Noir City 2025 @ SIFF Cinema Downtown

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.

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