Synopsis

Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard star in this penetrating psychological drama about two apparent strangers in New York City whose fateful encounter one night spins both of their lives in profoundly new directions. Sylvia (Chastain) is a single mother, 13 years sober and still reeling from a traumatic incident that she can’t forget, while Saul (Sarsgaard), suffering from early onset dementia, struggles to live an autonomous life. Can these two damaged souls find salvation?

ChicagoIFF award-winner Michel Franco, director of such acclaimed films as Sundown, New Order, and After Lucia, returns to the Festival with his most compassionate film. Though told in his precise and assured filmmaking style, he allows Chastain and Sarsgaard to fully embody the anguish of their characters–and the troubling complexities and tentative promise of their relationship. Winner of a Best Actor Prize at the Venice Film Festival for Sargaard’s subtle performance, Franco’s latest is a trenchant story of suffering and recovery–and memory itself and the ways it defines us.

Synopsis

After a fateful miss, an assassin (Michael Fassbender) battles his employers, and himself, on an international manhunt he insists isn’t personal. Working with the efficiency and expediency of a lifelong professional—while listening to The Smiths’ greatest hits to keep him focused–the unnamed killer crisscrosses the world, from Paris to the Dominican Republic, New Orleans to Florida, and New York finally to Chicago, to tie up any and all loose ends.

In his latest film, award-winning director David Fincher (The Social Network, Gone Girl), operating at the same high level of precision and skill as his protagonist, crafts a sleek and witty thriller about murder, routine, and one man’s obsessive attention to detail. Featuring a bewitching cameo by Tilda Swinton and a pulsating get-under-your-skin soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails duo Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, The Killer is a cool and clever demonstration of genre filmmaking from a master of the form.

Synopsis

In a posh London neighborhood, undocumented Filipina worker Joy arrives at her latest job with her young daughter Grace smuggled in her suitcase. As Grace hides in an upstairs bedroom, Joy takes care of the estate’s patriarch, Mr. Garrett, who’s bedridden and slowly dying of cancer. Then an ominous revelation emerges, threatening to destroy everything that Joy has strived for in her new life.

In this bold and frightening portrait of race, class, and power, British-Filipino filmmaker Paris Zarcilla skillfully mixes tongue-in-cheek social commentary with plenty of jump scares and haunted-house thrills. Called a “coming of rage” story by its director, the film builds to ever greater heights of thrills and blood-splattered carnage, as mother and daughter attempt to break out of the cycle of exploitation that has long trapped their people.

Synopsis

From writer-director Jeff Nichols (Loving, Midnight Special, Mud), 20th Century Studios, and New Regency, The Bikeriders is a furious drama following the rise of a fictional 1960s Midwestern motorcycle club through the lives of its members, starring Jodie Comer (Killing Eve, The Last Duel), Austin Butler (Elvis), and Tom Hardy (Mad Max: Fury Road, The Revenant).

Inspired by Danny Lyon’s iconic book of photography, The Bikeriders immerses viewers in the look, feel, and sounds of the bare-knuckled, grease-covered subculture of ’60s motorcycle riders. Kathy (Comer), a strong-willed member of the Vandals who’s married to a wild, reckless bikerider named Benny (Butler), recounts the Vandals’ evolution over the course of a decade, beginning as a local club of outsiders united by good times, rumbling bikes, and respect for their strong, steady leader Johnny (Hardy). Over the years, Kathy tries her best to navigate her husband’s untamed nature and his allegiance to Johnny, with whom she feels she must compete for Benny’s attention. As life in the Vandals gets more dangerous, Kathy, Benny, and Johnny are forced to make choices about their loyalty to the club and to each other.

The cast, most of whom did their own riding on an array of period-correct bikes, also includes Michael Shannon (Bullet Train), Mike Faist (West Side Story), Boyd Holbrook (Logan), and Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead).

Synopsis

Jack Delroy, a fictional ’70s talk show host played by rising horror star (and Chicago native) David Dastmalchian (The Suicide Squad, Oppenheimer), is in trouble. Jack and his show Night Owls were once the biggest names in late night. But now, with his personal life marred by tragedy and his ratings in free fall, he’s struggling to keep up. So Jack and his producers cook up a controversial plan for their 1977 Halloween special: A live possession, as performed by parapsychologist Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) and 13-year-old Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), the sole survivor of a Satanic mass suicide. What could possibly go wrong?

Told in a found-footage style that purports to cobble together rediscovered master tapes with dailies from a French documentary crew, Late Night with the Devil harnesses the anything-goes excitement of live television and combines it with the sinister aura of ’70s exorcism movies to unleash a demon into the airwaves.