Exhibition | Fiscal Sponsorship | Resources

2009 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Highlighted film titles link to SFIFF pages that contain film synopses, credits, print sources, running times, countries of origin and ticket purchase links.

Autumn
In this striking debut feature from a young Turkish director, Yusuf struggles to find purpose after serving ten years as a political prisoner, striking a bleak connection with a prostitute who reads Russian literature.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 443
Website: http://www.sonbaharfilm.com/

Bullet in the Head
Based on a true incident of an assassination of French cops by Basque terrorists, the moment-to-moment realism of Bullet in the Head will leave you stunned and gasping for breath. 
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 514
Website: http://www.the-match-factory.com/bulletinthehead

Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
This harrowing, breathless documentary revisits the 2007 protests by hundreds of silent monks and thousands of chanting citizens against Burma’s military dictatorship, using the stunning concealed-camcorder footage smuggled abroad by a cadre of courageous young reporters.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 625
Website: http://www.burmavj.com/

City of Borders
The Israel-Palestine conflict is seen anew through a rainbow of sexual identity in this heartfelt documentary centered on the diverse denizens of Jerusalem’s lone gay bar, a haven of unity amid the region’s seemingly eternal clash of cultures and religious strife. 
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 749
Website: http://www.cityofborders.com/

Crude
This lively and gripping documentary follows the shifting course of a lawsuit brought by 30,000 Ecuadoreans against Chevron over its responsibility for the country’s contaminated waters and streams.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 1,108
Website: http://www.crudethemovie.com/

Ferlinghetti
This portrait of poet and City Lights cofounder Lawrence Ferlinghetti traces a legendary and remarkably influential literary life, from the early Beats and the Howl censorship trial to the infamous anti-war banner hung outside the bookstore, “Dissent Is Not Un-American.” 
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 838
Website: http://ferlinghettifilm.com/

Go Go 70s
Based on the story of real-life ’70s rock group the Devils, Go Go 70s is a worthy addition to the recent canon of Korean films that re-evaluate the country’s history from authoritarian rule to civilian democracy in the late 20th century.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 413

Good Life
This affectionate patchwork of stories is about ordinary people—a social worker, a hairdresser, a bank loan officer, a classical musician—struggling to follow their dreams in the Chilean metropolis. Their lives are presented with such penetrating empathy that the film rises to the level of human comedy. 
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 689
Website:  http://www.latidofilms.com/proyectos.nuevostitulos.ficha.do?idProyecto=66&opcion_izquierda=5&opcion_superior=3/

Kabuli Kid
When a veiled woman abandons her infant son in the back of his cab, Khaled journeys through the streets of war-ravaged Kabul in an attempt to find the child’s mother in this bittersweet comic fable.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 589
Website: http://www.wildbunch.biz/homepage.cfm?section=films&filmid=249

Laila’s Birthday
Gaza-born director Rashid Masharawi captures the absurdity of the Palestinian situation in this comically deadpan, stop-and-start “road trip” through the land of checkpoints and barriers. A former judge who still retains his regal bearing, Abu Laila (stone-faced Mohamed Bakri, a Palestinian Buster Keaton) now drives a taxi to make ends meet.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 527

Mohandas
Prompted by the receipt of an amateur video showing an altercation at a mining company, a bright-eyed New Delhi TV reporter investigates the case of Mohan Das in Madhya Pradesh, in central India.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 329
Website: http://www.mohandas.in/

My Neighbor, My Killer
Anne Aghion has spent over a decade documenting a small village in Rwanda where, since 1999, government trials called the Gacaca have attempted to move toward reconciliation and healing in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, where Hutus killed Tutsis on a mass scale using machetes and makeshift weapons.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 393
Website: http://www.gacacafilms.com/mnmk/

New Muslim Cool
From behind the headlines on inner-city crime, clashing civilizations and the War on Terror comes filmmaker Jennifer Maytorena Taylor’s illuminating portrait of Puerto Rican Muslim Hamza Pérez, a former gang member and drug dealer turned politically outspoken hip-hop artist, anti-drug counselor, community activist, family man and devout convert to Islam.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 798
Website: http://www.newmuslimcool.com/

Oblivion
Heddy Honigmann returns to her native Peru for her latest deeply humanist exploration of everyday resilience and resignation. In Lima, “the forgotten city,” in the shadow of the presidential palace, bartenders and buskers create their own reality to survive an economy in ruins.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 620
Website: http://www.heddy-honigmann.nl

Reckoning
The International Criminal Court’s attempts to prosecute powerful killers who formerly acted with impunity is examined, through accounts of victims, prosecutors, and human rights activists, in this fascinating, often encouraging, account of the pursuit of justice.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 546
Website: http://skylightpictures.com/site/film_detail/the_reckoning/

Z32
Israeli “docu-essayist” Avi Mograbi reveals the deepest longings of a nation in conflict in this genre-breaking and original work in which a young Israeli soldier participates in a revenge operation and speaks of his experiences to his girlfriend.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 271


PAST EXHIBITIONS

Highlighted film titles link to SFIFF pages that contain film synopses, credits, print sources, running times and countries of origin.

Amandla: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony
Interviews, archival footage, and filmed performances highlight the role of music in the South African struggle against apartheid.
SFFS Exhibition: 2006 Youth Ed
Attendance: 180
 
Bamako
Set in the Malian capital of its title, Abderrahmane Sissako's Bamako centers on a show trial in which the plaintiff, “African society,” argues against exploitation by the defendant, the World Bank.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 SFIFF
Attendance: 727
Co-presenter: MOAD: The Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco Black Film Festival

Beyond the Call
Ed, Jim and Walt are not your average weekend warriors. Ordinary, inconspicuous Americans with wives, careers and hobbies, these three friends realize their deepest passion in life through self-financed humanitarian missions to war zones around the globe.
SFFS Exhibition: 2006 SFIFF
Attendance: 595
Website: www.beyondthecallthemovie.com/

Delwende
A rural and seemingly idyllic village in Burkina Faso is hit with a mysterious epidemic that is killing its children. The culprit, according to the men...
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 SFFS Screen
Atttendance: 189

The Devil Came on Horseback
Another African crisis has unfolded, and callous officials and concerned bystanders again stand paralyzed.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 SFIFF
Attendance: 531
Website: www.thedevilcameonhorseback.com/
 
The Dignity of the Nobodies
This is activist cinema at its best: passionate, informative and uncompromising.
SFFS Exhibition: 2006 SFIFF
Attendance: 693
Website: www.pinosolanas.com/la_dignidad_info.htm

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
Michael Moore, move over: There’s a new guy exposing America’s big-business buffoons, and his name is Alex Gibney.
SFFS Exhibition: 2005 SFIFF
Attendance: 730
Website: www.enronmovie.com/
 
The Fall of Fujimori
Ellen Perry documents how political oppression, murder and corruption in Peru were effectively promoted in the name of democracy and counterterrorism.
SFFS Exhibition: 2005 SFIFF
Attendance: 477
Website: www.falloffujimori.com/
 
Home of the Brave
The price of social commitment, not just to oneself but to the generations that follow, is compassionately explored in Paola di Florio’s Home of the Brave.
SFFS Exhibition: 2004 SFIFF
Attendance: 389
 
The Judge and the General
A Chilean judge chosen to investigate criminal charges against former dictator General Augusto Pinochet undergoes a transformation…
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 SFIFF
Attendance: 910
Website: www.pbs.org/pov/pov2008/judgeandthegeneral/index.html
Co-presenter:World Affairs Council of Northern California
 
Operation Turquoise
This unsentimental, sometimes brutal docudrama assesses the ostensibly humanitarian role of French troops after the Rwandan genocide of 1994 by viewing it through the eyes of both naïve and seasoned soldiers.
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 SFIFF
Attendance: 275
Youth Ed Attendance: 72
 
The Rape of Europa
Based on Lynn H. Nicholas’ award-winning book of the same name, this fascinating documentary is an epic exploration of how failed artist Adolf Hitler looted, plundered and pillaged the great art of Europe during World War II.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 SFIFF
Attendance: 1311
Website: www.rapeofeuropa.com/
 
A Social Genocide
The government must resign! Kick them out! In December 2001, Argentina was in a state of siege—thousands of people filled the streets banging on pots and pans, protesting decades of corrupt leadership that resulted in devastating economic ruin.
SFFS Exhibition: 2005 SFIFF
Attendance: 506
 
Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai
Taking Root tells the dramatic story of Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai whose simple act of planting trees grew into a nationwide movement to safeguard the environment, protect human rights, and defend democracy—a movement for which this charismatic woman became an iconic inspiration.
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 Youth Ed
Attendance: 193
Website: takingrootfilm.com/
 
The Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela
In this tribute to his late stepfather, B. Pule Leinaeng (“Lee”), filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris weaves a riveting exploration of family, exile and home.
SFFS Exhibition: 2006 SFIFF
Attendance: 435
Youth Ed Attendance: 21
Website: www.pbs.org/pov/pov2006/twelvedisciples/


FISCAL SPONSORSHIP

HIghlighted film titles link to sffs.org "Current Projects" pages, alphabetically listing SFFS fiscally sponsored films, containing synopses and website links where available. Below each title is the filmmaker's name.

America's Most Unwanted
Shani Heckman

Angel of Mercy
George Paul Csicsery 

Canvas of a City
Nadia Shihab, Lahib Jaddo

Educational Hip-Hop Video Collection
Howard Egger- Bovet

Ferlinghetti
Chris Felver

Forty Winters
Valarie Jernigan

An Imagined Country
Marilyn Mulford

Immersion
Richard Levien

The Last Days of Beijing's Hutongs
Weimin Zhang

Peak Moment Television
Janaia Donaldson

Down in a Hole
Nathan Friedkin

Star-Crossed
Florencia Manovil

They Closed Our Schools
Brian Grogan

Volunteer Nation: Stories of Service
Ben Hess, Dan Janos

Without A Net
Kelly J. Richardson


RESOURCES

The following list of resources offers interested audience members more information and ways to become involved in Social Justice.

Community Alliance with Family Farmers

California Innocence Project

Global Exchange

IJCentral

Latin America Working Group

NAACP

Resource Center for Non-Violence

San Francisco Foundation

San Francisco Rights Commission

World Affairs Council

Youth Alive!