24th San Francisco Independent Film Festival (Feb. 3-13)

Submitted by the Event Organizer

The 24th SF Independent Film Festival (SF IndieFest) presented in-person at the Roxie Theater in SF and virtually online from February 3 to February 13, 2022.

SF IndieFest will once again bring the freshest new independent films and digital programs from around the world to San Francisco audiences. This year’s festival includes 42 shorts and 26 features from 10 countries.

PASSES, TICKETS, VOUCHERS
Roxie Theater show tickets are $14 in advance and $15 at the door.
All online show tickets are $10.

• Live + Virtual All Access Pass: $100-150
• Virtual Screenings All Access Pass: $65-120

For more information and tickets, visit sfindie.com or call 415-662-3378.

There will be 20 live presentations that will take place at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. All programs, with the exception of CATCH THE FAIR ONE, will screen virtually on demand during the festival.

The program will be broken down into Big Nights, Local Films, Documentaries, International Indies, American Indies, and Shorts Programs. Find a rundown of feature films broken into their respective sections below.

BIG NIGHTS

OPENING NIGHT
THE SLEEPING NEGRO
Director: Skinner Myers
Confronted with a series of racially charged incidents, a young black man must overcome rage, alienation, and hopelessness in order to find his own humanity.

OPENING NIGHT
CATCH THE FAIR ONE
Director: Josef Kubota
Native American boxer Kaylee embarks on the fight of her life when she goes undercover in a sex trafficking operation to seek revenge against the men who kidnapped her sister.

CENTERPIECE
ALL MY FRIENDS HATE ME
Director: Andrew Gaynord
A birthday-party college reunion gives rise to a hilariously squirmy skewering of thirtysomething
neuroses among Britain’s privileged class.

CLOSING NIGHT
WE WERE ONCE KIDS (previously entitled THE KIDS)
Director: Eddie Martin
When the indie cult classic, KIDS, was released 26 years ago to an unsuspecting nation, it spurred the careers of Chloë Sevigny and Rosario Dawson. This documentary explores the divergent paths of the original cast and revisits how one of the most iconic films of the 1990s transformed their lives.

CLOSING NIGHT
MOTHER SCHMUCKERS
Directors: Harpo Guit and Lenny Guit
Issachar and Zabulon, two brothers in their twenties, are supremely stupid and never bored, as madness is part of their daily lives. When they lose their mother’s beloved dog, they have 24 hours to find it—or she will kick them out.

LOCAL STORIES AND STORYTELLERS

THE CREATIVE HIGH
Director: Adriana Marchione
World Premiere
The documentary showcases how art can be a guidepost for recovering from addiction, while delving into the artist’s challenge to maintain equilibrium before and after recovery.
Director Adriana Marchione lives in Noe Valley.

LANDLOCKED
Director: Paul Owens
Summoned to his soon-to-be demolished childhood home, Mason discovers a video camera that can see into the past, driving him to record as many memories as possible before the doomed house is destroyed.
Director Paul Owens lives in Nob Hill.

LOVE LETTER TEMPLATES
Director: Joselito Sering
Thirteen short stories interconnect the trauma of millennials lost in sex, drugs, and dance-punk afterparties during the 2000s in San Francisco’s seedy districts.
Director Joselito Sering lives in Potrero Hill.

THIS SIDE UP
Director: David Lanning
A struggling screenwriter is dumped by his high school sweetheart. Having no sense of direction in his life, he moves into a storage unit, where he figures out life in a funny way.
Director David Lanning lives in Monte Sereno, a suburb of San Jose.

DOCUMENTARIES

ALUMINATION
Director: Eric Bricker
An independent documentary film about the Airstream community, the company’s historic legacy, and its one-of-a-kind founder, Wally Byam.

CAT DADDIES
Director: Mye Hoang
A heartwarming collective portrait of eight unique men whose lives have been changed by their love for cats.

THE CREATIVE HIGH
Director: Adriana Marchione
Please see LOCAL STORIES AND STORYTELLER section.

WE WERE ONCE KIDS (previously entitled THE KIDS)
Director: Eddie Martin
Please see BIG NIGHTS section.

QUARANTEENED
Director: Rodrigo Dorfman
QUARANTEENED follows the lives of four girls from a blended family, as they cope with the anxiety of their covid-disrupted lives and stolen dreams with humor, self reflection and just enough mayhem to pass the time as boredom sets in and the days begin to blur one into the other.

INTERNATIONAL INDIES

DOUBLE
Director: Valerie Valente, Italy
World Premiere
Double has a special power: the power of invisibility. Thanks to this ability, he spends all his free time following others, coming into contact with the less visible sides of their lives and their personalities.

LIFELINE
Director: Rudolf Havlik, Czech Republic
Petr Horak a top cardiac surgeon, decides to carry out an operation on his daughter before they go on an adventurous journey to a beautiful Nordic island together. Out of blue, while they are in wild nature, Lucie collapses and the difference between reality and fiction starts to blur..

LUCID
Director: Victor Villanueva, Philippines
Ann Cruz is a lucid dreamer. Her dreams are the exact opposite of her mundane, routinary life. In one of her fabricated dreams, she meets a mysterious man who challenges her to make her dreams more adventurous. As she cross paths with another lucid dreamer, she realizes her dreams are far more alive than her reality—making her question if it is worth staying in there or not.

MOTHER SCHMUCKERS
Directors: Harpo Guit and Lenny Guit, Belgium
Please see BIG NIGHTS section.

PARI
Director: Siamak Etemadi, Greece
Babak, an Iranian student in Greece, doesn’t show up to welcome his visiting parents at the Athens airport. Pari and her older husband, both devout Muslims abroad for the first time, are ill-prepared to search for their son in an intimidating and alien environment. Following the steps of her rebellious son in the darkest corners of the city, she will exhaust her inner strength to achieve more than a mother’s search for her missing son.

PRETENDERS
Director: Izuro Kumasaka, Japan
The story of a teenage girl who tries to change the world for the better by faking good deeds.

WET DOGS
Director: Yves Matthey, Switzerland
Alix & Tina. Two best friends. Tina gets bad news: she has a cancer. She calls Alix and then escapes from the hospital. Together they decide to go and live their dreams.

AMERICAN INDIES

CATCH THE FAIR ONE
Director: Josef Kubota
Please see BIG NIGHTS section.

HAVE A NICE LIFE
Director: Prashanth Kamalakanthan
After hitting dead ends in life, Jyothi, an Indian housewife, and Sophie, a stoner musician, find themselves on the run from the law, together on a wild, surreal American road trip from Durham, North Carolina to Montreal, Canada.

LUCKY DOUG
Director: Eric Alan Rousseau
Doug is your average, everyday door-to-door cat food sales person. When he finds out his long time partner is pregnant, Doug makes the decision to become a millionaire, only to find out it’s not as easy as he thought to come up with a million dollar idea.

PAUL DOOD’S DEADLY LUNCH BREAK
Director: Nick Gillespie
A weedy charity-shop worker is set on winning the big national talent show. But when the actions of 5 selfish people cause him to miss his audition, he sets out to seek deathly revenge. It’s 1 lunch break and 5 spectacular murders.

THE ROOMMATE
Director: Curtis Pollock
When Alexis ditches the concrete jungle of NYC and reboots her life moving to the hipster mecca of Austin, she discovers her new roommate has vanished. So she follows the missing woman’s trail from sun-soaked streets to the trippy Technicolor underbelly of the city’s music scene.

THE SLEEPING NEGRO
Director: Skinner Myers
Please see BIG NIGHTS section.

UNDERGRADS
Director: Andrew Zuckerman
World Premiere
An ensemble of college students hang out over their last weekend before graduation. When Monday classes arrive, relationships have been put into question, or even cut off, while others have formed.

FREE SPECIAL EVENTS

Admission is free at all events. Face masks and proof of vaccination are required.

Thursday, February 3rd, 10:00 PM
Opening Night, Make Out Room, 3225 22nd St., San Francisco, CA 94110
Soul, Disco, Funk with DJs Vinnie Esparza and Aware.
21up.

Friday, February 4th, 9:00 PM
The Rumpus Room, 10 6th St., San Francisco, CA 94103
Northern Soul, Rocksteady, and Funk with DJ Barbary Ghost and special guest DJ Davey Bones spinning rare soul 45 vinyl records.
21up.

Saturday, February 5th, 8:00 PM
Bad Art Gallery, 518 Valencia St., San Francisco, CA 94110
The 10th anniversary and final iteration of the SF IndieFest Bad Art Show. This showcase will be the terminal batch of amazing fine art paired with hilarious catalog notes. Help a painting find it’s forever home.
All ages.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.