The Return
Synopsis
After 20 years away, Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) washes up on the shores of Ithaca, haggard and unrecognizable. The king has returned from the Trojan War, but much has changed in his kingdom. His beloved wife Penelope (Juliette Binoche) is a prisoner in her own home, hounded by suitors vying to be king. Their son Telemachus faces death at the hands of these suitors, who see him as an obstacle to their pursuit of the kingdom. Odysseus is also no longer the mighty warrior from years past, but he must rediscover his strength in order to win back all that he has lost.
Starring a forceful Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus and a sublime Juliette Binoche as Penelope — 25 years after their Oscar-winning collaboration The English Patient — The Return transforms Homer’s famous Greek epic into a classic tale of Shakespearean intrigue, fueled by great passions, cunning political machinations, and extraordinary violence.
In Focus: Italy on Screen
This film is part of the 60th Chicago International Film Festival’s In Focus: Italy on Screen collection, celebrating Italian cinema by harkening back to the best of the country’s filmmaking traditions while showcasing vibrant new work.
Screenings & Events
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Media
Film Credits
- Uberto Pasolini, James Clayton, Roberto Sessa, Kostantinos Kontovrakis
- John Collee, Edward Bond, Uberto Pasolini
- David Charap
- Marius Panduru R.S.C.
- Juliette Binoche, Ralph Fiennes, Charlie Plummer, Marwan Kenzari, Claudio Santamaria, Ángela Molina
- Rachel Portman
- Ralph Fiennes, Giorgos Karnavas, Torsten Poeck, Andrew Karpen, Kent Sanderson, Nicholas Sandler, Keith Kehoe
- Picomedia, Rai Cinema, Heretic, Ithaca Films, Kabo Productions, Marvelous Productions, Redwave Films
- https://bleeckerstreetmedia.com/the-return
Sponsors
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On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
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On an empty road in the middle of the night, Shula stumbles across her uncle’s dead body. As funeral proceedings begin around them, she and her cousins bring to light the buried secrets of their middle-class Zambian family in filmmaker Rungano Nyoni’s surreal and vibrant reckoning with the lies we tell ourselves.
Blending dark comedy with poetic realism, Nyoni critiques the traditional expectation to bury pain with the dead as a family of women refuses to feign grief. Featuring a striking visual style and haunting sound design, the film culminates in a defiant protest against silence and denial, suggesting that memory and truth will always endure.
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Film Credits
- Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Tim Cole
- Rungano Nyoni
- Nathan Nugent
- David Gallego ADFC
- Susan Chardy, Elizabeth Chisela, Henry B.J. Phiri
- Lucrecia Dalt
- Element Pictures, BBC Film, Fremantle, A24
Sponsors
Black Perspectives Program Sponsor
International Competition Program Patron
Jacolyn and John Bucksbaum Family Foundation
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Life and Other Problems Livet og andre problemer
Synopsis
When a juvenile giraffe named Marius was euthanized by the Copenhagen Zoo a decade ago, the decision sparked an international outcry. But filmmaker Max Kestner was more intrigued than flabbergasted, and uses the provocative incident as a launching pad for this wry and provocative essay film about life, death, biology, genetics, human and animal consciousness, and, well, just about everything else.
Jumping around the planet for a plethora of fascinating interviews — including Italian microbiologist Donato Giovannelli and Oxford veterinarian Charles Foster, who lives as a wolf to better understand them — the film explores the nature of life at a brisk pace, mixing the massive and the microscopic with the existential and the scientific using the lightest of touches. (The Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize?” makes for a memorable framing device.) Fascinating and funny, Life and Other Problems delves into the quandaries of existence while offering no single solution.
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Media
Film Credits
- Vibeke Vogel
- Max Kestner
- Michael Aaglund
- Maria Von Hauswolff, Sturla Brandt Grøvlen, Max Kestner
- Karen Lloyd, Bengt Holst, Charles Foster, Sheldrake Brothers, Sam Watts, Michael Levin
- Maxwell Sterling
- Bullitt Film
- https://www.bullittfilm.dk
Sponsors
Documentary Program Partner
Documentary Program Patron
Cynthia Stone Raskin
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Harvest
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.
Screenings & Events
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Film Credits
- Rebecca O’Brien, Joslyn Barnes, Michael Weber, Viola Fügen, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Marie-Elena Dyche
- Joslyn Barnes, Athina Rachel Tsangari
- Matt Johnson, Nico Leunen
- Sean Price-Williams
- Caleb Landry Jones, Harry Melling, Rosy McEwen, Arinzé Kene, Thalissa Teixeira
- Nicolas Becker, Ian Hassett, Caleb Landry Jones, Lexx
- Harvest Film Limited
- https://www.the-match-factory.com/catalogue/films/harvest.html
Sponsors
International Competition Program Patron
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Hard Truths
Synopsis
For his 23rd film, legendary British filmmaker Mike Leigh returns to the stark domestic dramas he’s known for, like his 1971 feature debut Bleak Moments (a ChicagoIFF Gold Hugo winner) and his blistering, Cannes-winning 1993 breakthrough Naked. Reunited with Leigh for the first time since his 1996 multiple Oscar nominee Secrets and Lies, the astonishing Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy, a woman wracked by fear, tormented by afflictions, and prone to raging tirades against her husband, son, and anyone who looks her way. In stark contrast, Pansy’s easygoing younger sister Michele is a single mother whose family life and hair salon are brimming with warmth.
Fierce, compassionate, and often darkly humorous, Hard Truths takes us into the intensities of kinship, duty, and the most enduring of human mysteries: that even through lifetimes of hurt and hardship, we still find ways to love those we call family.
Screenings & Events
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Media
Film Credits
- Georgina Lowe
- Mike Leigh
- Tania Reddin
- Dick Pope BSC
- Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Michele Austin, David Webber, Tuwaine Barrett, Ani Nelson, Sophia Brown, Jonathan Livingstone
- Gary Yershon
- Richard Kondal, Jennifer Eriksson, Alison Thompson, Mark Gooder, Andrew Karpen, Kent Sanderson, Javier Méndez, Javier Pons, Ollie Madden, Daniel Battsek, Gail Egan
- Cornerstone, Film4, Mediapro, Thin Man Films, Creativity Media
- https://bleeckerstreetmedia.com/hard-truths
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