Chicago is home to so many film festivals, there's an association for them. From niche, weekend events that pop up throughout the year to stalwarts like Reeling (the long-running LGBTQ-centered event), the annual Chicago International Film Festival stands alone as the city's main event, a marathon of programming across the city including hundreds of films, an industry conference, curated virtual access and, on opening night, an old fashioned neighborhood block party.
This year's Chicago International Film Festival, presenting organization Cinema/Chicago's 59th, runs October 11 - 20 at locations throughout the city, anchored by screenings at AMC NewCity (1500 N. Clybourne Ave.). Artistic Director Mimi Plauché recently spoke with our Steve Prokopy about the festival's many locations, robust program and future plans. For the next twelve days, however, stick with Third Coast Review for festival dispatches featuring what we're seeing and attending. We'll have capsule reviews of dozens of the festival's most anticipated films as well as yet-to-be-discovered gems.
For a full understanding of all that the festival has to offer, visit the event's official website, where you can view a day-by-day schedule, learn more about all the films included, and even purchase advance tickets (if the film you want to attend hasn't already sold out!).
Wednesday, October 11 starts the 59th film festival on the same exciting note as last year, with a block party open to the public in front of the Music Box Theatre (the 3700 N. block of Southport); no tickets are required and you don't have to be attending that evening's film programs to attend, either. The festival opens with a red carpet screening of We Grown Now, the Chicago-set story about a childhood friendship navigating the rocky reality of the Cabrini Green housing complex in the 1990s. For night owls, the program continues with another Chicago-centric title, Clare Cooney's Departing Seniors, a teen slasher film sure to start the festival's Midnight programming off on a thrilling note.
We Grown Now
Writer/director Minhal Baig made a splash a few years ago with her heartfelt and beautifully rendered Hala, a film ultimately released by Apple that announced Baig as a promising new voice in filmmaking. Her latest feature is We Grown Now, a well-meaning but ultimately misguided attempt at capturing a very specific, very vulnerable moment in Chicago's history. Set in the 1990s, the film largely takes place in the now-demolished housing complex Cabrini Green, a government-subsidized community that ultimately became a refuge for violence and gang activity, a blight on the city's efforts at equitable, accessible housing. The film centers on tweens Mailk (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez), neighbors who live in units one above the other, the former with his mother (Jurnee Smollett), grandmother (S. Epatha Merkerson) and younger sister, the latter with his father (Lil Rel Howery) and older sister. The boys exist in a world that straddles the games and adventures their young imaginations can cook up and the stark reality of unannounced police raids and bursts of violence throughout the community.
We Grown Now is a beautiful film, at least in its lush and thoughtful visuals, from the warm tones of the interior apartments to the nearly whimsical interpretations of Malik's inner monologue. Unfortunately, Baig falls short of creating a genuine, if fictional, narrative embedded in a very real, lived experience for many. Her young protagonist and his co-hort (both actors are exceptional) talk and act like no pre-teen I've ever met, often musing on the temporary nature of life and dreams and the future; at one point, the boys play hooky and choose to...wander the august halls of the Art Institute of Chicago? It's aspirational at best; at worst, it's tone deaf and uninspired, imposing a vision of the world on characters created from some pre-fab mold. According to the film's press notes, Baig was drawn to setting a film in 1990s Cabrini Green in order to explore the themes of home, growth and change. These are all present, certainly, but the end result is closer to how an outsider might imagine the lived experience of these boys, rather than one that's actually steeped in the reality of it. (Lisa Trifone)
Departing Seniors
Talking the high school slasher motif and turning it into an aggressive but highly effective anti-bullying statement, first-time feature director Claire Cooney, working from a screenplay by Jose Nateras (both of whom have deep Chicago roots), bring us the story of Javier (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio), a highly intelligent, gay, Mexican-American, high school senior who finds himself relentlessly tormented by his school’s athletes, including one he’s secretly having sex with on the side. His screamingly inappropriate best friend Bianca (scene-stealer Ireon Roach) does her best to defend him, but after a catfishing incident by the jocks goes horribly wrong, Javier ends up in the hospital with a head injury that seems to unlock psychic abilities that show him the past, present, and future activities of any person he touches, or the objects they have recently touched. This newfound power sends him and Bianca down a path toward discovering that a recent rash of suicides among his fellow, about-to-graduate senior class members are actually a series of brutal murders of those who make a habit of tormenting Javier.
The film’s decision to place queer and characters of color—characters who would normally be marginalized (and likely the first victims) in any other horror movie—as the focal point gives Departing Seniors a perspective we never get to experience. The film not only examines the usual high school hierarchies of popular and unpopular, but there’s a deeper look at more sinister prejudices that exist in all of society. Even with that, the film doesn’t lecture about life’s injustices; it simply presents them as context for the bigger, frequently comedic story about the resiliency of young people on the margins. Helping him gain confidence and esteem in the process, Javier gets to experience something that might be first love with a fellow student (Ryan Foreman) and finds an ally in a Latino teacher (Yani Gellman). Cooney has a solid grip on the mask-wearing, knife-wielding horror tropes, but she expands beyond the clichés and into richer, deeper terror-tory. (Steve Prokopy)
The film screens Wed., October 11 at 10pm at Music Box Theatre. Director Clare Cooney is scheduled to attend.