The San Francisco Film Festival will kick off its 2021 edition with a world premiere of director Chase Palmer’s Naked Singularity, which stars John Boyega, Olivia Cooke, Bill Skarsgard and Ed Skrein.
On April 9, the film that stars Boyega as an impassioned public defender who stumbles into a drug heist while his reality collapses all around him will stream online and at a drive-in theater. And SFFILM’s hybrid edition this year will close on April 18 with an online and drive-in screening of Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street, a documentary that chronicles the origins of the legendary childrens’ TV show Sesame Street, which bowed at Sundance.
San Francisco’s Centerpiece film this year will be Bo McGuire’s Socks on Fire, with a North American premiere for the doc by director McGuire that explores old family wounds between a homophobic aunt and a drag queen uncle. The April 10 drive-in screening will include a drag show featuring local performers and emceed by director McGuire.
The festival also booked a world premiere for Teppo Airaksinen’s Supercool comedy and Tasha Van Zandt’s After Antarctica, which recalls an expedition across the frigid continent. SFFILM’s 64th edition has North American bows for Lee Ran-hee’s A Leave; Michal Wnuk’s Overclockers aviation drama; Chloé Mazlo’s Skies of Lebanon, a romancer set against that country’s civil war; The Whaler Boy, by director Philipp Yuryev; and Captains of Zaatari, a documentary by Egyptian director Ali El-Arabi.
The festival’s pandemic-era lineup includes 42 feature films and 56 short films from 41 countries. In all, 57 percent of the films were directed by female filmmakers and 57 percent were helmed by BIPOC filmmakers.
The San Francisco Film Festival is set to run April 9-18.
