SFFP 2026—DAKAN (1997) / THE OUTCASTS (1982) / ARAYA (1955) / TRI (1965): REVIEWS

With the inaugural edition of the Re:Vision Festival of Restoration and Rediscovery (“SFFP”) about to launch this weekend (September 24-27, 2026) at San Francisco’s historic Roxie Theater, here are some selections to consider. The word that keeps surfacing to my mind with regard to SFFP’s inaugural program is that these films are all important, of consequence, too easily dismissed and forgotten, yet deserving of continued attention and, yes, even affection. They range wildly in genres and styles, which makes for a rich variety of spectatorial responses.  

Dakan / Destiny (1997); dir. Mohamed Camara—Guinean filmmaker Camara has never shied away from controversial subjects and has, in fact, created an oeuvre based upon them. Denko (1993) tackled incest; Minka (1995) child suicide; and Dakan (1997) has earned its stature as the first Black African film on homosexuality, for which it was lauded at L.A. Outfest with the Grand Jury Award for Outstanding Foreign Narrative Feature. 

From its opening sequence of two high-school boys kissing, Dakan makes no apologies for its homosexual subject matter. Manga and Sory are in love with each other and admit same to their parents, both who object and insist upon their separation. Sory’s father sends him off to college to learn business so he can take over the family fishing enterprise. Manga’s mother ships him off to a tribal witch doctor in hopes ritual magic will "cure" him. The through-line of their attraction for each other, however, pierces through all the efforts of others to force their conformity. Their love is—as dakan translated implies—destiny. Dakan is, then, more a study of how the true love of these two young men influences, agitates and transforms the sensibilities of those around them. It is their parents and the young women who believe they can change them that, in turn, are tasked with change. The film’s point-of-view positively emphasizes that the only behavior to be judged is anyone who tries to thwart a destined love. 

Camara’s signature edginess is on full display during the witch doctor sequence where Manga’s mother is required to roll around in a muddy cemetery and instructed to steal a funeral shroud from a grave. Meanwhile, back at the village, a handful of dwarves assist the witch doctor in her aversion rituals. Camara doesn’t even shy away from an interracial romance. The upsetting of social taboos unabashedly comprises the film’s thrust. 

For those unable to attend the festival, Dakan is available for streaming on YouTube. 

   

The Outcasts (1982); dir. Robert Wynne-Simmons—Social taboos and superstitions run rampant in early 1800s Ireland, though the maligned love affair here is between Maura (Mary Ryan) a moody withdrawn girl and her demon lover Scarf Michael (Mick Lalley) who the locals suspect is the devil incarnate. But is he? Or is he simply an itinerant fiddler who has accepted the aspersions cast upon him, reining them in to negotiate his own survival? And is he, consequently, in a perfect position to counsel Maura on how to escape the backward village where she has been shunned as strangely aberrant and forced to live a miserable isolated existence as a suspected witch? 

Difference is extolled as magical and transformative in The Outcasts in an atmospheric and absorbing narrative that is credited with singlehandedly reviving the cinema of Ireland after nearly a half century of no films being made. Its mythopoeic air was popular with audiences when it made its festival rounds, winning Best Film and Critics Prize at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, and Best First Feature and Best Actress at the San Remo Film Festival. It earned a Special Prize for Originality and Jury Prize at the Fantasporto Film Festival 1984, and the Prix du Publique at Geneva Film Festival. The Arts Council of Ireland recognized it with an award.

Araya (1959); dir. Margot Benaceraff—Long before Brazilian social documentary photojournalist Sebastião Salgado stunned the world with his bracing photographs of the dignified beauty of manual labor worldwide, Araya captured the life of salineros at the natural salt mine Araya located on a peninsula in northeastern Venezuela. Though grueling physical labor is involved in extracting salt through methods centuries-old, a community of laborers eke out a living for themselves and their families. 

Their quotidian tenacity is rendered poetic in Benaceraff’s essay structure, with abstracted black and white cinematography, and a score composed from sounds of the sea mixed with traditional Andalusian polo songs.

Araya shared the Cannes International Critics Prize with Alain Resnais's Hiroshima mon amour at the festival’s 1959 edition and SFFP audiences will have the privileged perspective of watching Araya on 35mm.

   

Tri / Three (1965); dir. Aleksandar Petrović—There’s something about black-and-white WWII narratives out of Eastern Europe that shred my soul each and every time. Their urgent testaments of resistance remain timeless. 

Hailing from the former Yugoslavia, Tri—a proponent of the Yugoslav Black Wave—was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 39th Academy Awards. Tri concerns itself with the moral weight of bearing witness to the unavoidable atrocities of war. The film is structured in three segments. The first is in April 1941, the April War (sometimes called Operation 25), when Germans begin invading Yugoslavia. The second is towards the middle of the war where protagonist Miloš Bojanić (Bata Živojinović) has joined the partisans and is being relentlessly pursued by German soldiers. In the third section he has matured and been promoted as a high-ranking officer for OZNA, Communist Yugoslavia’s Secret Police. 

In each segment Miloš is forced to watch people he cares for die. A kind of befuddled amazement in the first segment capsizes into abject despair in the second as he rages against an indifferent God. By the third, he is more circumspect but still feels for the plight of a woman who collaborated with the Nazis and is in queue to be executed. It’s a marvelous character study that serves to critique the ravages of war, lustrously filmed by Tomislav Pinter in black and white, with compositional touches that halt breath and visual surprises, such as a dancing bear on a railroad platform.