SIFF Selections, May 24 & FREE Closing Night Party

6:30 p.m. — As Luck Would Have It, an 98-minute Spanish film with English subtitles. From SIFF:

Former ad man Roberto (José Mota) is down on his luck. Jobless and abandoned by former friends and colleagues, he drags himself from one doomed interview to another, with only his loving wife, Luisa (Salma Hayek), to lean on. After a particularly humiliating episode, he drives to Cartagena, the city where he and Luisa spent their honeymoon. But the hotel has been torn down and replaced by a new museum adjoining a Roman amphitheater. Arriving during the press launch, Roberto wanders around on the site and, in a bizarre accident, falls from a scaffold and ends up with an iron rod embedded in the back of his skull. Instantly, he finds himself transformed from a pariah into the center of a media frenzy—and sets out to make the most of it. Part satire, part high-concept melodrama, the latest from maverick filmmaker Alex de la Iglesia (The Last Circus) is a tale for our media-saturated times. 

8:30 p.m. — The Fourth State, a 115-minute German film (filmed in English). From SIFF:

In the wake of his stylish vampire film, We Are The Night, writer/director Dennis Gansel returns to the land of the living for this Russia-set thriller. SIFF favorite Moritz Bleibtreu (Das Experiment) plays journalist Paul Jensen, who embraces both romance and risk-taking after a move from Berlin to Moscow following a divorce. With his experience tracking the moves of the rich and famous, Paul becomes a society-page editor for a once-popular tabloid under the editorship of Alexei Onegin (Rade Serbedzija), an associate of his East German father. With Paul’s expertise, circulation figures soar. Then, amidst the wining, dining, and fashion shows, he falls in love with Katja (Kasia Smutniak), a beautiful activist, who encourages him to inject some politics into his writing. A comfortable situation soon turns precarious after he witnesses the murder of a particularly outspoken reporter. In trying to identify the culprit, Paul finds himself up against a secret service operation behind a nefarious terrorist plot. Through his ordeal, he will get a taste of Russia’s infamous penal system, as well as a family past that had long remained hidden. Though Gansel uses fictional names, the allusions to real-world developments in the former U.S.S.R. are downright chilling. 

 

8:30-11 p.m. — at the . Celebrate the second year of SIFF in Renton and enjoy dancing, food and drinks at this FREE celebration of arts and film in Renton.