We last spoke with Cinema/Chicago Artistic Director Mimi Plauché a year ago, she said that plans were already in the works for this year’s 60th Chicago International Film Festival, which takes place October 16-27 at various venues across Chicago. The festival's primary home is AMC NEWCITY; events will also take place at the Music Box Theatre, the Gene Siskel Film Center, the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago, the Chicago History Museum, the Hamilton Park Cultural Center in the Englewood neighborhood, and the National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen.
Touted as the longest-running film festival in North America, this year’s program includes 122 feature films and 71 shorts. Within that are 4 world premieres, 19 North American premieres, and 16 U.S. premieres, showcasing cinema from more than 60 countries around the world.
The festival opens with writer-director Malcolm Washington receiving the Breakthrough Award for his visceral and compelling feature directorial debut The Piano Lesson. Star John David Washington will accept the festival’s Spotlight Award for the film adapted from August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name.
Filmmaker Robert Zemeckis returns to the festival to present his film Here, starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. Zemeckis will receive the Founder’s Legacy Award at the Closing Night celebration, marking the third time he has had one of his works screening as the festival's Closing Night film.
In addition, the Centerpiece presentation of Nightbitch stars Amy Adams as a woman who pauses her career to be a stay-at-home mom, but her new domesticity takes a surreal turn. Director Marielle Heller is set to receive the Festival’s Visionary Award for her film's look at the realities of being an American mom.
As part of the festival's Black Perspectives program, actor André Holland will receive the Artistic Achievement Award with “An Evening with André Holland,” hosted by Steppenwolf Theatre Company Co-Artistic Director Glenn Davis; and comedy legend Mike Myers will receive a Career Achievement Award at a special event, “An Evening with Mike Myers,” hosted by fellow Canadian Dave Foley and co-presented by The Second City.
This year’s event also includes several retrospective programs, led by a look at six films by Japanese master filmmaker Kore-eda Hirokazu, who will appear in person to accept a Career Achievement Award, co-presented by Japan Foundation New York. Other retrospectives include the World Premiere of the restoration of Stan Lathan’s Save the Children, a documentary featuring Black musicians at Chicago’s 1972 Black Expo; a restoration of director Ivan Dixon’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door, in which a Black CIA agent secretly leads a guerrilla army against the U.S. government; and Compensation, director Zeinabui irene Davis’s tale of two love stories set nearly a century apart with a newly restored print. Famed Chicago director Andrew Davis presents his 1989 thriller The Package, starring Gene Hackman and Tommy Lee Jones, screening at the Chicago History Museum.
As we do every year as part of our preview of the Chicago International Film Festival’s offerings, we sat down for an extensive interview with Plauché, who walks us through this year’s offerings, including a list of under-the-radar films that she believes deserve your attention. Please enjoy our conversation.
For more information, visit the festival’s website.
I remember when we spoke last year, you said a few things were in the works for this year. How many of those things actually are happening as part of the 60th anniversary celebration?
We wanted to bring in a director who has a significant history with the festival and do a tribute and retrospective, and obviously Kore-eda Hirokazu is that. I think it’s even bigger than we anticipated. In my time at the festival, we’ve never done a retrospective with six films; it’s usually been like two films. The other thing we wanted to do were small country-specific focuses, where we wanted to highlight some countries that we have a long and rich history with and have won a significant number of awards.
With the Finns, it’s been more recent; Finnish films have been doing exceptionally well at the festival. With Germany, it goes back to the early 1970s with German New Wave and being the first, not just festival, but place in the U.S. to showcase that work and have those filmmakers come in. Obviously, with Japan, we were talking about a Japanese showcase, which became focused on Kore-eda this year. And the same with Italy, we have this long history of showcasing great Italian cinema. And the idea was not to do a full-blown retrospective, like 10-12 films from one country, but more like spotlighting our relationship and bring in jury members from those countries to participate.
I like that you’re doing a retrospective of his work, but that there isn’t a new film. You’re focusing on someone who has simply had a presence at the festival.
I think we’ve shown nine of his films over 60 years. So when we talked about the retrospective and he agreed to come and said he’d do Q&As after everything, at first, I presented a list of seven titles to choose from, and he said “All of them!” We did choose together from festival titles and added one in, After Life, which is an early work that didn’t play the festival but is one that is so important to fans of his work. It felt like it was a great place to showcase that work alongside other films we’ve shown.
And I noticed one of the screenings is in 35mm, Nobody Knows. You’re actually doing a couple things in 35mm this year. How important is it, particularly this year, to show a few things on film?
From a programmers’ perspective, it’s really exciting that there’s this opportunity. There is a new film coming out on 35mm but then also being able to access other films on 35mm. Moving forward, if there’s a possibility, it’s something we would embrace, and there’s an audience eager to see things on film as well.
What other events are you doing that are special for this year that maybe aren’t a part of every festival?
The last several years, we’ve been in partnership with The Second City on a comedy program and bringing in Second City folks to moderate, and this year, we started working early together for an honoree and were able to secure Mike Myers early, which is a great anchor for the comedy program. That’s something we’ve been building toward together as institutions.
I’m curious about the André Holland event, because you aren’t playing his new film, Exhibiting Forgiveness, so how did you land on him and a honoree?
For years, the history of Black Perspectives has been stand-alone tributes. There are often years where it’s tied into a film, but it’s really about having that opportunity to sit down and have a conversation with the honoree. When it’s tied to a film, it’s more like a Q&A, with an award at the beginning, which is lovely but it’s a different type of experience to delve more deeply into a body of work, like with did with Ruth Carter, Steve McQueen, Sidney Poitier. So having this opportunity to not just tie it to a film and make it more of an extended conversation. Since the pandemic, we haven’t gone back to that model yet, but I think it allows for something more in-depth.
I particularly love your opening night choice of The Piano Lesson. August Wilson's connection to this city is pretty deep.
That was something we were thinking about when we saw it. Whether it’s the Goodman Theatre or the Court Theatre—I think the Goodman played the entire Cycle, first in Chicago—and the Court continues to showcase Wilson’s work. So thinking about that and Chicago being a theater town, we do have an ongoing relationship with Steppenwolf and how interconnected we are with theater companies, especially on the acting front. The theater and film communities are tied together.
And we love the idea of opening with a first feature because the history of the festival has been about discovery and presenting first films of directors who go on to become household names and are celebrated auteurs. We saw this and were really blown away by the direction and the performances. And we found out later that it’s co-written by Virgil Williams, who’s a Chicagoan, and Virgil will be coming in as well. When we saw what seemed like such a natural opening night for us, it’s a great film, which is the first reason, but then we have all of these other reasons that it felt like a great fit.
You’re also screening a handful of restorations this year…
The Spook Who Sat by the Door, last year was the 50th anniversary of the film, and we started talks with them then, but they hadn’t finished the restoration yet, so we postponed until this year, which was really great to fit in with our anniversary year. We’ll have three of the actors in attendance, which is really exciting, and director Ivan Dixon and Sam Greenlee’s daughters will be there. That same day, we’re showing the world premiere of the restoration of Save the Children, directed by Stan Lathan, which is a very Chicago film, recently referred to as Chicago’s Summer of Soul, an amazing concert documentary but not just that, with so many shots of Black Chicago in the 1970s. It has barely been seen and has a lure of its own.
Then we have Compensation, which had been getting more and more attention even before the restoration, and we’ll have the director [Zeinabu Irene Davis) and one of the actors in attendance. All three films are really interesting pieces of Chicago history.
And then you also have this screening of The Package, which is not usually the Andrew Davis-directed film that people screen, but I love that you’re not playing the obvious choice.
When we were talking to him about the possibility of presenting something—and we should mention that he has a novel that’s about to be published—he’s been such a part of our history and important to the history of film in Chicago. So when we were talking to him about the novel, he said the inspiration for it was his own film The Package. And you’re right, it’s not the go-to film for him, but The Fugitive is often played in Chicago, so we thought it might be a nice opportunity to play one of his films that is less seen but that is also directly connected with what he’s doing right now.
And speaking of Chicago filmmakers, you have Robert Zemeckis coming in once again for Closing Night.
Yeah, and thinking of his connection with the festival, starting in the early 1970s, we showed a number of his short films and student shorts as well. This will be the third festival in which the Closing Night film is from Robert Zemeckis. It felt like the right way to bookend the festival with something that is so closely tied to the festival’s history. And it’s not just that we’ve shown so many of his films, but he’s a Chicagoan as well.
I don’t think Marielle Heller has any Chicago connections, but how did you land on Nightbitch for your Centerpiece selection?
I feel recently we’ve been leaning into cheekier films for Centerpiece, and Nightbitch fits right into that, like last year we had Saltburn. It’s provocative, but in interesting and good ways.
I noticed that almost all the films you have as a Special Presentation are from filmmakers whose work you’ve featured before. I don’t know if that’s intentional or you all have been doing this so long, it’s inevitable.
I think it’s that. We’re always tracking filmmakers, especially if we have a long history with them. That’s not necessarily intentional, but it is a result of the history of the festival.
So as far as your annual under-the-radar picks, where would you like to begin?
We can do a couple from different categories. It’s not under the radar, but The Seed of the Sacred Fig from Mohammad Rasoulof is here. We’ve shown several of his films, and he’s already won three awards with us over the years, so it’s always nice to bring back an award-winning filmmaker in the competition, but it’s an incredibly strong film. The backdrop of the first half of the film is set in Tehran and then it moves outside the city for the second half. It’s a really interesting domestic drama that has social unrest in Tehran as the backdrop, which causes the instigating incident, which is a handgun that’s gone missing.
Another one in our International Competition is a world premiere of Suçuarana, which is a mystical road movie. This young woman with only a photograph that she knows is connected to her dead mother sets out in search of this mystical land Suçuarana. It’s about the journey and the people she meets as she’s looking for a place and looking for herself and ways to feel connected to the world.
I would also mention Vermiglio, which is by Italian filmmaker Maura Delpero, whose first film we showed in our New Directors Competition; this is her second feature, which won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival. It’s a period film set at the end of World War II in the Italian Alps in this remote community, which is as much about the options for young women were in that setting, but as the war starts to infringe on where they live, how that impacts their lives.
Another one from one of my favorite filmmakers in recent years is Runar Runarsson’s When the Light Breaks. We showed two of his films already, and this is showing in our International Feature Film Competition. It’s centered around a group of young people who have a tragedy in their lives and how do you come to terms with the cycle of life. There’s always this deep emotional core to his works, but they’re also shot really beautifully.
If we’re talking about new directors, I think it’s important to call out filmmakers who have had shorts with us before and won awards at the festival in previous editions, such as Maxime Jean-Baptiste’s Listen to the Voices, set in French Guiana and about this young man who is back in French Guiana after living in Paris, and connecting to family and culture. Specifically, he lost an uncle to violence, and so he has to understand the cycle of violence and how to use things like art and music to overcome that. There are documentary elements as well that bolsters the narrative.
Another one is that is wonderful and cringy and delightful is Peacock. Bernhard Wenger is an Austrian filmmaker whose shorts we’ve had in the past at the festival. There’s an offbeat sensibility to it that reminds me of I’m Your Man, but with no robots. This one is about a man who's available as a Rent-a-Friend.
Whoever you need this person to be, whether it’s a cultured boyfriend or perfect son or whatever you need, this young man is available to be rented to play a role. But it also asks questions about us all performing in our lives. If you’re always playing a role, what is the core essence of you?
Another one I’d like to point out is Rita by Paz Vega, which I found incredibly touching. One of the things that makes it work is its emotional core; it’s a personal story. It’s a story of domestic violence told from the point of view of a 7-year-old, watching it unfold around her.
Jason Park’s Transplant—Jason is a native Chicagoan, and this is his directorial debut. Someone called it Whiplash meets Grey’s Anatomy. It’s a thrilling coming-of-age story doctor intern.
Another unique entry we have is directed by Valeria Golino, The Art of Joy. It’s not her debut, but it is an adaptation of a novel that, when it was written, from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, it couldn’t be published because it was too scandalous. But it’s being celebrated more recently in Italy. It’s a two-part film, and you have to settle into the length of it. You feel that there’s immersive world you enter and lose yourself in the story.
I know you think all I care about is the After Dark films, but I was schooled in documentaries. What’s good in that section?
Mistress Dispeller, which explores this occupation of mistress dispeller, someone who would be hired to break-up a relationship. She’s hired to go in and make sure a relationship is not successful to preserve the family.
Wishing on a Star is really unique, probably the most comedic one we have this year, even though the work that is being represented is taken very seriously, but there is a lightness to it. It’s about an Italian woman who’s an astrologer, and clients go to her looking for love. So she reads the stars and figures out where they need to go on their birthday to find love.
As far as our politically leaning documentaries, we have The Last Republican, about Adam Kinzinger, from director Steve Pink, who will be here. He’s an Evanstonian, and not typically a documentary filmmaker, but the film is really unique because of the relationship Steve develops with Adam. Steve is a left-leaning liberal, but they get along surprisingly well.
We also have Ernest Cole: Lost and Found, which is a great photography documentary about someone who was celebrated for his work in documenting racial injustice in his time and slipped into his work and get into bringing back his work and his life story.
Our Outlook program is very strong this year. We have a film called Cabo Negro, a Moroccan film by a first-time feature director, by celebrated author Abdellah Taïa. It tells the story of the two young queer Moroccans who are invited to a wealthy American’s villa, and they get there and he’s nowhere to be seen. In this unusual context, you get to see what it’s like to live on the edge of society.
Four Mothers is a great Irish comedy about another author who is having great success with one of his novels. And right when there are all of these publicity opportunities and a tour of the US, he also has this strong sense of responsibility to take care of his mother. His friends understand that he’s devoted to her, and they decide they’re all going to head out to this Spanish island and dump all of their mothers on him.
That’s a solid list. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk.
Thanks, Steve.
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