SIFF Week 2: Picks & Pans

SIFF

Foxes

SIFF

Alamar

Details

Seattle International Film Festival Thurs., May 20—Sun., June 13. Tickets and schedule: 324-9996 and siff.net. Or visit box office at Pacific Place (second floor, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Mon.-Sat. and noon-6 p.m. Sun.).

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More About

• Glenn Gould
• Brian Miller
• Kirkland Performance Center
• Everett Performing Arts Center
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

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9:15 p.m., Harvard Exit

Backyard

The countless missing women of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, have been the subject of documentaries, TV specials, and New York Times articles. Backyard is set in 1996, before such coverage north of the border. It's half-narrated by a radio journalist observing a female cop run straight into the corrupt male establishment that has no interest in solving the crimes. The numbers are uncertain—600 dead, 800, or have some crossed the border alive or returned to their home villages? All that matters in Juárez is a fresh supply of cheap female workers for the foreign-owned maquiladoras. Labor is a commodity, and women are the cheapest commodity. (A visiting trade delegation breaks down the costs of competing with China, Malaysia, and Thailand.) A close cousin to Stephen Soderbergh's Traffic, Carlos Carrera's film is less accomplished, but it ambitiously assigns blame to every corner of the system. Maybe there's a secret sex-and-snuff club (run by Jimmy Smits); maybe prostitutes are being murdered by an Arab-American serial killer (dubbed "the Sultan"); or maybe women are just so devalued that domestic violence is ignored by the cops. Or maybe—as Backyard disturbingly suggests—all these things are true. Even the sweet peasant boyfriend of one worker can be drawn into this culture of violent misogyny. Juárez is like a poisoned well for Carrera (The Crime of Father Amaro), so murky you can't see the bottom. If there is one. (NR) BRIAN MILLER (Also: Pacific Place, 9:30 p.m. Wed., June 9.)