For Your Consideration: This Week at SIFF

SIFF enters its second full week with a slew of great documentaries, including the final screening of fair trade coffee doc Black Gold (Tuesday, 9:30pm @ the Egyptian). The directors, Marc and Nick Francis, will be in attendance, as will Tadesse Meskela, an Ethiopian Farm Cooperative Organizer featured in the film. The SIFF screenings mark the first time the directors and subject have been together since the making of the film---and the first time Meskela has seen the film on the big screen.

SIFF also continues its run in Bellevue. Films will play at the Lincoln Square Cinemas through next Monday.

Now, onto the movies! Seattlest applies our well-honed knowledge of all things cinema to the SIFF catalogue in order to point out some notable films playing this week:

· Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner This biopic covers the career of the esteemed playwright (see: Angels in America, Homebody/Kabul, and Caroline, or Change). Expect some AIDS talk, don't expect any defense of his work on Munich. (tonight, 6:30pm @ Broadway Performance Hall)

· 37 Uses for a Dead Sheep With that eye-catching title, you'd expect this film to be about beastiality. But no, it's a documentary about an isolated tribe in eastern Turkey. (tomorrow, 7pm @ Broadway Performance Hall; Thursday, 2pm @ Broadway Performance Hall)

· OSS 117: Nest of Spies There are few phrases that scare Seattlest as much as "currently a box-office sensation in France..." especially when said sensation is a comedy. So we're understandably avoiding this slapsticky spy flick, described as "James Bond crossed with Maxwell Smart and Austin Powers, with a little bit of The Naked Gun antics thrown in for good measure." Be afraid, be very afraid. (tomorrow, 7pm @ Lincoln Square Cinemas; Saturday June 10th, 7pm @ the Neptune; Monday June 12th, 4:30pm @ the Neptune)

· Black Orpheus A new print of the stunningly filmed 1959 Palme d'Or winner, in which the Orpheus-Eurydice myth is transplanted to Rio during Carnivale. (tomorrow, 7:15pm @ the Neptune)

· The Gold Rush For two screenings only, catch Charlie Chaplin's masterpiece on the big screen. (Wednesday, 7pm @ the Neptune; Saturday June 10th, 11am @ the Egyptian)

· Factotum In which racist cop Matt Dillon plays Charles Bukowski, featuring a lot of writing, boozing, and womanizing. It has to be better than Crash. (Wednesday, 7pm @ Lincoln Square Cinemas)

· Arctic Son In this documentary, an estranged father and son are reunited in the harsh Canadian wilderness. Dad's good at roughing it; the son, a Seattleite, not so much. (Wednesday, 7:30pm @ Broadway Performance Hall; Thursday, 4:15pm @ Broadway Performance Hall)

· The Heart of the Game Another Seattle-themed documentary, this one about the girls' basketball team at Roosevelt High School. Seattlest Seth would approve. Advance tickets for both screenings are long gone, but if you show up early at the venues, you should be able to purchase some rush tickets. (Thursday, 7pm @ the Neptune; Sunday June 11th, 4:15pm @ Lincoln Square Cinemas)

· The Road to Guantanamo This powerfully made film tells a truly terrible real-life horror story. Four friends, British citizens of Pakistani ethnicity and Muslim religiosity, head to Pakistan for a wedding, only to end up first held captive by U.S. forces in Kandahar and eventually sent to Guantanamo, where they were imprisoned for, oh, a few years. We're big fans of director Michael Winterbottom---he's impossible to place into a box, as all of his films are so different and yet so good. In this one, he combines interviews with the young men with dramatic recreations of their experiences. The film is tough to watch, but it's an important look at the tactics of the war on terror. (Thursday, 7:15pm @ the Egyptian; Sunday June 11th, 1:15pm @ Pacific Place)