Sonoma International Film Festival To Open With ‘Widow Clicquot,’ Host World Premiere Of ‘Extremely Unique Dynamic’:

The champagne may be flowing at the kickoff for the 27th Annual Sonoma International Film Festival – for more reasons than one.

This year’s event in California’s wine country will open with the U.S. premiere of Widow Clicquot, directed by Thomas Napper, a narrative feature about the Grande Dame of Champagne. Actress Haley Bennett stars in the titular role of Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot, “who against all odds advanced her late husband’s techniques to create the recipe for modern-day champagne.”

SIFF, running from March 20-24, will showcase 43 narrative features, 16 documentary features, and 48 short films representing more than 25 countries, according to a release.

The festival’s Centerpiece Film is Wildcat, directed by Ethan Hawke and starring his daughter Maya Hawke as renowned Southern Gothic author Flannery O’Connor. The Closing Night Film is Luc Besson’s crime drama Dogman, starring Caleb Landry Jones. A Closing Night Special Presentation of Pablo Berger’s Robot Dreams, Oscar-nominated for Best Animated Feature, is set for March 24.

“The world premiere of Extremely Unique Dynamic directed by Harrison Xu, Ivan Leung, and Katherine Dudas is the Gay-La Spotlight Film,” the festival notes, “with a party to follow hosted by actor, director, writer, musician John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch).”

‘Extremely Unique Dynamic’
Extremely Unique Dynamic is described as a “deliriously silly stoner comedy,” about two friends who “decide to make a movie about making a movie that stars two friends making a movie. When cameras start rolling, secrets and half-truths about their friendship, crushes, sexuality, and every other imaginable insecurity come out.”

Award-winning actor Beau Bridges will be presented with the SIFF Lifetime Achievement Award, honoring a film and television career that began with 1949’s The Red Pony and continues with six upcoming projects, including the lead role in The Neon Highway, directed by William Wages. Bridges has earned three Primetime Emmy Awards and starred in two Best Picture nominees — Norma Rae (1979), and The Descendants (2011). As part of the tribute to Bridges, the actor will participate in an on-stage conversation about The Fabulous Baker Boys, following a 35th anniversary screening of the beloved film which co-starred his brother Jeff Bridges and Michelle Pfeiffer.

“Building off last year’s festival, the highest attended in the history of SIFF, we are excited to welcome veteran actor Beau Bridges, and provide a showcase for premieres and extraordinary films from notable filmmakers and talent,” said Carl Spence, SIFF artistic director. “The Sonoma International Film Festival exemplifies why film festivals are essential to introduce appreciative audiences to the best and brightest from around the world. By creating unique, in-person experiences–through our films, parties, special events, and community initiatives–we bring people together; we ask them to look closer.”

Ginny Krieger, SIFF’s executive director, commented, “Each year we showcase the cinematic and culinary worlds to Sonoma over five fun-filled days, but it’s in showcasing Sonoma, and this place and our community, to the world that we really shine.”

As previously announced, Award-winning chef Susan Feniger will be presented with the Culinary Excellence Award at the Bay Area premiere of director Liz Lachman’s documentary Susan Feniger. Forked. That special event will include a multi-course dinner curated by Feniger.

The SIFF menu, in terms of documentaries, includes Copa 71 (directors Rachel Ramsay, James Erskine), Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg (dirs.. Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill), And So It Begins (dir. Ramona S. Diaz), Merchant Ivory (dir. Stephen Soucy), and Food, Inc. 2 (dirs.. Robert Kenner, Melissa Robledo).

Among the other highlights of the SIFF program is a live taping of the podcast “The Film That Blew My Mind” co-hosted by John Cooper and Tabitha Jackson, both former directors of the Sundance Film Festival. Their guest will be John Cameron Mitchell.

Bay Area premieres include Thea Sharrock’s Wicked Little Letters (Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley); Tony Goldwyn’s Ezra (Bobby Cannavale, Rose Byrne, Robert De Niro, Vera Farmiga, Whoopi Goldberg, Rainn Wilson); Daina O. Pusic’s Tuesday (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), Gilles Legardinier’s Mr. Blake At Your Service (John Malkovich, Fanny Ardant); Giorgio Diritti’s Lubo (Franz Rogowski); Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast (Léa Seydoux, George MacKay); Bob Byington’s Lousy Carter (David Krumholtz, Olivia Thirlby); and the aforementioned Merchant Ivory (Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Vanessa Redgrave, Hugh Grant), among others.

SIFF’s five-day festival is curated by Artistic Director Carl Spence, senior programmers Amanda Salazar, and Ken Jacobson, and shorts programmer Oscar Arce Naranjo. Full details on the festival program can be found by clicking here.

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