55th San Franciso Int. Film Fest: Farewell, My Queen and Farewell to Festival Stalwarts

The 55th edition of the San Francisco International Film Festival opens today, April 19th with the French period drama “Farewell, My Queen” by Benoît Jacquot and which runs for a good three weeks on the 3rd of May. This year’s edition will be a bittersweet for many involved due to the untimely passing of its executive director, Graham Leggat last August, and his follower Bingham Ray whose death also shocked the film world smack down during the Sundance Film Festival.

The festival is the longest running film festival in the Americas which showcases some of the best films from around the world with competitions and awards. This year’s centerpiece is the critically well-liked “Your Sister’s Sister” by Lynn Shelton and closes with the documentary “Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey” by Ramona S. Diaz. This year British actor and director Kenneth Branagh, Australian actress Judy Davis, writer David Webb Peoples, French cinephile Pierre Rissient, documentarian Barbara Kopple and author Jonathan Lethem will be appearing to be honored for their work with intimate conversations.

Among the over 120 feature films, there are films by Yorgos Lanthimos (Alps), Marjan Satrapi (Chicken with Plums), Hong Sang-Soo (The Day He Arrives), Alex Gibney (The Last Gladiators), Johnnie To (Life Without Principle), Joachim Trier (Oslo, August 31), Maiwenn (Polisse), Emanuele Crialese (Terraferma), Michael Winterbottom (Trishna), Nadine Labaki (Where Do We Go Now?), Peter Ho-Sun Chan (Wu Xia) and Andrea Arnold (Wuthering Heights).

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