By Randy Myers, Bay City News Foundation
The San Francisco Greek Film Festival, running from Friday through April 16, offers a tasty and diverse menu this year with in-person selections at the Delancey Screening Room along with virtual options.
The 6:30 p.m. opening night feature “Holy Emy” kicks things off in a daring way with a nonconformist drama that refuses to adhere to the dictates of a specific genre. The award-winning debut from Araceli Lemos tells the unique story of a young Filipina girl named Emy (Abigael Loma) with stigmata abilities that appear to be hereditary. When her sister (Hasmine Killip) gets pregnant by a bad-boy coworker at a fish seller that employs them both, Emy, already feeling alienated living in Greece, feels even more ostracized as her powers show up in miraculous ways. “Holy Emy” is an intriguing message movie that comes Saran Wrapped-tight over an always-interesting, multihued premise about being an immigrant.
If you’re hankering for something sexy, sashay over at 6:30 p.m. April 12 to the Delancey Screening Room for Apollo Bakopoulos’ sensual “Aligned.” Abundant with the eye-candy sights of Athens, Greece, as well as the lithe, chiseled physiques of its two male leads, “Aligned” tells the steamy story of a New York dancer (Dimitris Fritzelas) and an out Greek dancer (Panos Malakos) and their discovery that they make excellent partners in the studio and great friends, and potentially more than that, whenever they are away from rehearsals. “Aligned” is erotic, stylized but not overly explicit. It goes down smoothly.
Other notables include the intense thriller about a relationship’s fallout in the aftermath of a disaster “All the Pretty Little Horses” (6:30 p.m. Saturday) and the closing night feature, an epic set in Smyrna about a family contending with raw emotional and physical wounds brought on by dark chapters in history, “My Beloved Smyrna” (6:30 p.m., April 16). For a full schedule and to see what is available to watch online, visit http://grfilm.com/.