SFist Mihi finds love in the Foggy City!

Medicine for Melancholy (M4M) made its West Coast Premiere on Wednesday night at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF). Filmmaker Barry Jenkins shot this moody little indie flick in three weeks, all while working at the Banana Republic on Grant Avenue. (It's people like him who make us feel bad about living in a messy apartment. We can barely manage to hold down a job and bathe on a regular basis. What are you eating for breakfast Barry? Can we have some of that?)

M4M follows two San Francisco hipsters as they spend the day together following a one-night stand. Instead of taking the walk of shame the next morning like normal people, they go out to breakfast. The gal seems really unpleasant at first, but the dude is persistent (maybe because she is so damn pretty) and they end up connecting and debating on a whole range of topics in a Before Sunrise, walk-around-town-and-talk-and-talk-and-talk sort of way. They go to cafes, listen to Emo music and dance at a hipster club. They eat from taco trucks and ride their bicycles around our crowded little city.

Oh, and did we mention they're both black?

After the jump: conversations about black hipster San Francisco identity, a hilariously awkward question in the Q&A, and No On 98. Preview clip after the jump too!

SFist Mihi, contributing.

For some reason, that little fact makes this movie seem unique. As one of the audience members said after the movie, it's nice to see that existential romance is not the exclusive domain of white people.

At times, the audience did seem a little too eager to bond with the filmmaker though. One person said M4M "blew the cover off white liberalism." Huh? This same person went on to ask why Jenkins didn't film in Bayview Hunter's Point. Jenkins was very gracious about explaining that these two characters would have no reason to hang out in Bayview Hunter's Point (just cause they're black). We had to fight the urge to stand up, point our finger at the PC freak and say, "now, whose liberalism needs to have its cover blown off? You! You! You!" (We're pretty immature.)

Besides discussions on inter-racial dating and black identity, the movie also explores the ways in which gentrification is changing San Francisco. The filmmaker even filmed a bit of a "No on 98" meeting and admitted that it is a narrative break, but one he took liberties with because it's his movie. We appreciated that honesty.

Medicine for Melancholy plays again on May 4 at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley and on May 7 at the Kabuki in San Francisco.