Fingernails
Synopsis
Anna (Jessie Buckley) and Ryan (The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White) have found true love. In fact, it’s been proven by a controversial technology that tests the authenticity of romantic love between couples. While the assessment is painful — a single fingernail from each person in the relationship must be removed — a positive result is worth it for many. Entranced by this new science, Anna decides to take a job at the love institute, running workshops and testing matches. But when she meets her new colleague Amir (Riz Ahmed), it puts everything she knows empirically into question.
In his winsome and wryly surrealist English-language debut, Greek director Christos Nikou (2020 ChicagoIFF winner Apples) creates a clever, idiosyncratic allegory about our desire for certainty in love and the infallibility—and frailty—of our closest relationships.
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Media
Film Credits
- Coco Francini, Andrew Upton, Cate Blanchett, Christos Nikou, Lucas Wiesendanger
- Christos Nikou, Sam Steiner, Stavros Raptis
- Yorgos Zafeiris
- Marcel Rév
- Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, Jeremy Allen White, Luke Wilson, Annie Murphy
- Christopher Stracey
- Glen Basner, Milan Popelka, Alison Cohen, Ashley Fox, Kevin Lafferty, Jerome Duboz
- FilmNation Entertainment, Dirty Films
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Food Roots
Synopsis
Emmy Award-winning Chicago Restaurateur Billy Dec adventures through his mother’s native 7,641 Islands of the Philippines to learn recipes from his last living elders, confronting culinary and cultural treasures and family secrets.
Food Roots gives viewers the opportunity to accompany Dec by plane, boat, motorcycle, jeepney, and foot, as he searches through bustling metropolitan cities, tiny remote islands, and hidden cloud-scraping mountain villages to find his family members. He climbs a mountain to meet with a 103-year-old tribal tattoo master, where she blesses him with a tattoo related to his ancestral connection. Through the ups and downs of the trip, Dec gains a deeper understanding of his family history, along with an elevated appreciation for how food has shaped their view of the world.
Film Spotlight
Film SpotlightWe chatted with director Michele Jouse and subject Billy Dec about Food Roots, discovering one’s heritage, their favorite Chicago films, and more.
Screenings & Events
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Film Credits
- Apl.De.Ap, Ronnie del Carmen, Becky Magura, Mike McNamara,
- Marcos Durian, Chino Neri, Julian Rodriguez
- Billy Dec, Leilani Castro, Celia Bumanglag-Dec, Stacey Efstathiou, Michael Morales, Rosario Sta.Ana, Kalel Demetrio, Roberto Bumanglag, Nora Bumanglag, Lisa Leofando, Pilar Sangalang, Oscar Bumanglag, Nora Bumanglag Carasi, Apo Whang-Od
- Nathan Matthew David
- Ronnie Del Carmen, Mike McNamara, Becky Magura, Apl.de.Ap, Michele Josue
- COACT Agency
- https://www.FoodRootsFilm.com
Sponsors
Documentary Program Sponsors
Cynthia Stone Raskin
Film Sponsor
Accessibility Partner
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Green Border Zielona Granica
Synopsis
Urgent, clear-eyed, and helmed with incredible conviction, Green Border finds master filmmaker Agnieszka Holland training her camera on a real-life geopolitical crisis. Set on the border of Poland and Belarus, the film offers a glimpse into the lives of refugees fleeing to the European Union and the humanitarian activists working to help them reach safety.
When a family of Syrian asylum seekers is left stranded in the forest, a group of Belarusian border guards shepherds them into Poland. When they encounter the Polish military, they’re forced back over into Belarus. Julia, a psychologist who lives alone near the border, witnesses this cyclical, inhumane back-and-forth and joins up with a group of activists working to rectify the situation.
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Film Credits
- Marcin Wierzchoslawski, Fred Bernstein, Agnieszka Holland
- Jalal Altawil, Maja Ostaszewska, Behi Djanati Atai. Mohamad Al Rashi, Dalia Naous, Tomasz Włosok
- Metro Films, Blick Productions, Marlene Film Production, Beluga Tree, Astute Films
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Synopsis
Greg (Matthew Modine) is a beleaguered social worker at a Colorado juvenile correctional center with a passion for bicycle racing and a revelatory idea for rehabilitation: Rounding up an unlikely crew of incarcerated students to complete a transformative 1000-mile ride from Denver to the Grand Canyon. To achieve their goal, this determined coach and his disgruntled teenage squad will battle heat stroke, speed wobbles, mountainous inclines, and most of all each other to come together as a unified team.
Inspired by a true story and filmed amid the majestic landscapes of the Sierra Nevadas, this heartfelt, humor-filled adventure is a feel-good throwback to the coming-of-age sports dramas of the ‘80s and ‘90s, with an inspiring performance by Modine (Oppenheimer) as the devoted teacher who will never give up on his kids.
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Film Credits
- Christian Sander
- RJ Daniel Hanna, Christian Sander
- Evan Schrodek
- Mack Fisher
- Matthew Modine, Cynthia Kaye McWilliams, Leslie David Baker, Sean Astin. Jahking Guillory, Jackson Kelly, Damien Diaz, Zachary T. Robbins
- Andrew Johnson
- Scott Sander, Larry Roth
- Pensé Productions
Sponsors
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Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
Radu JudeRomania, Luxembourg, France, Croatia
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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
Film Credits
- Jesper Kurlandsky
- Johan Söderberg
- Fredrik Wenzel
- Johan Söderberg
- Fasad Production AB
Sponsors
Documentary Program Sponsors
Cynthia Stone Raskin
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waking up in silence [short film]
Mila Zhluktenko, Daniel Asadi FaeziGermany, Ukraine
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212 W Van Buren St., Suite 400
