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SIFF 2026: Week 1
May 10, 2026
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The 52nd annual Seattle International Film Festival is up and running through May 17th. This year’s SIFF features a total of 203 shorts, documentaries, and narrative films in 71 languages. I’ll be sharing reviews here at Hullabaloo and on my Den of Cinema site throughout the festival. Here are some highlights from Week 1: Birds of War (United Kingdom) *** – Filmmakers Janay Boulos and Abd Alkader Habak share much more than the directing credits for this autobiographical documentary-they are longtime professional colleaguesand life partners.
Those various degrees of collaboration didn’t hatch all at once; their “against the odds” relationship has rendered a love story as deeply personal and politically expansive as Reds or Doctor Zhivago. Lebanese journalist Janay Boulos was working as a producer for the BBC (based in London) when the Syrian revolution exploded in the spring of 2011 after the brutal Assad regime reacted to widespread street protests with lethal force. At the time, Syrian activist and cameraman Abd Alkader Habak was living in Aleppo. Since reporters were forbidden from entering the city, Boulos needed a source who was already on the ground. Hence (as they say)it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Drawn from 13 years worth of personal archives, the resulting film delivers a real-life tale of love and war that is by turns touching and harrowing, and ultimatelyhopeful. Mārama (New Zealand) *** – One of my personal Rules of Cinema is that “nothing good ever happens at an isolated manor”. Rebecca meets The
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