2026 Festival Schedule

Film

The Big Cheese

2025 | 86 minutes | USA

A scrappy band of eccentric American cheesemongers storms the Mondial du Fromage, taking on elite European masters in a hilarious, high-stakes battle of rind and reputation—where pride, passion, and perfectly-aged wheels are on the line.

Film

The Blue Trail

2025 | 86 minutes | Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Netherlands

This Berlin Film Festival award-winning film is a bold, near-future odyssey. When a defiant 75-year-old escapes state surveillance, she journeys through the Amazon to reclaim her freedom and dreams in this stirring tale of resistance and self-discovery.

Film

The Balloonists

2025 | 86 minutes | USA, United Kingdom, Austria

This breathtaking, edge-of-your-seat real-life adventure story takes you up in the air with explorers Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones as they set out to become the first to circle the globe in a balloon.

Film

Colors Of Time

2025 | 126 minutes | France

Winner of the Audience Award at the American French Film Festival, this charming dramedy follows distant cousins uncovering their link to a remarkable young woman, Adèle, and a legendary Impressionist—bridging modern-day discovery with the artistic ferment of 1890s Paris.

Film

Eagles of the Republic

2025 | 129 minutes | Sweden, Egypt, France, Denmark, Finland, Germany

Sweden’s Oscar submission, Tarik Saleh’s electrifying political thriller follows a famous Egyptian actor coerced into a regime propaganda film—only to be ensnared in a seductive web of secrets, power, and betrayal that threatens to consume his real life.

Film

Girl Climber

2025 | 82 minutes | USA

Can elite climber Emily Harrington become the first woman to free climb El Capitan in 24 hours by the treacherous Golden Gate route? This gripping documentary profiles Emily’s extraordinary career and the most daring climb of her life.

Film

Hello Betty

2025 | 110 minutes | Switzerland

Based on a delicious true story and infused with humor and heart, Hello Betty follows trailblazing ad exec Emmi Creola, who outsmarts a male-dominated industry and becomes Switzerland’s culinary icon—while juggling ambition, fame, and family.

Film

Hen

2025 | 96 minutes | Germany, Greece, Hungary

This bold, unforgettable film follows a runaway chicken fleeing factory-farm life in search of home. Told entirely through the eyes of a hen, this darkly comic, deeply moving fable reveals human hardship, resilience, and surprising tenderness.

Film

My Tennis Maestro

2025 | 125 minutes | Italy

Set in 1980s Italy, this sun-drenched, bittersweet comedy pairs a driven teen player with a washed-up ex-champion coach (Pierfrancesco Favino). Sparkling performances fuel this funny, heartfelt coming-of-age romp about failure, ego, and growing up.

Film

Our Land/Nuestra Tierra

2025 | 122 minutes | Argentina, Mexico, France, Denmark, Netherlands

Argentine auteur Lucrecia Martel makes her first foray into feature documentary filmmaking with this haunting investigation into the killing of an Indigenous community leader and its relationship to the larger, centuries-old story of colonialism and erasure.

Film

Poetic License

2025 | 117 minutes | USA

Maude Apatow’s sharp, tender debut follows Liz (the magnetic Leslie Mann), adrift in a new town, who befriends two adoring students (Cooper Hoffman & Andrew Barth Feldman) after auditing a poetry class. Flattery spirals into awkward longing in this smart, laugh-out-loud story of reinvention. Sebastiani - Priority Admission for Silver, Gold, Platinum, & Patron Passholders, Vets #1 - Bronze Passholders and Single Ticket Holders

Film

Silent Friend

2025 | 147 minutes | Germany, France, Hungary

Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at Venice, this enchanting meditation on love, time, and connection unfolds where a majestic Ginkgo biloba tree silently observes human lives across centuries. Starring Tony Leung, Léa Seydoux, and Luna Wedler.

Film

The Stranger

2025 | 120 minutes | France

Winner of three 2026 Lumière Awards, François Ozon’s The Stranger reimagines Albert Camus’ classic. Set in 1930s colonial Algeria and starring Benjamin Voisin, this Venice Competition standout is a gripping, sensual meditation on alienation, morality, and fate.

Film

The Six Billion Dollar Man

2025 | 129 minutes | USA

Eugene Jarecki´s explosive, Cannes-premiering thriller traces Julian Assange’s transformation from renegade hacker to global lightning rod. Packed with revelatory interviews and high-stakes intrigue, it’s a gripping, globe-spanning saga of power, politics, and defiance.

Film

The Sea

2025 | 93 minutes | Israel

Israel’s Oscar submission and winner of five Ophir Awards, including Best Picture, The Sea is a stirring, neorealist drama about a Palestinian boy who defies a checkpoint to glimpse the Mediterranean for the first time—an urgent, humanist journey in the vein of Bicycle Thieves.

Film

What Marielle Knows

2025 | 86 minutes | Germany

This wickedly funny, award-winning comedy flips family life on its head when a tween girl develops telepathic powers and can see and hear everything her parents do. Secrets implode, lies unravel, and middle-class respectability doesn’t stand a chance.

Film

Winter of the Crow

2025 | 112 minutes | Poland, United Kingdom, Luxembourg

Based on a story by Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk, this gripping neo-noir set during Poland’s 1981 martial law stars Lesley Manville, who delivers a riveting performance as a British professor thrust into a deadly cat-and-mouse chase.

Film

Yanuni

2025 | 112 minutes | Austria, Brazil, USA, Canada, Germany

Produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, this pulse-pounding eco-thriller follows Juma Xipaia, the first female Indigenous chief of her people, as she risks everything to confront illegal miners and defend the Amazon from devastating destruction.

Event

Opening Night Party

March, 25 2026

Kick off the 2026 Sonoma International Film Festival with DJ StaRJay and a "Taste of Sonoma" small bites and libations at the beautiful Sebastiani Vineyard & Winery. Open to Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Patron Passholders only.

Sebastiani Vineyards & Winery