![Two young women and a girl lay in the middle of a grassy field laughing and smiling with each other.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_ParadiseisBurning1_1200x600.jpg)
Paradise is Burning Paradiset Brinner
Synopsis
In a working-class Swedish neighborhood, 16-year-old Laura cares for her two younger sisters, left on their own by an absent mother. For the trio and their friends, summer is wild, indulgent, and anarchic, full of ritual and mischief. But when social services schedules a meeting with their mother — who is nowhere to be found — Laura must find someone to step in or the girls risk being separated in foster care. Keeping the impending threat a secret from her sisters creates a palpable tension and conflict, sending each of them on an individual journey of discovery and connection. As the meeting with social services draws nearer, the boundaries of the girls’ radical freedom are tested by the harsh realities of growing up.
Echoing the chaotic freedom of films like The Florida Project, Mika Gustafson’s striking fiction debut is as bold as it is tender, a refreshingly forthright coming-of-age story and an intimate portrait of sisterhood.
Screenings & Events
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Media
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_ParadiseisBurning1_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_ParadiseisBurning2_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_ParadiseisBurning3_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
Film Credits
- Nima Yousefi, Marco Valerio Fusco, Micaela Fusco, Maria Stevnbak Westergren, Venla Hellstedt, Jenni Jauri
- Mika Gustafson, Alex Öhrstrand
- Anders Skov
- Sine Vadstrup Brooker
- Bianca Delbravo, Dilvin Asaad, Safira Mossberg, Ida Engvoll, Mitja Siren
- Giorgio Giampà
- Hobab, Intramovies, Toolbox Films, Tuffi Films
- https://www.intramovies.com/production/paradise-is-burning/
Sponsors
International Competition Program Sponsor
John and Jacolyn Bucksbaum Family Foundation
![A man in the passanger seat of a car looks backwards over his shoulder past camera.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_PetShopDays1_1200x600.jpg)
Synopsis
In an act of desperation, impulsive black sheep Alejandro (Dario Yazbek Bernal) flees his home in Mexico. On the run from his unforgiving father, Alejandro ends up in New York City. There, he meets Jack, a pet store worker whose own, similarly wealthy family life is fracturing after his father (Willem Dafoe) betrayed his mother (Emmanuelle Seigner). Together, the two young men enter a whirlwind romance, sending them into a dead-end world of passion, drugs, and depravity.
With Pet Shop Days, first-time feature director Olmo Schnabel, son of artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel, has crafted a gritty throwback to American independent cinema. (No wonder Martin Scorsese signed on as an executive producer.) Imbued with raw emotion and propulsive pacing, and led by an explosive performance by Yazbek Bernal (Gael’s half-brother) as the wild and wounded Alejandro, Pet Shop Days is a riveting portrait of lost young men in search of connection.
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Media
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_PetShopDays1_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_PetShopDays2_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
Film Credits
- Galen Core, Alex Coco, Francesco Melzi d’Eril, Gabriele Moratti, Marie Savare de Laitre
- Jack Irv, Olmo Schnabel, Galen Core
- Sophie Corra
- Hunter Zimny
- Jack Irv, Darío Yazbek Bernal, Willem Dafoe, Peter Sarsgaard, Maribel Verdú, Jordi Mollà, Camille Rowe, Emmanuelle Seigner, Louis Cancelmi
- Eli Keszler
- Giovanni Corrado, Raffaella Viscardi, Moreno Zani, Malcom Pagani, Renato Ragosta, Livio Strazzera, Theo Niarchos, Aimone Ripa Di Meana, PJ Van Sandwijk, Peter Brant Jr., Michel Franco, Reka Posta, Jeremy O. Harris, Martin Scorsese
- TWIN, MeMo Films, Storyteller Productions, Tenderstories, 3 Marys Entertainment, ELA Films
![Within a maze, a man on a ladder leans over a hedge.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_AfterWork1_1200x600.jpg)
After Work
Synopsis
In his wry and insightful new film, Festival alum Erik Gandini (Videocracy, The Swedish Theory of Love) chronicles the past, present, and future of labor. We meet today’s workaholics — a hilarious American motivational speaker; a tragic South Korean office worker — as well as those on the opposite end of the spectrum. These include grossly underemployed young Italians and ordinary Kuwaiti citizens who receive hefty paychecks for sitting in offices doing nothing.
After Work asks big questions: When A.I. and robots take over the global workforce, what is the fate of human industry? Is the promise of universal basic income a blessing or a curse? The film offers few answers, instead using touches of humor, memorable characters, and evocative cinematic images to create an intoxicating and provocative exploration of humanity’s relationship with work, how our jobs define us, and what happens when they’re gone.
Screenings & Events
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Media
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_AfterWork1_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_AfterWork2_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_AfterWork3_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
Film Credits
- Jesper Kurlandsky
- Johan Söderberg
- Fredrik Wenzel
- Johan Söderberg
- Fasad Production AB
Sponsors
Documentary Program Sponsors
Cynthia Stone Raskin
![A black and white image. Illimunated by a single bright light, a man sits in front of a ham radio.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_AlienIsland1_1200x600.jpg)
![A black and white image. Illimunated by a single bright light, a man sits in front of a ham radio.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_AlienIsland1_1200x600.jpg)
Alien Island Isla Alien
Synopsis
Chile, 1984. As a wave of UFO sightings — and a military dictatorship — sweep the country, a group of short-wave radio operators receive mysterious communications from a nearby island. Through the crackling voices, they learn that a highly developed extraterrestrial race has taken residence on Friendship Island and is offering the listeners the promise of a better world.
Mixing shimmering, Twilight Zone-esque black-and-white sci-fi reenactments with lucid archival footage, this stranger-than-fiction story of supernatural intrigue follows both the citizens swept up in the mystery and Ernesto de La Fuente, the enigmatic man at its center. Uniquely stylized, utterly fascinating, and sharply witty, Alien Island goes beyond a tale of close encounters to reveal a far more insidious story of lies, accountability, and political oppression.
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_AlienIsland-poster_600x900.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_AlienIsland-poster_600x900.jpg)
Screenings & Events
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Media
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_AlienIsland1_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_AlienIsland1_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_AlienIsland2_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_AlienIsland2_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_AlienIsland3_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_AlienIsland3_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
Film Credits
- Diego Breit Lira
- Cristóbal Valenzuela, Juan Eduardo Murillo
- Juan Eduardo Murillo
- Matías Illane
- Ernesto de la Fuente
- Jorge Cabargas
- Diego Breit Lira
- Glaciar Films, Tico Film Company
- https://www.islaalien.com
Sponsors
Documentary Program Sponsors
![A young man with glasses glares straight ahead. His face is sweaty and battered.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_CarnalSins1_1200x600.jpg)
![A young man with glasses glares straight ahead. His face is sweaty and battered.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_CarnalSins1_1200x600.jpg)
Synopsis
Nino, a gay teen from a deeply religious family, is the continual target of homophobic attacks by the neighborhood boys. His parents decide to temporarily move the family to a pious village in the countryside, where the legend of the Almamula — a monster that haunts the forest waiting to take those who commit impure acts — frightens the community’s youth into hushed submission. Amidst the summer heat, Nino’s desires and impulses are unignorable, and he finds himself seeking out temptation and sin. To escape from a reality rife with repression and hypocrisy, Nino willingly succumbs to the mysteries of the forest.
A rich and seductive fable, Carnal Sins is a darkly stunning first feature from Juan Sebastián Torales that blurs the borders of fantasy and reality, religion and myth.
Screenings & Events
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Media
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_CarnalSins1_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_CarnalSins1_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_CarnalSins2_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_CarnalSins2_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_CarnalSins3_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_CarnalSins3_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
Film Credits
- Lorena Quevedo, Edgard Tenembaum
- Juan Sebastián Torales
- Juan Sebastián Torales
- Ezequiel Salinas
- Nicolás Díaz, Martina Grimaldi, María Soldi, Cali Coronel, and Adrián Ramallo
- Matteo Locasciulli
- Bendita Films
- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11488252/