Tom’s Best of the Fest

SIFF NOTES 2025 by Tom Reynolds

The Seattle International Film Festival is our regions big annual festival of film. But over the last six years SIFF has experienced some big changes. This year the festival completed it’s transition from a sprawling three week, 25 day event highlighted by a few big budget films, director and actor tributes, galas, over 400 total films, including 6 or 7 archival films, and as many as 70 documentaries to the current 11 day in-theater festival, completely focused on showcasing independent and foreign films, (The week after the main festival festival attendees can stream a percentage of the features previously shown in the venues—about 30%).

There have been other changes too. Some maybe not so positive, like an end to printing the expensive festival catalogs—my collection of catalogs now permanently ends with 2018, and this year an end to voting by paper ballot. So folks like me without an IPhone can’t vote on films. But I’ve always found trying to judge and vote films just as you came out a screening to be problematic.

Claudia and I attended this year’s Seattle International Film Festival for five days, May 20 through May 24. We saw twelve films at various venues, and then streamed 6 more the following week at home. I liked most of the films I saw this year, and all contained things to recommend them. That was never the case when I was seeing between 25 and 30 films during the years of the longer festivals. Of this year’s group, I’ve picked six that I can recommend to highlight. They are listed below with short descriptions.

I feel like all six of these films are strong enough to warrant distribution. Still 73% of the films shown at this year’s festival did not yet have a distributor in May.

Odd Fish (Iceland)
Bjorn and Hjalti are friends who operate a popular restaurant during the summer in a fishing village in the Westfjords of Iceland. With the cruise ship business increasing they decide to try stay open over the winter. At the same time, Bjorn decides to come out as a trans woman. Which causes a stir in the village, and tests their friendship just as they preparing the restaurant for new customers.

The director, who grew up in a similar small fishing town, co-wrote the script with a trans woman.
Film Strengths: A strong sense of place, two sympathetic main characters, and a serious story handled with humor.

Shepherds (Quebec)
Mathyas, a Montreal-based copywriter, decides to change his life and moves to a farming town near the French Alps to become a shepherd. Knowing nothing about the work, Mathyas finds he has a lot to learn. It helps when a girl he meets at the immigration office impulsively decides to join him on his romantic quest. They find that living a simple pastoral life requires learning on the job, mistakes happen and sheep die, but if you’re determined and stick with it life as a shepherd has its rewards.

Director Sophie Deraspe’s based her film on the autobiographical novel by Mathyas Lefebure, who co-wrote the screenplay with the director.

Film Strengths: beautiful cinematography in the French Alps, an interesting story, and a lively leading actor.

Raptures (Sweden)
In the 1930’s, in a remote village in northern Sweden a minority Finnic language community, the Meankieli, lives isolated from the rest of the country, and increasingly alienated from mainstream Swedish Lutheranism. Their pastor is called away, and his vacuum is filled by Teodor the husband of the village schoolteacher, Rakel. A devote woman she is initially supportive of her husband. But his claim of having revelations makes her begin to question his motives, and as his leadership becomes more extreme, she realizes spiritual devotion is secondary to hedonism in Teodor’s new religion.

The film is based on incidents involving the Swedish extremist Korpela movement of the 1920’s. It was a Rotterdam Film Festival winner.

Film Strengths: a gripping script based on real events, a strong sense of place and dazzling cinematography, and powerful acting by the two leads.

Souleymane’s Story (France)
Guinean immigrant Souleymane, is trying to survive in Paris until he can get asylum status. He races around Paris on his bicycle delivering take-out orders. But because he has no papers, he has to use another driver’s identity, and that costs money. In two days he will have his asylum interview. But he’s been told that his story about why he came to France isn’t strong enough to get him asylum, so he’s also paying a fixer to give him a better story. But its the same fabricated story many others are also telling.

Like thousands of other illegal immigrants around the world, Souleymane is waiting to see if his story will be good enough to get him asylum in another country.

Film Strengths: A pulse-pounding pace, and a great performance by the lead actor, non-professional Abou Sangare whose performance as Souleymane garnered him the Most Promising Actor award at the 2025 French Cesar Awards.

Color Book (US)
A widowed black father Lucky, still grieving the sudden death of his wife is determined to maintain the relationship with his nine-year old son Mason who has downs syndrome. Mason loves baseball, and Lucky’s plan is to take him to a professional baseball game in Atlanta. But the trip turns out to be less about baseball, and more about the love between and the resilience of both Lucky and Mason.

Film Strengths: The use of black and white cinematography and two tremendous performances by William Catlett and Jeremiah Daniels create a real intimacy in this story of a father and son trying to move on after a life changing event.

The director and actors appeared at the screening of the film that we saw. These Q & A’s with people connected with films are a benefit of seeing films at the festival.

Waves (Czech Republic) Streaming

The setting is the Prague Spring, a period when the communist regime in Czechoslovakia seemed to be loosening it’s control over citizens and the media. Tomas and his younger brother Paja are barely surviving after the death of parents. Tomas is apolitical, while Papa is a student activist. Tomas gets a job in the International News Office of Czechoslovak Radio after agreeing to report back to the radio leadership on what the manager of the Office, a free speech advocate, is planning.

A new government leader accelerates the pace of reform, and the International News Office starts working on stories that circumvent state censorship. Finally, by surprise, Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia. Tomas finds his loyalties tested as the International News Office becomes the voice of free news for the whole country.

Film Strengths: A high action period thriller, with a strong story based on real events, and a great use of archival footage mixed in with and made almost indistinguishable from the fictionalized film.

Honorable Mention:
Evergreens (US)

In Spokane-based Jared Briley’s debut feature, Eve, bored with her summer vacation in Spokane, meets James who’s on a road trip from New York and trying to find himself. They share Chinese food and Eve spontaneously decides to join him on his drive across the state. They see lots of great Washington locations along the way, while the two likeable main characters carry the narrative in this enjoyable (if derivative) story about self-discovery and first love with a thoughtful ending.

Film Strengths: Film showcases certain Washington locations, along with nice performances by two young actors.

The End