69th SFFILM — Week Two Screenings

SFFILM is in the part of the festival where the shape of the whole thing finally comes into focus. Opening-night buzz is over. The red carpet photos are done. What’s left is the real festival experience — hopping between theaters, picking through the schedule, and figuring out which screenings in the second weekend are actually worth your time. This year’s 69th San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 24 through May 4, with 79 programs from 40 countries spread across San Francisco and Berkeley. ### So what’s happening right now? On Saturday, May 2, the live schedule shows a pretty representative cross-section of week two. At the Marina Theatre, there’s the refugee-family documentary *One in a Million* at noon, *Hair, Paper, Water…* at 1 p.m., and *Shorts Block 1: Human Flow* at 2:45 p.m. Over at the Premier Theater at One Letterman, *Jaripeo + Born at Night* plays at 2:30 p.m., and the JCCSF is hosting a teen filmmaking workshop at noon. ### What does “week two” mean here? Basically, it’s the stretch after the headline-grabbing premieres when the festival becomes more exploratory. The official program isn’t just a few gala nights — it’s 11 days of narratives, documentaries, shorts, talks, workshops, and special events. That matters because the second week is where a lot of the discovery happens, especially for films that won’t get huge commercial runs in the Bay Area. ### Which special events defined this back half? A few already set the tone. The festival gave its Sloan Science on Screen Award to Ildikó Enyedi’s *Silent Friend*, with a screening tied to a conversation around science and cinema. It also staged an evening with Ritesh Batra built around *The Lunchbox*, and a Mel Novikoff Award event honoring longtime Sundance figure Michelle Satter, followed by *Beasts of the Southern Wild*. ### Why are the venues such a big deal? Because SFFILM isn’t operating like an old-school one-campus festival anymore. The action is split among the Marina Theatre, the Presidio’s Premier Theater at One Letterman, BAMPFA in Berkeley, JCCSF, and the Castro for select marquee moments. KQED’s early guide put it well — the Castro is back in the mix. ### What’s the biggest closing-weekend draw? It’s almost certainly the May 4 closing night screening of *Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back* at the Castro Theatre. That event doubles as a Star Wars Day play and a venue showcase, with Anthony Daniels — C-3PO himself — scheduled for an onstage conversation with Lucasfilm veteran Howard Roffman. In other words, SFFILM is ending the festival with something much broader than a niche cinephile pick. ### Is this still a film festival for serious movie people? Yes — but not only that. The schedule mixes international art-house work, local-interest films, family programming, workshops, awards events, and crowd-pleasers. That’s the balancing act. SFFILM wants discovery, but it also wants packed rooms. A shorts block, a Gaza-set medical documentary, a queer rodeo documentary, and *Empire* can all live in the same week without feeling random. ### What’s the practical takeaway? If you’re looking at week two, don’t think in terms of one “best” screening. Think in lanes. There’s the discovery lane, the awards-and-conversation lane, and the big communal-event lane. This weekend is where those lanes overlap most clearly — and where the festival feels less like a premiere calendar and more like a map of Bay Area movie culture. ### Bottom line The second week of SFFILM is the useful part — the part where the festival stops announcing itself and starts revealing what it actually programmed. If you want the real shape of the 69th edition, this is it.