:: FRIDAY, MAY 5 - THURSDAY, MAY 11 ::

📽️ DOC10

A showcase of new nonfiction cinema, the annual DOC10 Film Festival continues through Sunday at the Davis Theater (4614 N. Lincoln Ave.) in Lincoln Square and the Gene Siskel Film Center. Five of the nine programs are reviewed below. Also of note are UNDER THE SKY OF DAMASCUS, a new feature by Talal Derki (OF FATHERS AND SONS), who co-directed with his wife Heba Khaled and Ali Wajeeh, screening at the Film Center on Saturday at 2:30pm; and GOING TO MARS: THE NIKKI GIOVANNI PROJECT, a profile of the celebrated titular poet, screening at the Film Center on Saturday at 8pm. For more information, including a complete schedule, visit the festival website here.

Nicole Newnham’s THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SHERE HITE (US/Documentary)
The Davis Theater – Friday, 6:15pm
According to Newsweek, The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality (1976), initially set for burial by its publisher (print run of 4,000 copies, no marketing), is the 30th best-selling book of all time. While MacMillan reaped a fortune from this research report, its author is practically unknown today, a fact that astonishes those of us who knew about her in her heyday. A fashion-forward, intellectually engaged, red-headed beauty, Shere Hite lived in a rat- and roach-infested basement apartment while she pursued a doctorate in history at Columbia University, modeling and borrowing money to survive. Drawn to the women’s movement, especially after facing sexist and classist criticism from a professor she admired, she decided to mail a lengthy questionnaire across the country for women to answer and return anonymously. The report in which “3,000 women, ages 14 to 78, describe in their own words their most intimate feelings about sex” contradicted the accepted notion that clitoral stimulation through penetration was the best way to achieve orgasm, leading men who feared feeling sexually irrelevant to attack her. Her follow-up studies, The Hite Report on Men and Male Sexuality (1981) and Women and Love: A Cultural Revolution in Progress (The Hite Report on Love, Passion, and Emotional Violence) (1987), only intensified the attacks, sending her into self-imposed exile in Europe, where she died in 2020, and causing her to renounce her US citizenship. Despite her track record as a best-selling author, she was never published in the United States again. Director Nicole Newnham excels at uncovering masses of archival photos and footage to tell socially significant stories, such as with the Oscar-nominated CRIP CAMP: A DISABILITY REVOLUTION (2020) that reveals the beginnings of modern disability activism in the United States. Newnham mixes present-day interviews with archival still images and footage of Hite that not only show the writer/researcher valiantly trying to hold her own against hostile interviewers and, in one case, an entire audience of men on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show, but also her community of friends and long history as a model for Madison Avenue flaks and art photographers alike. A free spirit comfortable with her own body and the language of sex (watching a tongue-tied David Hasselhoff try to engage her in conversation is painfully funny), Hite predicted that women of the future would have to fight the same fight for equality she was engaged in. Once again, sadly, she was right. The film’s executive producer, Dakota Johnson, provides Hite’s voice. Followed by an in-person Q&A with Newnham, moderated by Christie Hefner. (2023, 118 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Penny Lane's CONFESSIONS OF A GOOD SAMARITAN (US/Documentary)
The Davis Theater – Friday, 8:30pm
In what some may find to be a surprising turn, experimental documentary filmmaker Penny Lane places herself in front of the camera in CONFESSIONS OF A GOOD SAMARITAN, a philosophical exploration about human connectedness, altruism, and what we owe to each other. In 2017, Lane decided she wanted to donate a kidney to a stranger, an act that she was surprised to find many people still find quite controversial. Through interviews with a medical ethicist, neuroscientist, "altruistic" or "good samaritan" kidney donors, doctors, and (most uncomfortably) Lane herself, CONFESSIONS OF A GOOD SAMARITAN raises and teases out complex layers of meaning, evolving societal norms, and ethical concerns that find a locus in altruistic organ donation. Lane reveals her own ambivalence about such an act and whether performing this act makes her a "good" person, through intimate confessions, diary entries, and philosophical self-examination. Similar to Lane's other genre-bending documentaries NUTS and HAIL SATAN, CONFESSIONS OF A GOOD SAMARITAN pushes the edges of documentary with evocative montage sequences and an immersive original score, although to a much different effect in this film. These stylistic choices present a layer of subjectivity and intellectual exploration which evokes Lane's interior struggle and not without her trademark sense of self-effacing humor—a welcome leavening agent in a subject area that can feel very heavy as we near the most emotionally intense moments of her journey. Much like earlier experimental work, including THE VOYAGERS and THE COMMONERS, or her master's thesis, THE ABORTION DIARIES, which weaves together documentary-style interviews and Lane's personal diary entries, CONFESSIONS OF A GOOD SAMARITAN illustrates how Lane learns to understand herself as subject through deep understanding of elements of the exterior world. The key difference is that Lane is in front of the camera this time, revealing, quite vulnerably, her facial expressions as she comes to understand how incredibly alone, yet incredibly connected, we are as living beings. Followed by an in-person Q&A with Lane, moderated by Christie Hefner.  (2023, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Alex Ensign]
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Elaine McMillion Sheldon’s KING COAL (US/Documentary)
The Davis Theater – Saturday, 4:45pm
Elaine McMillion Sheldon’s whimsical rumination on coal, mining, and the pervasive industrialization of the sedimentary composite in central Appalachia is a distinctly feminine rendition of a narrative that’s traditionally been represented via masculine iconography (i.e. sooty visages, hard hats, taciturn emotions and fervent pride). Early on in the film, in one of its more straightforwardly documentary vignettes, one such figure talks about the profession to an elementary school class. At times he seems out of his element, surrounded by young children who respond more with vague curiosity than vested interest, their innocence still a shield against life’s harsh realities and a distancing mechanism for viewers, hinting at the film’s unorthodox approach. It’s also a child who serves as the de facto protagonist, a young girl with red hair and a face full of freckles. Sheldon narrates, the girl a stand-in for her as she recounts her experience growing up in Appalachia and contending with King Coal, an epithet signifying the influence the coal industry has over the area, likely conferred by Upton Sinclair’s 1917 novel of the same name. Comprising the film are vignettes with the girl, which sometimes show how King Coal’s indoctrination begins almost at birth; more straightforward documentary sequences, ranging from a coal queen pageant to segments utilizing archival footage to convey the history of mining and the workers’ labor struggles; and more poetical sketches, usually featuring the lush land of various coal-rich locations, accompanied by Sheldon’s sagacious narration, which lends a literary quality to this uncommon documentary exploration. She manages to cover a lot of ground while also committing to the more ambiguous structure, ultimately considering what life might look like when King Coal has been deposed of its power. The film is likewise mournful and reassuring, taking into account the industry’s often violent and contentious past while looking forward to a more peaceful future. Having previously made films about the opioid crisis and its impact on Appalachian communities (HEROIN(E) and RECOVERY BOYS), Sheldon’s latest is a more personal and philosophical meditation on the region’s history and its far-reaching implications, articulated by a grown woman channeling the young girl insider her, evincing a singular, more tender sort of inquiry. Followed by an in-person Q&A with Sheldon, director of photography Curren Sheldon, and producer Shane Boris. (2023, 78 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
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Camilla Hall and Jennifer Tiexiera’s SUBJECT (US/Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 1pm
"There usually isn't a happy ending,” says Jesse Friedman, who’s featured in Andrew Jarecki’s 2003 HBO documentary CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS. He’s also one of the so-called subjects in Camilla Hall and Jennifer Tiexiera’s aptly titled film, a documentary about the subjects of documentaries. Along with his father Arthur Friedman, Jesse had been convicted of molesting young boys two decades prior to the film, though his conviction was later put into question; here he’s observing that while many documentaries assume a traditional narrative structure with a pat, if not always happy, ending, such closure is not necessarily provided in real life. Further exemplifying this is Margaret Ratliff, daughter of Michael Peterson, whose trial for the murder of his wife Kathleen has been the subject of much media speculation. This includes not only a 2004 French-produced docuseries, The Staircase (acquired and updated by Netflix in 2018), but also a recent fictionalized series on HBO; she recalls Sophie Turner, the actress playing her, asking if they could speak, to which Margaret expresses frustration over the fact that Turner not only made a lot of money for the job but dredged up traumatic memories while capitalizing on her family’s tragedy. These are just two examples of how SUBJECT probes the documentary landscape, past and present, to consider the moral implications of the form. Several figures from prominent documentaries of the last few decades (which also include HOOP DREAMS, THE SQUARE, and THE WOLFPACK) discuss their experiences, while filmmakers and industry powerhouses such as Chicago’s own Gordon Quinn, Kirsten Johnson, Bing Liu, Sam Pollard, Thom Powers, and Sonya Childress weigh in on the ethical dilemmas inherent in their practice. (Interestingly, the filmmakers decided not to interview the directors of any of the films whose subjects are represented.) Responses run the gamut: some of those featured in the documentaries are either outrightly resentful of the experience or at least ambivalent toward it. Others are happier, with a few even continuing to leverage the visibility brought to them by the films. But the point is that their stories go on, when the cameras have stopped rolling and the accolades have ceased filling a void. Documentary is hardly an under-discussed facet of the film industry—they’ve become aggressively mainstream, with people now anticipating a documentary or docuseries about every cultural incident—and while the film doesn’t tread new ground, it certainly casts a light on that which typically isn’t discussed in popular discourse around non-fiction cinema. Followed by a post-screening panel discussion with co-director Tiexiera, producer Margaret Ratliff (THE STAIRCASE), Assia Boundaoui (THE FEELING OF BEING WATCHED), executive producer Dr. Kameelah Rashad (co-founder, Documentary Accountability Working Group), co-producer Arthur Agee (HOOP DREAMS), and Kartemquin Films’ Gordon Quinn. (2022, 96 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
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Luke Lorentzen’s A STILL SMALL VOICE (US/Documentary) 
The Davis Theater – Sunday, 4:30pm 
Mati, the principal subject of A STILL SMALL VOICE, is a woman in training to be a hospital chaplain; the movie follows her over the course of her residency in New York City. While Mati’s training (like her future career) is surely filled with heart-rending interactions with patients and families, director Luke Lorentzen includes only a few of these in the film. His focus, rather, is on the more prosaic aspects of Mati’s professional development: meetings with her fellow interns, one-on-one sessions with her program adviser, moments of much-needed downtime when she learns to dissociate herself from her demanding work. The purpose of Lorentzen’s approach is to show that caregiving isn’t a skill one comes to naturally but arrives at after extensive training; apparently, providing emotional support to people in critical situations is as fine an art as surgery or any other aspect of modern medicine. Lorentzen considers the bureaucratic framework that ensures professionalism amongst chaplains, with scenes in which Mati and other interns review their strategies, take guidance, and consider ways to improve. It can be a little unnerving to think that empathy can be monitored and finessed in such a clinical fashion, that bureaucracy can penetrate some of our most human emotional instincts. A STILL SMALL VOICE presents this phenomenon without directorial comment, leaving all the reflection to the subjects—Lorentzen advances a style that’s fairly clinical itself, with lots of static long takes that make the film occasionally suggest a European arthouse drama. And like many an emotionally withholding art film, A STILL SMALL VOICE offers an eruption in its final act, when the tension between Mati and her advisor reaches its breaking point. Some may leave the film with negative feelings toward the advisor, but I don’t think that was Lorentzen’s intent. Instead, I think the point is to show that people in essential, high-stress jobs are simply human like the rest of us. Followed by an in-person Q&A with Lorentzen. (2023, 93 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

The Chicago Critics Film Festival

Music Box Theatre – Through Thursday

Alex Proyas’ DARK CITY (US)
Friday, Midnight
DARK CITY captures precisely why film noir and science fiction can meld so well together. While noir ponders the nature of reality, identity, and memory through motifs of corruption and deceit, sci-fi does so from a dystopian, technological viewpoint. Blend that together and you get films like BLADE RUNNER (1982), which well predates DARK CITY, and THE MATRIX (1999), which premiered a year later. DARK CITY fits neatly within that timeline, and even the more recent CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (2022) feels somewhat inspired by the film—particularly the setting. Director Alex Proyas (THE CROW) brings in some distinctiveness here, mainly in how markedly stylized the film is, creating a unique work that leans equally as heavily into film noir as it does into sci-fi. After John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) wakes up with no memory, he finds himself at the center of murder investigation. With the help of his femme fatale wife (Jennifer Connelly) and his nervous doctor (Kiefer Sutherland), he attempts to figure out who he his while simultaneously being chased by a police inspector (William Hurt) and a group of extraterrestrial hive-minded beings known as The Strangers (unsettlingly portrayed by Richard O’Brien, Ian Richardson, and Bruce Spence, among others) who can bend reality at will. Set in a nondescript city where it’s perpetually night, the film’s meandering plot also twists through the two genres, dazzlingly marrying graphically composed noir shots with striking moments of haunting sci-fi, particularly in relation to The Strangers. Proyas uses clocks, spirals, and mazes throughout to illuminate the confusion of the characters and perhaps the audience, too. Like BLADE RUNNER before it, DARK CITY was given a voiceover edit to help explain the dense plot, but, similarly, it doesn’t need it. As a film about memory, its wandering, nightmare-like narrative mirrors that theme. Whether or not the plot is clear, the striking images of DARK CITY remain so; like memory, it doesn’t need to be well-defined to be effective. (1998, 100 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]
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Philip Kaufman's THE RIGHT STUFF (US)
Monday, 7pm
Before thoughts of going to the moon, America had to first successfully send someone to space and back. Based on Tom Wolfe's now-classic book, Philip Kaufman's THE RIGHT STUFF explores the early days of the US space program: the astronauts behind the first test flights and the ones selected for Project Mercury. Sam Shepard stars as the legendary Chuck Yeager, a hard-working, ambitious pilot who was the first to break the sounder barrier but who is rejected for the Mercury project because he lacks a college degree. The film follows the Mercury program from its infancy, sending the first Americans into space and orbiting around the sun, until the last American is sent into orbit alone in 1963, nearly sixteen years after Yeager's historic sound barrier flight. The film is more than a simple glorification of American spirit and achievement: Kaufman allows for the faults to show, those of the government, the pilots and astronauts, and their families. Myths of heroism are cast aside and replaced with a more realistic consideration of these still remarkable men. A contemporary epic, and a modern American classic. (1983, 193 min, 35mm) [Shealey Wallace]
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Other films screening as part of the Chicago Critics Film Festival are Matt Johnson’s BLACKBERRY, Zachary Wigon’s SANCTUARY, Christian Petzold’s AFIRE, Morrisa Maltz’s THE UNKNOWN COUNTRY, Laura Moss’ BIRTH/REBIRTH, Ted Geoghegan’s BROOKLYN 45, Jeremy Coon and Steve Kozak’s A DISTURBANCE IN THE FORCE, Julien Chheng and Jean-Christophe Roger’s ERNEST & CELESTINE: A TRIP TO GIBBERITIA, Paul Schrader’s MASTER GARDENER, Ira Sachs’ PASSENGERS, Linh Tran’s WAITING FOR THE LIGHT TO CHANGE, Jesse Short Bull and Laura Tomaselli’s LAKOTA NATION VS. UNITED STATES, Georgia Oakley’s BLUE JEAN, Celine Song’s PAST LIVES, D. Smith’s KOKOMO CITY, Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck’s AND THE KING SAID, WHAT A FANTASTIC MACHINE, Clement Virgo’s BROTHER, Alice Winocour’s REVOIR PARIS, Law Chen’s STARRING JERRY AS HIMSELF, and Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman’s THEATER CAMP. More info on the festival here.

Cristian Mungiu's R.M.N. (Romania)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

In a storybook Romanian village nestled in the mountains and surrounded by forests, the creatures haunting the populace are neither mythical nor ancient. Matthias returns to the village after a run-in with the foreman at the German industrial livestock facility where he was to have been on a three-year contract. He isn't expected back home, nor is he particularly welcome. A hulking, angry caveman type, Matthias is estranged from his wife and feels she's raising their young son to be a sissy; he tries to resume an out-in-the-open affair with his ex-girlfriend who runs the industrial bakery—now the primary employer in the area after globalization and political upheaval have gutted other industries. When no locals can be found to fill their minimum wage positions, the bakery brings in Sri Lankans, which sets off a powder keg race- and class-based conflict. Meanwhile, Matthias's boy keeps getting spooked by things he claims to see in the forest and his aging father is acting erratically. A Christmas-time torchlight procession of villagers in bear-skins prompts one of the Sri Lankans to ask the costume's significance and are told that the men are trying to feel as one with the beasts to ward off evil spirits. But it's a much more familiar monster that haunts their home and Mungiu, admirably, doesn't let anyone off the hook or propose any easy solutions. Matthias keeps staring at his father's brain scans, taken after the old man collapsed and was unresponsive, but he doesn't know what he should be looking for or how to make it better. (2022, 125 min, DCP Digital) [Dmitry Samarov]

David Cronenberg's SPIDER (Canada/UK)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 9:30pm

Over the course David Cronenberg’s career, the filmmaker has moved through different periods. Since DEAD RINGERS (1988), his films have become less interested with body horror and science fiction and more literary and melodramatic. In the director's commentary for the SPIDER DVD, Cronenberg made it clear he has no interest in a psychoanalytical study of a character. Throughout his films, his greatest interest is the human condition, not scientific study. That being said, it’s tempting to view his body of work through a Freudian lens. This can go as far back as RABID (1977), when a character holds up a book called The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud. SPIDER begins as a man, Spider, is released from a psychiatric hospital to live at a halfway house in London’s East End. At the start, the audience doesn’t know his condition or the reason for his confinement. As refamiliarizes himself with old streets and places, Spider relives memories from childhood. Along with him, the viewer struggles to find out what happened and where it all went wrong. Previously, Cronenberg made a film adaptation of William S. Burrough’s Naked Lunch, a book considered unadaptable for the screen. From early stages, the director worked with screenwriter Patrick McGrath (who also wrote the novel on which this is based). In development, Cronenberg pushed McGrath to construct a story that would work for the cinematic medium and would differ from the novel. The Canadian auteur remarked, “You have to be unfaithful to the book in order to be faithful, there is no direct translation." In the novel, the reader follows Spider’s notebook where the character eloquently recounts events in detail. For the film, the creators optioned the character to barely speak in complete sentences if he ever spoke. The audience experiences the world as the character; a London neighborhood would normally be bustling with cars and people, remains occupied only by the isolated Spider. Through visuals and space occupied by the actors, the audience breathes the atmosphere of the character’s inner life. Ralph Fiennes gives an astonishing performance as an emaciated man with schizophrenia trying to piece his life back together. Much of his performance improvised mumbling, the actor was encouraged to create his own written language for scenes when Spider writes in his journal. Generous to his collaborators, each film directed by David Cronenberg has its own voice and life. He is one of the last living auteurs who sculpts the essence of literary works into cinema. Screening as part of Doc’s Thursday II series, “Skin Under Skin: A Retrospective of David Cronenberg.” (2002, 98 min, 35mm) [Ray Ebarb]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Yasujiro Ozu's TOKYO STORY (Japan)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm

Yasujiro Ozu's films tend to bring out the inner poet of the critics writing about them, and I suspect it's because his work is as paradoxically straightforward and inexplicable as that very medium. Much like one might read a poem and reflect on its ability to impart awe in such an assuming way, so one watches an Ozu film and feels utterly perplexed by its sublimity. TOKYO STORY is the film that introduced him to American audiences; it's also a prime example of his elegiac approach to filmmaking. Just as in other Ozu films, the plot doesn't matter. Rather, it's the particular societal arrangement and the depth of characterization that gives each film its distinction. TOKYO STORY is about an elderly couple who go to the city to visit their grown children, and, well, as with other Ozu films, that's basically the gist of it. Generational differences between the old, young, and even younger provide most of the 'conflict,' as does the question of place within a family. Setsuko Hara plays Noriko, the wife of the parents' son who died in the war; she remains attached to them even eight years after her husband's death. It's she who bonds with the mother, redeems the father, and departs wisdom on their youngest daughter. (In perhaps one of the most heartbreaking scenes in cinema, the young daughter asks Noriko, "Isn't life disappointing?" Noriko responds, "Yes, it is," with a guileless smile on her face, one that she wears throughout the film until an uncharacteristic breakdown at the end.) The film also embodies Ozu's signature style, which consists of seemingly slow-moving plot and humbly low camera placement. It's widely considered his masterpiece, yet it rejects critical examination. It exists just as his characters do, wholly and unremarkably, and alive in the truest sense of the word. To scrutinize an Ozu film is, like poetry, to vitiate its essence; to ask "why?" is to miss the point completely. Screening as part of Doc’s Friday series, “Sight & Sound: The Greatest?” (1953, 136 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Ari Aster's BEAU IS AFRAID (US)

Music Box Theatre – See venue website for showtimes

Beau Wasserman (Joaquin Phoenix) is not at home in his world. The street outside his dingy apartment building is a dystopian hellscape of caterwauling maniacs, his therapist asks him questions he can't or won't answer, and his mother keeps calling. He's to visit her the next day on the anniversary of his father's passing but never makes it to the airport. Instead, the route to his mother's house goes through a Freudian looking-glass of past, present, and future versions of his inner monologue. Along the way to confronting the Jewishest mother of Jewish mothers, Beau is hit by a car, returns repeatedly to his fraught boyhood, and finally gets together with his childhood love. None of it goes well. Aster's third feature (after the hit horror films HEREDITARY [2018] and MIDSOMMAR [2019]), doesn't veer away from the genre that made his name so much as take it internal. This is a movie in which little of what's shown can reliably be described as anything but Beau's overmedicated, paranoid perception. It's a journey through the psyche of a man who feels no agency over anything that's happened in his life. When I saw the trailer a few months back, I immediately thought of Charlie Kaufman's SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (2008), but a more recent film working in this sort of waking nightmare/reverie mode is Alejandro Iñárritu's BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS (2022). All three attempt to wrest free of narrative constraints and try to visually and aurally render an individual's particular psychic landscape. They're visions that can't help being compared to the biography of their creators and come off as indulgent and egomaniacal to the broad movie audience. I hope this doesn't sink a promising young director's career, but I can't imagine fans of the Marvel Universe embracing the kind of neurotic saga of self-immolation that Aster unhurriedly rolls out over three hours. I loved every painful second. Beau is a pitiful nonentity, but Phoenix, cowering and bloated, a look ranging from worry to outright terror never leaving his face, makes us absolutely and utterly feel his pain. He knows his life is ridiculous and out of control and he makes us laugh even if he can't laugh himself. (2023, 179 min, DCP Digital) [Dmitry Samarov]

Rebecca Zlotowski’s OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN (France)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

The French are so good—and so consistent—at making understated dramas about middle-class discontentment that they probably have a name for this subgenre. Claude Sautet’s run of masterpieces from the 1970s may be the high-water mark for whatever it’s called, though there have been excellent entries from directors as diverse as Bertrand Tavernier, André Téchiné, François Ozon, and Mia Hansen-Løve. (Claude Chabrol, who blended the subgenre with elements of the suspense thriller, worked in a category all his own.) It seems like a difficult type of movie to pull off: if you get too cynical or angry about middle-class hypocrisy, you may end up with trite moralizing; but if you’re too accepting of your characters and their worldview, you may end up with something soft and complacent. As such, writer-director Rebecca Zlotowski walks a fine line in OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN. This semicomic movie, about a 40-ish divorcée who first realizes she wants to be a mother, doesn’t really question the logic behind typical bourgeois aspirations; however, it feels realistic in its depiction of the challenges that keep the bourgeoisie from realizing their dreams. The heroine, Rachel, is a high-school teacher who falls in love with Ali, a car designer who’s also divorced. He shares custody of his five-year-old daughter, Leila, and as romance develops between the two protagonists, so does Rachel fall for Leila and, in the process, discover that she longs for the “banal” goals of settling down and raising children. As proven by Justine Triet’s SIBYL (2019) and Paul Verhoeven’s BENDETTA (2021), Virginie Efira excels at playing headstrong women who are more than a little neurotic, and she delivers another smart and compelling performance as Rachel; she makes you reflect on what it means to be happy along with her. Zlotowski, for her part, delineates the hurdles to Rachel’s happiness in a manner that’s neither too obvious nor obscure. One recognizes a certain self-sabotaging quality in the heroine but also the impact of things beyond her control, like the unpredictable nature of interpersonal relationships, the demands of a high-stress career, and plain old bad luck. Life gives us plenty of reasons to be dissatisfied. (2022, 104 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
ALSO SCREENING

 ⚫ Block Cinema (at Northwestern University)
The Otolith Group’s 2019 film INFINITY MINUS INFINITY (56 min, Digital Projection) screens Friday at 7pm, followed by Otolith Group members Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun in person to discuss the film with Antawan Byrd (College Fellow, Department of Art History, Northwestern University). 

Katy Dore and Jack Kohler’s 2023 film GIFT OF FEAR (106 min, Digital Projection) screens Sunday, 1pm, as part of the First Nations Film and Video Festival. Introduced by Ernest M. Whiteman III, a Northern Arapaho filmmaker, artist, writer, and media educator, as well as the co-director of First Nations Film and Video Festival. Admission is free to both events.

Shirikiana Aina’s 2017 film FOOTPRINTS OF PAN-AFRICANISM (77 min, Digital Projection) screens Thursday at 6:30pm. Aina will participate in a post-screening discussion with Paige Taul, filmmaker and Visiting Artist at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Chicago Film Archives
The Chicago Transit Authority, in partnership with the Chicago Film Archives (CFA), presents a new, one-of-a-kind temporary art installation now playing at the Cicero Green Line station (4800 W. Lake St.). The installation, known as we love, is a filmic exhibition of home movies and amateur films selected from collections housed and preserved at CFA. The video, which has a runtime of approximately 48 min, will be projected onto a wall in the mezzanine area of the station. The video will run day and night through mid-March next year. More info here. 

⚫ Doc Films
Nicole Newnham and James Lebrecht’s 2020 documentary CRIP CAMP (108 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 4pm. Co-sponsored by Students for Disability Justice. Free admission. 

Hlynur Pálmason’s 2022 Icelandic film GODLAND (143 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 8pm, as part of the Dóc: New Releases series.

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2000 film AMORES PERROS (153 min, 35mm) screens Thursday, 6pm, as part of the Three Amigos series.

Gordon Parks’ 1969 film THE LEARNING TREE (107 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday, 7pm, as part of the Decisive Moment: Photographers Turned Filmmakers series.

Lisa Raj Singh’s 2023 documentary THE HEART OF HYDE PARK: STORIES OF SMALL BUSINESSES (60 min, DCP Digital) on Monday at 5pm.

Chantal Akerman’s 1986 film LETTERS HOME (104 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 7pm, as part of the Delphine Seyrig, More Than a Muse series.

Alfonso Cuarón’s 2001 film Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN (106 min, 35mm) screens Thursday, 7pm, as part of Doc’s Thursday I series, The Three Amigos. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Film Studies Center at the University of Chicago (915 E. 60th St.)
José María Cabral’s 2021 film PARSLEY (85 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday at 7pm. Introduced by Dinayuri Rodriguez; presented by the Film Studies Center and Sou Sou: A Humanities Laboratory in Caribbean Studies. Free admission. More info here.

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Saim Sadiq’s 2022 Pakistani film JOYLAND (126 min, DCP Digital) continues. See Venue website for showtimes. 

The Chicago Palestine Film Festival also continues. View lineup and schedule here. 

The SAIC Film, Video, New Media, Animation and Sound Festival 2023 begins Wednesday and goes through Friday, May 12. More info on all screenings and events here. 

⚫ South Side Projections
South Side Projections is back at the Logan Center’s Family Saturdays with Nature Films, including several short films totaling approximately 45 min. The Logan Center for the Arts is located at 915 E. 60th St. Free admission. More info here.

⚫ Sweet Void Cinema
Find information on the Humboldt Park microcinema, including its screening and workshop schedule, here.

CINE-LIST: May 5 - May 11, 2023

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Ray Ebarb, Alex Ensign, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Dmitry Samarov, Shealey Wallce