysia’s most exciting filmmakers comes a tender, utterly gorgeous meditation on yearning and regret set amid a small fishing village, where a father attempts to rekindle an old romance as his son discovers his first love.
-
- Woo Ming-jin
- World Cinema
- Malaysia/South Korea
- 2009
