And the Winners Are...

And so another Seattle International Film Festival has come to a close. The stars have flown back home, the movie houses are going back to their regularly scheduled summertime fluff and the staff over at Cinema Seattle breathes a sigh of relief that they've managed to get through another 25 days of movie-going hysteria and didn't collectively collapse from exhaustion.

Personally, I don't know how they do it. I love film, adore it to the point just the thought of not being a part of this community is enough to reduce me to pools of blubbering hysterics that's more than a bit childish, but even I have trouble making it through all three and a half week of the festival with my sanity intact. This event isn't a sprint, it's a marathon, and only those with the stamina to endure the good, the bad, the ugly and the downright miraculously bizarre day in and night out are the ones who keep coming each and every year ready - begging, even - for more.

With almost 300 feature-length films (not to mention nearly another 200 shorts, forums, events and parties), it is impossible to see everything. Usually I can make a pretty good go of it catching most of the festival's must-see items. All that said, I didn't make it to the Golden Space Needle Audience Award-winner for best film, German director Doris Dörrie's (Men) latest curiosity Cherry Blossoms - Hanami. I did make it to the runner up film, however, Courtney Hunt's sensational and moody Frozen River (which also won the Lena Sharpe audience award for best female director), and I can't fault ticket and pass holders in the least bit for becoming so completely enamored with that particular one in the least bit.

Other Golden Space Needle winners included Best Actor Alan Rickman's sly and beguiling turn as British wine impresario Steven Spurrier in the otherwise pleasing if slight closing night film Bottle Shock, newcomer Jessica Chastain's fiery and fiercely magnetic performance in Dan Ireland's disappointingly infuriating Jolene for Best Actress, and Jordanian filmmaker Amin Matalqa took home the trophy for Best Director for his wonderfully entertaining dramatic comedy Captain Abu Raed. Can't say I disagree, audiences going a long way to erasing last year's almost disgraceful mistake of giving Daniel Water's an award for his rather forgettable comedy Sex and Death 101.

For me, SIFF 2008 had much to adore. I saw what I believe to be hands-down the year's best film in Fatih Akin's (Head On) brilliantly moving drama The Edge of Heaven, the movie a poignant, multi-layered masterpiece worthy of repeat viewings. Also on the narrative side, Alan Ball's (HBO's "Six Feet Under") explosively compelling Towelhead refused to pull punches and offered up a coming of age satire sure to spark endless debate, Tarsem's (The Cell) visually resplendent The Fall took my breath away and then some, The Duplass Brother's (The Puffy Chair) quirky and imaginative Baghead was a suspense and laugh-filled surprise, I had a blast watching the Danish Harry Potter wannabe The Island of Lost Souls, absolutely adored Russell Brown's talkative The Bluetooth Virgin, thought both Colin Hanks and John Malkovich stole the show in the sometimes hysterical The Great Buck Howard, and the shatteringly emotional New Director Showcase Grand Jury Prize winner Everything is Fine immediately cemented Canadian filmmaker Yves-Christian Fournier's as a talented newcomer worth keeping an eye on.

On the non-fiction end of things, my two favorites were Nanette Burstein's American Teen and Yung Chan's Up the Yangtze. Audiences, however, disagreed slightly and awarded Denny Tedesco's solidly entertaining biography of the best back-up band you've never heard of The Wrecking Crew with the Golden Space Needle for Best Documentary, while the Grand Jury Prize in the same category went to Isaac Julien’s fascinating (if a bit too bland for my tastes) look at acclaimed the late iconoclastic British filmmaker Derek Jarman, Derek. Other doc highlights included recent Oscar winner Alex Gibney's (Taxi to the Dark Side) Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Johnny Symons' excellent Don't Ask-Don't Tell piece Ask Not, the steriods epic Bigger, Stronger, Faster*, the absolutely absorbing multi-decade gay romance Chris and Don: A Love Story, the beguiling German treatise on the world's smallest particle Dust and the sometimes stunning Hurricane Katrina piece Trouble the Water.

There were some missteps, of course, but none of them rose to quite the level of infuriating ignominy as David Wain's brutally horrific The Ten did last year. Still, Dario Argento's latest The Mother of Tears was pretty darn bad, as was Roger Spottiswoode's turgidly well-meaning epic The Children of Huang Shi. Also not making the grade were the annoying French sci-fi mind-bender Chrysalis, C. Jay Cox'z anemically plotted gay marriage comedy Kiss the Bride and good have done without a good half hour of Jean-Paul Salomé's (Arsène Lupin) WWII epic Female Agents. Most surprising was the stunning collapse of Tom Kalin's (Swoon) fact-based Savage Grace even though it contained one of the great tour-de-force performances of acclaimed actress Julianne Moore's entire career.

Overall, howver, this was a good SIFF, sometimes even a magnificent one. There were highs, there were lows and, like always, there was everything stuffed to the gills right in-between. In short, I may be exhausted (too little sleep mixed with too much Diet Coke coupled with far too much stale popcorn over a 25-day period will end up doing that to you) but, now that all is said and done, I wouldn't have it any other way. Even better, I can't wait until 2009 to do it all over again.