Synopsis
Donghwa (Ha Seongguk), a thirty-something poet, is committed to living a life of beauty and simplicity. One afternoon, he drives his girlfriend Junee (Kang Soyi) to her parents’ home just outside of Seoul. There, he meets her father (played by Hong Sangsoo mainstay Kwon Haehyo) for the first time—a generally affable goofball who develops a strange fixation for Donghwa’s car. A quick spin around the block leads to an invitation to dinner and a chance to meet the rest of the family. A lazy afternoon slips into a drunken evening, and everything starts to unravel as Donghwa’s idealistic confidence begins to fray.
A bitterly comic fable about life, art, and the desire to live simply, What Does That Nature Say to You is a rich and revealing character portrait. Festival mainstay Hong Sangsoo (By the Stream) deploys his trademark long takes and keen narrative intuition to chart the comeuppance of his quixotic protagonist.
Screenings & Events
Screening
Fri, Oct 17 @ 2:00pm
at Gene Siskel Film Center, Screen 1
Venue information...
T-Coil Devices available
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Media
Film Credits
- Hong Sangsoo
- Ha Seongguk, Kwon Haehyo, Cho Yunhee, Kang Soyi, Park Miso
- Jeonwonsa Film Co.
- https://cinemaguild.com
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Wind, Talk to Me Vetre, pričaj sa mnom
Synopsis
Returning to his family’s country home for his grandmother’s birthday, filmmaker Stefan Djordjević brings along his camera, hoping to complete a film he’d be making about his mother—a project tragically interrupted by her passing. While en route on the rainsoaked back roads, he accidentally hits a stray dog. Guilt-ridden, he decides to bring her along and nurse her back to health.
Enlisting the help of his family to play themselves, Djordjevic blends footage of his late mother with staged, modern-day scenes of his relatives’ remembrances to create an intimate, tender tribute to her life and memory. Featuring a winning cast of characters, and an impeccable canine performance, all set against the backdrop of the bucolic Serbian backwoods, Wind, Talk to Me is a vulnerable, moving work of docufiction that reflects, remembers, and grieves through its art.
Screenings & Events
Screening
Sat, Oct 18 @ 7:45pm
at AMC NEWCITY 14, Screen 04
Venue information...
Director Stefan Djordjevic
Screening
Sun, Oct 19 @ 12:15pm
at Gene Siskel Film Center, Screen 2
Venue information...
Director Stefan Djordjevic
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Media
Film Credits
- Stefan Ivančić, Stefan Djordjevic, Ognjen Glavonić, co-produced by: Vanja Jambrović, Jožko Rutar, Miha Černec
- Stefan Djordjević
- Tomislav Stojanović, Dragan von Petrovic
- Marko Brdar
- Negrica Djordjevic, Stefan Djordjevic, Bosko Djordjevic, Djordje Davidovic, Budimir Jovanovic, Ljiljana Jovanovic, Marina Davidovic, Ana Petrovic, Vidak Davidovic, dog Lija
- Ivan Judaš
- Non-Aligned Films (Serbia), co-produced by: Katunga (Serbia), SPOK Films (Slovenia), Restart (Croatia), Staragara (Slovenia)
Sponsors
Program Patron
Robert and Penelope Steiner Family Foundation
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Shorts 2: Animation
Synopsis
Some worlds can only truly be conjured outside of physical reality. These eight thrilling shorts unfold in an inventive array of visual and narrative styles that come together to form a vibrant snapshot of contemporary animation. May not be suitable for all ages.
Paradaïz, an abstracted depiction of returning to Sarajevo, hums with absurdist humor and a real longing for home. This is not your Garden uses 3D scan data to capture a ghostly portrait of Bogota’s highland cloud forests, which are currently threatened by climate change and human development. One man’s plans for the future are laid out in Retirement Plan. Every resident chases their own version of happiness in the colorful apartment building at the center of Dollhouse Elephant. In the quiet sepia-toned countryside of Dog Alone, a young woman, her grandfather, and a nearby dog all confront loneliness. In dipolar bipolar, the internal life of a person managing bipolar disorder appears as pulsing, maximalist visions. As eight-year-old Agata boards a full bus from Poland to Belgium by herself in Autokar; she notices that those around her seem different. The present moment sits perfectly still in Ordinary Life.
Screenings & Events
Screening
Wed, Oct 22 @ 5:00pm
at Gene Siskel Film Center, Screen 1
Venue information...
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Sponsors
With support from
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Shorts 8: Drama
VariousChina, Croatia, France, Greece, Hong Kong, Palestine, Philippines, Spain
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Cover-Up
Synopsis
Chicago journalist Seymour Hersh has uncovered some of the most momentous political scandals in American history, from exposing the U.S. military’s My Lai massacre in Vietnam to its torturing of Iraqi citizens at Abu Ghraib. After decades spent trying to get Hersh to agree to make a documentary, Oscar winner Laura Poitras (CitizenFour), together with Mark Obenhaus, finally get their moment, sitting with the occasionally combative Hersh to do a deep dive into his history, his investigations, and his sources, telling a story not only about the legendary indefatigable reporter but also about the need to hold those in power accountable for their actions.
No hagiographic portrait, Cover-Up shows Pulitzer Prize winner Hersh as a complex and contentious figure whose reputation has taken a fair share of knocks, even as he’s been one of America’s most important truth-tellers. As President Nixon says of Hersh in an archived audio recording, “The son of a bitch is a son of the bitch, but he’s usually right.” As we observe brief scenes of Hersh still working to expose abuses in Gaza, the film serves as a testament to the vital need for investigative journalism in our precarious modern world.
Screenings & Events
Screening
Fri, Oct 24 @ 5:15pm
at Gene Siskel Film Center, Screen 1
Venue information...
Closed Captions- T-Coil Devices available
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Media
Film Credits
- Yoni Golijov, Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus, Olivia Streisand
- Amy Foote ACE, Peter Bowman, Laura Poitras
- Mia Cioffi Henry
- Seymour Hersh
- Maya Shenfeld
- Thomas MacWhirr, Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Josh Braun, Nick Shumaker
- Praxis Films, Project Mockingbird
Sponsors
Program Partner
Program Patron
Cynthia Stone Raskin
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The Beauty of the Donkey La Beauté de l'Âne
Synopsis
Award-winning Swiss Albanian filmmaker Dea Gjinovci (2020’s Wake Up on Mars) returns to the bucolic Kosovo town of her father’s youth—a place he hasn’t seen in 60 years—for this lyrical journey into the past at once wistful and tragic. Together, they recreate his childhood memories, making sets that resemble his former home and with scenes acted out by the local villagers. Through this collective creative project, 1950s Kosovo springs to life in a series of beautifully realized vignettes that prompt Gjinovci’s father to reflect on times of innocence, of violence (when the country persecuted the Albanian population), and of loss, enabling him to finally reckon with the disappearance of his mother decades before.
This evocative mix of memory and reenactment allows father and daughter to uncover shocking truths about their family history and to come to terms with a legacy of oppression. A touching narrative of resilience and catharsis, The Beauty of the Donkey is also a sensitive and bittersweet testament to the power of stories to bring back people and places that history and political strife have tried to erase.
Screenings & Events
Screening
Sun, Oct 19 @ 2:45pm
at AMC NEWCITY 14, Screen 01
Venue information...
Director Dea Gjinovci, Production Designer Aurélia Martin, and Executive Director Maida Lynn
Screening
Mon, Oct 20 @ 2:00pm
at Gene Siskel Film Center, Screen 2
Venue information...
Director Dea Gjinovci, Production Designer Aurélia Martin, and Executive Director Maida Lynn
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Media
Film Credits
- Dea Gjinovci, Palmyre Badinier
- Dea Gjinovci
- Lizi Gelber
- Maxime Kathari
- Asllan Gjinovci, Leart Gjinovci
- Gael Kyriakidis
- Maida Lynn
- Astrae Productions
Sponsors
Program Partner
Program Patron
Cynthia Stone Raskin
With support from
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