SIFF reviews: “Monarch City” and “BLKNWS: Terms Conditions”

So far, this year’s Seattle International Film Festival, with the insanely fun and enticing tagline “Escape to the Reel World,” has been a treat. A festival within a festival, the 51st SIFF offers a wide array of perspectives and curations that expand atmospheres and allow local lovers of film to see not only themselves, but others — many, many others.

For this intrepid reporter (and sometime film critic) the focus for covering SIFF is specifically the “Northwest connection” curation, where narrative films, documentaries and shorts are either helmed by local directors or focus on Washington stories. From generational gaps to Afrofuturism, this is the first block of films I had the privilege of screening for SIFF 2025.

“Monarch City”

An interesting take on generational trauma and small town atrophy, this family drama follows stoic patriarch Sam (Paul Eenhoorn), his estranged daughter Hope (Mahria Zook), who is in a court-ordered rehab facility, and Hope’s detached daughters Billie (Liisa Kaufman) and Zee (Lavender Hamilton), along with Billie’s boyfriend Lil RIP (Cameron Carter), who dreams of becoming a famous rapper.

The film, which was written and directed by Titus Richard, intercuts between home video footage of better times, scenes of various delinquencies to get through the dark idleness of a dying Cascadian town and the neverending movement and sound of train cars exiting across the landscape — something Billie, RIP, Zee and their friends seem doomed to never undertake.

Filmed in the tiny Washington towns of Roslyn, Easton and Cle Elum, it’s safe to say that the environment and locations are another persona in the film, offering beauty, but also a melancholy that leaves each character on the precipice of their own fate.

Hope is like an anchor in the film, a character dealing with her own trauma from having a father who “didn’t protect her” while trying to get to the point where she can come to terms with the fact that she is also estranged from her daughters. Zook’s performance is brief but whole, expertly displaying the intense emotions of someone who is as destructive as she is vulnerable.

“Monarch City” was Eenhoorn’s last film before his death in 2022, and his performance as Sam is a strong coda to a long career in the Seattle film scene.

We do not know the extent of Sam’s history with Hope, but we do see him as a solitary man who carries a lot of guilt, but also understanding. The morning that Billie and Zee are setting off to visit their mother, Sam treats them to breakfast and doesn’t even blink when he sees the sloppy Halloween makeup that is still caked on Zee’s face from her partying hard the night before. And he doesn’t seem to mind when he is met with Billie’s disinterest in food or conversation, dreading having to go see her mom.

One would expect a lecture or a slew of insults toward the girls but instead, Sam parries with a strategically placed fart noise, which the two reciprocate, hearkening back to a beloved inside joke between the two generations.

The standout of the cast is undoubtedly newcomer Hamilton as Zee, the (most likely) teenage girl who flutters between one side, where she is finding tranquility with horses in a pasture and clinging to her mother’s side and another side where she is being a bad influence on a smoking pre-teen and stealing alcohol from a convenience store. Hamilton is a local talent who brings a real delicacy to Zee, who only wants to portray herself as tough and unapproachable.

The film is dramatic and eye-catching, especially when it comes to its enticing camera angles and hypnotic music and may hit close to home for those who are trying to navigate a wayward family unit. Come for the Cascade mountain range, stay for the generational trauma and the hint of hope that things will be better.

“BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions”

In what director Kahlil Joseph calls a “cinematic experience mirroring the sonic textures of a record album,” “BLKNWS” is a major standout of this year’s SIFF and perhaps one of the best cinematic destructions of western film formulas of this century.

Utterly unique in every conceivable way as it mixes documentary, narrative storytelling and other genres that escape description, Joseph’s work is five years in the making and an adaptation of his own video art installation.

Taking inspiration from his own family history, the “Encyclopedia Africana” and the works of W.E.B. Du Bois, Funmilayo Akechikwu, Saidiya Hartman (who is credited as a writer on the film), Marcus Garvey and the late work of French director Jean-Luc Godard (among many others), “BLKNWS” takes viewers and listeners on a fluid journey that transcends everything one might know about diving into a film.

Described as Afrofuturistic and (sometimes) set against the backdrop of the TransAtlantic ship “The Nautica,” the film follows several characters that weave in and out of the film, including Akechikwu, who is a West African-based curator, Nigerian author Wole Soyinka and Ghanian journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas. It is impossible to include even a fraction of the important figures that are featured and highlighted throughout the film, as many of them are cited straight from “Encyclopedia Africana” itself, page numbers included.

During a Q&A for the film at the Siff Cinema Downtown, Joseph talked about how he considered himself less of a director of the film and more of an editor-in-chief and a “student of the moving image.”

Another impossibility of the film is the ability to fully and succinctly describe its content and how each scene and sequence marries itself to the next. Yes, it features historic figures and the leeching blowback of the transatlantic slave trade, but it is also flecked with a random meme here and there — and created “BLKNWS” segments complete with chyrons and anchors.

Through some of the best film editing I have ever seen (which is attributed to Joseph himself, along with Luke Lynch and Paul Rogers of award-winning “Everything All At Once” fame) the audience is also given glimpses into the personal history of Joseph’s family, which settled in Seattle, but can be traced back to Chicago, Brazil and Africa. Joseph said that in his Q&A that the film does what art gets to do.

“No one wants to hear this stuff in a dinner conversation, but I think it’s interesting and it contextualizes it,” he said.

Highly informative, deeply moving and often as unsettling as a dream right before it reaches a state of lucidity, “BLKNWS” takes me back to my first viewing of David Lynch’s “Inland Empire” from 2006, which was an extremely experimental narrative film that is also hard to describe. While I see the merit in Lynch’s signature dream-like filmmaking and his propensity for high-art visuals in “Inland,” Joseph’s work here in “BLKNWS” fully realizes that film’s potential.

While Joseph is perhaps best known for his art installations and his music videos with Kendrick Lamar and Beyoncé, that changes with “BLKNWS,” and I have no doubt that his talent and vision will take him even further.