Digging Deeper into Movies with Nick Davis
Join the Chicago International Film Festival and Nick Davis, Northwestern Professor and film critic, for this series of free interactive lectures exploring recent releases and festival films from around the world with a focus on the nuances of imagery, editing, and sound that complicate story and theme.
Admission is free and open to the public with registration.
The Digging Deeper into Movies Lecture Series is made possible with the support of the Robert & Penelope Steiner Family Foundation.
Upcoming Digging Deeper Events
Sat, Jan 31 @ 11:00am
Buried Treasures: Unsung Movies of 2025
By now, we can guess which of last year’s films seem bound for posterity via Oscar ballots, festival prizes, box-office glory, or Top 10 lists. But, as always, some cinematic gems of 2025 missed out on such high-profile recognition—including some top-tier international films that were big deals at home, released belatedly and only briefly in the U.S.
Sat, Feb 21 @ 11:00am
Oscar Spotlight: What a Difference a Director Makes
This year, Oscar’s Directing Branch nominated two movies showcased at last fall’s Festival and three bigger-budget features by filmmakers who started out as independents. What might fellow directors admire, similarly or differently, in these films? How does each film honor its script but use directorial techniques to enrich or complicate the story as written?
Past Digging Deeper Events
Sat, Jan 10, 2026
Get into the Spirits!
Awards season has entered full swing, and one of its most valuable gifts comes earliest: the nominee list for the Film Independent Spirit Awards. Join us to celebrate some of the year’s most interesting movies, as accomplished and provocative as the likely Oscar nominees despite lower production and promotion budgets.
Sat, Oct 6, 2025
Undercover No Longer: The Secret Agent and Kleber Mendonça Filho
With The Secret Agent, Brazilian critic-turned-filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho seems poised to cross over into wide recognition. Using clips from his past films, spanning melodrama, documentary, and horror, always with an eye on politics, this session will highlight some of Mendonça’s abiding themes and artistic signatures.
Sat, Oct 19, 2025
Paris, Texas: Richard Linklater and Nouvelle Vague
As preface to the 61st Festival’s double feature of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, a fact-inspired fable about the creation of that film, we will chart some Godardian resonances in Linklater’s best- and least-known features.
Sat, Oct 11, 2025
Iranian Masters: Jafar Panahi and Shahram Mokri
One of only two directors to win Cannes, Berlin, Venice, and Chicago, Jafar Panahi trained under Iranian legend Abbas Kiarostami and joined him in bringing that country’s cinema to world awareness. Before the latest films by both men play at the 61st Chicago International Film Festival, we will examine Panahi’s and Mokri’s distinct ways of blending the poetic, the political, and the metacinematic.
Sat, Sept 27, 2025
Voices that Carry: The Quiet Power of Kelly Reichardt
It’s a miracle for any U.S. independent filmmaker, especially a woman, to build a ten-feature body of globally lauded work. A Competition veteran of the Cannes, Berlin, Venice, and Chicago festivals, Kelly Reichardt receives this year a retrospective at CIFF—including her new, period-set heist dramedy The Mastermind.
212 W Van Buren St., Suite 400
