February 11 – March 1, 2016
Since 1977, the Portland International Film Festival has been the Northwest Film Center’s annual showcase of new world cinema. Over three weeks in February, through the exhibition of nearly 100 feature films and 60+ short films, PIFF audiences across the City of Portland travel the globe in theater seats through our celebration of the world’s filmmakers and cinephiles.
Submit a Film
The Portland International Film Festival accepts submissions on a seasonal basis. The submission season opens in June culminating with the Festival each February. Submissions will be open for PIFF40 on June 10, 2016, and close on November 14, 2016.
Submissions have closed for the year.
Press & Sponsorship
The Festival is sustained through the encouragement, leadership, and generosity of loyal sponsors who value the diverse perspectives and cultural inclusion that the Festival brings to the community.
For information about 2017 sponsorship opportunities, contact Rachel Record, Development Manager, at 503-221-1156 x17 or rachel@nwfilm.org.
Please direct all press inquiries to Nick Bruno, Publicity and Promotions Manager, at 503-221-1156 x20 or nick@nwfilm.org.
100 Yen Love
Directed by Masaharu Take
“Play video games with your nephew, pick up junk food, and pass out reading manga. Such is the life of …
50 Feet from Syria
Directed by Skye Fitzgerald
Syria. The word likely resonates for many of us who are following the tragic situation there. But what if it …
600 Miles
Directed by Gabriel Ripstein
Winner of the Best First Feature Award at the Berlin Film Festival, 600 Miles is a riveting thriller about gun …
A Good American
Directed by Friedrich Moser
The explosion of information in the digital age left government agencies like the NSA struggling with bureaucracy and technology to …
Above and Below
Directed by Nicholas Steiner
Nicolas Steiner’s sublime exploration of lives lived on the fringe is set in a seemingly apocalyptic world that happens to …
Adama
Directed by Simon Rouby
The year is 1916. Adama is 12-years-old and lives in a remote West African village. When his elder brother Samba …
Aferim!
Directed by Radu Jude
Jude won Best Director at the Berlin Film Festival for this visionary historical epic — a European “Eastern” to an …
April and the Extraordinary World
Directed by Christian Desmares, Frank Ekinci
1941. Napoléon V is the ruler of an alternative France, and without modern technology, the world runs on coal and …
Arabian Nights: Volume 1, the Restless One
Directed by Miguel Gomes
“An up-to-the minute rethinking of what it means to make a political film today, Gomes’s shape-shifting paean to the art …
Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One
Directed by Miguel Gomes
“The middle section of Gomes’s monumental yet light-footed magnum opus shifts into a more subdued and melancholic register. But within …
Arabian Nights: Volume 3, The Enchanted One
Directed by Miguel Gomes
“Gomes’s sui generis epic concludes with arguably its most eccentric—and most enthralling—installment. Scheherazade escapes the king for an interlude of …
Baskin
Directed by Can Evrenol
While en route to answer distress calls from a rural village, a small group of policemen find themselves diverted to …
Body
Directed by Margorzata Szumowska
“Balancing bleakness and mirth in equal measure, Body chronicles three haunted souls in Warsaw: an icy coroner who suspects his …
Cemetery of Splendour
Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
A hypnotic cinematic dreamscape unfolds in Thai master Weerasethakul’s new film, in which soldiers with a mysterious sleeping sickness are …
Chevalier
Directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari
“While on a fishing trip in the Aegean Sea, six men decide to play Chevalier, a game that measures every …
Counting
Directed by Jem Cohen
Cohen (Museum Hours) evokes the fabric of urban life with this richly textured combination of sound and image. A essayistic …
Court
Directed by Chaitanya Tamhane
Winner of top prizes at the Venice and Mumbai film festivals, Tamhane’s film is a quietly devastating, absurdist portrait of …
Coz Ov Moni 2: FOKN Revenge
Directed by King Luu
Ghana’s most popular rap group, the FOKN Bois, star in what’s been called “the world’s 2nd 1st Pidgin musical.” One …
Demon
Directed by Marcin Wrona
Things quickly get out of hand at a Polish wedding when the groom appears to have been possessed by a …
Dheephan
Directed by Jacques Audiard
Jacques Audiard won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for this gripping tale of three Sri Lankan refugees and their immigrant …
Disorder
Directed by Alice Winocour
Afghanistan war vet Vincent is suffering from PTSD. He’s hired as a temp security guard at Maryland, the estate of …
Don’t Be Bad
Directed by Claudio Caligari
Set in the mid-1990’s in Ostia on the outskirts of Rome, Vittorio and Cesare, two men in their early twenties, …
Dukhtar
Directed by Afia Nathaniel
In the mountains of northern Pakistan, ten-year-old Zainab has been promised to Tor Gul a cruel, aging tribal leader six …
Eisenstein in Guanajuato
Directed by Peter Greenaway
Greenaway’s lively, provocative film follows the great Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein (Finnish actor Elmer Bäck) in his travels to the Mexican …
Embrace of the Serpent
Directed by Ciro Guerra
Crosscutting stories set decades apart, Guerra weaves two parallel journeys between a lone Amazonian shaman and western scientists in search of …
Evolution
Directed by Lucile Hadžihalilović
After diving below the waves surrounding his coastal village, a young boy claims to have seen the body of another …
Eye in the Sky
Directed by Gavin Hood
The goal of British-led Operation Cobra is the capture of Aisha Al Hady, a radicalized British citizen who has joined …
Fatima
Directed by Philippe Faucon
A Moroccan immigrant now living in Lyon, Fatima works long hours as a cleaning lady to support her two daughters, …
For Grace
Directed by Kevin Pang, Mark Helenowski
An in-depth look at what it takes to create and manage one of the world’s greatest restaurants—from concrete box to …
Francofonia
Directed by Aleksandr Sokurov
Celebrated for his daring and landmark films—such as Russian Ark (2002,) which was filmed in one sequence in the Russian …
From Afar
Directed by Lorenzo Vigas
Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival, From Afar uncovers common ground between two men divided …
Heavenly Nomadic
Directed by Mirlan Abdykalykov
A family of horse-herding nomads lives in the remote high mountains of Kyrgyzstan. Tabyldy is the head of the household; …
Home Care
Directed by Slávek Horák
Writer-director Slávek Horák’s mother, a home care nurse, inspired the central character of this insightful feature debut. Working in the …
I Saw the Light
Directed by Marc Abraham
British actor Tom Hiddleston inhabits the role of legendary singer/songwriter Hank Williams, an artist who revolutionized country music with his …
In the Shadow of Women
Directed by Philippe Garrel
Philippe Garrel’s romantic drama is an examination of marital infidelity and a freewheeling riff on life, art, and the never …
In Transit
Directed by Albert Maysles, Lynn True, Nelson Walker III, David Usui, Benjamin Wu
The final, fitting film of documentary legend Albert Maysles, In Transit, journeys into the hearts and minds of everyday passengers …
Iraqi Odyssey
Directed by Samir
Bombs, war, angry bearded men, shrouded sobbing women, shattered cities: Iraq, as seen through the eyes of the Western media …
King Georges
Directed by Erika Frankel
Fiery French chef Georges Perrier is on a crusade to save his world-renowned 40-year-old Philadelphia restaurant Le Bec-Fin from closing. …
Klown Forever
Directed by Mikkel Nørgaard
Five years have passed since their camping antics in Klown [PIFF 35] and Casper and Frank are standing at a …
L’Atessa
Directed by Piero Messina
Anna (Juliet Binoche) sits alone in an old country house in Sicily. Her son Giuseppe has just died and there …
Lamb
Directed by Yared Zeleke
Set against the magnificent mountains of southern Ethiopia, Lamb is heartwarming and visually stunning coming-of-age fable about a boy learning …
Land and Shade
Directed by César Agusto Acevedo
“A poetic and devastating statement on how environmental issues impact every aspect of life, César Augusto Acevedo’s Camera d’Or–winning (Best …
Landfill Harmonic
Directed by Brad Allgood, Graham Townsley
A testament to the transformative power of music and the resilience of the human spirit, Landfill Harmonic follows the Recycled …
Last Cab to Darwin
Directed by Jeremy Sims
Rex, a stubborn cab driver, has lived his entire life in the small, outback town of Broken Hill. When he …
Let Them Come
Directed by Salim Brahimi
Up to 200,000 Algerians are thought to have perished in clashes between the government and fundamentalist Islamist rebels in the …
Little Big Master
Directed by Adrian Kwan
Faced with a broken education system and misguided parents and school board, headmistress Lui Wai-hung resigns her post at a …
Liza the Fox-Fairy
Directed by Károly Ujj Mészáros
Liza’s a lonely nurse whose search for a companion always ends in the same way— with the death of her …
Magallanes
Directed by Salvador Del Solar
In this engrossing thriller, Magallanes works as a psychologically scarred taxi driver in the streets of Lima. But he has …
Man vs. Snake
Directed by Andrew Seklir, Tim Kinzy
In 1983, Tim McVey claimed the highest score ever achieved on a classic video game. The game in question was …
Marguerite
Directed by Xavier Giannoli
“Imagine a collaboration between Vladimir Nabokov and Billy Wilder and you will have some idea of the riches provided by …
Marshland
Directed by Alberto Rodriguez
Winner of ten Goya Awards, including best film, director, actor, and screenplay, Marshland is a taut neo-noir set in 1980 …
Men & Chicken
Directed by Anders Thomas Jensen
“The title might hint at where this brilliant new black comedy from the outrageous mind of Anders Thomas Jensen is going to …
Mia Madre
Directed by Nanni Moretti
Moretti revisits themes of life, cinema, family ties, and guilt through the eyes of Marghertita, a besieged middle-aged director. She …
Miss Hokusai
Directed by Keiichi Hara
In 1814 Edo, an accomplished artist works tirelessly in his studio. His name is Katsushika Hokusai and decades later his work will …
My Golden Days
Directed by Arnaud Desplechin
An intoxicating ode to romance and youthful coming-of-age, My Golden Days is a prequel to Desplechin’s debut, My Sex Life… …
Nahid
Directed by Ida Panahandeh
Panahandeh depicts the near impossibility of finding security and happiness within Iran’s strictures of socially enforced respectability. Nahid, an impoverished …
Nawara
Directed by Hala Khalil
Nawara works as a housemaid for a family closely linked to the Mubarak regime. On the eve of the 2011 …
No Home Movie
Directed by Chantal Akerman
"At the center of Akerman’s enormous body of work is her mother, a Holocaust survivor who married and raised a …
Office
Directed by Johnnie To
A nimble takedown of corporate corruption and greed, Office tells its story as a witty musical extravaganza. Featuring superstars Chow …
The Clan
Directed by Pablo Trapero
The Clan tells the true story of a middle-class family pulled into a world of kidnapping, ransom, and murder by …
The Club
Directed by Pablo Larraín
A meditation on justice and the Catholic Church, Larraín’s darkly comic, but no less angry, film presents the moral dramas …
The Fencer
Directed by Klaus Härö
Fleeing from Russian secret police in early 1950’s, a young Baltic dissident leaves Leningrad to settle in the small coastal …
The Forbidden Room
Directed by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson
A film that “has more ideas in ten minutes than most filmmakers have in their entire oeuvres” (Sight and Sound), …
The Idol
Directed by Hany Abu-Assad
The Idol maps the true story of Palestine’s first pop celebrity, Mohammed Assaf, and his stellar rise to fame following …
The Invitation
Directed by Karen Kusama
Will and Kira attend a dinner party hosted by Will’s ex-wife Eden in the secluded Hollywood home that they once …
The Lobster
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
The Lobster is a love story set in the near future where single people, according to the rules of “The …
The Meddler
Directed by Lorene Scafaria
“Striking a winning balance of insight, heart, and laugh-out-loud hilarity, Scafaria’s film stars the magnificent Susan Sarandon in one of …