The 2024 Seattle International Film Festival (also referred to as SIFFty for this year) took place in theaters from May 9 to 19, 2024, and streaming May 20 to 27, 2024. SIFF announced an initial six films on March 14 and the full lineup on April 17, 2024. This year's festival had 261 films from 84 countries and regions. The selections included 92 new and five archival features, 47 documentaries, and 115 short films.
The festival took place at various locations, including the SIFF Cinema Uptown (3 screens), the SIFF Cinema Downtown, the SIFF Cinema Egyptian, the SIFF Film Center (a venue at Seattle Center), the AMC Theatres at Pacific Place, Majestic Bay Theatres, and Shoreline Community College Theater. The festival sold nearly 95,000 tickets, and SIFF venues sold of popcorn. Selected films from the festival were online from May 20âÂÂ27, 2024. on the SIFF Channel.
The opening, Thelma, occurred at the Paramount Theatre. The closing was Sing Sing at the SIFF Cinema Downtown followed by a gala party at MOHAI.
Although the first festival was in 1976 and the occurrence in 2024 would seem to have indicated the 49th festival, in 1988 the festival organizers yielded to triskaidekaphobia, so that the "14th" festival occurred in its 13th year. SIFF chose the term SIFFty to mark the 50th edition of the film festival.
SIFF organized the films into the following programs: African Picture, Alternative Cinema, Archival Films, Asian Crossroad, cINeDIGENOUS, Culinary Cinema, Face the Music, Films4Families, FutureWave, Ibero-American Cinema, New American Cinema, Northwest Connections, Short Film Packages, and WTF. A film could appear in more than one program.
SIFF in 2024 listed five feature competitions:
There was also a competition for short films that had three categories, Live Action, Animation, and Documentary. All three categories of short films also served as qualifiers for the corresponding categories for the Academy Awards.
The 2024 Seattle International Festival had jury and audience awards. There were also festival awards from other organizations.
Jurors served several different juries. For feature films, there were juries for the official competition, new directors, new American cinema, Ibero-American, and documentaries. There were two short film juries, one for narrative films and another for documentary and animated films.
The Golden Space Needle Awards are voted by the audience.
FOOL Serious, an "officially unofficial un-organization of the Seattle International Film FestivalâÂÂs passholders" also had their own awards for the 2024 festival.