2026 San Francisco International Film Festival Reviews: ‘The World of Love,’ ‘A Sad and Beautiful World,’ ‘Nuisance Bear,’ ‘One in a Million’ (SFFILM)

Migration, formative youth experiences, and large-scale conflicts guide this batch of four independent films reaching the San Francisco International Film Festival after successful fall and early-year festival runs.

The World of Love (Dir. Yoon Ga-eun)

South Korean director Yoon Ga-eun further expands her affecting tapestry of stories about formative youth experiences with The World of Love (2025). Moving from her usual fixation on early childhood to adolescence, the film tracks 17-year-old student Jooin (Seo Su-bin) as she navigates her constantly shifting love life. Seemingly peaceful at first, this layered drama pulls its safety net with the same abruptness with which Jooin’s environment shifts following an uncomfortable class conversation. This discussion reveals a long-held secret of hers, one that completely recontextualizes everything that came before this well-timed reveal. Meanwhile, Jooin’s mother Taesun — played by Parasite-famous Jang Hye-jin in another truly memorable turn — struggles with alcoholism and the ensuing health complications, a concern connected to her daughter’s buried pain that she feels notably responsible for. Gae-un’s careful framing of childhood trauma’s echoing presence displays the prejudices and assumptions that cloud societal comprehension of taboo scenarios. In The World of Love, change and growth are accepted as non-linear, isolating processes that deserve patience and grace, extending an admirable degree of empathy to its characters’ differing modes of coping. Seo Su-bin delivers a revelatory performance that captures the various dimensions of Jooin, a young woman attempting to navigate the customary teenage struggles, whilst everyone refuses to allow her any sense of normalcy.

Grade: B

A Sad and Beautiful World (Dir. Cyril Aris)

Serving as Lebanon’s Best International Film entry for the 98th Academy Awards, A Sad and Beautiful World (2025) captures a decades-spanning romance forced to combat war and conflicting views of how to exist within it across various life stages. Nino, a doe-eyed optimist committed to his family’s restaurant, and Yasmina, a logic-driven overachiever with ambitions too big for her conflict-burdened home, first meet in grade school. Quickly forming a tender bond, they are forced to separate when Yasmina’s parents divorce and relocate her to a safer city. The two find each other again in adulthood when Nino accidentally crashes his car into the walls of Yasmina’s family business. Despite their vastly different career ambitions and their country’s drastic decay, the couple prioritizes their love, resulting in an engaging exploration of repeated generational patterns that can only be understood once lived. Arguably overlong and melodramatic to a fault, the film often resorts to conventional story beats to highlight the cultural and blood-bound pressures that motivate each player. Its weaker stretches are held together by an indisputable heart and commitment to offering hope amidst difficult push-and-pull factors. Tender and well-meaning, A Sad and Beautiful World is a proper case of specificity-coated clichés offering solid results.

Grade: B-

Nuisance Bear (Dir. Gabriela Osio Vanden & Jack Weisman)

Following its buzzy Sundance premiere, Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman’s documentary Nuisance Bear (2026) has reached warmer climate and continued its hot streak of audience support at SFFILM. First released as a short in 2021, this full-length expansion offers a rich collection of striking vignettes of Churchill, Manitoba, labeled the “Polar Bear Capital of the World.” The ironic title is given ample space to prove itself. Tourist buses bring crowds of financially comfortable outsiders seeking their polar bear picture. Hunters aim to preserve their rites, further complicating species conservation. And wildlife officers employ various aggressive tactics to scare off bears from their vicinity, disrupting the bear’s migration patterns and continuing to risk its endangerment. This Canadian town serves as a fascinating microcosm for larger environmental issues, where competing human interests and impractical living demands bring misfortune for societies and natural environments alike. The narrative predominantly features a serious tone that never undercuts the difficult reality of human and polar bear attempts at coexisting. The married co-directors began the project over 10 years ago, returning to the area various times to capture the film’s stunning nature footage. The A24-produced, Mubi-distributed film is primed to become a major player in the festival circuit and awards circles year-round thanks to its charming animal protagonist and engrossing imagery.

Grade: B+

One in a Million (Dir. Itab Azzam & Jack MacInnes)

Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Directing Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, One In a Million follows the incredible story of Isra’a and her family as they navigate a difficult migration from Syria to Germany, then a return to their homeland following the end of the Syrian civil war. First encountering Isra’a in a Turkish street selling cigarettes, her ease with the camera made her an immediate source of fascination for filmmakers Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes.  The film, yet another decade-in-the-making documentary by a married couple, finds the crew accompanying the family in every step of their journey — save for a highly dangerous trek by boat, footage that the family filmed even during life-threatening circumstances. As Isra’a grows from childhood into teenage life and finally early adulthood, the camera observes her ever-changing relationship to her cultures and parents with minimal interference, knowing its place as an observer that allows its protagonists to be in control of their own story. Yet most refreshing of all are Azzam and MacInnes’ refusal to succumb to Anglo-Saxon moralism in the framing of the family’s lives, carefully laying even the least palatable of cards on the table. One in a Million truly lives up to its title, developing a multifaceted exploration of life before, during, and after cross-continental migration, as well as the specific struggles attached with each phase. 

Grade: B

These capsule reviews are from the 69th San Francisco International Film Festival, which ran April 24-May 4, 2026.

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Damian Danemann

Damian Danemann is a lifelong film aficionado, starting his awards predicting journey at 5 years old and never letting go since. He was raised in Mexico and moved to the United States during the pandemic, a transition that was essential to his growth as a writer. A student at UC Berkeley, he spends his time producing short films, getting involved in campus organizations, and making good use of his AMC A-List membership.

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