![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.
Screenings & Events
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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
![A child in a snowsuit lays down on a snowy hill surrouded by people going up and down with sleds.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_OccupiedCity1_1200x600.jpg)
![A child in a snowsuit lays down on a snowy hill surrouded by people going up and down with sleds.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_OccupiedCity1_1200x600.jpg)
Occupied City
Synopsis
The past collides with our precarious present in Steve McQueen’s bravura documentary Occupied City. From the streets of Amsterdam, McQueen creates two interlocking portraits: a vivid journey through the last years of pandemic and protest, and a door-to-door excavation of the Nazi occupation that still haunts his adopted city. What emerges is both devastating and life-affirming, an expansive meditation on memory, time, and where we’re headed.
Screenings & Events
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Film Credits
- Floor Onrust, Steve McQueen, Anna Smith-Tenser, Bianca Stigter
- Bianca Stigter
- Xander Nijsten, Steve McQueen
- Lennert Hillege N.S.C.
- Oliver Coates
Sponsors
Film Supporters
Robert and Penelope Steiner Family Foundation
![A woman in an orange polo and red shorts strides confidently through a courtyard. Two women watch from behind her.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_ClubZero1_1200x600.jpg)
![A woman in an orange polo and red shorts strides confidently through a courtyard. Two women watch from behind her.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_ClubZero1_1200x600.jpg)
Club Zero
Synopsis
Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner (Little Joe) returns to the director’s chair with a provocative thriller out of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland, Crimson Peak) stars as Ms. Novak, a nutrition teacher at an elite prep school whose dogma of “conscious eating” quickly devolves into cult-like conformity for a group of seven teens. By the time their parents realize how extreme this so-called “Club Zero” has become, it may be too late to break Ms. Novak’s spell over her students.
A mannered, impeccably constructed combination of dry satire and gross-out body horror, Club Zero takes aim at Instagram “wellness” culture and social conformity. A typically controversial statement from an iconoclastic director, it’s bound to be the one of the most talked-about films at this year’s Festival.
Screenings & Events
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Media
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_ClubZero1_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_ClubZero1_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_ClubZero2_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_ClubZero2_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
Film Credits
- Philippe Bober, Mike Goodridge, Johannes Schubert, Bruno Wagner
- Jessica Hausner, Géraldine Bajard
- Karina Ressler
- Martin Gschlacht
- Mia Wasikowska, Sidse Babett Knudsen
- Markus Binder
- Barth Brosseau, Kristin Irving, Alex C. Lo, Eva Yates, Vladimir Zemtsov
- Coop99 filmproduktion and Coproduction Office, Coproduction Office Ltd., Essential Films, Parisienne de Production, Paloma Productions, Gold Rush Films, Cinema Inutile, Austrian Film Institute, BBC Film, FISA - Film Industry Support Austria, ORF Film/Fernseh – Abkommen, Eurimages - Council of Europe, Vienna Film Fund, Gold Rush Pictures, ZDF/Arte, Arte France Cinéma, Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg, Doha Film Institute, TRT Sinema, The Danish Film Institute, DR, Film Funding Lower Austria, Obala Art Centar, CNC, Aide au Cinéma du Monde, Institut Français
![A man and woman smile while clinking glasses, as they focus on the man facing them.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_AllofUsStrangers1_1200x600.jpg)
![A man and woman smile while clinking glasses, as they focus on the man facing them.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_AllofUsStrangers1_1200x600.jpg)
All of Us Strangers
Synopsis
One night in his near-empty tower block in contemporary London, Adam (Andrew Scott) has a chance encounter with a mysterious neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal), which punctures the rhythm of his everyday life. As a relationship develops between them, Adam is preoccupied with memories of the past and finds himself drawn back to the suburban town where he grew up, and the childhood home where his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell), appear to be living — just as they were on the day they died, 30 years before.
Screenings & Events
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Media
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_AllofUsStrangers1_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_AllofUsStrangers1_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_AllofUsStrangers2_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_AllofUsStrangers2_1200x600-1024x512.jpg)
Film Credits
- Graham Broadbent, Peter Czernin, Sarah Harvey
- Andrew Haigh
- Jonathan Alberts, ACE
- Jamie D. Ramsay, SASC
- Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell, Claire Foy
- Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch
- Diarmuid Mckeown, Ben Knight, Ollie Madden, Daniel Battsek, Farhana Bhula
- Andrew Haigh
Sponsors
Film Supporters
Bill Melamed and Jamey Lundblad
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![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/ss23_NowhereSpecial_1200x600.jpg)
![](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/ss23_NowhereSpecial_1200x600.jpg)
Nowhere Special
Synopsis
Thirty-five-year-old window cleaner and single father John has dedicated his life to raising his son. Given only a few months to live, he traverses Belfast, visiting homes of the working class and wealthy alike. He has a singular goal: to find the perfect family to raise his toddler Michael. How can he carry out this impossible task? Inspired by true events in the UK, Nowhere Special is a tender tale of pure love, profound heartbreak, and parenthood.