TEMPESTAD

Mexico 2016 - DCP - 105 minutes, in Spanish with English subtitles

Director, Screenplay: Tatiana Huezo

Producers: Nicolás Celis, Sebastián Celis

Executive Producer: Jim Stark

Print Courtesy: Shadow Distribution

Sunday, July 10 9:15 P.M. | RR2

Monday, July 11 3:15 P.M. | RR2

Tatiana Huezo’s breakout film was TEMPESTAD, which made clear that she was a major new talent. The New York Times’ Ken Joworowski called it “artful and lyrical,” and indeed it is. It was the first of Huezo’s two films so far to be chosen as Mexico’s submission to the Oscars for Best Foreign Film. “Twin stories of broken Mexican lives, exquisitely told… this powerful, luminously shot documentary pairs the tales of a woman jailed for years by a criminal cartel, and of another, whose daughter was kidnapped. Tatiana Huezo’s exquisite documentary speaks painful truths but is worth every minute…. Luminous cinematography and a plangent but sparingly used score buttress the powerfully composed storytelling.” Leslie Felperin, The Guardian. Though working in documentary, Huezo pushes the conventions of the form with the haunting beauty soon to come into even fuller flower in narrative film form. —Ken Eisen

Sunday,

Sneak Preview Work-in-Progress Screening COLD REFUGE

USA 2022 - DCP - 80 minutes, in English

Director, Print Courtesy: Judy Irving, Pelican Media

Director Judy Irving is no stranger to anyone who’s seen her completely delightful surprise smash-hit documentary THE WILD PARROTS OF TELEGRAPH HILL, or who’ve been MIFF and Railroad Square regulars and have seen her films here before. This year she returns with a special sneak-preview premiere showing of her new film that explores her beloved San Francisco, not from the air space of the parrots but from the water of its fabled Bay. COLD REFUGE is about the philosophical, psychological, and spiritual aspects of full immersion in the natural world, and, specifically, water, touching on how swimming in cold water helps mitigate life’s challenges. The film’s diverse subjects include a wheelchair-bound, paralyzed swimmer who faces fear by diving off a high pier; a Black man who was told by whites when he was 13 that “Black people don’t swim” (it took him until he was 40 to try); a blind man who tethers himself to a sighted swimmer; a lawyer who reduces courtroom stress in the open water; a woman with aggressive breast cancer who “swims to chemo;” and a young woman who communes with her late mother in San Francisco Bay, where they both swam together. Along with swimmers’ stories of adversity and resilience, the film’s marine mammals, birds, artwork, and a variety of open-water locations create a visual meditation on what it means to be fully present in the natural world. —Ken Eisen

Sponsored by Jennifer Strode