It's SIFF season, baby! Seattle's favorite film fest returns this month with 262 films over 11 days (April 14–24) screening both in-person and online. We're rounding up some of our top picks. You can check out all of them here.
TUG OF WAR Tanzania, 2021, 93 min, Dir. Amil Shivji
Don't miss this rare feature from Zanzibar...Courtesy SIFF
It is not an accident that one of the most fascinating pop stars of the 20th century, Freddie Mercury, was born in Zanzibar. This island, which is a part of the nation of Tanzania, is one of the most fascinating places on earth. And so there is no surprise in the fact that one of the few features from Zanzibar, Amil Shivji’s Tug of War, contains no scene or actor who does not hold our fascination. The film, which concerns the island's post-war revolutionary period, follows the fate of two young rebels (one black African, one South Asian African) who fall in love in an interesting time and place.
Charles Tonderai Mudede, The Stranger’s senior staff writer, is a Zimbabwean-born cultural critic, urbanist, filmmaker, college lecturer, and writer. Mudede collaborated with the director Robinson Devor on three films, two of which, Police Beat and Zoo, premiered at Sundance, and one of which, Zoo, screened at Cannes. He has also written for the New York Times, Cinema Scope, Tank Magazine, e-flux, LA Weekly, and C Theory.
