The Seattle International Film Festival is back for its 52nd year, which means your moviegoing ambitions are about to get a little unruly. It runs May 7-17 with 203 films from 71 countries and regions, including 18 world premieres and 10 U.S. premieres. The fun, and the problem, is figuring out where to begin. I’ve seen a few of these, plan to see more, and could easily make a much longer list. For now, here are a few films worth putting on your calendar.

I Love Boosters

Opening Night Film
May 7, 7 p.m.

Writer-director Boots Riley opens SIFF with I Love Boosters, a wild heist comedy about a crew of professional shoplifters who target a ruthless fashion mogul. Keke Palmer leads the cast, with Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Don Cheadle, Demi Moore, and LaKeith Stanfield, who has had a large and persistent hold on me since his Atlanta days. Riley’s Sorry to Bother You remains one of the most brilliant and original movies ever. SIFF says Riley is scheduled to attend, which makes opening night the place to be.

Edie Arnold Is a Loser

New American Cinema 
May 8-9

Edie Arnold Is a Loser follows a self-declared loser at a Catholic high school who starts a punk band, and the whole thing looks fabulously playful with a fat, juicy heart at its center. Megan Rico and Kade Atwood’s debut feature premiered at SXSW, and SIFF has it paired with the short Scout’s Honor. SIFF program coordinator Alison Jean Smith calls the film “a siren song for the weirdos, the outcasts, and the underdogs among us.” Cheers to that forever and always.

Mārama

cINeDIGENOUS
May 8-9

Mārama makes a strong case for anti-colonial horror as a genre, because the terror is not coming out of nowhere. The feature debut from Māori filmmaker Taratoa Stappard follows a young Māori woman who travels to Victorian England after a letter offers information about her family. What she finds is tied to colonial violence, a stolen family history, and a house full of things that should never have been taken. This is a revenge story with Māori women and cultural survival at the center. Horror can hit pretty hard when the rage has a reason.

Nuisance Bear

Documentary
May 8-9

Animal movies can be emotionally dangerous territory, and Nuisance Bear sounds especially so. The film won Sundance’s U.S. Grand Jury Prize for documentary and follows polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba, where their migration runs up against tourism, wildlife control, and the expanding human footprint. The title already tells you who has the power to name the problem. The bear is called a nuisance, but the movie seems to ask who made the world harder to live in.

Drunken Noodles

World Cinema / Argentina
May 8 and May 10

Drunken Noodles follows Adnan, a young New Yorker whose summer starts with a hookup while housesitting and then slips into something much less linear. Writer-director Lucio Castro moves through queer romance, art, memory, and a few narrative folds. It’s beautiful, especially if you like a movie that refuses to walk in a straight line.

Yo (Love Is a Rebellious Bird)

Documentary
May 9-10

Anna Fitch was 24 when she met Yo, who was 73, and the friendship that followed became a way into a movie about grief, memory, and how people keep loving each other after death. After Yo died, Fitch spent years building a one-third-scale version of Yo’s Pacific Grove house, with a 20-inch puppet of Yo inside it. The film blends footage from Yo’s final year with this handmade world. What stayed with me is how open it is. Who is ever really ready to say goodbye? Fitch asks the big questions without forcing answers, which lets the audience carve their own path through. I found myself noticing every judgment or concern that crossed my mind while watching, then trying to quiet it and just observe. It is honest and beautifully shot, the kind of movie that teaches you a lot about yourself while you’re watching it. It also understands that universal truths do not come from broad strokes. Somehow, quite miraculously, we find ourselves in the fine details of someone else’s life.

Happy Birthday

World Cinema / Egypt
May 9 and May 17

In Happy Birthday, 8-year-old Toha wants to throw a birthday party for her friend Nelly. The plan is sweet, but complicated: Toha works in Nelly’s home as a maid. What starts with cake and decorations becomes a child’s attempt to claim one small piece of joy in a world that keeps reminding her where she stands. Egypt submitted Sarah Goher’s debut feature for the Academy Awards, and Variety’s Alissa Simon calls it “a powerful empathy generator.”

Ghost in the Machine

Documentary
May 10-11

Seattle-raised filmmaker Valerie Veatch’s documentary looks at artificial intelligence and the racist (and sexist) ideas built into systems often sold as neutral. The film traces some of AI’s assumptions about intelligence back through eugenics and a narrow definition of whose knowledge gets treated as genius. One of its most gripping threads, and one I had not heard framed this way before, is the Silicon Valley creation myth, where a world of men tries to build intelligence in its own image, almost as if AI offers a chance to make life without needing a body. The film is dense. I had to pause a few times to process what I was learning, then spent the rest of the night digesting it. As AI keeps moving into daily life, literacy around it is critical.

Hen

World Cinema / Germany, Greece, Hungary
May 11-12

The premise is compelling enough on its own: a chicken escapes a processing plant and winds up in a Greek seaside village, seeing human behavior from a very low vantage point. “Driven entirely by instinct, she has no understanding of the events unfolding around her. That absolute innocence is exactly what makes her such a devastating witness,” writes Becky Rice for SIFF. It sounds so strange and clever, and everyone seems to be talking about this one. 

RADIOHEART: The Drive and Times of DJ Kevin Cole

Northwest Connections 
May 12, 15, 17

For many people who came to Seattle from somewhere else, KEXP became a kind of first friend. You moved here, figured out the rain, tried to find your people, and there was Kevin Cole, making the city feel a little less anonymous through the radio. RADIOHEART looks at Cole’s life, from Minneapolis clubs to his long run at KEXP, where his curiosity helped shape how Seattle listens. The film also touches on Music Heals, KEXP’s series on how music connects to mental health. It includes an excellent soundtrack and appearances from other local treasures but the real pull is Cole himself: a DJ who knows that the right song at the right time can change everything. 

The Life We Leave

Northwest Connections / Documentary
May 14-16

Call me dark, but I like talking about death. We should talk about it more, even when it makes us emotionally squeamish. The Life We Leave follows Auburn-based Return Home, one of the companies at the center of Washington’s human composting movement. Washington legalized the practice in 2019, and what might sound unnerving at first becomes, in the film, a practical and very human question about what we do with the people we love after they die.

Micah Truman puts everything on the line to build Return Home, but one of his best choices is bringing in funeral directors Brie Smith and Katey Houston, who understand that death care needs more than a business plan. They bring remarkable warmth and empathy to the process, helping families navigate this new way of working through losing someone. Seeing families receive the soil of their loved one and using it to plant something new is moving. For local audiences, the movie also carries a little pride: Washington helped make this possible, and the film shows that work up close.

Lady

World Cinema / United Kingdom 
May 16-17

Lady starts as an absurd mockumentary about a young filmmaker who agrees to document Lady Isabella, an aristocrat with a massive estate and a very silly vanity art project. He arrives expecting to watch her make a fool of herself and, in the process, prove that he is a brilliant filmmaker with an eye for absurdity. At first, that seems like the whole movie, then strange things begin happening, and the film becomes more playful and more sincere at the same time. Lady Isabella is still ridiculous, but she is not empty, and her project begins to feel like an attempt to make something out of the deep shame and loneliness she carries. The filmmaker, who thought he could stay safely behind the camera, ends up having to offer more of himself too. The result is tender and hilarious, with enough kooky magic to make the real moviemakers and the audience meet somewhere unexpected.

Powwow People

cINeDIGENOUS / Northwest Connections / Documentary
May 16-17

Shot at Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center in Discovery Park, Powwow People follows a powwow over the course of a single day, with emcee Reuben Little Head helping guide the rhythm of the gathering. Director Sky Hopinka, a Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians filmmaker with local ties, keeps the film rooted in observation rather than explanation. It sounds like a documentary that asks viewers to slow down and understand witnessing as its own kind of participation.

Cookie Queens

Documentary
May 16-17

Cookie Queens follows four Girl Scouts through cookie season, which is apparently an $800 million operation and also a very real emotional battlefield. I happen to have a Girl Scout in my immediate family, so I understand that cookie season is not a casual activity. The girls have goals, strategies, and enough sales pressure to make most adults crumble like a Thin Mint. The documentary won an audience award at SXSW, and it sounds like a sweet little family movie with a ton of bite.

Black Burns Fast

World Cinema / South Africa
May 16-17

The movie follows Luthando, a scholarship student at an elite South African all-girls boarding school who has learned to stay small. Then Ayanda arrives and pulls her toward a freer, riskier version of herself. Their secret romance opens up a new world for Luthando, but it also threatens the future she has worked so hard to protect. This one looks sweet and raw, and good coming-of-age stories should be mandatory viewing.

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A few additional titles of note: Eight Bridges, Renoir, Late Fame, The Invite, Camp, Promised Sky, and The Ascent. With the lineup spread across 13 programs, from cINeDIGENOUS and Northwest Connections to Asian Crossroads, WTF, and more, there is plenty to sort through. Start making your schedule and prepare to make a few impossible choices.