The Art of the Director: Industry (Bong Joon-ho & Alejandro González Iñárritu)

Digging Deeper: The Art of the Director series (April – June)

Our Digging Deeper Spring sessions form a three-part series called “The Art of the Director,” exploring different ways to consider the work that goes into directing a film, especially for our most accomplished and adventurous artists. Audiences will gain new vantage points on some filmmakers they know and also bring new questions and contexts to lots of different movies we watch as the year unfolds.

The Art of the Director: Industry

Sustaining a film career often depends on national and industrial contexts beyond the director’s control. Yet part of the artistry involves working smartly within those structures, shaping stories and aesthetics that resonate with national moods, and even showing how those broad patterns show up in people’s daily lives. We’ll explore these ideas through two major auteurs who rose to prominence at low moments for their countries’ economies and film cultures but turned those hardships into creative advantages.

Recommended viewing: for González Iñárritu, the Chicago International Film Festival Gold Hugo-winning Amores perros (2000); for Bong, either of two Chicago International Film Festival favorites, The Host (2006) or Parasite (2019).

Please note: The discussion ticket does not include a ticket to screen the films.