The San Luis Obispo International Film Festival has given SLO Review the opportunity to preview some of the narrative and documentary films on the festival’s April 24-29, 2025 program schedule. Follow the links to purchase tickets to see these notable films for yourself.
An Alternative Family Group
Fifteen-year-old Emily’s home life is broken and her parents are divorcing, but things look up when she is selected to join an avant garde theatre group.
The Players, written and directed by Sarah Galea-Davis (who won a 2025 , opens on a group of young women rhythmically moving, performing in a public park. Emily (a strong Stefani Kimber, who won a 2025 joins in, and ultimately finds herself an alternative family group.
She becomes a background player for the group’s production of Hamlet, but also finds herself, although its youngest member, increasingly a focus of the director’s attention.
The film has a gradually growing creepiness, which parallels Emily’s growing awareness of things not feeling quite right to her. The sets are dark and cloudy: hotel rooms, her family home, most often the stage of the actors’ studio.
Rehearsals are grueling, often humiliating. Inexperienced, vulnerable, but trusting, an uncomfortable and awkward Emily accepts the behavior of the director and other cast members. The play is successful and its inclusion in a festival requires Emily and the performers to spend a weekend away from home.
Emily’s observations of her cast members during that time, and a later encounter with her director, become experiences that allow her to move forward, give her some understanding of life, and make her stronger, especially relating to male behavior and expected female behavior.
The film ends with another group activity in the park that is decidedly different, and perhaps more satisfying, than its opening scene.
Editor’s Note: Screenings of The Players (Canada, run time 93 minutes, rated PG, in English, U.S. Premiere) at the SLO International Film Festival are sponsored by Hyde Park Partners.