Black Rabbit, White Rabbit
Synopsis
Remaking a classic Iranian film in Tajikistan, the director insists that his movie replicate the original in every detail, down to shot compositions and period-specific props, including one real gun. Worried about bringing a live weapon onto the set, the film’s armorer hopes to swap in a replica undetected as a cavalcade of extras arrives and a curious young woman demands an audition. Meanwhile, across town, a woman recovering from a car crash suspects that she’s the victim of a conspiracy. As the film shoot proceeds, reality and fiction begin to blur amid rising tensions stoked further by the presence of the gun.
Expertly weaving together disparate narrative threads, director Shahram Mokri (2020’s Careless Crime) returns to the Festival with this bracing meditation on cinema, art making, and modern life. Deploying masterfully choreographed long takes (some clocking in at over twenty minutes), surreal visual effects, and a wry, winking sense of humor, Black Rabbit. White Rabbit layers stories within stories within stories, all building toward an unforgettable, showstopping climax.
Screenings & Events
There are currently no upcoming screenings of this film.
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Media
Film Credits
- Negar Eskandarfar
- Nasim Ahmadpour, Shahram Mokri
- Shahram Mokri
- Morteza Gheidi
- Babak Karimi, Hasti Mohammaï, Kibriyo Dilyobova, Bezhan Davlyatov
- Peyman Yazdanian
- Masoud Daliri
- Karnameh Dubai Co.
- https://www.dreamlabfilms.com/
Sponsors
Program Patron
John and Jacolyn Bucksbaum Family Foundation
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The Helsinki Effect
Synopsis
Global peace is at risk. The borders of Western democracies and Communist Russia hang in the balance. Can diplomacy effectively conclude the Cold War? In this witty, clever, and insightful film about geopolitical gamesmanship, Finnish filmmaker Arthur Franck looks back at the 1973 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), a seemingly banal meeting of international leaders in his native Helsinki that would have far-reaching consequences for the future of our current global politics.
Using hundreds of hours of archival footage and amusingly off-kilter TV broadcasts, declassified documents, and some help from cheeky AI-generated voices, Franck brings to life the conference and the central figures of this high-stakes chess match, from a cynical Henry Kissinger to a boisterous Leonid Brezhnev. Following up on the promise of his 2019 Festival selection The Hypnotist, Franck returns with an equally droll historical docudrama uncovering truths, both humorous and heady, about the surprising results that can come from world leaders talking to each other.
Screenings & Events
There are currently no upcoming screenings of this film.
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Media
Film Credits
- Sandra Enkvist, Arthur Frank, Oskar Forstén, Stefan Kloos, Anja Dziersk, Thorvald Nilsen
- Arthur Franck
- Markus Leppälä, Arthur Franck
- Henry Kissinger, Leonid Breshnev, Gerald Ford
- Uno Helmersson, Patrik Andrén
- Polygraf Film, Kloos & Co, Indie Film Bergen
- https://polygraf.fi
Sponsors
Program Partner
Program Patron
Cynthia Stone Raskin
With support from
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Only Heaven Knows Dünüyö
Synopsis
Set in Chicago’s Kyrgyz community, this tense drama follows a Kyrgyz family thrown into turmoil as they try to find their footing in the U.S. Eric, the prodigal son, is a working truck driver trying to save enough money to buy a house for his wife Mira and his mother. This plan is complicated, though, when his mounting gambling debts begin to catch up with him. Suddenly left to her own devices, Mira is forced to navigate a maze of immigration appointments, interpersonal strife, and suspicion.
Documentary-turned-fiction filmmaker Nurzhamal Karamoloeva crafts an urgent and compelling story about a community on edge. Fresh and vital, Only Heaven Knows portrays a people struggling to assimilate, as they endure the perils of pursuing the American Dream—an ideal that can quickly turn combustible.
Screenings & Events
There are currently no upcoming screenings of this film.
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Media
Film Credits
- Aziza Khalbekova
- Jeff Man, Güljan Toktogul
- Ulukmyrza Ravshanbekov
- Mitchell Arens
- Malika Kanatova, Dauren Tashkenbaev, Elmira Mirza
- Ulan Moldousupov
- Nurzhamal Karamoldoeva
- Paradigma N
Sponsors
Program Patron
Robert and Penelope Steiner Family Foundation
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Short Summer
Synopsis
Eight-year-old Katya is spending the summer with her grandparents in the Russian countryside. She and her friends play soccer, hide and seek, and roam the nearby fields, their lives adopting the languid rhythms of the season. Amid the rolling hills and serene landscapes, time seems to stand still. Yet all the while, a war is raging on the periphery, intruding on daily life in ways both large and small.
Drawing on real-life memories from her upbringing in the early 2000s during Russia’s Second Chechen War, director Nastia Korkia carefully crafts a picture of a childhood coexisting with chaos and conflict in which violence seems to lurk around every corner. Featuring some of the year’s most stirring, thought-provoking images and a textured, earth-toned visual palette, Short Summer is an unforgettable, atmospheric vision of growing up in the inescapable shadow of war.
Screenings & Events
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Media
Film Credits
- Dirk Decker, Andrea Schütte, Natalia Drozd
- Nastia Korkia, Mikhail Bushkov
- Benjamin Mirguet
- Evgeny Rodin
- Maiia Pleshkevich, Yakov Karykhalin, Aleksandr Karpushin, Vesna Jovanović, Alexander Feklistov
- Tamtam
Sponsors
Program Patron
Robert and Penelope Steiner Family Foundation
With support from
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Two Prosecutors
Synopsis
In the midst of Stalanist Russia’s Great Terror, hundreds of party critics are unjustly imprisoned in deplorable conditions. The detainees write letters, thousands of them, in hopes that their pleas for freedom will fall into the hands of someone who can help. The secret police burn them before they are sent. Against all odds, though, one such letter reaches the desk of Alexander Kornev, an idealistic prosecutor. When attempting to offer counsel to the prisoner who authored the missive, though, he’s met with suspicion and resistance from local officials. Suspecting foul play, he embarks on a quest to Moscow, intent on justice.
An exacting, austere visual style—a mostly immobile camera captures the action in long, unbroken takes—creates a mounting sense of chilling, Kafkaesque paranoia. Festival award-winner Sergei Loznitsa (Natural History of Destruction, 2022) returns with this unflinching, absurdist confrontation with the Soviet state’s grim, totalitarian reality.
Screenings & Events
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Media
Film Credits
- Kevin Chneiweiss
- Sergei Loznitsa
- Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Alexander Filippenko, Anatoli Beliy
- SBS Productions
Sponsors
With support from
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See your most-anticipated screenings at the 61st Chicago International Film Festival.
