2026 San Francisco International Film Festival Reviews: ‘Two Pianos,’ ‘If I Go Will They Miss Me,’ ‘Filipiñana,’ ‘Elder Son’ [SFFILM]
With the 69th San Francisco International Film Festival underway, what better way to get a taste of its program than with some capsule reviews of what the festival has to offer? SFIFF’s eclectic programming shines a light on unknown corners of global cinema as well as American mainstays. These four capsule reviews represent the wide international reach of the festival: a French auteur’s return, a bold new American voice, patient and painterly Filipino art, and a generation-spanning Korean-Argentinian saga.
Two Pianos (Dir. Arnaud Desplechin)
Desplechin’s newest film is a melodramatic foray into the world of classical music set in Lyon, France, where François Civil’s Mathias has been called home by Charlotte Rampling’s Eléna, his master pianist mentor. Upon landing, Mathias gets involved with an old flame, Nadia Tereszkiewicz’s Claude, and quickly falls into a spiral trying to balance these two halves of his life around these two women. Desplechin similarly has trouble reconciling these two halves of a film to make a whole. Tonally, Desplechin plays both stories down the middle with a coy severity, that is to say: French. The three core performances are transfixing and Desplechin’s fascination mostly lies with the knots we tie ourselves into in order to avoid facing our regrets and choices. He provides the leads ample room to wring out their characters’ wildest emotions, but this emotional thorniness is often translated through a discordant edit that never quite succeeds in threading the stories together. As Eléna’s fear for her uncertain, aging future gives way for Mathias to fret over what’s to come, Claude’s pangs of regret over her past actions allow him space to question their shared past, and Desplechin squeezes every drop of melodrama from these people, but there’s not much of a story to bind them. Two Pianos reaches its high early on when Mathias is confronted with a child in public, a spitting image of himself, and Desplechin splices surreality into his all-too grounded reality, but this playfulness quickly fades into the background of a more standard, if very watchable, melodrama.
Grade: B-
If I Go Will They Miss Me (Dir. Walter Thompson-Hernández)
Walter Thompson-Hernández’s feature debut is dedicated, in its closing credits, to many people including “all those in flight.” In If I Go They Will Miss Me, this small-scale odyssey of a father, son, and mother stuck in place, all three family members wish to spread their wings, all knowing they have what it takes to take flight. Set in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, the film follows Lil’ Ant (Bodhi Jordan Dell) and his parents, Lozita (Danielle Brooks) and a just-released from prison Big Ant (J. Alphonse Nicholson), as they navigate life and its challenges. At its core, this is a story about a father and son trying to understand each other in ways they can’t comprehend. Thompson-Hernández approaches this story, expanded from his own short of the same name, with a deft tenderness that gives grace to each character, to their pain and joy, but in his consistent generosity for his characters lies a lack of real conflict. The primary conflicts are within both Big and Lil’ Ant, the former struggling to understand the literally mythic status that his son thrusts upon him through Greek mythos learned in school, while the former can’t understand what it is about himself that’s driving his family to turmoil, never understanding that it’s beyond his control. Thompson-Hernández’s camera is gentle and his humanism is reminiscent of Jonathan Demme in how he finds sympathy for everyone, no matter the transgression. They’re still somebody with a soul and with love in their life. Portraits of boys at play and snapshots of men at war with their ideals of manhood fill out the edges of this striking debut. It’s a strong declaration of a new voice, one that’s surely just taking flight.
Grade: B
Filipiñana (Dir. Rafael Manuel)
An average golf course consumes 300,000 gallons of water per day. All to keep artificial hills and valleys prim and proper for a select few to make deals, cancel deals, renege on deals, or deal a new deal. The deals and lives of those who keep this fugazi fantasy in motion are explored in Rafael Manuel’s feature debut, Filipiñana, adapted from his short of the same name. When Isabel (Jorrybell Agoto), a young girl just starting as a tee-girl at a club’s golf course in the Philippines, grows fascinated with the club’s president, she discovers a more sinister web of deceit that’s propping the whole club up. In other words, if Bad Day at Black Rock was just as fiery a heater but with a teen girl in Spencer Tracy’s shoes and if every shot was twice as long. Filipiñana is not an entry into the canon of slow cinema, it is far too brisk on the whole, but it is a languorous work that makes clear its message with shots steadily reaching past the two-minute-mark. Manuel lingers on spoiled fruit being driven over by golf carts as much as a girl framed under the legs of a golfer’s phallic club. Subtlety isn’t the name of the game, and the film does end up slightly overstaying its welcome, but Manuel’s confidence behind the camera guides his audience through this off-kilter world. His compositions are steady and work beyond their picturesque surface as a real indictment of the Philippines’ colonial history and the chasm in class disparities that’s been fostered. Manuel threads a sweltering discomfort throughout the film until its darker secrets are revealed. As a highwire act, this is impressive stuff and as a debut even more so.
Grade: A-
Elder Son (Dir. Cecilia Kang)
Cecilia Kang took home the Best Emerging Director Award at the 78th Locarno Film Festival for her feature debut, Elder Son, a sort of triptych of narrative and form. The first third follows Lila (Anita B Queen), a young Korean-Argentinian woman who is on a vacation of sorts with her father, Antonio (Kim Chang Sung), reconnecting to her roots while feeling adrift being seen as a tourist. The second part jumps to the past to track her younger father (Suh Sang Bin) as he struggles to find a life for himself after immigrating from Korea, while the final third becomes a documentary about Kang’s own parents, giving credence to the story we’ve witnessed. In theory, this is an ambitious conceit. In practice, Elder Son can’t seem to focus on one thread long enough to sustain connection with its audience. All three central performances are very moving, quiet and nuanced with everything unspoken being said through their eyes, but they aren’t given enough room to breathe. Kang’s portrait of Korean-Argentinian life is achingly personal, the latter third is quite literally an autobiography capturing her family’s past in their own words. Her ambition is admirable and the film is intermittently quite beautiful, but Kang never manages to draw the individual pieces close enough to each other to paint a full picture. Kang’s naturalistic style is eye-catching for its clarity and her willingness to not handhold is appreciated, but the shifts between timelines is so jarring and unclear at first, one questions if a bit of narrative foundation could’ve done the film well. Between moments of beauty, Elder Son is unfortunately too little too late three times in a row.
Grade: C
These capsule reviews are from the 69th San Francisco International Film Festival, running April 24-May 4, 2026.
2026 San Francisco International Film Festival Reviews: ‘Two Pianos,’ ‘If I Go Will They Miss Me,’ ‘Filipiñana,’ ‘Elder Son’ [SFFILM] 
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