Synopsis

Iconoclastic French filmmaker Leos Carax (Holy Motors, ChicagoIFF 2012 Gold Hugo winner) reflects on his work and life in this personal cinematic essay. Nodding to the late style of New Wave master Jean-Luc Godard, whose voice can be heard on the soundtrack, the film assembles footage from Carax’s work and situates it within the broader history of cinema. Originally commissioned for an exhibition hosted by Paris’s Pompidou Center, the museum asked the auteur to respond to a simple question: “Where are you at, Leos Carax?”

No subject is off limits, no idea too small or large. The result is a dazzling, playful masterpiece of freely associative montage that includes everything from nostalgic film clips to heartbreaking voicemail recordings to ecstatic spectacles of dancing puppets. Essential viewing for fans and newcomers alike. Just be sure to stay for the post-credits sequence.

Synopsis

Rio de Janeiro, early 1970s. The Paivas family lives under the tightening grip of Brazil’s military dictatorship. Rubens is a former politician, and his wife Eunice (Fernanda Montenegro) is devoted to their five children. They live an enchanted life by the beach surrounded by friends and family, and their humor and affection appear to be their only forms of resistance to the increasing oppression that surrounds them — until the day a violent and arbitrary act changes their lives forever.

In his first fiction film since 2012’s On the Road, the acclaimed director of Central Station and The Motorcycle Diaries delivers another powerful political and human drama about his home country, lead by a stunning performance from Central Station star Fernanda Montenegro as the matriarch who must reinvent herself to carve out a new destiny for her family. A gripping tale of Brazil’s dark history, I’m Still Here marks a forceful and masterfully crafted return for the Brazilian auteur.

Synopsis

The earthy tones of untamed nature, shot with stunning vibrancy by filmmaker Sean Price Williams, color a nameless medieval village somewhere in England that seems to exist out of time. A tight-knit community of villagers is suspicious of outsiders, and spend their days laboring for the generally affable landowner Charles Kent. Things begin to change when Kent’s nefarious cousin claims ownership over the land and installs plans for massive change. A cartographer is hired, maps are drawn, and the architecture of profit-driven, capitalistic agriculture begins to manifest.

Rich, textured visuals and impeccable performances create a lived-in universe that feels uncannily adjacent to our own. Unfolding over the course of a single hallucinatory week, the English-language debut of “Greek Weird Wave” godmother Athina Rachel Tsangari (Attenberg, 2010) is a breathtaking, atmospheric fable that satirizes modernity and its chaotic fallout.

Synopsis

A panoramic portrait of a patriarchal society, Happy Holidays chronicles the lives of a Palestinian family living in Israel. While studying far away from her home in Haifa, Fifi’s newfound sense of freedom is threatened when she gets into a minor car accident. Injured, but hoping to avoid confrontation with her headstrong mother, she must decide just how much to reveal to her family. Her decision creates a cascade of ripple effects, and a complex web of deceits and half-truths begins to crack the family’s foundations.

Told in four chapters, each from the perspective of a different character, the film intricately balances a bevy of narrative threads to create a swirling, kaleidoscopic drama. Featuring pitch-perfect performances and a shifting structure that subverts expectations at every turn, the film elaborates the clashing demands of tradition and progress.

Synopsis

1917. Edward, a skittish civil servant working for the British Empire, has been posted in Rangoon, Burma for years. When his fiancée Molly sends a letter announcing her imminent arrival, he experiences a sudden and debilitating case of cold feet, boards the first ship in sight, and flees the country. Learning of his escape, Molly is determined to track him down. So she embarks on an Asian grand tour, going from Bangkok to Shanghai in search of her reluctant lover. Equal parts 1930s Hollywood throwback and meditative travelog, director Miguel Gomes (The Tsugua Diaries, Chicago IFF 2020) imbues this globe-trotting love story with searching melancholy. The studio-set “colonial romance” is shot in black and white, and intercut with sumptuous color footage shot in the modern day. The result is an intoxicating mixture of fiction and documentary that ponders the past as it ruminates on our present.