SFFILM 69 (2026): THREE CAPSULES—LATE FAME (2025), TO HOLD A MOUNTAIN (2026) & TIME & WATER (2026)

Willem Dafoe and Greta Lee in Late Fame (2025)

I have long found the film capsule to be one of the oddest short form film “review” formats. Its purpose is primarily promotional in advance of a film festival with the caveat that it is supposed to be limited—roughly 75 words per capsule, dependent on festival and publicist—to be followed by a more in-depth review when the film opens theatrically. Promotion aside (I’ve never felt it was the responsibility of a reviewer to fill seats), I’ve often found festival program notes to be much longer than a capsule, more dedicated to narrative synopsis, with the added (arguably true) responsibility of enticing prospective viewers to purchase tickets. 

Film coverage is all snakes and ladders, windows of opportunity and doors of perception, expenses and receipts. 

Because the frequently well-written festival program note tends to disappear once a festival has concluded and gained dust on its online shelf, I like to include them in my overviews more as a snapshot in time and out of respect to those that have drafted them. My capsules then become instead quick and immediate responses to the films I’ve had the chance to purview. 

Kent Jones’ Late Fame (2026) flexes one of the most important—Jungian theorist James Hillman argues the most important and the only—dyad in psychologist C.G. Jung’s system of archetypology; namely, the relationship between the archetype of the Senex / Crone and that of the Puer / Puella, a hyphenated structure that speaks to the dynamic of the relationship between them. For definition’s sake, the “Senex” represents the masculine spirit, structure, and tradition as reflected in the Wise Old Man, whereas the Wise Old Woman represents the feminine aspect of the "mana personality"—a figure of spiritual authority and deep, often intuitive, knowledge. In simpler terms it represents the crosscurrent of energy between older and younger individuals and the importance of each to the other. 

Now, see, that’s already 125 words and so we will have to wait until Late Fame opens in movie houses before I can get into what I would like to say about this intelligent and poignant film. But so you don’t feel shorted, here’s what Jessie Fairbanks wrote in SFFILM’s program note: “The latest feature from Kent Jones (former director of the New York Film Festival) is a gently piercing dramedy about ambition, obscurity, and the echoes of youthful dreams. Ed Saxberger (a beautifully restrained Willem Dafoe) once arrived in New York determined to be a poet, publishing a slim volume before settling into the quiet routines of postal work. As his retirement nears, an ardent group of downtown bohemians, led by the captivating Gloria (Greta Lee), discover Ed’s long-forgotten book and insist on honoring him with a literary salon. What begins as flattery soon stirs doubt, longing, and unexpected desire. With a sharp, literate screenplay by Samy Burch, Jones crafts a wise, sparkling New York tale about reinvention and the courage it takes to be truly seen.”  

Late Fame served as SFFILM’s opening night and here’s a clip of Kent Jones and Greta Lee interacting with their San Francisco audience in the Castro Theatre; specifically of Greta Lee describing how she developed the character of Gloria.

 

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Next up, the Serbian narrative documentary feature To Hold A Mountain (2026) directed by Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić. Bedatri Choudhury synopsizes for SFFILM: “At first glance, Gara is a simple farmer, tending her crops and animals, making cheese, and caring for adolescent Nada. But there is far more to this woman who lives amid the beauty and isolation of Montenegro’s mountainous Sinjajevina plateau. Gara’s quiet but intense love for Nada is an extension of the deep love she feels for this land she calls home. Her story is intertwined with that of this breathtaking region, the place where she protects Nada and nurtures the girl’s future with hard-earned wisdom. When NATO forces propose turning the area into a field for military exercises, Gara further demonstrates her grit as she takes action to oppose the plan. A mesmerizing vérité plunge into rural life, what could have been a simple and romanticizing document of women’s lives in Montenegro is instead a portrait of quiet and steadfast resilience.”  

To Hold A Mountain’s title speaks not only to the resistance against militaristic forces seeking to exploit Montenegro’s Sinjajevina plateau for war maneuvers, but also a heartfelt environmental embrace rooted in the etymology of “to hold”, which originates from the Proto-Germanic verb *haldanan ("to tend, herd, watch over, or keep"), often used in the context of tending cattle (of which there’s plenty in this film), but which then morphed into the Old English healdan (West Saxon) or halden (Anglian), meaning "to grasp, retain, contain, or keep watch over". In gist, while it historically meant protecting or tending, the usage expanded early to include "keeping fast in the hand," "observing a rule," "controlling," and "possessing". While protection of ancestral land is the film’s main theme, it deepens into yet another example of the Crone-Puella archetype.

 

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Once again giving credit to Jessie Fairbanks, here’s her synopsis of Time and Water (2026) for SFFILM: “Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason faces an unthinkable task: composing the eulogy for Okjökull, the first glacier declared dead due to climate change. In Sara Dosa’s (Fire of Love, Festival 2022) luminous documentary, Magnason confronts the disappearance of his country’s ice while preserving the stories of his grandparents, intertwining personal history with vanishing landscapes. Drawing from home movies, photographs, songs, and folklore, Dosa constructs an immersive portrait of loss and continuity. Moving seamlessly between intimate recollections and the monumental sweep of glaciers over millennia, Time and Water is a visually striking meditation on vulnerability, charting the fragility of the natural world and the urgent need to bear witness before vital elements of it disappear.” 

The plight of glaciers facing global climate change has challenged documentary filmmakers since Jeff Orlowski-Yang’s 2012 warning cry Chasing Ice. Clearly many in power are not listening, including the current Trump administration whose fingers are plugging their ears as they scream “hoax.” If they would listen, they would hear the dying cries of glaciers, written about by Robert Draper (“The Sound of Ice”) for National Geographic magazine where yet another glacier—this time in Chile—is slowly receding from the heat. Sara Dosa’s environmental documentary deepens the theme and bears connective tissue with To Hold A Mountain in its portrait of indigenous relation to the land rendered in protracted poetic reverie.