SIFF: An Award Winning Festival

For the third consecutive year, I attended the opening night of the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF). They hold the event at their very cool theatre at the Seattle Center. This year’s premiere film was “Battle in Seattle”, which was Stuart Townsend’s writing and directorial debut. It was based on the riots during the WTO summit in 1999. Townsend craftily used fictional characters and real events from the riots to weave a suspenseful story. He made a short speech and introduced the main cast, including Charlize Theron, before the show.

I was impressed with the number of films SIFF presented. This year there were 191 feature films, 57 documentary features and 170 short films from 69 countries. I was fortunate to see a few of them and added many titles to my DVD list.

Frozen River Earns an IndieShares Thumbs Up

I recently had the opportunity to see an advance screening of "Frozen River" and highly recommend the film. Courtney Hunt's directorial debut about two down-and-out women struggling to make ends meet in frozen upstate New York, is simply mezmerizing.

The story is wonderfully written by Hunt and is incredibly well cast. Melissa Leoby ("21 Grams," "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada,") stars as Ray Eddy, a woman whose husband recently left her and their two children, taking the family’s life savings. Misty Upham ("Edge of America," "DreamKeeper," and "Skins") plays Lila, a Mohawk woman in a dead-end life where her meager income is earned by smuggling illegal immigrants from Canada to the US across a frozen stretch of the St. Lawrence River. The story follows these two women as they forge an unlikely friendship despite initial animosity. Their journey is tumultuous, but is rewarded with a truly heartwarming ending.

Co-star Michael O'Keefe ("The Great Santini," "Caddyshack," "Ironweed") is a clever state trooper who knows more than he lets on. Up-and-coming Charlie McDermott plays the older of Ray's two boys and seems to be the sole bearer of sanity in his mother's life. Mark Boone Junior ("Batman Begins", "Memento") shows up as a Canadian bar owner and despicably cruel human trafficker.

"Frozen River" won the Grand Jury Prize for drama at Sundance and gets a wholehearted IndieShares thumbs up!