📅 Friday, February 14th – Thursday, February 20th, 2025
🕐 Multiple screenings daily (see full schedule below)
📍 SIFF Cinema Downtown: 2100 4th Ave, Seattle (Downtown)
💰 Tickets $20, SIFF members $15, seniors/students $19; festival passes $133–$158
🚗 Parking at Warwick Hotel garage; Westlake light rail station 3 blocks away
Is there a cooler cinematic genre than film noir? It’s all tough private eyes and beautiful women, shadowy alleyways and smoldering glances, dialogue that cuts deeper than the knives the gangsters have hidden in their pockets.
This February, SIFF Cinema Downtown hosts the Noir City film festival’s 17th year, celebrating the femmes fatales who made this stark, existentialist post-war genre unforgettable. The lineup features 18 films, including two fresh restorations: 1951’s Cry Danger and 1944’s Phantom Lady from German director Robert Siodmak.
Turner Classic Movies host Eddie Muller, founder of the Film Noir Foundation, presents the first weekend’s screenings (February 14th–16th). Many of the leading ladies featured, including Audrey Totter, Marie Windsor, and Jane Greer, appear in Muller’s book Dark City Dames, out in an expanded edition this April. Local noir experts Vince and Rosemarie Keenan—a married couple who write mystery novels together under the pseudonym Renee Patrick—take over hosting duties February 17th–20th.
Don’t miss the “tiki noir” Hell’s Half Acre, where Evelyn Keyes goes undercover in Honolulu’s red light district, armed only with a mysterious Hawaiian song. In Caged, widely considered the greatest “women behind bars” film ever made, writer Virginia Kellogg’s research in Southern prisons brings stark authenticity to the screen.
In all, the festival promises to be a suitable tribute for one of the darkest and most stylish cultural movements to ever go mainstream in America.
NOIR CITY DAILY SCHEDULE
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14th
6:30 pm – The Narrow Margin (35mm)
8:45 pm – Hell’s Half Acre (35mm)
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15th
12:30 pm – The Sleeping City (35mm)
3 pm – Mary Ryan, Detective (35mm)
6 pm – Out of the Past (35mm)
8:45 pm – Cry Danger (35mm)
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 16th
12:30 pm – Tension (35mm)
3 pm – Alias Nick Beal (35mm)
6 pm – Caged (35mm)
8:45 pm – 99 River Street (35mm)
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17th
6 pm – Murder, My Sweet (35mm)
8:45 pm – My True Story (35mm)
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18th
6 pm – Raw Deal
8:30 pm – The Killing
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19th
6 pm – Detour
8:30 pm – Phantom Lady (4K restoration)
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20th
6 pm – The Long Wait
8:30pm – Ace in the Hole
💁♂️ Pro tips
🎵 Arrive early on opening night (Friday, February 14th) for live jazz by the Dmitri Matheny Quintet at 5:30 pm
🏛️ New venue alert: Festival has moved from SIFF Cinema Egyptian (closed for repairs) to SIFF Cinema Downtown
🎟️ No reserved seating—get there 15-20 minutes early for best choice
🦻 Assistive listening devices available at venue manager’s desk
👀 Closed captioning and descriptive listening devices available (call 206.479.8028 or email info@siff.net to confirm)
🚊 Take Link light rail to Westlake Station (3 blocks away) to avoid parking hassles
💝 Feel good about your ticket purchase—proceeds support film preservation efforts
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