SIFF is coming up on the end of the ten-year lease it forged in 2014 to keep the screen lit at Capitol Hill’s Egyptian Theatre. What started with a triumphant overhaul that kept the Egyptian a working cinema has been a rougher showing in recent years as SIFF and theaters across the city tried to survive the pandemic.
This week SIFF’s signature event, the Seattle International Film Festival, returns for its 48th iteration to present 262 films, a slimmed-down number compared to past years and a slimmed down version of the event. Kicking off Thursday night, the 10-day festival will screen films at a handful of local theaters including Capitol Hill’s SIFF Egyptian Cinema, which will host a number of headlining films.
After SIFF was canceled entirely in 2020 due to the emergence of COVID-19 and subsequently hosted online in 2021, this year will be a return to form in some regards– though it will feature the first in-person screenings and festivities in two years, the 2022 festival will be conducted in a hybrid format, with over 100 films being made available for streaming on the SIFF Channel.
Though partially in-person once again, the offerings this year are much more streamlined than usual– past festivals have generally boasted over 400 films, far more than the 262 coming this time around. Around two-thirds of the films shown this year were created by either first- or second-time filmmakers, and a similar amount may not screen commercially in the U.S. after their screening at the festival.
Just beyond Capitol Hill, the Paramount Theater will host the kick-off event for the festival– the theater will screen Navalny, a 98-minute documentary directed by Daniel Roher about the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on April 14 at 7pm. A party is set to take place on the block outside of the theater after the screening.
SIFF ends April 24 with a 6 PM closing screening of Call Jane at SIFF Cinema Egyptian on Capitol Hill. The 121-minute film is based around the complexities of abortion in the 1960s, and is directed by Phyllis Nagy and stars Elizabeth Banks and Sigourney Weaver. The festival will draw to a close with a gala held at the Museum of History and Industry in Lake Union Park.
2022 marks a relative return to normalcy for SIFF and the Egyptian Cinema, rallying filmgoers back into the 520-seat venue after a turbulent two years under the pandemic. The theater will be one center of the down-sized festival, hosting the following spotlighted films:
- Spin Me Round, an Italian-filmed comedy starring Alison Brie, Alessandro Nivola, and Aubrey Plaza, showing April 15 at 6:15pm.
- Nothing Compares is an Irish film taking an intimate look into the career of musician Sinead O’Connor, showing April 17 at 7pm.
- Inu-Oh, an animated piece of historical fiction created by Japanese director Masaaki Yuasa, showing April 20 at 6:30pm.
- Marcel The Shell With Shoes On is a stop-motion mockumentary featuring a sentient seashell from the minds of Dean Fleischer-Camp and Jenny Slate, showing April 23 at 7pm.
Information on purchasing tickets and passes as well as a list of the films featured in the festival can be found on the SIFF website.
SIFF Egyptian Cinema is located at 805 E Pine.
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