May 14, 2025—It’s that time again! The Seattle International Film Festival kicks off on Thursday, May 15th for its 51st iteration. In my opinion, the best thing about attending film festivals is getting to check out international films and documentaries that you may never get the chance to see again. This year, SIFF is loaded with that sort of programming. I can’t wait!
For SIFF 2025, there’s a fun travel theme of “The Reel World” where they’ve created suggested 6-pack itineraries based on global regions and themes, helping out folks that may be otherwise overwhelmed with browsing the program. After all, this year’s festival includes 245 films from 74 countries/regions around the globe in 63 different languages including 83 features, 122 short films in 14 different programs, 35 documentaries, three archival features, and two secret films. Whew!
Thursday’s Opening Night film Four Mothers is Irish charmer about a gay YA novelist (James McArdle, “Mare of Easttown”) who must look after four aging women left in his care. As always, the event continues with the Opening Night Party out on 9th Avenue, just outside the host venue, the glorious Paramount Theater.
There’s a lot… A LOT to try to pick and choose from. But here are some things that piqued my interest:
Remaining NativeThe cINeDIGENOUS program features films from indigenous filmmakers throughout the world. Some highlights: The locally-connected documentary Remaining Native follows teenager Ku Stevens, who aspires to go to the University of Oregon and become an Olympic-level cross-country runner while he reflects on his own family’s past in Indian boarding schools. There’s a sweeping 1860s-based Maori epic Ka Whawhai Tonu: Struggle Without End starring Cliff Curtis and Temuera Morrison. The charming feature Tinā is a tuneful underdog story about Mareta, a grieving Samoan teacher who finds a new lease on life and connection to community when she forms a student choir at a wealthy school.
SonsI’m always a sucker for Scandinavian films, and there are a bunch this year. I got to see an early screening of Sons, Danish director Gustav Möller’s follow-up to the excellent The Guilty (SIFF 2018). It’s a tense, burn of a thriller starring the always-great Sidse Babett Knudsen as a prison guard who encounters a new inmate who shares a disturbing connection with her past. I’ll see anything starring the amazing Trine Dyrholm, so Beginnings is on my list. And there is already very good buzz about Raptures, where a devout Christian woman in the 1930s living along the Finland-Sweden border must protect her family from the encroaching wrath of her husband’s newly formed sectarian cult.
This year’s archival treats include a screening of Jim Henson’s magical (and kind of spooky) puppeteering fantasy The Dark Crystal with a live soundtrack by DJ NicFit; Robert J. Kaplan’s 1972 camp classic Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers starring trans actress Holly Woodlawn; and 1953’s The Glass Web, one of only a few noirs filmed using the 3-D process.
Good BoyThe WTF program, aka Wild, Fantastic, and Terrifying films are always… memorable at the very least. Good Boy offers an explanation of what dogs are looking at when they seem to be starting at an empty wall. Horror luminaries Stephen King and Takashi Miike and others discuss the impact 1974’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in Chain Reactions. Noémie Merlant (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) returns with a very different theme in The Balconettes, where a trio of Marseille roommates—a camgirl, a writer, and an actress—rage against toxic masculinity in the middle of a terrible heat wave.
Are you still at a loss? Don’t worry, SIFF programmers have also published their personal recommendations and favorites, which may help you narrow down your schedule.
The fest wraps up with the Closing Night Party, (conveniently) on Saturday the 24th (so you can still recover and catch more films on Sunday, the last day) with a screening of Sorry, Baby, a nonlinear, seriocomic story about a melancholic English professor’s complicated path toward healing in the aftermath of an all-too-common tragedy. The film was the winner of the Sundance 2025 Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and director, writer, and star Eva Victor is scheduled to attend. The screening is followed by a party at MOHAI.
Dig in to the 51st Seattle International Film Festival full program here. And have fun! See you at the movies!
