SF Indie Film Fest & The Mostly British Film Festival Are Here!

The San Francisco Independent Film Festival (hereafter “S.F. IndieFest”) is back with its 28th edition. Running from February 5-15, 2026 both in person at the Roxie Theater and online, lucky viewers can choose from among 67 independent films of various lengths from around the world. From a documentary about a notorious holiday celebration to Alex Cox’s transposition of a classic Russian novel to the Old West, the wonderfully eccentric choices of S.F. IndieFest’s programming team ensures viewers will not be subjected to the aesthetic blanderization generated by streaming networks’ cookie cutter algorithms.

For example, a streaming channel algorithm may respond to a “show me a holiday movie” request by dredging up half a dozen treacly romantic comedies set during the holiday season. On the other hand, ask the S.F. IndieFest programmers for a holiday movie, and they’ll offer the film that opens the 2026 festival. That Opening Night documentary “Santacon,” recounts the history of one of the most unpleasant holiday events of recent years. Seth Porges’ film shows how some Burning Man folks’ Dada street theater event ridiculing capitalism devolved into a nationwide excuse for tens of thousands of Saint Nick mufti-wearing fools to get publicly drunk and even violent.  Viewers may wonder if Porges’ film draws some uncomfortable parallels between Santacon’s devolution and the current state of Burning Man.

On the other hand, the subjects of Marie Losier’s music documentary “Barking In The Dark” have not lost any of their considerable alternative street cred.  The legendary Bay Area cult band The Residents’ sui generis look of giant eyeball masks and tuxedos have not been commercially xeroxed to death.  Those who want to know who and what The Residents are beyond the David Copperfield stuff will be aided (sort of) by Homer Flynn.  The man happens to be the Cryptic Corporation president who gives Losier (and by extension, the viewer) a tour through The Residents’ archives.

Another archive provides the jumping off point for Bingham Bryant’s documentary essay “Doomed And Famous.”  The owner of that archive (or rather collection) is Downtown NY art scene habitue Adrian Dannatt.  Pieces from Dannatt’s collection appear in the titular show.  But an equally big draw for viewers are Dannatt’s reflections on his life in that famed art scene.  These recollections are accompanied by appearances from (among others) artist Julian Lethbridge, No Wave film star Eric Mitchell, and writer Dean Kissick.

Vicent Monsonis’ partially historical drama “The Invasion Of The Barbarians” sadly proves timely in the wake of current events in the United States.  The title directly refers to a painting coveted as a trophy by a Francoist colonel in the Spanish Civil War.  But that artwork is part of a collection of Prado masterpieces under the protection of their curator Esperanza.  This storyline is tied to one set more than eighty years later involving Esperanza’s granddaughter Aurora.  She’s trying to get Esperanza’s remains exhumed and properly buried but faces bureaucracy and official silence.  Both stories show how fascism works hand in hand with corruption and Church complicity to hurt different generations.

Alejandro Castro Arias’ feature drama “Harakiri, I Miss You” presents toxic masculinity without coddling its antiheroic male protagonists.  This trio of young Madrid men may be obsessed with sex.  Yet over the course of a long night, their arrogance and their self-destructive behaviors (e.g. lying, failure to communicate with women, and drunken fights) soon reveal the deep insecurities lying underneath their bravado.

“Goody,” the title of Zoe Lubeck’s dramatic feature, is a nickname for protagonist Guelia Pedat.  The nickname probably refers to her adherence to religious rituals (she was raised Catholic), but it misses several truths about her.  She’s lost her faith, her performing rituals are caused by OCD, and she unnecessarily blames herself for her older brother’s death.   Can Goody find a way to escape her grief spiral before it destroys her life?

Spike Kittrell’s drama “All My Friends” touchingly deals with a situation familiar to more than a few Broke-Ass readers.  A young woman’s acceptance of a new job means uprooting herself to move across the country.  But the “escaping her old life” process is a lot more than figuring out what to take with her and what to give away.  It’s also about saying goodbye to old haunts and negotiating with old memories and leaving friends behind.

Impressed by Richard Linklater’s amazing coming of age drama “Boyhood?”  Gary Mairs’ anthology film “Adulthood” does a new iteration on the Linklater film’s central idea of following its central character from childhood to adolescence over the course of a dozen years.  Here, Mairs follows a couple (Amy Seimetz and David Nordstrom) over the course of 15 years after they decide to break up.  Yet the script comes from such filmmakers as James Benning and the video technology used to film this story changes as well over this time period.

Thomas Seymour’s feature documentary “Video Dreams: A VHS Massacre Story” follows the decades-long effort of an indie filmmaker to get his film on the shelf of a Blockbuster Video store.  But what happens to that effort when the domestic home video rental market pretty much goes belly up? 

Long before “Grand Theft Hamlet” wowed festival audiences with its “documentary shot inside ‘Grand Theft Auto Online’” format, there was machinima.  Back in the 1990s, filmmakers cracked open such PC games as “Quake” and “Halo” to use their worlds as virtual back lot film studio sets.  This underground process would be called machinima.  Andrew Callaway’s short documentary “Hidden Levels: Machinima” traces the creative line from machinima to Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane’s entertaining documentary.

Is it possible to re-purpose the lyrics of Wu-Tang Clan songs to tell a modern day version of “Romeo And Juliet?”  Find out in Ryen McPherson’s “C.R.E.A.M.”

Ready for a painful comedy about a family intervention that goes way off the rails?  Then you’re ready for Niccolo Aeed and Marina Tempelsman’s “This Will Never Work.”  Amanda has a drinking problem.  So her Black family decides to stage an intervention facilitated by a therapist named Trevor (who’s white, which should not curb any desire for candor he said sarcastically).  As it turns out, the family members’ inability to listen and more than a few evasions soon turn the meeting into a hot steaming mess.

The four stories in Kevin Lee Luna’s feature “I’m A Stranger Here Myself” do not collectively interlock to offer some grand statement about life in contemporary Los Angeles.  Instead, this quartet of individual tales (a couple in a decaying relationship, an older man found disoriented in the desert, a pizza delivery driver passing a night shift by folding boxes, and a single mother who’s a porch pirate) is a study in observational slow cinema.

Why would a Korean-American return to Seoul to join the Korean military for overseas duty?  That enigma is at the heart of James Choi’s low-budget drama “Before The Call.”  The film is told in the form of two timelines:  one where the young man returns to his father’s home and re-connects with old flame Minji and one where the man sends from the proverbial front philosophical letters to Minji on such subjects as identity, masculinity, and who he’s fighting for.

Kai Kim’s outrageous short “Glory” deals with both grief and glory holes.  Benji has the latter in his consciousness thanks to his emotional fluctuations between grief-induced catatonia and extreme horniness.  The death of Benji’s boyfriend Sam in a bizarre hot dog cart accident brought Benji’s condition about.  To help Benji heal, an unconventional therapist sends him on a psychedelic journey where the grieving man will encounter shame, queer supervillains, and piles of hot dogs.

Chelsea Christer’s (“Bleeding Audio”) short narrative “Out For Delivery” deals with facing the gap between a law’s promise and a law’s application.  Joanna is terminally ill, so she decides to use the Death With Dignity law to pursue her life termination options.  But in practice her pending demise winds up being neither peaceful nor dignified.

What happens when your life doesn’t get better after you set a deadline of 2 years?  For the titular Tom of Karni Harneman’s dark comedy “Tom’s 2nd Suicide,” the answer is to drive out to a lonely desert spot and kill herself with carbon monoxide poisoning.  Maybe her car’s failure to restart and a chance encounter with a stranger named Kobi could be the universe’s way of urging Tom to take another chance on life.  But during the subsequent road trip, Tom’s still determined to off herself because the reason for her decision rests not with depression but such things as anger and loss of control over her life.

Those who are in a CW teen drama mood might want to check out Lauren Shapiro’s dramatic feature “Still Life.”  The teen in question is Dafne, a ballet student living in the S.F. Bay Area in 1999.  She’s dealing with the usual challenges of teen life, such as school, dance rehearsals, and a budding romance.  But there’s an extra life challenge in the mix: her mother’s struggling with leukemia, and Dafne’s living with the months-long stress of possibly losing someone who loves her very deeply. 

Kip Andersen and Chris O’Connell’s locally-themed documentary “Join The Club” recounts the story of legendary San Francisco pot dealer Dennis Peron.  When Peron discovers marijuana can help AIDS victims, he opens the famed dispensary the Cannabis Buyers’ Club.  Law enforcement might have spent millions trying to put Peron out of business, but he dealt with that while advancing his bigger goal of legalizing marijuana in America.  Co-presented by the folks at Broke-Ass Stuart’s website.

Also co-presented by the folks of this website is Jeff Nucera and Jonathan Ruane’s documentary feature “Tight & Nerdy.”  The title happens to be the name of the (so far only) burlesque troupe which bares it all to the music of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s food-based song parodies.  Incidentally members of the Tight & Nerdy troupe will perform live after the screening.

Jacque Rabie’s documentary short “Hyodo’s Paradise” concerns a Japanese man who lives near Tokyo in a house filled with hundreds of sex dolls.  Is he lost in permanent hedonistic fantasy revelry, or is his life a rebuttal to Japan’s normality and conformity?

Werner Herzog served as executive producer on Yana Alliata’s dramatic feature “Reeling.”  The film follows 24 hours in the life of Ryan, a man who’s returned home to his family’s Hawaiian homestead for a birthday luau.  Yet Ryan can’t enjoy himself because a traumatic accident has left him a proverbial emotional shell.  More troublingly, he has no memory of the details of that accident…or does he?

The combination of personal trauma and a paradisiacal setting also kicks off the first of S.F. IndieFest’s two Closing Night films.  Lilian T. Mehrel’s multiple festival award-winning comedy “Honeyjoon” takes place on the one-year anniversary of a personal loss suffered by both June and her Persian mother Lela.  They’re traveling together to a romantic island in the Azores, but they’re disagreeing about why they’re doing so or even the proper way to grieve.  Add to the mix such things as Woman Life Freedom, a very charming surfer, and June’s really tiny bikini, and then prepare to go on a wild emotional ride.

The other Closing Night Film happens to be “Dead Souls,” the possibly “last film” from director Alex Cox.  Like Cox’s cult film “Straight To Hell,” this is a Western…but one that transposes the titular Nikolai Gogol classic from Russia to 1890 Arizona.  The mysterious Strindler comes to a small desert town with an offer to pay good money for lists of names of dead Mexicans.  Why he wants this list, nobody knows.   Could it be connected to the ongoing 1890 census? 

Also taking place during the same period as S.F. IndieFest is the 18th edition of the Mostly British Film Festival (hereafter “MBFF”). Running from February 5-12, 2026 at the Vogue Theatre, MBFF sports a few key differences from S.F. IndieFest.  

As the title indicates, this festival focuses on presenting award-winning films from the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India.  (Editor’s note:  So what’s Canada, chopped liver?)  26 feature films are in this year’s lineup, but none of them will be streamed after their scheduled screening date at the Vogue.  

Another difference from S.F. IndieFest is that this year’s MBFF schedule includes a second chance to see such classic films as Academy Award-winner “Tom Jones” or the adaptation of John Osborne’s “Look Back In Anger” with Richard Burton as protagonist Jimmy Porter.  For those more interested in second chances with recent films, there’s a screening of Oliver Hermanus’ acclaimed “History Of Sound.”  Finally, broke-ass readers can score free tickets to a pre-release screening of Emerald Fennell’s upcoming controversial adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” by going to the Vogue box office starting February 5, 2026.

To give readers an idea of what to expect at this year’s MBFF, here are some films to try:

Her semi-autobiographical debut novel drew condemnation in 1960 for depicting sexual desire from a woman’s point of view.  She walked out on her husband in the middle of cooking dinner.  In London, this Irish author would socialize with the likes of Marlon Brando, Paul Mc Cartney, and Sean Connery.  Her name was Edna O’Brien, and Sinead O’Shea’s documentary “Blue Road:  The Edna O’Brien Story” recounts her life.  O’Brien herself was interviewed for this film when she was in her 90s.

Nadia Fall’s “Brides” is based on the true story of a pair of East London teenage girls who run away from England to join the “Brides Of ISIL.”  But her film is not an attempt to judge these jihadi wives harshly.  Instead, it’s a look at the confused mix of emotions that caused these two girls to take such a radical step.

Harris Dickinson’s FIPRESCI Prize-winning drama “Urchin” follows the struggles of homeless East London addict Mike to survive life on the street.  However, the addict’s tendencies towards violent outbursts, dishonesty, and self-destructive behavior do little to improve his odds of survival.

Fans of Chris Marker’s classic essay film “Sans Soleil” should check out Miguel Gomes’ “Grand Tour,” a depiction of the collision between artifice (a studio set dressed up to look like a 1917 space) and reality (contemporary documentary footage of various Asian countries).  Ostensibly, the film’s “story” is told from two different viewpoints: British civil servant Edward and his fiancee Molly.  When Edward learns that Molly’s coming to Rangoon to finally tie the knot, the prospective bride groom impulsively leaves the Burmese city and sets out on a journey that will take him to such places as Hanoi and the Yangtze River.  However, Molly doggedly follows Edward’s path and even has a letter waiting for her errant fiancee whenever he lands in a new locale.       

The Nigerian drama “My Father’s Shadow” takes place against the backdrop of the 1993 Nigerian presidential election, and is told from the perspective of two young boys.  The boys expect a day of fun on their trip to Lagos with the father they worship.  But neither child realizes (yet) their old man is up to something.  Is he connected to a rebel group?  Is he a little too friendly with a beautiful woman?  Only one thing is certain:  the boys’ image of their father might not survive the harshness of reality.

Closing Night Film “I Swear” is based on the true story of John Davidson (Robert Aramayo, “Game Of Thrones”).  In his small Scottish village, Davidson is considered an insane outcast.  That’s because thanks to Tourette’s Syndrome, he involuntarily curses out the other village residents.  However, neither the villagers nor Davidson himself has ever heard of the disease, which leads to Davidson sinking into depression.  Fortunately, some good breaks in life will ultimately lead the Tourette’s sufferer to undreamed-of success.

/