The San Francisco International Film Festival recently completed its 2025 run with some buzz-worthy titles and real juice. It featured some of the most exciting international and indie features, bringing raw talent, new ambitious voices with diverse cinematic language tools and expressions, and important stories varying from the lighthearted to the morbid and the bizarre. As the Geek Vibes Nation remote festival coverage faithful soldier, I decided to share brief thoughts on some of this year’s most exciting titles. These are my personal recommendations for the features you should have on your radar. Be sure to keep a close eye on these, as one or two may slip into the award conversation anytime now!
Ricky
Movies depicting life after incarceration gained popularity following the success of Sing Sing. In Ricky, director Rashad Frett places his protagonist in the spotlight: a man who has spent 15 years incarcerated, only to encounter another form of life imprisonment in the outside world, where he reveals how people who have been incarcerated are released only to be reinstalled back into the judicial system. The handheld camera adds a verité feel. Stephan James’s performance resonates through the cracks of the complex concept of adulthood and deeper underlying tragedies of a bigger injustice outside prison walls.
Ink Wash
Sarra Tsorakidis’s feature debut is all about distress. The focal distance is tight, the actors are often positioned far away and compressed into the screen, so viewers struggle to decipher their reactions to very unpleasant situations. The camera lingers on the characters’ faces in the most uncomfortable situations, traps them in frames within frames, or displays some of the most bothersome backshots I’ve seen in recent films as viewers navigate the secluded lives of artists at work or sharing a dinner table, where conversations of melancholy, arrogant intellectuals evokes further alienation mixed with curiosity in the minds of audiences.
40 Acres
Danielle Deadwyler is a name that has recently come to be associated with quality performances and intense filmmaking. This year’s 40 Acres is another chameleonic performance for her where she gets to lean into the genre of post-apocalyptic family drama, rather than let the weight of the whole film rest on her shoulders. R. T. Thorne’s film debut is a tense thriller about the end of the world looming ahead, whilst family turmoil never rests. It works in some parts, others it doesn’t. 40 Acres doesn’t spare the violence, but also leaves no place for a dull moment to pass by.
The Last First Time
Coming-of-age queer dramas have come a long way ahead. In this Mexican tale of sexuality and identity, director Rafael Ruiz Espejo uses his dialogue sparsely, paving the way for skin and lots of tongue locking as his protagonist, 18-year-old Eduardo, has a sexual awakening with his cutie classmate Mario, who comes from a more open background. A handheld camera finds us trapped in Eduardo’s psyche as he navigates the erasure of his sexual inexperience to become more comfortable in his own skin with his beloved. It’s a movie about boyhood, the queer experience, and how loves interweaves both with a magical fabric.
The Devil Smokes
Some films are as confusing as they are alluring, leaving one with an uneasy feeling after finishing them, with the need to go back and revisit some scenes or trace some hidden clues in the process. Ernesto Martínez Bucio’s scary fairytale and Lynchian nightmarish feature debut has the elements of a children’s story gone rogue. It doesn’t only tackle the intricate world of childhood fears, but how adults perceive that secret universe in which children exist, unattached from their parents and the all-knowing mini-worlds they create to protect them. Part enchanting, part morbid and haunting, The Devil Smokes is a portal into the dark side of childhood.
3670
Queer cinema has been making major strides in this edition of SFFILM Festival. But this South Korean tale of love and identity in the underground gay community in Seoul brings a different perspective to the queer romance. 3670 is an endearing tale of a North Korean refugee living a double life. He enjoys friendships within the community of defectors and finds love in the South Korean gay community. He is torn between his love life and his growing friendships, and director Joonho Park weaves a beautiful tale of loneliness, self-discovery, humor, and belonging in the land of cultural ambiance.
Jaylan Salah Salman is an Egyptian poet, translator, and film critic for InSession Film, Geek Vibes Nation, and Moviejawn. She has published two poetry collections and translated fourteen books for International Languages House publishing company. She began her first web series on YouTube, “The JayDays,” where she comments on films and other daily life antics. On her free days, she searches for recipes to cook while reviewing movies.
