There's nothing quite like opening night. There's an electricity in the air as tents go up, marquees are set, and the staff makes final checks in their walkie talkies. Of course, it wouldn't be opening night of the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) without at least a drizzle of rain, which began coming down in earnest around the time the red carpet arrivals kicked off.

Celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage month, Heidi Grace Acuña presented their debut fashion show with Living Waling Waling, held early May 2025. Acuña partnered with Seattle Center and was selected to represent and uplift  emerging and established local AAPI artists. Acuña is a multidisciplinary artist who has appeared on TV, galleries across the West Coast, and was a finalist at Fruit Bowl. Born in Washington and raised in Hawai’i, Acuña moved from sculpture to fashion and brought a colorful bouquet of upcycled and sustainable clothing through their designs. 

On a Saturday night in April in the Denny Triangle neighborhood, vintage glamour was present at the doors of Seattle’s Kremwerk complex. DJ duo Théque Support (composed of Hot N’ Spicy Disco and Moonlighter) were bringing their monthly evening of Disco Dust to Seattle, with a set from special guest Heidy P visiting from New York. Moonlighter and Hot N’ Spicy Disco are both from Detroit, the official birthplace of techno and a continuing hub of electronic music innovation. At the duo’s monthly disco parties, hosted in Kremwerk’s newest dance room, Cherry, they go old-school, dusting off vinyl records and using turntables.

The 2025 Cascadia Film Festival was a weekend full of inspiring women directors, producers, and their amazing films. From stories of scrappy heroines and documentaries rich in wisdom, the festival brought audiences from across Washington and farther. The weekend kicked off with a screening and talkback from honored guest Yvonne Russo. Russo is a director and producer known for her work in Vow of Silence: The Assassination of Annie Mae (2024), The Heart Stays (2024), and Viva Verdi (2024) the film that opened the festival as a Pacific Northwest premiere. 

Created by Eva Anderson, Derek Bishé, Mali Elfman, Eric Hoff, Tommy Honton, and E3W Productions (Aaron Keeling, Austin Keeling, Natalie Jones), AOTW is a completely new flavor of production. The focus of AOTW is to create a deeper relationship between art and its participants, and the entrancing world of The Shape of the Night is completely enrapturing, entangling you in the story, performance, and atmosphere. The Shape of the Night is an art gallery, an escape room, a drag show, a play, and a magical realm.

On a Friday night in Capitol Hill, a crowd of eager theater-goers entered through the unassuming front doors of Seattle Open Arts Place to watch the debut of a new theater company. Well Behaved Women and Co were putting on their inaugural production, In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play).

So naturally, when Dacha Theatre, who so often defies the status quo of theatre, took on Kate Hamill’s Emma, they began the show by having audience members pluck up the women’s etiquette guide pages—which had been left on every seat—and shred them, stating they were throwing etiquette out the door.

Audience members held onto these shreds and threw them when cued. The pieces fluttered down as white confetti upon the jubilant opening wedding scene of Mrs. Weston (Kayla Walker), and Mr. Weston (Van Lang Pham).

The film, Rainier: A Beer Odyssey, is ostensibly about the series of Rainier ads that changed Seattle's diet for beer. Really, though, the film is about Seattle and how the next generation of creatives brought their own way of thinking to advertising. They were scrappy, resourceful, and determined not to sell a product, but to create short films that featured a product in a way that made people feel the urge to buy it.

The Seattle Jewish Film Festival (SJFF) wrapped another exciting series of films this year for their Pearl Anniversary (30 years).  Here are some select highlights that screened in-person and streamed virtually and how you can see some of them:

Director John Helde hosted the Marcie’s world premiere in a packed, sold out crowd at Northwest Film Forum. Marcie’s follows a scrappy bartender, played by Jenn Ruzumna, who is a few payments away from fully owning the good ol’ local Ed’s Tavern—a long-held dream reached by one struggling payment at a time. But a rich, ambitious man enters and tries to persuade Ed into selling the restaurant before Marcie can finish her payments.

Many of the sandwiches on these “best of” Seattle lists were one or two cities removed. Going to Lynnwood for a good sandwich is fine for some people, but it is not feasible or practical for the majority of us in the city. So, when coming up with my own roundup, I stuck to a few rules. The first was that this was a list of terrific Seattle banh mi, and so should stay within city boundaries. 

There's nothing more titillating than the forbidden. Tacoma Cabaret, partnered with YouWen Production Company, knows this and flawlessly executed a Prohibition-themed show called “Velvet Rope.”

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Seattle Jewish Film Festival—the Pearl Anniversary. SJFF uses the metaphor of the pearl to describe this year’s cinematic offerings:Like a pearl formed through resilience and transformation, the Seattle Jewish Film Festival has spent 30 years illuminating powerful stories that shine through history’s darkest moments and celebrate the triumphs of Jewish life, culture and cinema. 

Christine Deavel’s Blue to Blue follows Beryl, a grieving daughter (played by Cecelia Frye) who can’t seem to stop getting packages of her recently deceased mother’s things delivered to her door. Beryl is accompanied by a pair of ghostly psychopomps who help her evaluate what to do when it feels like there’s no way forward.

Seattle has had a longstanding connection with the Francophone world. As one of the top 15 most common non-English languages spoken among Seattle residents, French is a vital part of the city. The Alliance Française de Seattle is a local nonprofit that serves as one of the central hubs for both language instruction and Francophone cultural events and programming, and has been doing so since 1987.
On March 12, AFdS hosted a screening of the 2023 film Ru at Northwest Film Forum. The event was co-sponsored by the Québec Government Office, which opened a new delegation in Seattle this year.

Equipoise, defined as a balance of forces, is a name well suited for the debut Seattle dance company created by Heather Smith and Samantha Weissbach. The company, which set upon their first performance at the Yaw Theater on Friday, February 28, offered audiences a blended style of movement, tapping into the grounded athleticism and aesthetics of modern dance and the emotionally driven, raw beauty of contemporary dance.

On February 28, Seattle band Deep Sea Diver released their fourth album, Billboard Heart, their first release on the Sub Pop label. As part of their promotion of the record, the band performed songs from the album on release night at Easy Street Records in West Seattle and hosted a record signing event for fans after the show.

Curry painted iconic musicians from Jimi Hendrix to civil rights activists James Baldwin, Michelle and Barack Obama, John Lewis, and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Curry titles his show Where Do We Go From Here—prodding conversation about how we continue to fight and move forward as agents of change.I asked Curry how the people in his portraits answer the question posed by his show. “We keep fighting. We keep supporting,’” Curry answered. 

In the 2020s, the topic of sustainability has become a major focus in classrooms—specifically regarding fast fashion, prompting many students to face the fact that their shopping habits or favorite retailers may be harming people and the planet. In recent years, fashion has gained a reputation for being one of the most extractive and exploitative industries. Student organizations play an important role in creating collective change by holding space for education and action, both with their members and their greater campus and local community.

February 12 was, aptly, a bit of a dark and stormy night. Wet snow dripped onto the sidewalks as people in winter coats trudged into Third Place Books in Ravenna. That night, Tacoma-based writer J. Ann Thomas was discussing her newly published novel, The Spirit Collection of Thorne Hall, a Gilded Age romance novel, and her first adult novel.