Human-rights stories, Salman Rushdie, and a thespian chicken appear on local screens this week.
The Green Film Festival of San Francisco launches its 2026 edition Thursday, challenging the perception of environmental cinema as depressing, boring or preachy. Nearly 50 films screen at the 4-Star Theater and online during the eight-day event, a project of SF IndieFest. Fare ranges from activist profiles to body horror to an avian adventure. “Hen” opens the festival on Oct. 15. Greek filmmaker Gyorgy Palfi presents the world through the eyes of a charismatic chicken who abandons an industrial farm for a better life in the narrative dramedy. Also featured is “The Terroirist,” Jeffrey Reiner’s documentary about California winemaker Randall Grahm and his quest to discover a new grape variety, on Oct. 18. “A City in the Forest” closes the festival on Oct. 22. An Atlanta grassroots movement fights a plan to raze an urban forest and build a large police facility there in Lev Omelchenko and Nolan Huber’s documentary. “Best Day Ever,” on Oct. 17, from Ben Knight and Berne Broudy, follows two adaptive mountain bikers as they confront the challenges of their disabilities and experience joy in Vermont’s mountain-biking community. Also this year: the return of the festival’s Eco-Horror Midnight Movie. Visit sfindie.com for more information.
Also opening Thursday is the 29th United Nations Association Film Festival —11 days of high-quality documentaries about human rights, social justice, the environment and peacemaking. Venues are Mitchell Park Community Center in Palo Alto; Stanford University, Stanford; Eastside College Preparatory School, East Palo Alto; and Delancey Screening Room, San Francisco. Sixty docs will screen Oct. 15-25. “The Comfort Dogs of Uganda” — a short film in which a bond with a village dog helps former child soldiers to heal — opens the festival. Opening Night feature-length offerings are “Last Christian in Bethlehem,” in which filmmakers Robert Levering and Stephen Talbot explore the challenges faced by Christians in the Holy Land; and “Through the Body,” Andrew Reissiger’s documentary about Oakland dancer-percussionist Keith Terry and the International Body Music Festival. Closing the fest is “In the Company of Wolves: An American Journey,” which explores humans’ complicated relationship with wolves and its effect on our folklore and national identity. Also: “Adapted” features three outdoors lovers taking back their lives after experiencing traumatic spinal-cord injuries and, in “Widow Champion,” a Kenya widow, ejected by her in-laws, becomes a committed advocate for women’s land rights. The festival is presented by the United Nations Association, a Stanford-based organization. Visit unaff.org.
“Atonement,” the feature debut of writer-director Reed Van Dyk, is a modestly presented, remarkably moving drama about combat confusion and survivor’s guilt, as experienced by several people directly affected by the chaos of the Iraq War. Currently showing at the Smith Rafael Film Center, it’s scheduled to open at the Opera Plaza Cinema in San Francisco on Friday. Inspired by a New Yorker article, Van Dyk’s screenplay follows three characters over about a decade, in Baghdad and then California. Lou D’Alessandro (Boyd Holbrook) is a U.S. Marine who, in 2003, during a firefight with insurgents, makes a decision that accidentally kills three members of an Iraqi family. Mariam Khachaturian (Hiam Abbass) is the family’s devastated matriarch. Michael Reid (Kenneth Branagh) is a New Yorker journalist who, years later, arranges a meeting between Lou and the Khachaturian family’s surviving members. Lou, guilt plagued, wants to apologize for the tragedy he caused. At the same time, everyone knows that an apology can’t bring back those the family has lost. Van Dyk’s filmmaking has a low-key quality, and initially it doesn’t seem conducive to compelling storytelling. But he grippingly presents traumatic scenarios and immerses viewers in the thick of them, whether that involves the firefight that will change lives forever, or the emotionally charged meeting taking place between Lou and the Khachaturians in their living room. Viewers feel their confusion, pain and unease.
There are effective performances, although Branagh’s fact-based character can feel like a plot device. Holbrook hits no false notes when portraying Lou’s suppressed anguish. Abbass, whose face speaks volumes with its neorealist look and the wealth of feeling, is quietly extraordinary.
“Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie” is the lower profile of two new releases by prolific documentarian Alex Gibney (“Musk” is the other), and it’s a gem of a movie about art, expression and defiance. Based on the memoir by Rushdie, it screens at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 19 at Rialto Cinemas Sebastopol and 6:30 p.m. Oct. 20 at the Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley. Via archival materials, recent footage and narration provided by Rushdie himself, Gibney (“Taxi to the Dark Side”) presents an appreciative portrait of the British and American novelist, from his Mumbai childhood with an alcoholic father to his success as a writer of “Midnight’s Children” and “The Satanic Verses.” After detractors declared the latter novel blasphemous, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering Rushdie’s death. Gibney focuses foremost on the 2022 incident in which Rushdie, preparing to deliver a lecture in Upstate New York, was stabbed by a knife-wielding man. The attack severely wounded Rushdie and cost him an eye. The hospital and recovery scenes, which contain bedside videos shot by Rushdie’s wife, the poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths, are intimate, sometimes gruesome, and often entertaining. As he shares thoughts on his ordeal, his physical and emotional recovery, his steadfast belief in free speech and his determination to live without fear, Rushdie is an inspiring force of courage and a terrific documentary subject.