The San Francisco International Film Festival (April 21–May 5) opens its 54th year with an exhilarating lineup of films from around the world and an inspired variety of accompanying festivities. Highly anticipated by its loyal and passionate audiences, championed by civic and community leaders, admired by filmmakers and closely watched by industry professionals, SFIFF is one of the most important events on the Bay Area cultural calendar and an important stop on the international festival circuit. SFIFF54 opens April 21 and runs through May 5, with 188 films from 48 countries.

On Tour

(Mathieu Amalric, France)

CLOSING NIGHT French actor Mathieu Amalric directs and stars in this sexy yet wistful comedy about a disgraced French TV producer making a comeback with a troupe of buxom, brassy American burlesque performers touring the French countryside. Their manager may be seeking redemption, but these ladies are pros, so regardless of the outcome the show must go on.

5/5/2011 7:00 CASTRO

Chantrapas

(Otar Iosseliani, France)

A filmmaker finds creative freedom more elusive than he imagined in this ironic comedy-drama from Otar Iosseliani (Gardens in Autumn, SFIFF 2007). Tired of the state-appointed producers and censorship in his homeland, Soviet Georgia, Niko decides to move to France, only to find that he has merely traded one type of interference for another.

4/24/2011 6:15 PFA

4/26/2011 6:00 KABUKI

4/29/2011 9:00 NEW PEOPLE

Nostalgia for the Light

(Patricio Guzmán, France) 

The renowned Chilean documentarian goes to one of the highest, driest places on earth, the Atacama Desert, to examine the work of astronomers who search the skies to understand our universe at the same time that relatives of those disappeared under the Pinochet dictatorship search the sands for the bodies of the victims.

4/26/2011 6:30 KABUKI

4/28/2011 6:15 PFA

Circumstance

(Maryam Keshavarz, France) 

This debut feature—winner of a Sundance Film Festival Audience Award—is an exhilarating political drama and love story about a burgeoning romance between two young Iranian women and the fraught allegiances of a single Tehrani family.

5/1/2011 6:00 KABUKI

5/3/2011 6:15 KABUKI

Hands Up

(Romain Goupil, France)

Fearing the deportation of their friend, an 11-year-old undocumented Chechen immigrant, a close-knit gang of children goes into hiding to try to insure her safety. Their disappearance becomes a cause célèbre, compelling the adult world to reconsider their priorities and policies. 5/1/2011 1:00 KABUKI

5/3/2011 3:30 KABUKI

5/4/2011 6:15 KABUKI

Children of the Princess of Cleves

(Régis Sauder, France)

Featuring candid discussion about hopes and dreams, love and heartbreak, family and friends, this engrossing documentary makes an inspired connection between classic literature and contemporary teen life in modern-day Marseille as one high school class studies the 17th-century novel La princesse de Clèves. With short Aglaée (20 min).

4/24/2011 4:15 PFA

4/25/2011 2:00 KABUKI

4/30/2011 4:15 KABUKI

Yves Saint Laurent l’Amour Fou

(Pierre Thoretton, France )

Few figures loom larger in the annals of 20th-century style than legendary French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent. Thoretton’s film documents his high-glamour, high-drama career via surviving business and life partner Pierre Berge—just as the latter prepares to sell off much of their astounding art collection in “the auction of the century.”

   5/3/2011 7:00 KABUKI

5/5/2011 8:15 KABUKI

Living on Love Alone

(Isabelle Czajka,France)

An invigorating mix of genres gives us a humorous, and ultimately tragic, story about Julie, a 23-year-old French woman trying to make it on her own. Floundering in her attempts to hold a job and reckless in love, she makes a bid for freedom with a charming young man of dubious employment.

4/23/2011 9:30 KABUKI

4/27/2011 6:45 NEW PEOPLE

4/29/2011 9:00 PFA

I’m Glad My Mother Is Alive

(Claude Miller, Nathan Miller, France)

This finely acted, delicate and provocative new film by one of France’s most impressive filmmakers—working here with his son, Nathan—depicts the troubled life of an adopted boy who, as a taciturn adult, visits his birth mother and strikes up a relationship fraught with tension and emotion.

4/22/2011 6:45 KABUKI

4/25/2011 9:30 KABUKI

Place in Between

(Sarah Bouyain, France)

A young biracial woman raised in France travels to Burkina Faso in search of the mother she hasn’t seen in many years. Meanwhile, in Paris, an émigré from Burkina Faso who makes her living as a cleaner teaches the Dioula language to a white middle-class office worker, in this affecting story of global displacement.

4/22/20112:00 KABUKI

5/1/2011 3:45 KABUKI

5/5/2011 8:45 KABUKI

Cat in Paris

(Alain Gagnol, Jean-Loup Felicioli, France)

Children of all ages will root for the undercats in this beautifully animated caper set against the cityscape of Paris. A sneaky feline, a mute girl, her police detective mom and a big-hearted cat burglar join forces to combat a gangster and his bumbling sidekicks. With short Specky Four Eyes (9 min). Recommended for ages eight and up.

4/24/2011 12:30 KABUKI

5/1/2011 12:30 NEW PEOPLE

Detroit Wild City

(Florent Tillon, France)

Detroit: A postapocalyptic landscape of decay or an empty pasture or the newest Mecca for urban pioneers? Filled with arresting images, this beautifully crafted travelogue focuses on people as well as ruins, and suggests that Detroit’s possible futures are more complex than most of us might imagine.

4/29/2011 7:00 KABUKI

5/1/2011 2:45 NEW PEOPLE

5/4/2011 8:40 PFA

Sleeping Beauty

(Catherine Breillat, France)

On the heels of the mesmeric Bluebeard (SFIFF 2009) comes this wonderfully idiosyncratic, heady and erotic exploration of another classic Charles Perrault fairy tale by French cinema’s endlessly probing and brilliant provocateuse. Time-tripping with a truly precocious heroine, we follow a once-cursed six-year-old princess as she awakens a century later into contemporary society at the ripe old age of 16.

4/26/2011 6:15 KABUKI

4/27/2011 6:30 KABUKI

The San Francisco International Film Festival, established in 1957, is the longest-running festival in the Americas. Over the past 54 years, SFIFF has shown more than 6,000 films from 150 countries to an audience of more than two million film lovers. The International is deeply rooted in the strongest and finest traditions of appreciation of film both as an art form and as a meaningful agent for social change. It is a cultural treasure for Bay Area audiences who embrace new ideas, compassionate humanity and world citizenship. Remarkably intimate for a festival of its size and scope, the International combines a range of marquee premieres, international competitions, hard-hitting documentaries, digital media work and star-studded gala events.

fest11.sffs.org

Castro Theatre, 429 Castro Street
New People, 1746 Post Street
Pacific Film Archive Theater, 2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley
SFMOMA, 151 Third Street
Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, 1881 Post Street