Given the current recommendation to stay home and practice social distancing, we at the Chicago International Film Festival are looking at past selections from each year of the Festival that you can stream now from home. Stream our past selections as we look forward to the 56th Chicago International Film Festival this October 14-25, 2020.

Today’s #56Films entry won the Gold Plaque at the 13th Chicago International Film Festival in 1977 and comes recommended by Senior Programmer Anthony Kaufman.

---

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK

Director: Peter Weir

Set at the turn of the 20th Century, Australian filmmaker Peter Weir’s hypnotic and haunting 1975 feature concerns a group of female college students who go missing on a St. Valentine’s Day outing. But what sounds like a description for a horror film is a far more amorphous and moody journey into the mysteries of the natural landscape and the repressive mores of traditional Victorian society. Enigmatic, enticing, and lushly photographed, this hallmark of the Australian New Wave and winner of a Gold Plaque at the 13^th Chicago International Film Festival is the kind of bold film that refuses easy answers. – Anthony Kaufman, Senior Programmer

Streaming Details:
Picnic at Hanging Rock is streaming now on The Criterion Channel and available for digital rental.