Don Shanahan
Maintaining its status as North America’s longest-running competitive international film festival, the 58th Chicago International Film Festival rolls out its red carpet for some excellent Special Presentations and Spotlight features this year. In addition to the Opening Night (A Compassionate Spy), Festival Centerpiece (Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery), and Closing Night (White Noise) films that were previously reported, this year’s CIFF features in-person appearances by Darren Aronofsky, Jonathan Majors, Kathryn Hahn, Anna Diop, and more. Here’s a quick preview of the top-shelf offerings.
The Festival Centerpiece of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery from director Rian Johnson spurs a tribute to Emmy-nominated actress Kathryn Hahn. She will appear in-person at the Music Box Theatre on October 16th to receive the Career Achievement Award. Hahn joins a deep ensemble led by Daniel Craig for that hotly anticipated Netflix mystery flick.
Sarah Polley’s Women Talking, a film stirring up festival accolades, plays on Thursday, October 20th at the Music Box Theatre. The program will feature a tribute to Polley and her cinematographer Luc Montpellier receiving the Visionary Award. Starring Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey with Ben Whishaw and Frances McDormand, the film is based on the best-selling novel by Miriam Toews and follows a group of women in an isolated religious colony as they struggle to reconcile their faith with a series of sexual assaults.
The next night, Friday the 21st, at the AMC River East hub, the Chicago International Film Festival will bestow the Rising Star Award to actress Anna Diop. That ceremony will accompany a festival screening of her new film Nanny. The first horror film to win Sundance’s Grand Jury prize, Nanny is a psychological fable of displacement where Diop places a Senegal immigrant haunted by the unsettling home life of the affluent family she works for as a caretaker.
Actor Jonathan Majors will receive the Artistic Achievement Award ahead of the screening of Devotion on Saturday, October 22. Over the last several years, Majors has notched stellar performances in When We Rise, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Da 5 Bloods, Lovecraft Country, and The Harder They Fall. J.D. Dillard’s Devotion stars Majors as Jesse Brown, the first Black man in U.S. Naval history to become a fighter pilot.
In addition to Devotion and Women Talking, the other premium Special Presentation selections of the 58th Chicago International Film Festival include Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, Brendan Fraser’s award-winning turn in The Whale where director Darren Aronosfky will appear as a guest, and the new feature from Sam Mendes Empire of Light led by Oscar winners Olivia Colman and Colin Firth. Those tickets run $25 and are selling quickly.
Not far behind the Special Presentations is the Festival’s Spotlight program. Tickets for these are $20. Under this banner, you will find more hidden gem discoveries lurking behind the award season headliners everyone knows are coming. This program includes new films from esteemed filmmakers Park Chan-wook, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Stephen Frears, Sebastian Lelio, Maria Schrader, and talented performers including Nicolas Cage, Jennifer Lawrence, Ewan McGregor, Ethan Hawke, Sally Hawkins, Steve Coogan, Carey Mulligan, and Elizabeth Banks. Check out a few links below for further previews and descriptions.
Embracing international and independent films, the 58th Chicago International Film Festival also includes expansive thematic programs celebrating women in cinema, short films, new directors, documentaries, LGBTQ+ features, local Illinois and Chicago projects, Cinema/Chicago’s well-regarded Black Perspectives selections, and their niche-favorite After Dark horror discoveries. The rabbit hole for this festival is welcome, deep, and beautiful!
The films and festivities of the 58th CIFF begin Wednesday, October 12th and conclude October 23rd. Tickets are available in-person and online. Our own 25YL writers Aqib Rasheed and Don Shanahan are credentialed to cover this year’s slate. For more information, visit the Festival’s website at https://www.chicagofilmfestival.com/. Follow the Festival through these social media handles and sites:
Facebook: facebook.com/chicagofilmfestival/
Twitter: @ChiFilmFest
Instagram: @ChiFilmFest
TikTok: @ChiFilmFest
Hashtag: #ChiFilmFest
