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.

Adoration
An ancient news story takes on new viral life after a teenager transforms a simple translation exercise into a riveting narrative about his own dead parents, imagining his father as a terrorist who places a bomb in his pregnant girlfriend’s handbag.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 659
Website: http://www.sonyclassics.com/adoration/

Artemisia
Like many of her male predecessors in the Taiwanese New Wave, director Chiang Hsiu-chiung probes the generational and cultural conflicts confronting modern families in Taiwan.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 218
Website: http://www.pts.org.tw/

Don’t Let Me Drown
A love affair set amid the ruins of post-9/11 New York powers this strong feature debut by UC Berkeley graduate Cruz Angeles, who adapts a street-level neo-realist aesthetic to capture the vibrancy (and frictions) of a community rarely portrayed realistically onscreen, the city’s Latino Caribbean population.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 572

French Girl
“So which are you: French, African, Moroccan or Arab?” This loaded question, posed to the titular ten-year-old of Souad El-Bouhati’s wonderfully assured first feature, has no easy answer, for although young Sofia was born in France and fully embraces her Gallic origins, her North African parents prefer that their headstrong daughter retain the traits and traditions of their homeland.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 1,352
Website:   http://www.widemanagement.com/fiche.php?id=790

Gasoline
Three middle-class teenage boys, stealing gasoline to go on an all-night joyride, are headed down the highway to hell in this provocative, nuanced story of adolescent angst.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 325
Website:   http://ondamaxfilms.com/new-films.php?page=gasolina/

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

It’s Not Me, I Swear!
In a placid Montreal suburb in 1968, ten-year-old Léon is a hellion with a cause. The child of dysfunctional but au courant parents, he needs attention. Philippe Falardeau’s (Congorama) intelligent comedy is also a touching study of abandonment.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 524
Website:   http://www.cestpasmoijelejure.com/

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

Khamsa
Karim Dridi creates a vivid picture of Roma life in an enclave on the outskirts of Marseille. Thirteen-year-old Marco, a runaway from foster care, prefers this place of hard living and big, messy families to life on the outside.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 553
Website:   http://www.khamsa-lefilm.com/

Kisses
Children have it tough in this bitter, bright and winning film from Ireland. Young teens Dylan and his neighbor Kylie live for the day they can make a break from their abusive families and bleak suburban housing estate.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 491
Website:  http://www.kisses.ie/

Lake Tahoe
With droll observational humor reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch, writer/director Fernando Eimbcke’s feature follows teenage Juan as he struggles to fix the family car in the aftermath of a minor accident and amid deeper emotional undercurrents.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 484

My Suicide
An alienated teen sets off a chain of hilarious, disturbing and intense events after he announces his intention to film his own suicide. This wild ride unfolds as a torrent of sound, images, comedy and fragments of real experience.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 759
Website:  http://www.mysuicide.net/

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/

Son of a Lion
This sensitively and beautifully shot debut film follows its appealing nonprofessional cast through the harsh, lovely terrain of remote northwestern Pakistan, in a story of a boy who would rather go to school than make firearms with his father.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 655
Website: http://www.sonofalion.com/

Speaking in Tongues
Veteran documentarians Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider tangle with the debate over bilingual education by following the diverse stories of four San Francisco public schoolchildren enrolled in Chinese and Spanish language-immersion programs.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 360
Website: http://www.speakingintonguesfilm.info

A Week Alone
This nuanced portrait of a group of privileged youths in an exclusive gated community outside Buenos Aires, left on their own while their parents travel, quietly penetrates the secret worlds of children as they push the boundaries of newfound freedom.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 508

Youth Bring the Truth
They may be underage, but they’re not to be underestimated. Young filmmakers are grabbing their cameras and tellin’ it like they see it: From voting to NAFTA, Vietnam to immigration, their take on the world is both fresh and focused.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 440


PAST EXHIBITIONS

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

American Teen
Being seventeen has never seemed as interesting, frightening or fun as it does in Nanette Burstein’s unabashedly entertaining new documentary.
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 SFIFF
Attendance: 803
Youth Ed Attendance: 257
Website: www.americanteenthemovie.com/
 
Another Man’s Garden
Sofia, a young girl in Mozambique who is studying to be a doctor, finds that her professor wants more from her than hard work.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 Youth Ed
Attendance: 72
 
August Rush
A drama with fairy tale elements, where an orphaned musical prodigy uses his gift as a clue to finding his birth parents.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 Youth Ed
Attendance: 184
Website: augustrushmovie.warnerbros.com/
 
Ballast
A man, a woman and a child battle each other and themselves in the aftermath of a tragic death.
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 SFIFF
Attendance: 620
Website: ballastfilm.com/
 
Boxers and Ballerinas
Shot in three countries over a two year period, Boxers and Ballerinas explores the US-Cuba conflict thru the eyes of four youths--a boxer and a ballerina in Havana and Santiago de Cuba and a boxer and a ballerina exiled in Miami.
SFFS Exhibition: 2005 SFIFF
Attendance: 1010
Youth Ed Attendance: 561
 
The Boy Who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan
The 1,600-year-old Buddhas carved into the pale cliffs adjoining Afghanistan’s picturesque Bamiyan valley were the world’s tallest stone statues until the Taliban destroyed them in 2001.
SFFS Exhibition: 2004 SFIFF
Attendance: 509
Website: www.theboywhoplaysonthebuddhasofbamiyan.com/
 
The Boys of Baraka
Mavis Jackson tells her Black male Baltimore high school audience that they have three options by the time they reach age 18: “An orange jumpsuit and bracelets, a black suit in a brown box or a black cap and gown.”
SFFS Exhibition: 2005 SFIFF
Attendance: 1012
Youth Ed Attendance: 871
Website: www.pbs.org/pov/pov2006/boysofbaraka/
 
Bus 24: The Diversity Bus (short)
The ethnic and cultural multiplicity of San Francisco comes to life on the #24 Muni from Bayview–Hunters Point through the city’s array of neighborhoods.
SFFS Exhibition: 2004 SFIFF
Attendance: 787
 
Children of the Sun
Not everyone’s home movies chart the rise and fall of a bona fide social movement, but not everyone grew up on a kibbutz.
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 SFIFF
Attendance: 583
 
China Blue
Do you know the real cost of your jeans?
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 Youth Ed
Attendance: 241
Website: www.pbs.org/independentlens/chinablue/

The Class
Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as he negotiates a year with his racially mixed students from a tough Parisian neighborhood.
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 French Cinema Now
Attendance: 330
2008 Youth Ed Attendance: 300
Website: www.sonyclassics.com/theclass/
 
Darius Goes West
In this multi-award-winning documentary, fifteen-year-old Darius Weems and eleven of his best friends set off across America with the ultimate goal of getting his wheelchair customized on MTV’s Pimp My Ride.
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 Youth Ed
Attendance: 160
Website: www.dariusgoeswest.org/the-film/
 
Duma
An orphaned cheetah becomes the best friend and pet of a young boy living in South Africa.
SFFS Exhibition: 2006 Youth Ed
Attendance: 271
Website: dumamovie.warnerbros.com/
 
L’ Enfant
Bruno and Sonia, a young couple living off her benefit and the thefts committed by his gang, have a new source of money: their newborn son.
SFFS Exhibition: 2006 Youth Ed
Attendance: 366
Website: www.sonyclassics.com/thechild/
 
L’ Esquive
“I wanted to show a different way of looking at kids in the projects,” Abdellatif Kechiche says of this courageous teenage romance…
SFFS Exhibition: 2004 SFIFF
Attendance: 838

Favela Rising
One night in a favela, an impoverished barrio on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, an infamous druglord shot and killed four policemen, launching what the favela residents refer to as “The Massacre.”
SFFS Exhibition: 2006 SFIFF
Attendance: 392
Youth Ed Attendance: 171
Website: www.favelarising.com/

Freedom Writers
A young teacher inspires her class of at-risk students to learn tolerance, apply themselves, and pursue education beyond high school.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 Youth Ed
Attendance: 124
Website: www.freedomwriters.com/

Girl Trouble
Girl Trouble is an intimate look at the compelling personal stories of three teenagers entangled in San Francisco’s juvenile justice system.
SFFS Exhibition: 2004 SFIFF
Attendance: 1001
Website: www.girltrouble.org/
 
Going on 13
A four-year study of how four young girls come of age in today's world.
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 Youth Ed
Attendance: 26
Website: www.goingon13movie.com/

Half Nelson
An idealistic Brooklyn junior high school teacher, battling institutional apathy and a crippling drug addiction, strikes up an unlikely relationship with one of his students in this low-key, naturalistic look at friendship and inner-city life.
SFFS Exhibition: 2006 SFIFF
Attendance: 719
Website: www.halfnelsonthefilm.com/

Heart of Fire
In this moving drama, ten-year-old Awet, played with powerful expressiveness by Letekidan Micael, is swept into the Eritrean war for independence of the early 1980s.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFFS Screen
Attendance: 175

Heart of the Game
The politics of race, class and gender land center court in Ward Serrill’s entertaining documentary about the Birkenstock-shod coach of a high school girls basketball team in Seattle…
SFFS Exhibition: 2006 SFIFF
Attendance: 318
Youth Ed Attendance: 101
Website: www.heartofthegame.org/web/home.htm
 
Hip Hop Project
The Hip Hop Project is the dynamic and inspirational story of a group of New York City teenagers who...
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 Youth Ed
Attendance: 125
Website: www.hiphopproject.com/
 
Iraq in Fragments
A film about Iraq for those who may be growing weary of mass media coverage about Iraq, James Longley’s newest work is a powerful combination of arthouse documentary and political provocation.
SFFS Exhibition: 2006 SFIFF
Attendance: 1006
Youth Ed Attendance: 263
Website: www.iraqinfragments.com/
 
JUMP!
A feature-length character-driven documentary about competitive jump rope that follows kids on five teams from around the country who push physical and psychological limits in pursuit of winning the World Championship.
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 SFIFF
Attendance: 215
Youth Ed Attendance: 321
Website: www.jumpmovie.com/
 
The Key of G
The remarkable life of 22-year-old Gannet Hosa-Betonte and his devoted caregiver friends is lovingly chronicled in this inspiring documentary.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 SFIFF
Attendance: 317
Youth Ed Attendance: 12
Website: www.lateralfilms.com/keyofg/
 
Mad Hot Ballroom
The refined world of ballroom foxtrots collides with the chaos of New York City schoolkids in this documentary cross between Spellbound and Strictly Ballroom.
SFFS Exhibition: 2005 SFIFF
Attendance: 1445
Youth Ed Attendance: 399
Website: paramountvantage.com/madhot/
 
The Miracle of Bern
To many Germans their team’s victory over the Hungarians at the 1954 World Cup in Bern, Switzerland, ranks with the fall of the Berlin Wall as one of the most important events in postwar Germany.
SFFS Exhibition: 2004 SFIFF
Attendance: 787
 
The Monkey Kid
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 Youth Ed
Attendance: 281
 
Mukhsin
Everyone has a first love story to tell.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 SFIFF
Attendance: 364
Youth Ed Attendance: 83
 
My Kid Could Paint That
A look at the work and surprising success of a four-year-old girl whose paintings have been compared to the likes of Picasso and has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 Youth Ed
Attendance: 60
Website: www.sonyclassics.com/mykidcouldpaintthat/

Once
A modern-day musical about a busker and an immigrant and their eventful week in Dublin, as they write, rehearse and record songs that tell their love story.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 Youth Ed
Attendance: 659
Youth Ed Attendance: 94
Website:www.foxsearchlight.com/once/

Opal Dream
SFFS Exhibition: 2006 Youth Ed
Youth Ed Attendance: 150
 
 
The Reel Youth Revolution
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 SFIFF
Attendance: 689
Youth Ed Attendance: 524
 
Runners High
If you can finish a marathon you can do anything. Such is the elegant and powerful mantra of the organization Students Run Oakland. It’s an inspiring challenge, rife with metaphor and room for resolve—and then there's the doing of it. To get to the finish line, SRO asks teens to dedicate themselves to four months of training.
SFFS Exhibition: 2006 SFIFF
Attendance: 1197
Youth Ed Attendance: 706
Website: www.runnershighfilm.com/

2nd Verse: The Rebirth of Poetry
 It's the annual Brave New Voices Poetry Slam, a San Francisco event that in 2005 (the year recorded here) attracted some 350 teenage poets from 36 U.S. cities, plus a smattering of international participants.
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 Youth Ed
Attendance: 242
Website: www.2ndversefilm.com/

Sepet
In her second film, Yasmin Ahmad tells a story of interracial teenage love, between Chinese Jason, a peddler of pirated videos, and Orked, a Malay schoolgirl who likes Hong Kong movies.
SFFS Exhibition: 2005 SFIFF
Attendance: 614
Youth Ed Attendance: 23
 
Sequins
Hand-woven designs and luxurious embroidery are the visual basis of this delicately observed French tale of an unlikely friendship between two women of different ages, classes and cultures.
SFFS Exhibition: 2005 SFIFF
Attendance: 556
Youth Ed Attendance: 638
 
Smiling in a War Zone
In the wake of September 11, when airspace was severely restricted to private aircraft, director and performance artist Simone Aaberg Kaern was determined to “reclaim the freedom of the sky.”
SFFS Exhibition: 2006 SFIFF
Attendance: 373
Youth Ed Attendance: 125
 
The Sugar Curtain
Born in Chile in 1971, Camila Guzmán Urzúa was the daughter of a guerrilla filmmaker, Patricio Guzmán, who would soon become one of the most notorious figures in Latin American cinema.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 SFIFF
Attendance: 609
Youth Ed Attendance: 87
 
These Girls
The streets of Cairo, Egypt are no place for a young girl. Dangerous and unstable, they provide little reprieve from the dirty underbelly of urban life, where kidnappings are as frequent as police abuse.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 SFIFF
Attendance: 440
 
The Third Monday in October
Fall 2004. Election season is in full swing and the presidential candidates are out in force, campaigning with gusto and making their platforms known: Curly fries for the cafeteria! New themes for dances! No more chairs attached to desks! Bush and Kerry may be busy debating Iraq and the economy, but for 11 presidential hopefuls from three states, junk food and bathroom stalls are the issues of import in the elections for middle school student government.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 SFIFF
Attendance: 359
Youth Ed Attendance: 952
Co-presenter: League of Young Voters

Up the Yangtze
Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang displays a lyrical eye for landscape and detail that doesn’t shy from hard truths. His haunting film leaves us mourning what is lost and wondering what is gained as the imminent completion of the massive Three Gorges Dam, one of the biggest and most controversial engineering projects in human history...
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 SFIFF
Attendance: 651
Youth Ed Attendance: 86
Website:www3.nfb.ca/webextension/up-the-yangtze/
 
Vanaja
When a soothsayer predicts that she will become a great dancer, and her father no longer can pay for school, Vanaja steers her way into the household of  a virtuoso of kuchipudi, a narrative dance practiced by high-caste Brahmins.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 SFIFF
Attendance: 917
Youth Ed Attendance: 12
Website: www.vanajathefilm.com/
Co-presenter:  3rd I
 
Vitus
Fredi M. Murer’s upbeat film about an exceptional boy who learns to find his own way in life is an admonitory tale for average folk as well.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 SFIFF
Attendance: 359
Youth Ed Attendance: 224
Film Website: www.sonyclassics.com/vitus/
 
Viva Cuba
Director Juan Carlos Cremata relates his road movie fairy tale with a disarming sincerity that is always involving and engaging. Taking elements from the reality of daily life, he weaves a heartfelt fable of children, which gives it its great charm.
SFFS Exhibition: 2006 SFIFF
Attendance: 1219
Youth Ed Attendance: 538
Website: www.vivacuba-lefilm.com/
 
Welcome to the Sticks
SFFS Exhibition: French Cinema Now
2008 Youth Ed:
Attendance: 261

Whale Rider
Whale Rider is an exceptional coming-of-age fable that never cheats its audience, allowing viewers of all ages to rediscover innocence and wisdom, free of cynicism and doubt.
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 Youth Ed
Attendance: 239
Website: www.whaleriderthemovie.com/
 
The World According to Sesame Street
The film follows productions in Bangladesh, Kosovo and South Africa and examines how producers from New York's Sesame Workshop take the iconic American television show and localize it with indigenous songs, puppets and curricula while facing cultural, political and production challenges.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 Youth Ed
Attendance: 100
Website: www.pbs.org/independentlens/worldaccordingtosesamestreet/
 
Young at Art (SFUSD Student Art Festival)
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 Youth Ed
Attendance: 238

Youth Be Told
SFFS Exhibition: 2004 SFIFF
Attendance: 787
 
Youth Gone Wild
SFFS Exhibition: 2006 SFIFF
Attendance: 432
Youth Ed Attendance: 257
 
Youth Media Mania
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 SFIFF
Attendance: 309
Youth Ed Attendance: 271


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

Come Life
Ryan Etzel

Educational Hip-Hop Video Collection
Howard Egger- Bovet

God's Army: The Real Story
Joe Hill White

Kunjo
Terrie Samundra

Lost in a Sense
Bobby White






RESOURCES

The following list of resources offers interested audience members more information and ways to become involved in Youth.
826 Valencia

Active Voice

Campaign Against Child Labor

The Casey Family Programs National

Children NOW

Children of Lesbians and Gays
Everywhere

Common River (Ethiopia)

Girl Scouts of America

Girls INC.

Just Think

Keep a Child Alive

Museum of Children's Art (Oakland)

ONE Campaign

Out of Home Youth Advocacy Council

Princess Projects

Redefining Progress

UNICEF

Youth Community Action