It's that time, again.

Over the next two weeks, the San Francisco International Film Festival will bring some of the finest work in international and independent cinema to Bay Area theaters. Punctuated by programs as diverse as Spike Lee's epic When The Levees Broke and Garin Nugroho's audacious Opera Jawa, this year's festival appears every bit as engrossing as last year's.

As always, a festival is only as good as the films you actually see. So...my festival playlist:





(click on the images for more on the films)

"Left to right, left to right"...the films and their directors:

Bamako - Abderrahmane Sissako
Strange Culture - Lynn Hershman Leeson
Bunny Chow - John Barker
The 12 Labors - Ricardo Elias
Daratt - Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
A Few Days Later... - Niki Karimi
Colossal Youth - Pedro Costa
amour-Legende - Wu Mi-sen
When The Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts - Spike Lee
Fresh Air - Agnes Kocsis
Agua - Veronica Chen
Revolution Summer - Miles Matthew Montalbano