Stay Awake, starring This Is Us regular Chrissy Metz and directed by Jamie Sisley, will open the San Francisco International Film Festival as it returns to an in-person event next month.
The family drama set against the backdrop of prescription drug addiction, and also starring Fin Argus and Wyatt Oleff, bowed in Berlin and will receive a North American premiere at SFFILM. Oleff and Argus play sons who try their best to navigate the pressures of teenage life while tending to their mother’s (Metz) debilitating prescription drug addiction.
Additionally, the Dakota Johnson-starring Cha Cha Real Smooth, which won an audience award at Sundance and landed at Apple, will close the SFFILM festival. Leslie Mann, Evan Assante, Brad Garrett, Raúl Castillo and Odeya Rush also appear in the feature directed by Cooper Raiff.
The festival, to run from April 21 to May 1, will give Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon star Michelle Yeoh a special tribute to be presented by fellow actor Sandra Oh. The 2022 edition of SFFILM will screen just over 130 films at cinemas that include the Castro Theatre, the Vogue Theater, the Roxie Theater, the Victoria Theatre and BAMPFA in Berkeley.
This includes world premieres for Debora Souza Silva’s Black Mothers Love & Resist, a documentary about two mothers of young Black men victimized by police brutality; Maris Curran’s Jeannette; Sophia Silver’s coming-of-age tale Over/Under; My-Linh Le’s Mud Water; and Ayoungman, directed by Holly Fortier and Larry Day.
“I am delighted to return to theaters with our audiences to watch wildly imaginative films that reignite the wonder of movies,” SFFILM executive director Anne Lai said in a statement.
