USA
Director: Dean Burdusis

A demanding customer’s request for A Perfect Manhattan brings a bartender to the breaking point.

14 min.

France/Burkina Faso
Director: Sarah Bouyain

Abandoned as a child, Amy is caught between two worlds when she leaves her adoptive French family for her birthplace, Burkina Faso. Faced with a foreign language and an inscrutable aunt, she searches for her birth mother, revealing a deeper desire for belonging. This remarkable debut illuminates the surprising relation between dissolving national borders and dissolving families.

French with subtitles, 82 min.

USA
Director: Ben Berkowitz

The wayward son of a prosperous Jewish clan, Reuben spins discs at a club and sells drugs on the side, telling himself that it’s only until he makes it as a big-time DJ. But a visit from his Orthodox cousin and the looming consequences of his recklessness cause him to question the life he’s chosen. Filmed and set entirely in Chicago, could this be the Windy City’s own Mean Streets?

96 min.

Germany
Director: Michael Stock

As a child, Michael Stock was sexually abused

German with subtitles, 85 min.

France/Germany
Director: Bertrand Tavernier

Chicago favorite Bertrand Tavernier (’Round Midnight) directs this lush, unsentimental take on the historical romance, which takes a clear-eyed look at the intersection of passion and power in 16th-century France. Young, beautiful aristocrat Marie favors war hero Henri, but she’s married off to the Prince of Montpensier for political reasons. Once at court, she inspires love, violence, and thirst for power in the men around her as civil war tears the country apart.

French with subtitles, 139 min.