We’re thrilled to screen more than 110 feature films at the 61st Chicago International Film Festival, from acclaimed awards-winners making their Chicago premieres to special retrospective screenings, works from new directors, inspiring documentaries, sizzling shorts, and more.
Our Programming team works year-round selecting a carefully curated lineup of compelling films from around the globe, and they’ve highlighted some hidden gems at this year’s Festival to help moviegoers plan their #ChiFilmFest schedule:
Anthony Kaufman, Senior Programmer
The Beauty of the Donkey
As lyrical as its title sounds, this evocative film shows the power of storytelling to help us process the past. When a filmmaker stages memories from her father’s childhood growing up as an Albanian in Kosovo, it ends up solving a mystery that has haunted the family for decades.
Bouchra
One of the Festival’s most original films, this is an animated docu-fiction hybrid set in a world where all the characters are different animals. And yet, it’s also a deeply heartfelt story about the queer protagonist (who is represented as a cool coyote) trying to make a film within the film to help her reconcile with her mother.
Sophie Gordon, International Features / OUTLOOK Programmer
Two Times João Liberada
Our OutLook program this year is really wild and diverse, but there’s an interesting through-line in multiple films that explore kinds of ghosts in very different ways. A Useful Ghost, Strange River, The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo—but arguably my favorite ghost in the program is the sassy historical ghost in Two Times João Liberada. This film really stands out as incredibly unique in our entire feature film program this year. It is so many things that I love: it’s shot beautifully on 16mm, it’s playfully meta (as a film about filmmaking), it’s a fascinating look at the ownership of history and storytelling… A film that celebrates trans resilience and joy!
Emi
Emi is another absolute gem from our OutLook program, and we’re also thrilled to be WORLD premiering the film in Chicago! I was swept away by this unique adoption story that follows such a curious and compelling young character. I love how this story unfolds, revealing itself in increasingly surprising ways. And as an OutLook film, I appreciate that this film’s queerness is imbued into its characters and their stories—part of the texture of the film but not the story’s main focus.
Oca
Oca is one of those films that just takes your breath away. It’s a surreal, labyrinthine road movie that uses beautiful magical realism and dreams to explore faith and destiny in a very sincere way. It’s also surprisingly funny and playful, and it is gorgeous to look at. This film is stunning all the way through, but it might just have my favorite final scene of the whole Festival.
Christy LeMaster, Shorts Lead Programmer
Make No Mistake: These are the Glory Days
(plays as part of Shorts 4: City & State)
Shorts 4: City & State is a perennial highlight of the festival. The audience vibe is always great. We present two screenings of the program; one presented with open captions. It is joyful to celebrate the immense talent of our local filmmakers. Each screening is followed by a robust Q&A with filmmakers filling the stage. Make No Mistake: These are the Glory Days is the last film in the program this year and Texas Smith the director captures all of the ups and downs of trans-led band HOME IS WHERE on a scrappy tour. Texas works in collaboration with his subjects and you can really feel it in the last scene. This doc is likely to be moving for anyone who has dedicated a lot of time and energy to collaborative creative pursuits and captures a moment of trans power in a time when there are so many forces gathering to tear trans people down.
Dollhouse Elephant
(plays as part of Shorts 2: Animation)
Shorts 2: Animation is a globe-trotting mix of animation forms and stories. There are works from Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Finland, France, Ireland, Japan, and Portugal. One unforgettable animation is Dollhouse Elephant from Finland. Animating with a wildly colorful palette using acrylic paint on paper, Jenny Jokela flies the audience through several different apartments in a building full of people with different passions that sometimes humorously conflict. Jokela has said she is interested in what it takes to share space with others and this film presents all of its characters with a big-hearted joy and curiosity that could suggest the qualities needed for a happy life in a crowded world.
Water Sports
(plays as part of Shorts 10: Outré)
This year we have added a new shorts program to the usual slate. Shorts 10: Outré is an expansion of our genre offerings, meant for the same viewers who appreciate our After Dark selections. Around the office we have been saying, this is the weird shit. The films in the Outré program are jaw-droppingly singular, sometimes naughty and often oddball and maximalist. The sheer inventiveness of these shorts struck us. All of these filmmakers have harnessed the limited scope of the short format to blow past the usual boundaries of story, production design, and performance style for something way stranger, definitely riskier, and delightfully new. Out of the Philippines, Water Sports by Whammy Alcazaren (Winner of the 2024 Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Bold Eagle) follows two students Ipe and Jelson as they prepare for life in their world ravaged by climate change. Delightfully hyperstylized with a queer romance at its core this movie is filled with striking production design and cheeky humor.
Joyy Norris, Black Perspectives Programmer
Pasa Faho
It’s always intriguing to witness the Black experience in spaces and places we rarely get to see and how characters navigate that territory while maintaining cultural integrity.
True North
In recent years, Canada’s reputation of politeness has been extinguished as its suppressed history of racism and xenophobia has been coming to light – a long needed confrontation.
Nicola McCafferty, After Dark Programmer
Anything That Moves
This local feature from returning Festival filmmaker Alex Phillips (All Jacked Up and Full of Worms) has a little bit of everything. Sex on demand delivered via bicycle. Chicago in the summer. Stunning 16mm cinematography. Gruesome, ritualistic murder. An indictment of church and state and their roles in repressing the free expression of sexuality. I’m certain this will be one of the rowdier screenings at the Festival, and to my mind, not to be missed! Plus, both director and star will be there for what’s sure to be a fascinating Q&A.
The Book of Sijjin and Illiyyin
First of all, it doesn’t get grosser than this blood-spattered and dirt-smeared story of a woman’s black magic revenge against her evil stepfamily. Second of all, director Hadrah Daeng Ratu is a rising star in Indonesian horror, and the recent winner of the best director award at Fantasia Film Festival for this film. Following in the tradition of Indonesian supernatural horror films like The Queen of Black Magic, The Book of Sijjin and Illiyyin has blood and guts and dirt and decay captured in stunning (and stomach-churning) detail, not to mention an interesting exploration of the tensions and intersections between religion and folk tradition.
Mother of Flies
The Adams family are indie horror royalty, writing, directing, and starring in all of their films themselves (including former Festival selection Hellbender!), and they’ll be here in person for a Q&A about their latest film about a reclusive necromancer’s unconventional cure for a young woman’s cancer. Poetic and personal, witchy and weird, Mother of Flies asks us to think about the interwoven processes of life and death.
Sam Flancher, Programmer
Wind, Talk to Me
An extremely beautiful, winsome exploration of grief and healing through cinema. It’s about a filmmaker (the director plays himself) working to finish a film he had started about his late mother. He had been working on a documentary about her when she passed, and he enlisted the help of his family to finish the film. The result is an intricate, tender portrait of a family that acts as a beautiful remembrance of the filmmaker’s mother. There’s also an incredible storyline about nursing an abandoned dog back to health. It’s the best canine performance of the year by far.
Short Summer
This film has some of the year’s most profound images, and its compositions have lingered in my head since I first watched the film. The film is about childhood existing during times of war, and director Nastia Korkia does well to position the film entirely from her 11-year-old protagonist’s perspective. Adults remain mostly offscreen, and we’re left to ponder what it means to be a kid when the world around you is violent and chaotic. The film’s intimate scale and beautiful earth-toned images create a reflective mood, and the film offers an audience space to ponder its big ideas. Don’t miss this one!
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