![A girl in a warm hooded coat leads a horse by the bridle.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheEcho1_1200x600.jpg)
The Echo El Eco
Synopsis
In the small rural Mexican village of El Eco, a teenage girl, Montse, dutifully works alongside her family, caring for the sheep and her grandmother with the same sense of curiosity and devotion. While frost and drought punish the land, she learns the ways of life and death. As in her auspicious fiction feature Prayers for the Stolen, with this lyrical coming-of-age docu-fable acclaimed Mexican-Salvadorean filmmaker Tatiana Huezo beautifully captures both the preciousness of adolescence and the region’s unforgiving elements.
Exquisitely textured and deeply empathetic, The Echo unfolds like a dream, shifting between the sweet and the dark. In sumptuous, vivid images, Hueso observes how children’s lives in these hardscrabble towns mirror those of their parents and grandparents in a generational cycle of struggle and hope.
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheEcho-poster_600x900.jpg)
Screenings & Events
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Media
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheEcho1_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
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![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheEcho3_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
Film Credits
- Tatiana Huezo, Dalia Reyes
- Tatiana Huezo
- Lucrecia Gutiérrez (AMEE), Tatiana Huezo
- Ernesto Pardo
- Montserrat Hernández Hernández, Luz María Vázquez González, Sarahí Rojas Hernández, María de los Ángeles Pacheco Tapia
- Leonardo Heiblum, Jacobo Lieberman
- Maya Scherr-Willson
- Radiola films
- https://lineup.the-match-factory.digital/berlinale-23/the-echo
Sponsors
Documentary Program Sponsors
Cynthia Stone Raskin
![A woman and two men sit in a dimly lit dining hall, having a meal. A Christmas tree stands behind them.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheHoldovers1_1200x600.jpg)
The Holdovers
Synopsis
Nobody likes teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) — not his students, not his fellow faculty, and not the headmaster, who all find his pomposity and rigidity exasperating. With no family and nowhere to go over the Christmas holiday in 1970, Paul is forced to remain at school to supervise students who are also unable to go home. After a few days, only one holdover remains — a trouble-making 15-year-old named Angus (Dominic Sessa), a good student whose bad behavior threatens to get him expelled. Joining Paul and Angus is head cook Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), an African-American woman whose son was recently lost in Vietnam.
In his latest film, Alexander Payne, the Oscar-winning writer-director of The Descendants and Sideways, goes back to the ’70s of his youth, telling a nostalgic and comedic story of three very different shipwrecked people who together learn they are not beholden to their past, but can choose their own futures.
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Media
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheHoldovers1_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheHoldovers2_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheHoldovers3_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
Film Credits
- Mark Johnson, P.G.A., Bill Block, David Hemingson
- David Hemingson
- Kevin Tent, ACE
- Eigil Bryld
- Paul Giamatti, Da'vine Joy Randolph, Dominic Sessa
- Mark Orton
- Andrew Golov, Thom Zadra, Chris Stinson
- Miramax, Gran Via Production
- https://www.focusfeatures.com/the-holdovers
Sponsors
Comedy Program Sponsor
![A couple sits side-by-side on a blue couch.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheHypnosis1_1200x600.jpg)
![A couple sits side-by-side on a blue couch.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheHypnosis1_1200x600.jpg)
The Hypnosis Hypnosen
Synopsis
This incisive, quick-witted, and cringe-inducing satire opens with André and Vera on the cusp of a business breakthrough. Invited to pitch their app concept at an international workshop for young entrepreneurs, the Swedish duo begins to feverishly prepare. Then, days before the event, Vera books a session with a hypnotherapist in hopes that it will help her quit smoking. Now, she’s suddenly cigarette-free and has a new outlook on life — one that is completely free of social inhibitions. As their big moment approaches, André begins to worry.
This delightfully awkward sendup of modern entrepreneurial culture is an ironic, open-hearted look at what it means to be your authentic self in the face of societal expectations.
Screenings & Events
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Media
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheHypnosis1_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
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![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheHypnosis2_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheHypnosis2_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheHypnosis3_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheHypnosis3_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
Film Credits
- Mimmi Spång
- Mads Stegger, Ernst De Geer
- Robert Krantz
- Jonathan Bjerstedt
- Asta Kamma August, Herbert Nordrum, Andrea Edwards, David Fukamachi Regnfors, Moa Niklasson, Simon Rajala, Aviva Wrede, Alexandra Zetterberg Ehn, Kristina Braden Whitaker, Karin de Frumerie, Julien Combes
- Peder Kjellsby
- Garagefilm International AB, Film I Väst AB, Mer Film AS, Totem Atelier
Sponsors
New Directors Program Sponsors
Robert and Penelope Steiner Family Foundation
Comedy Program Sponsor
![A mysterious man wearing a hat and leather gloves, looks through a monocular at an unseen view in Paris, France.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheKiller1_1200x600.jpg)
![A mysterious man wearing a hat and leather gloves, looks through a monocular at an unseen view in Paris, France.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheKiller1_1200x600.jpg)
The Killer
Synopsis
After a fateful miss, an assassin (Michael Fassbender) battles his employers, and himself, on an international manhunt he insists isn’t personal. Working with the efficiency and expediency of a lifelong professional—while listening to The Smiths’ greatest hits to keep him focused–the unnamed killer crisscrosses the world, from Paris to the Dominican Republic, New Orleans to Florida, and New York finally to Chicago, to tie up any and all loose ends.
In his latest film, award-winning director David Fincher (The Social Network, Gone Girl), operating at the same high level of precision and skill as his protagonist, crafts a sleek and witty thriller about murder, routine, and one man’s obsessive attention to detail. Featuring a bewitching cameo by Tilda Swinton and a pulsating get-under-your-skin soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails duo Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, The Killer is a cool and clever demonstration of genre filmmaking from a master of the form.
Screenings & Events
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![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheKiller1_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheKiller1_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheKiller2_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheKiller2_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheKiller3_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheKiller3_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
Film Credits
- Ceán Chaffin, p.g.a.
- Andrew Kevin Walker
- Michael Fassbender, Charles Parnell, Arliss Howard, Sophie Charlotte, Tilda Swinton
![A woman in a red swimsuit smiles as she stares at something. Behind her, the vast blue ocean glistens in the sunlight.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheLoveStoriesofLivS1_1200x600.jpg)
![A woman in a red swimsuit smiles as she stares at something. Behind her, the vast blue ocean glistens in the sunlight.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheLoveStoriesofLivS1_1200x600.jpg)
The Love Stories of Liv S. Les histoires d'amour de Liv S.
Synopsis
A reconstruction of a life through a series of encounters, this decades-spanning portrait of one woman’s romantic history from girlhood crush to middle-life heartbreak investigates the joy and pain of partnership. Liv, a filmmaker and the lead singer of a post-punk band, drifts through a cycle of love and separation, in search of someone or something — even she can’t grasp what, exactly — with a sense of optimism and self-aware irony.
Vulnerable, playful, and honest, this offbeat rom-com oozes with charisma in its montage and mise-en-scène, and is buoyed by original glitter-grunge music. But, much like the character of Liv herself, the delightful, wry exterior of this confessional film belies an inner depth that plumbs questions of intimacy, compatibility, and connection without the promise of answers or resolutions.
Screenings & Events
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Media
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheLoveStoriesofLivS1_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheLoveStoriesofLivS1_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheLoveStoriesofLivS2_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheLoveStoriesofLivS2_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheLoveStoriesofLivS3_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_TheLoveStoriesofLivS3_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
Film Credits
- Aline Schmid and Adrian Blaser
- Anna Luif, Marie Fourquet
- Nicolas Hislaire
- Timon Schäppi
- Agnès Delachair, Marie Fontannaz, Jean-Christophe Folly, Baptiste Gilliéron, Andranic Manet, François Neycken, Dimitri Stapfer, Antonin Schopfer, Rémi Fortin, Rebecca Bonvin
- Balz Bachmann
- Beauvoir Films
- https://www.love-film.ch