All Those Small Things was shot, rather gracefully, mostly in Spokane, but is set nowhere so specific, which feels at the heart of the movie’s problems: It doesn’t know quite where it is, or what it is. In the town he finds an array of yokels who jibe poorly with his Shakespeare-loving, pinot noir-sipping brand of posh. He rents a room in a house by a touring musician named Tiny Hammer, who seems like he wandered out of a bad SNL sketch. Is his plush life-baths, nice wine, easy money-all meaningless? He sorts through his mail and finds a letter from someone in rural Eastern Washington claiming to be his biggest fan. When his longtime friend dies, an aging British game show host Jonathan (James Faulkner) spirals into existential crisis.

IMAGE: COURTESY SMARTHOUSE CREATIVE All Those Small Things The plot, including a budding attraction between Diego and June, is less of a draw than discreet moments of office drone humor: a worker putting white-out on his computer screen to fix a typo, a montage of a woman typing in increasingly gymnastic positions. You’ll find traces of Being John Malkovich and Office Space, but it’s less angsty than either. The movie, shot in Yakima, belongs to the weirdo work comedy lineage.

June, it turns out, is a virtuoso folder filer. Then Diego and his friend June (Greena Park) discover that behind the office Coke machine, a door opens after hours and people filter into watch underground folder filing competitions. People type people file people sneak naps in their endless rows of cubicles in the wan light. Diego (Eli Vargas), a young guy sleeping in his car, takes a job at Data Mart, a cartoonishly bland office.

Rick Castañeda is precisely the sort of lo-fi oddball indie you expect to find at a film fest. This absurdist comedy from Washington-born director J.

Below are reviews of all the Northwest Connections movies streaming through Seattle International Film Festival April 8–18.

Siff and then there was light