February 28 – March 2, 2025 · Sonora, California
Wing chun grandmasters, coma-awakened avengers, agents with improbable tennis skills, and a man fighting Nazis with a very small budget — the 2025 Sonora Film Festival honored the fist, the foot, and the furiously creative spirit of the fighting arts. Seven films. Three days. Innumerable bones broken.
The true story of Ip Man, the Wing Chun grandmaster who trained Bruce Lee, as he navigates the Japanese occupation of Foshan during World War II. Donnie Yen commands every frame — and then he fights ten men at once.
A detective awakens from a seven-year coma to discover his family was murdered and a corrupt senator is behind it all. Steven Seagal heals via traditional Chinese medicine and then goes to the blood bank. Senator Trent's blood bank.
Two secret agents race to recover a formula that causes global sterility before criminal masterminds can use it. Features a tennis match sequence that defies all logic, physics, and filmmaking convention — and a child peeing statue deployed as a weapon.
A gloriously over-the-top action parody set in WWII, featuring the most confidently unhinged performance committed to film in recent memory. Every moment raises new questions about what the filmmakers were thinking. This is a compliment.
Two unemployed actors, stranded at home during lockdown, decide to stage a full production of Hamlet inside Grand Theft Auto Online. The most inventive documentary in years — and the only one where Ophelia is shot by a passing motorist mid-soliloquy.
Franz Kafka struggles to write the opening line of "The Metamorphosis" on Christmas Eve, tormented by interruptions and alternatives. An Oscar-winning short featuring the Cockroach Song — which will live in your head forever, free of charge.
A homeschooled teenage sci-fi writer discovers his novel has been plagiarized by his famous idol. Jared Hess's most deranged film — stranger than Napoleon Dynamite, funnier than it has any right to be, and featuring Sam Rockwell at his most gloriously unhinged.
"The Most Exclusive Event in Film"
Founded in 2022 in the Sierra Nevada foothills, the Sonora Film Festival is Northern California's premier film festival, featuring the finest selection of overlooked, forgotten, underrated films—hand selected by our panel of experts.