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Welcome to the San Francisco Documentary Festival 2023 Virtual Festival!
Explore our on-demand catalog here. Film programs are available June 1-11, 2023.
Feature Films
OPENING NIGHT FILM Filmed inside California’s oldest state prison, 26.2 to Life explores the transformative power of San Quentin’s 1000 Mile Club, in which incarcerated men train for and run a marathon on the dirt and concrete path circling the prison yard.
89 min | USA
26.2 to Life + Q&A
It's the coldest day of the year in the coldest place in America and they are running, biking and skiing in the toughest race in the world. What can we learn from them about life, love and happiness?
100 min | USA
40 Below: The Toughest Race in the World + Q&A
While serving life sentences in a dangerously overcrowded and drug-saturated prison system, 50 men embark on a radical journey to become some of the first incarcerated Substance Abuse Counselors in the country.
92 min | 2022 | United States
The 50 + Q&A
What would you like to see if you were about to loose your sight? A blind mother and her seven-year-old son teach each other how to navigate the world as his vision slowly fades and a new life awaits.
76 min | Denmark
All That Remains to be Seen + Q&A
A funeral car cruises the streets of Medellin, while a young director tells the story of his past in this violent and conservative city. He remembers the pre-production of his first film, a Class-B movie with ghosts.
75 min | Colombia
ANHELL69
Annie Lennox & Tell Me Iggy (+ Q&As)
Composed from the conversations that the director holds with people passing by in the street under his Warsaw apartment, each story in 'The Balcony Movie' is unique and deals with the way we try to cope with life as individuals.
101 min | | Poland
The Balcony Movie
A filmmaker looking to get to the bottom of her mysterious mother’s hippie past uncovers an outrageous family history that changes everything.
82 min | United States
Before Us + Q&A
Filmed across unfolding seasons, Eileen–a young, solitary maverick–forges a life among the discarded remnants and lingering memories of a desert ghost town called Cisco. A queer slice of the contemporary American West, Cisco Kid is both a portrait of a person who has walked away from mainstream society, and a place that has been left behind by a changing world.
85 min | USA
Cisco Kid (+Q&A) & Sean Dorsey Dance: Dreaming Trans and Queer Futures
The Colour of Ink uncovers the mystery and power of our oldest medium through the eyes of Jason Logan, a Toronto inkmaker. Harvesting colours from the natural world—weeds, berries, bark, flowers, rocks, rust—he makes ink from just about anything.
110 min | Canada
The Colour of Ink + Q&A
Opening Night - Iconoclastic bluesman Fantastic Negrito faces his demons as he records his third Grammy-winning album. Digging deep into his turbulent past, he searches to answer the question: in a sick society, how do you keep from going crazy?
92 min | United States
Fantastic Negrito: Have You Lost Your Mind Yet? + Q&A
Shaolin is the birthplace of Chinese Chan and Kung Fu, where in a seemingly paradoxical way, the monks pursuing Buddhist peace and enlightenment through the practice of deadliest martial arts. The film observes life of several Shaolin monks and Serbian young female anthropologist who came to conduct fieldwork. With so much chaos in today’s world, can these insiders and outsiders find the Buddhist inner peace and the ending of suffering here?
92 min | China
Into The Shaolin + Q&A
Jesselyn Silva is a 15-year-old 3x national boxing champion. However, when she is on the cusp of making the Olympic team, she is forced to face her toughest battle yet, a cancer diagnosis.
90 min | United States
JessZilla + Q&A
A film about why you should join a club—and why the fate of America may depend on it. Follow the story of America’s civic unraveling through the work of Robert Putnam, whose legendary Bowling Alone findings light a path out of our democracy’s crisis.
104 min | | United States
Join or Die + Q&A
Malcolm Kenyatta, the self-described “poor, Black, and gay kid from North Philly” is running for the United States Senate. But this race is about more than taking on Malcolm’s political competition. It’s about taking on an entire system.The film examines a key question facing our nation: what does it mean to be “electable”?
95 min | United States
Kenyatta: Do Not Wait Your Turn + Q&A
In Cuba, influences from Africa and Europe merge to create a unique colorful culture. Its wildly pulsating heart is the music and dance scene, which extends far beyond Latin jazz, Buena Vista Social Club and salsa. Havana in particular, is a bubbling cauldron of musical, rhythmic creativity with hypnotic sounds of clave, drums, traditional songs and popular hits. The Caribbean island lives music!
87 min | Germany, Cuba
La Clave - A Mystery of Musica Cubana + Q&A
Owning a home – the cornerstone of generational wealth -- is increasingly out of reach for people of color. In Detroit, a group of Black women fights against scammers, evictions and traditional banks to help make The American Dream a reality for all.
78 min | United States
Locked Out + Q&A
An up-close cinematic walkabout through the life of Gary Young, the original (and highly unlikely) drummer of indie rock royalty Pavement. His booze and drugs-fueled antics (on-stage handstands, gifting vegetables to fans) and haphazard production methods (accidentally helping launch the lo-fi aesthetic) were both a driving force of the band’s early rise and the cause of his eventual crash landing. Leaving a wake of joy and/or destruction at every turn, Gary teeters the thin line between free-form self-expression and chaotic self-destruction. Thirty years on with scoliosis, blood clots, and a shriveled liver, Gary is still drumming with no regrets. Note: no puppets were harmed in the making of this film.
91 min | United States
Louder Than You Think + Q&A
Charlie Trotter revolutionized American cuisine but his quest for excellence cost him everything. Featuring Grant Achatz, Emeril Lagasse, and Wolfgang Puck.
97 min | USA
Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter + Q&A
"The wind got up in the night and took our plans away," reads the proverb in the opening titles of Museum of the Revolution. The words are a reference to the 1961 plan to build a grand museum in Belgrade as a tribute to Socialist Yugoslavia. It was supposed to "safeguard the truth" about the Yugoslav people. But the plan never got beyond the construction of the basement. The derelict building now tells a very different story from the one envisioned by the initiators 60 years ago. In the damp, pitch-dark building live the outcasts of a society reshaped by capitalism.
Motel Drive (+ Q&A) & As American As It Gets
Museum of the Revolution & Wondrous Kiental (+ Q&As)
An Israeli anthropologist is traveling to meet a hidden Jewish community in north Ethiopia, together they are telling their special story of survival . Abera, a young artist joins to discover what has been hidden from him
71 min | Israel
Nafkot:Yearning + Q&A
Amidst an onslaught of attacks from a sitting President and the deadly threat of a global pandemic, local election administrators work around the clock to secure the vote for their community.
91 min | United States
No Time To Fail + Q&A
During the preliminary round, there are 160 of them. Then, about 80. Then 40. At last, only 10 lucky ones make it to the final. These are the contestants in the legendary International Chopin Piano Competition, held every five years in Warsaw, Poland. PIANOFORTE follows an eclectic group of young musicians from around the world who have prepared since they were children for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
90 min | Poland, Germany
Pianoforte + Q&A
CLOSING NIGHT - The story of how the Satanic Panic of the 1980s was ignited by "Michelle Remembers", a memoir by psychiatrist and his patient. The book relied on recovered-memory therapy to uncover Michelle's abduction by baby-stealing Satanists.
90 min | United States
Satan Wants You + Q&A
The Secret Song chronicles the final months of Doug Goodkin’s fabled 45-year career teaching music to children in San Francisco.
91 min | USA
The Secret Song (+ Q&A) & parklunchgod
A patchwork of videos, pictures and writings reconstruct the story of a young traveler who disappeared in the Himalayas. From his house in Venice, the filmmaker, intertwining the materials his missing friend sent him throughout his trip, finally shapes the journey he has always dreamt after but never dared to undertake. A meditation on how we create images and the way we interact with them.
46 min | | Nepal, France, Italy, India
Shambala + Q&A
SK8FACE is a film about the history and evolution of skateboard art and culture. Witness the evolution of skateboard art from a simple 2x4 with roller skate wheels to skateboards hanging in museums all over the world.
79 min | USA
SK8 FACE + Q&A
A decade in the making, this documentary chronicles the musings and lifestyle of an eccentric mortician with an attraction to the forbidden living in the coastal town of Galveston, Texas.
75 min | USA
Song of the Cicada + Q&A
Four sex workers caught in the spiral of addiction turn to a self-proclaimed healer offering friendship and a path to salvation from the streets inside his roadside RV. But just as they begin to rebuild their lives, a shocking betrayal comes to light that will change them all.
100 min | | United States
Sweetheart Deal
Tell Me Iggy & Annie Lennox (+ Q&As)
On the night of a family wedding in Jharkand, India, Ranjit fears the worst after waking up to find his daughter is not home. Dragged into the woods, she was gang raped by three men. The village solution is to marry her to one of them. Ranjit refuses. Instead, he challenges the status quo, determined to get justice for his daughter. On his quest, he works with a gender-justice NGO that sees in him an example for other men to follow. As the financial and emotional pressure of the case mounts, the villagers turn against Ranjit, and the boys’ families threaten murder.
126 min | Canada
To Kill A Tiger + Q&A
Water for Birds (+ Q&A) & Shambala
Homeless individuals in Oakland, CA, tell their struggles, experiences and hopes - in their own words - through cell phone footage. The film follows three individuals as they move from one site to the next, all while chasing the elusive miracle that will deliver them out of their current situation.
We R Here (+ Q&A) & Beyond I Wanna Go
Wondrous Kiental & Museum of the Revolution (+ Q&As)
Shorts Programs
Bay Area Shorts Collection + Q&A
Bay Area Shorts: Legends + Q&A
Bay Area Shorts: Slice of the Bay + Q&A
Dare to Rise + Q&A
Iggy and Annie (+ Q&As)
Oddball Adventures + Q&A
Snapshots + Q&A
Still Striving + Q&A
Structures of Movement + Q&A
Unraveling the Heart + Q&A