The 48th annual San Francisco International Film Festival runs through May 5. See Film listings for show times and details.

Reelin' and rockin'
Lovers, fighters, samurai, talking beavers, yes, yes, yes! The San Francisco International Film Festival enters its second week

Wed/27

Amazing grace: First-time filmmakers Mike Cahill and Brit Marling attempt to bridge the divide between the United States and Cuba, fighters and sugarplum fairies, in their documentary, Boxers and Ballerinas. Amazing grace: First-time filmmakers Mike Cahill and Brit Marling attempt to bridge the divide between the United States and Cuba, fighters and sugarplum fairies, in their documentary, Boxers and Ballerinas.
Boxers and Ballerinas (Mike Cahill and Brit Marling, USA/Cuba, 2005) Exhibiting alarmingly confident chops for first-time filmmakers in their early 20s, Mike Cahill and Brit Marling manage to sew up four engrossing personal stories, the American dream, and the Cold War That Won't Die in one dynamic documentary package. They focus on two ballerinas and two boxers at the hopeful beginning (or perhaps premature end) of their careers – albeit on either side of the divides between the United States and Cuba, Cubans and Cuban Americans. Sans polemicism, this vivid nonfiction looks past two schools of extreme rhetoric to affirm that life is complicated and achievement is exhilarating whether you're pledging allegiance to the Cigar or the Shrub. 2 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sun/1, 6:30 p.m., Kabuki; Tues/3, 1 p.m., Kabuki. (Dennis Harvey)

The Intruder (Claire Denis, France/South Korea, 2004) Despite the activity implicit in the very words motion picture, Claire Denis wants to move us with stasis, the retina-searing poetry of the frozen moment. Here she finds her picture(s) at the French-Swiss border, where smugglers, spies, and shady types hide in the blinding light of a snow-draped winterland. The camera idly follows a border patrol officer, a gap-toothed wild woman (Béatrice Dalle) who runs with dogs, and an aging, multilingual hermit multilingual hermit (Michel Subor of Beau Travail), until several stealthy acts of violence seem to catch the director's attention and we settle on the loner and his search for his son (Grégoire Colin, also of Beau Travail). The old man's a miner, with a bad organ transplant, looking for a heart of gold. Inspired by island transplants like Paul Gauguin, this oblique yet compelling movie could have been easily titled Le colonial, as Denis contemplates Europe's ambivalence toward the permeability of its physical – and metaphysical – borders. 8:45 p.m., Kabuki. Also Fri/29, 4 p.m., Kabuki; Sun/1, 8:45 p.m., PFA. (Kimberly Chun)

Thurs/28

Duck Season (Fernando Eimbcke, Mexico, 2004) Jim Jarmusch meets John Hughes in this stranger-than-paradise breakfast club of a debut, which has pocketed prizes abroad and at home. The setup is simple: 14-year-olds Flama and Moko are psyched when Flama's mother leaves them home alone – an afternoon of fast food, soft drinks, and PlayStation mayhem is on the horizon. But a flirtatious next-door neighbor and a tardy pizza delivery man (Enrique Arreola) soon alter the duo's plans. The title refers to an ugly painting Flama's parents are fighting over while in the throes of divorce; his mixed feelings about the split come to the surface, as do Moko's conflicted affections, in a moment of Y tu mamá también-junior platonic-turned-homoerotic bonding. Whether paying homage to the cover of the Beatles' Please Please Me or visualizing the type of wonder that weed-laced brownies can induce, director Fernando Eimbcke remains in perfect sync with his characters, as if he were just another witness to an unforgettable day. 10 a.m., Kabuki. Also Fri/29, 6:30 p.m., Kabuki; Sat/30, 4:15 p.m., Kabuki. (Johnny Ray Huston)

Film As a Subversive Art: Amos Vogel and Cinema 16 (Paul Cronin, England, 2003) Doc subjects don't get much more endearing than Amos Vogel, a humble, soft-spoken yet opinionated man who laid the groundwork for experimental cinema in the United States. Some of the best – certainly the funniest – moments in this hour-long portrait occur when the camera follows Vogel into a cramped cranny of his apartment so he can rescue a prized piece of history from the back of a file cabinet. Director Paul Cronin gives ample time to Vogel's innovations as a film programmer at Cinema 16, where visionaries such as Maya Deren got their first showcase and Hollywood directors such as Hitchcock attended previews or post-ops of their work. 9:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also Mon/2, 2:45 p.m., Kabuki. (Huston)

In the Battlefields (Danielle Arbid, France/Belgium/Lebanon, 2004) Lebanon's civil war looms as the remote but resonant backdrop to a story preoccupied with a young girl's initiation into a fractured adult world, in Lebanese writer-director Danielle Arbid's excellent debut feature. Set in Beirut in 1983, In the Battlefields (Maarek Hob) is a seductive and unsentimental drama about 12-year-old Lina (Marianne Feghali), a lonely presence in her cheerless family home, who latches onto her aunt's rebellious 18-year-old servant, Siham (Rawia Elchab), as a surrogate older sister, best friend, and object of fascination. An outstanding cast animates Lina's expanding universe, and Arbid's frank realism combines with captivating visual lyricism (evoked by cinematographer Hélène Louvart's luminous natural lighting) as the camera mimics Lina's rapt voyeuristic gaze amid an atmosphere of unruly passion and sullen self-destruction. 4 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sun/1, 3:30 p.m., Kabuki; Tues/3, 7 p.m., Aquarius. (Robert Avila)

Murderball (Dana Adam Shapiro and Henry Alex Rubin, USA, 2004). "We're not going for a hug – we're going for a fucking gold medal," one Team USA member says in this documentary about quadriplegic rugby, differentiating the dead-serious competition of the Paralympics from the give-these-kids-a-hand events of the Special Olympics. At first impression the Sundance hit feels as pumped-up and potentially obnoxious as its leading protagonists, type A-for-asshole über-jocks, in your face and up your arse. However, we soon get to glean other sides to their personalities, particularly the ones that emerge when they're not on court driving customized wheelchairs into each other like little gladiator chariots. In the end, Murderball has a lot to say about able-bodied and differently abled life and the huge difficulties of forced transition from one to the other. Quad-rugby athletes and the filmmakers will appear at the fully accessible April 28 screening. 7:30 p.m., Kanbar Hall. Also Fri/29, 7 p.m., Kabuki. (Harvey)

Fri/29

Phil the Alien (Rob Stefaniuk, Canada, 2004) Certain comedies tend to get negative reviews not because they're bad but because most critics assume they must be – their whole genre is considered suspect, downscale, kids' stuff. These folk are incapable of discerning between actual dumb comedy (you name it) and faux-dumb comedy (Napoleon Dynamite), in part because the latter often makes deadpan, in-joke fun of the former. Rob Stefaniuk's very Canadian Phil the Alien gives very, very good faux-dumb comedy. Phil (Stefaniuk) is a not-so-bright specimen from another galaxy who crash-lands deep in Mountie country, assumes the local guise (flannel shirt, hunting vest), and gets so into local customs – namely getting drunk at the nearest bar – that a beaver (voiced by Joe Flaherty) urges him to straighten up and fly right. Put it this way: this is the great stoner comedy that beer people have been waiting for. Midnight, Kabuki. Also Mon/2, 1:15 p.m., Kabuki. (Harvey)

Yes (Sally Potter, England, 2004) A lot of people have been disappointed and/or bewildered by Sally Potter's paltry output since 1992's Orlando. They've wondered if that film's imaginative expansiveness was a fluke and if her story lines – suggesting it's never too late for a complicated woman to find a tall, dark, and handsome foreigner who'll in turn find her G-spot – aren't too personal. Yes, however, manages to pull off a degree of thinly veiled self-indulgence. This extravagantly mannered tale of a molecular biologist (Joan Allen) who has an affair with a Lebanese doctor turned refugee-waiter while her marriage to an English politician (Sam Neill) rots is visually striking, structurally inventive, and filigreed with musings on colonialism, religion, race politics, and existential philosophy. Did we mention the dialogue is in rhymed verse? Potter goes out on several limbs here – though it's best to keep looking skyward as she does, otherwise you might notice these branches are just above some rather banal ground. Allen accepts her Piper-Heidsick Award at the screening. 7:30 p.m., Castro. (Harvey)

Sat/30

Abel Raises Cain (Jenny Abel and Jeff Hackett, USA, 2004) Plenty of people think of their parents as eccentrics, but filmmaker Jenny Abel has more reason than most. Abel Raises Cain is an affectionate portrait of Ma and Pa Abel (Alan and Jeanne), two of our country's most storied tricksters. Alan became a media hoaxer in the 1950s after writing an offhand satire of moralism (he jokingly created an organization dedicated to making animals "decent" by requiring them to wear clothes); the organization was covered in newspapers nationwide and received serious scrutiny. Since then the Abels have concocted countless schemes that play on media sensationalism and the smug self-righteousness of both the left and right. Their work resonates as it becomes increasingly clear that the news media are anything but innocuous, though Jenny's straight-laced documentary style seems oddly divergent from her parents' playfulness. 6:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 5, 5:15 p.m., Kabuki. (Max Goldberg)

Crónicas (Sebastián Cordero, Ecuador, 2004) Call it a version of the Beverly D'Angelo Effect, that strange combination of winning actor and lousy films: the presence of John Leguizamo usually means a stinker is in store. Crónicas, however, serves up a surprise – it's more substantive than your average U.S. thriller, with an ending that just might linger in your mind the next time you tune into the harangues of Greta and Nancy on TV. Leguizamo plays Manolo Bonilla, a reporter whose work has crossed the line from news into entertainment, requiring him to play the hero no matter what the circumstance. Faced with giveaway clues about a man who has raped and murdered children in an Ecuadorian village, Bonilla begins to manipulate the cops and his network boss to land the ultimate story. What he ends up with is soul-corroding proof that he's a fraud. 9 p.m., Kabuki. Also Tues/3, 6:45 p.m., Kabuki. (Huston)

Izo (Takashi Miike, Japan, 2004) Opening with a found-footage montage-blast of historical atrocities furious enough to impress Craig Baldwin, a gross-out crucifixion epiphany right out of Mel Gibson's unanswered prayers, and a wacko-dialectical mantra ("The perfect system vomits up its contradictions!") that only the most damaged of acid-head Hegelians might find scribbled on the bathroom walls of their minds, there's only one thing such a combination of elements – in the first 10 minutes of a feature-length film – could mean: Takashi Miike is back in town. A gore-soaked, sex-frenzied, time-skipping samurai epic that'll send most of the audience screaming for the exits even as it leaves those faithful devotees of this most ultra-outré of Japan's cine-outlaws glued ecstatically to their seats, Izo is to the swordplay genre what silicon circuitry is to the abacus. Midnight, Kabuki. Also Tues/3, 12:45 p.m., Kabuki. (Chuck Stephens)

The White Diamond (Werner Herzog, Germany, 2004) This newish Werner Herzog documentary centers on British aeronautic scientist Dr. Graham Dorrington, an odd duck whose lifelong dreams of flight have led him to devise a noiseless blimplike "airship" of Jules Verne-esque beauty. Whether it's a thing of function too is worrisome as Dorrington and company travel to Amazonian Guyana for a tryout. Herzog perhaps injects himself too much into the proceedings; more amusingly, he often digresses in the direction of local-miner-turned-crew-member Mark-Anthony Yhap, whose shamanistic aura and poetic speech clearly have the filmmaker in near-schoolgirlish thrall. The White Diamond's most transporting passages, however, are its long moments of nonverbal flora and fauna observation, climaxing in a final shot more fantastical than anything CGI could devise. 6:15 p.m., Castro. Also Mon/2, 12:45 p.m., Kabuki. (Harvey)

Mon/2

The Real Dirt on Farmer John (Taggart Siegel, USA/Mexico, 2005) "Soil tastes good to me," "Farmer John" Peterson opines after sneaking a bite from his fields. Immediately, it's clear this is no ordinary farmer we're meeting. Peterson, who happens to enjoy wearing feather boas whenever possible, opens his life to longtime friend Taggart Siegel, who traces Peterson's decades-spanning journey from average Midwest farmer to hippie artist, to depressed untouchable teetering on financial ruin, to his eventual shiny, happy success as an organic farmer. Home movies, footage from Siegel's previous works (many of which also feature Peterson), interviews with Peterson's friends and neighbors, and Peterson's voice-over (read from his own prose) illuminate this remarkable tale, making for an inspiring experience even city dwellers can appreciate. 9:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 4, 1 p.m., Kabuki. (Cheryl Eddy)

Web exclusive

Still have a few spare hours in your San Francisco International Film Festival screening schedule? Read on for even more short reviews from our critics, exclusively published here on our Web site.

Wed/27

The Search for the Captain (Erin McEnery, USA, 2004) As the first man to raise the American flag in San Jose, Captain Thomas Fallon seemed a logical candidate for a prominent statue – that is, until members of the local Mexican-American community questioned the honoring of a man they viewed as a "conquistador." The racial and historical issues raised during San Jose's period of downtown redevelopment in the 1980s and 90s go way deeper than the statue, and they're clearly worth investigating. Unfortunately, this doc by first-time filmmaker Erin McEnery (daughter of Tom McEnery, who was San Jose's mayor throughout most of the controversy) is marred by amateurish execution: irritating narration; quote-happy intertitles that underline obvious themes via nuggets o' wisdom from Napoleon, Groucho Marx, and others; and cheesy tics – do we really need the screeching-car sound layered under McEnery saying "Now hold on!" or the cash register "cha-ching" during money talk? 7:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also Fri/29, 12:45 p.m., Kabuki. (Eddy)

Fri/29

Midwinter Night's Dream (Goran Paskaljevic, Serbia and Montenegro, 2004) A minor work by a major filmmaker, Goran Paskaljevic's (Tango Argentino) latest has strong, silent, haunted type Lazar (Lazar Ristovski) returning home to his native Serbian town after a decade in prison – served not for war crimes, but rather for the senseless drunken violence he committed after going AWOL from a war-crime-ridden military stint. He discovers his flat now inhabited by Bosnian refugee Jasna (Jasna Zalica) and her autistic daughter Jovana (the autistic Jovana Mitic), who've been abandoned by a husband/father and are just scraping along. Lazar decides instead to let them stay and soon finds he's got a ready-made family to ease him past his post-traumatic stress disorder. This is a "nice" movie, but the necessarily improvisational scenes with Mitic never quite mesh with the dramatic heavy lifting elsewhere. 7 p.m., PFA. Also Sat/30, 9:45 p.m., Kabuki; May 5, 5 p.m., Kabuki. (Harvey)

Mouth to Mouth (Alison Murray, England/Germany, 2004) Mouth to Mouth is English writer-director Alison Murray's first feature after a series of celebrated shorts, and it plays a bit like a good first novel: full of big ideas and impressive moments if a bit short of coalescing into a whole. Murray draws upon her own experience (another giveaway) in crafting the story of Sherry, a lost teenager who joins a tight-knit, politically radical posse of street kids. The group's egalitarian ideals are an easy hook for impressionable Sherry, but soon it becomes clear that this band of youths is a cult. Murray is at her best in those digressive, dialogue-free scenes in which a simple action – hitching a ride, picking grapes – gives way to a tender portrait of Sherry's unknowing, emboldened adolescence. 9:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also Tues/3, 3:45 p.m., Kabuki. (Goldberg)

Relativity (Brenda Kovrig, Canada, 2004) Now that the camcorder generation has come of age, the family documentary seems like an uphill battle of a genre ripe with cliché. There's a deep experimental tradition in this vein – from Brakhage on down – that casts its shadow on Relativity. Brenda Kovrig, an adoptee, reconnects with her birth mother, and far from providing a Hollywood ending, the reunion opens a whole can of "identity" worms for our wistful narrator. Relativity's formal approach is more akin to that of The Stone Reader than to that of Tarnation: a wandering quest for answers that can get too philosophical for its own good. The offenses include a ceaseless voice-over and several way-deep interviews – one particularly cringe-worthy pearl being a professor of philosophy solemnly intoning, "People die in dumb ways, and that's just part of life." Eek. 3:15 p.m., Kabuki. Sun/1, 3:45 p.m., Kabuki. (Goldberg)

The Riverside (Alireza Amini, Iran, 2004) For a new bride, crossing the threshold turns from a right of passage into a deadly twist of fate in the cruel geography of a world at war. Stepping on a land mine as she passes over the Iran-Iraq border, she must stand still to avoid detonating it while the groom runs for help. Meanwhile, a set of local and uprooted characters traveling through the same countryside do their best to cheer and entertain the poor terrified bride until her husband's return. Iranian director Alireza Amini's quirky feature has, of course, a strong metaphorical dimension to it, but works on us with its strangely unsettling mixture of sardonic humor and acquiescence in the sheer sorrowfulness of his subject. 9:45 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sun/1, 1:30 p.m., Kabuki; Tues/3, 9:30 p.m., Aquarius. (Avila)

Sat/30

Life in a Box (Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer, USA, 2005) Caught near the end of a decade-plus career are gay country music duo Y'all, comprising molasses-voiced Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer and garrulous James Dean Jay Byrd, who always wears a dress on stage – a skinhead Dolly to his on- and off-stage partner's Porter Waggoner. Cheslik-DeMeyer's documentary at first looks like a pleasant promo, even after we're introduced to the guy (Roger McKeever) Y'all take along as third house- and bedmate. It gets a lot more interesting halfway through, when the everything's-hunky-dory act is dropped and we begin to see how the introduction of this new element reveals fissures in the established relationship. Breaking up is hard to do; but let's face it, it's a much better movie subject than marital bliss. 9:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 5, 8 p.m., Kabuki. (Harvey)

Sun/1

Following Sean (Ralph Arlyck, USA, 2004) Following Sean answers the "whatever happened to?" question about the subject of Ralph Arlyck's 1969 student short, "Sean" – at the time, a jaded 4-year-old raised amid Haight-Ashbury's flower-power explosion. Excerpts from that celebrated (and controversial) film mix with Arlyck's black-and-white period footage, backed by narration revealing the filmmaker's surprisingly un-nostalgic recollections of the sacred '60s. Thirty years later, Arlyck reunites with Sean (now an average-Joe electrician who marries and has a son) and catches up with Sean's relatives (including his still off-the-grid father and his communist grandmother). Throughout, Arlyck draws parallels between Sean's clan and his own family – fortuitously, home movies were a big presence in both households – adding an intriguing, if self-serving, dimension to the end result. 9:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also Wed/4, 3:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Eddy)

Tues/3

Private (Saverio Costanzo, Italy, 2004) A Palestinian family has its house commandeered by the Israeli army in this Italian docudrama. Forced to live as restricted tenants in their own home while soldiers occupy the upstairs, the family's plight becomes an intimate case study and metaphor vis-à-vis the larger colonial conflict raging outside. Director Saverio Costanzo tries too hard to wrench emotion and a documentary feel from this slickly produced film – most transparently through handheld camerawork and the overlaying of a Roger Waters song – though the confusion, deep indignation, paranoia, and fear suffered by ordinary people under military occupation still comes across. 9 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 5, 7 p.m., PFA. (Avila)