SIFF 2026: 'Lady' Movie Review

When a young documentarian, Sam (Laurie Kynaston) takes a paid gig to shoot a portrait of the obscure noble Lady Isabella (Sian Clifford, Fleabag), what initially appears to be a vanity project for an entitled aristocrat quickly morphs into something much, much stranger and more off the wall. The mockumentary format is a hit-and-miss affair, for me at least, but Samuel Abrahams’s Lady makes excellent use of this stylistic approach and delivers something both hilarious and truly unusual, all anchored by an incredible, unhinged performance from Clifford. Think Absolutely Fabulous meets Grey Gardens by way of the Invisible Man.

SIFF 2026: 'Fifteen' Movie Review

As we all know, growing up is a horror show with no equal. Such is the case for BFFs Ligia (Greta Marti) and Mayte (Macarena Oz). Outcasts, the poor kids at their hoity-toity private school, they’re bullied and mocked and picked on. All they want is to stage the perfect joint quinceanera and show up their priggish classmates, a plan that goes awry when Ligia’s ne’er-do-well boyfriend is bitten by a sewer monster and knocks her up. An unwanted teen pregnancy is tough enough, but in writer/director/brother duo Jack Zagha Kababie and Yossy Zagha’s Fifteen (Quince), it is much more monstrous than that. 

SIFF 2026: 'Again Again' Movie Review

So you’ve been stuck in a time loop, cursed to relive the same day over and over and over again for ten years. But one morning you wake up and it’s tomorrow. What now? Tons of films deal with what it’s like to be endlessly stuck in the same day, some funny, some horrific, but not many, if any, deal with the aftermath. What do you do when you can finally move on? How do you cope? What does that do to your mind and your heart? This is the core idea that drives Mia Moore and Heather Ballish’s feature Again Again.

SIFF 2026: WTF Nightmare Fuel Shorts

I don’t typically watch a lot of short films. While I respect the passion, effort, and craft, they tend to be more miss than hit for me. I recognize that’s a me problem, but it’s the truth. That said, the Seattle International Film Festival always has a robust shorts program, so I thought what the hell, why not check out the eight films in the WTF! Nightmare Fuel package. There is certainly some weird and wild things to behold.

SIFF 2026: 'Body Blow' Capsule Review

Imagine if Greg Araki or Alice Maio Mackay made Cruising and you have an idea of Dean Francis’s Body Blow. Lo-fi and neon-drenched, it follows a sex-addicted, non-masturbating cop (Tim Pocock) as he gets in too deep with a ruthless drag queen crime boss.

SIFF 2026: 'Marama' Movie Review

Set in 1859, Marama, the debut feature from writer/director Taratoa Stappard, follows Mary Stevens (Ariana Osborne), a young orphaned Māori woman. When she receives a mysterious letter claiming to have information about her parents, she travels around the globe to England, searching for answers to questions about her family and her ancestry. Upon her arrival, she becomes governess to a spooky young girl, the granddaughter of shipping magnate and benefactor Nathanial Cole (Toby Stephens). What begins as an unsettling feeling that all is not quite right quickly spirals into a fight for physical and spiritual survival.

SIFF 2025: 'Know Her Name' Movie Review

All-too-often people seem to believe there were no, or at least vanishingly few female filmmakers throughout the history of the medium. If Zainab Muse’s Know Her Name has anything to do with it, that won’t last much longer. Her documentary dives into the deep, rich, and integral, not to mention frequently overlooked and undervalued role women have and continue to play in film history. 

SIFF 2025: 'She's The He' Capsule Review

To get close to a crush, seniors Alex (Nico Carney) and Ethan (Misha Osherovich) pretend to be trans, a dicey proposition for sure. Here’s the twist, for one of them, she’s never felt so comfortable, so herself. Realizing she is in fact trans, the movie follows the fallout from that revelation. 

SIFF 2025: 'Sanatorium Under The Sign Of The Hourglass' Capsule Review

The Brothers Quay return with their first feature in 20 years, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. The haunting stop-motion offering, based on the book of the same name by Polish writer Bruno Schulz, adapts the surreal, fantastic journey of a young man, who, having recently lost his father, travels by train to a mysterious sanatorium.

SIFF 2025: '40 Acres' Capsule Review

Music video and TV veteran R.T. Thorne directs his feature debut, 40 Acres. In the apocalyptic wake of a fungal pandemic, new civil war, and sweeping famine, a family, led by no-nonsense former soldier Hailey (Danielle Deadwyler), must protect their fortified farm from threats within and without. Including potential cannibal invasion. 

SIFF 2025: 'Chain Reactions' Capsule Review

Documentarian Alexandre O. Philippe has delved into Alien, the shower scene in Psycho, David Lynch, and more. In Chain Reactions, he focuses on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, this time via extended interviews with Patton Oswalt, Takashi Miike, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Stephen King, and Karyn Kusama. Each shares their interpretations and experiences with the iconic film, honing in on legacy and influence.

SIFF 2024: 'Tenement' Movie Review

Much of Cambodian import Tenement, making its North American debut at the Seattle International Film Festival, will be familiar to those reasonably well-versed in supernatural horror. The story follows someone returning to a place they once had a connection to and finding it haunted by more than memories. Though the film may lack a bit of originality, it delivers an effective, to-the-point, gorgeously staged chiller.

SIFF 2024: 'The Lavender Hill Mob' Movie Review

In 1951’s The Lavender Hill Mob, Alec Guinness plays Holland, a milquetoast bank clerk. He routinely supervises the delivery of hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of gold bullion. Honest to a fault, viewed by his coworkers as a goody two shoes, he’s the kind of bloke who reads to his elderly landlady at night. He would never. Right? When means, inspiration, and opportunity come together, however, Holland breaks bad and, with a ragtag crew of mismatched outlaws, heists his latest load.

SIFF 2024: 'Chuck Chuck Baby' Capsule Review

Sucks to be Helen (Louise Brealey). She works nights at the chicken-packing plant, lives with her dirtbag ex and his idiot 20-year-old baby mama, and cares for his dying mother, Gwen (a wonderful Sorcha Cusack), who’s as close to a mother as she’s ever known. When Joanne (Annabel Scholey), her schoolgirl crush, returns to town, it lights something ablaze within her. 

SIFF 2024: 'Eternal' Capsule Review

In Eternal, a rift on the ocean floor threatens to destroy not only Earth’s climate but the burgeoning relationship between a young submarine pilot and aspiring singer. 

SIFF 2024: 'Scala!!!' Capsule Review

From the 1970s to the ‘90s, London’s Scala theater was a haven for cinemaniacs. From arthouse to exploitation and everything in between, they screened oddities, avant-garde experiments, and whatever the hell they wanted.

SIFF 2024: 'Scorched Earth' Movie Review

12 years after skipping town, career thief Trojan (Misel Maticevic) returns to Berlin, desperate and looking for work. What he finds is a world that’s moved past his old school ways, adopting new technology and the unfamiliar attitudes of those who adapt to such things, and a list of old contacts who have gone straight or otherwise left behind the life. When he finally lands a job, a four-person art heist, things spiral ever out of control. Such begins Thomas Arslan’s Scorched Earth. (Not to be confused with the DTV post-apocalyptic joint starring a certain disgraced former MMA star of the same name.) 

SIFF 2023: 'The Night Of The 12th' Capsule Review

As the protagonist of The Night of the 12th says, every investigator has one case that haunts them, that they never solved and can’t let go. They let you know from the jump exactly how this will play out.

SIFF 2023: 'Burning Hearts' Capsule Review

What if Romeo and Juliet but with warring small town Italian farm mob families? That’s the basic conceit of Pippo Mezzapesa’s Burning Hearts, where a forbidden romance shatters a fragile truce and stirs up a generational blood feud.

SIFF 2023: 'The Last Exit' Capsule Review

When a pair of criminal brothers on the run attempt to find shelter from a storm in an isolated farmhouse inhabited by a reclusive family, they get much more than they bargained for as the mother, a steely, badass Joely Richardson, fights back.