SF DocFest 2025: Gamemaster & Bad Hostage

Gamemaster:
A poetic and honest story about a man who believes that those who forget to be playful will grow old very quickly. Jens-Rune lives to create an enchanting world full of adventures. For 40 years, he and his friends have been exploring it in Jens-Runes version of the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. Despite his impressive achievement of 40 books filled with stories and imaginative drawings, he still lacks recognition from the outside world, his daughters in particular. Therefore, he decides to showcase his life’s work in an exhibition – but navigating the “real world,” especially without email and the internet, proves to be a challenge. Directed by Magda Wyszynska.

Bad Hostage:
After Mimi Wilcox’s grandmother was held hostage, she shocked the small Northern California town of Sebastopol by declaring that she felt more threatened by the police than by the men holding her hostage – and she wasn’t the only woman that year to do so. A thrilling piece of family lore intersects with the famous Berkeley kidnapping of Patty Hearst and a dramatic bank heist in Sweden in this investigation into the pernicious origins of Stockholm Syndrome. Directed by Mimi Wilcox.