The 5th Annual Vashon Island Film Festival returns Thursday, August 13, for four days of independent cinema, bringing an eclectic collection of narrative features, documentaries, short films, and special presentations to Vashon Island.

Running August 13-16, 2026, this year's festival includes eight narrative features and five feature-length documentaries, along with an extensive collection of narrative, documentary, and animated shorts.

Should I See It is thrilled to be documenting the festival's feature selections for those heading over to the iconic island getaway, located a few miles south of West Seattle in the Kitsap Peninsula. Each day, I will be sharing capsule reviews of what I have seen and highlighting some of the films worth keeping an eye on as VIFF gets underway.

After a terrific first day of films, Day Two offers four features, including one terrific documentary, one film shot on Vashon, and two films currently seeking distribution.

There’s a devastating, somber message at the center of Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild], a powerful documentary directed and edited by brothers Adam and Zack Khalil (Ojibway). 

Specifically, who gets to define history?

Museums are often seen as repositories for items that tell stories, recapture moments lost to history, and curate the past to help inform our future. However, for generations, Indigenous tribes have seen the remains of their ancestors removed from burial sites and stored in museums, universities, and other institutions, with little regard for the emotional and spiritual connections those remains carry for tribal communities.

Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild] focuses on the efforts of the Michigan Anishinaabek Cultural Preservation and Repatriation Alliance (MACPRA), an organization dedicated to returning Indigenous human remains and funerary objects to their tribal communities. Though federal laws in 1990 established a process for repatriation, determining which Nation should receive remains can involve complicated questions of geography, anthropology, historical documentation, and tribal affiliation. The process can ultimately take years while ancestors wait to return home.

The title itself establishes a connection between ancestor, great-grandparent, and great-grandchild. Over the course of 80 minutes, we begin to understand what that connection means to those who have passed and those still living. Everything is intertwined. The dead remain alongside the living, and the body is viewed as part of an ongoing cycle in which burial and returning to the Earth are a natural part of the journey.

Through conventional documentary storytelling and more experimental visual flourishes, the film can occasionally feel at odds with itself. Some of its more experimental moments are visually compelling, but do not always complement the more conventional moments we observe. The film simply proves more powerful when the Khalils allow the people doing this work to share their stories.

Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild] forces us to consider the human cost of a process that has allowed Indigenous remains to sit on shelves and in storage boxes as descendants fight to bring them home. The film argues that the colonization and dehumanization of Indigenous people does not exist solely in the past. When institutions continue to maintain possession of their ancestors, that dehumanization becomes perpetual and generational.

The thesis the film explores is the complicated question of who gets to define history. By the end, the Khalils leave us with an even more unsettling question: Why are human beings being treated as historical property in the first place?

These aren't artifacts. They are someone's ancestors, waiting to be brought home.

Here is a great find - a movie that has bounced around the festival circuit for more than a year and still has not found theatrical distribution. Akin to a character study you might find from earlier A24 releases or a current IFC Films offering, Adult Children is a dramedy with a great ensemble of character actors, an interesting analysis about the decisions we make, and just how no one really understands just how messy everyone’s life is on some level.

Director Rich Newey, working from a script written by partner Annika Marks, filters his film through the view of 17-year-old Morgan (Ella Rubin). Hardly an ‘adult child,’ she is the half-sibling to three older children from their mom’s previous marriage. Mom (Mimi Rogers) is planning to go on a long vacation, but panics when she learns that her son Josh (Thomas Sadoski) has relapsed and must remain in her care until a bed opens up at the local recovery center. This connects Morgan with older sisters Dahlia (Aya Cash) and Lisa (Betsy Brandt), who have very different reasons for uprooting their lives and coming to stay with Josh and Morgan. 

If the film has a recurring flaw, it is that Marks’ screenplay can often feel episodic and somewhat clunky in transitions between comedic moments and more dramatic ones. However, the ensemble has outstanding chemistry, the acting is consistently good, and the emotions generated feel earned. As the wide-eyed, (not so) innocent observer to the struggles that her siblings are running away from, we see Morgan shift from child to an adult of her own, navigating situations and giving and receiving advice beyond her youthful age. 

A bit messy like its characters, Adult Children is a really good movie and a film that deserves commercial distribution and the chance to find an audience. Rubin is especially terrific in how she plays differently opposite her co-stars, yet creates a character of depth, who often sets aside her own emotions to assist others. In some ways, she is damaged by her siblings, but also fits right in.

Overall, an endearing story about imperfect families, imperfect people, and the messy human experience we all must go through to give our lives some true meaning, Adult Children is a winner. 

A frenzied dose of horror, comedy, and theater-kid energy, Theater is Dead is an uneven, though intriguing exploration of the way we can become consumed with acceptance and seek validation at all costs. 

Written and directed by Katherine Dudas, and filmed in and around Vashon Island, the film returns home to close out Day Two of VIFF in the community where much of it was made. 

Decker Sadowski plays Willow, the daughter of an actor, who lands the lead in her first play after auditioning for a famous director (Shane West). Along the way, she brushes up against her fellow actors, discovers mysteries of a dark and sinister nature, and tries to outwit and outsmart a villain emerging among them. 

Dudas’ film has humor, intensity, and some really nifty editing and sound design, but struggles to find a consistent rhythm when it pivots from one style to the next. Sadowski maneuvers through the different genres well and can balance humor with suspense, drama with fear. She keeps things intriguing even when having to navigate one particular supporting performance that, for me, felt like nails on a chalkboard. The character’s appearances, especially early on, repeatedly derail the film’s momentum, though Sadowski and Dudas find a way to power through it. 

At the nucleus of Theater is Dead is the tangible fear of pouring your heart and soul into something you love and receiving a less-than-favorable reaction. While it may not always find the balance it seeks, there's something endearing about a film wrestling with the vulnerability of artistic creation returning to the place where Dudas and her collaborators took that very risk themselves.

Hold Onto Me was not made available for previewing ahead of its VIFF appearance. However, this film arrives with a lot of buzz, having won the Audience Award: World Cinema Dramatic prize at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

Largely filmed in Cyprus, and spoken in Greek, the film follows an 11-year-old girl, Iris, during one particular summer when she learns her estranged father has returned to town. Seeking a relationship with her dad, Iris finds him in a broken-down shipyard and the two attempt to establish a connection.

My friend Matt Oakes of Silver Screen Riot caught up with Hold Onto Me at Sundance and gave it a very positive review. He called the film “Emotionally potent and quietly devastating,” adding that the film “… crescendos in unexpected ways, letting its quiet interiority do the heavy lifting.”

THE FESTIVAL

The 2026 Vashon Island Film Festival runs August 13-16 on Vashon Island, Washington. Additional information on films, screening times, tickets, and festival events is available through the Vashon Island Film Festival website.