Happy Holidays
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.
In Focus: Germany on Screen
This film is part of the 60th Chicago International Film Festival’s In Focus: Germany on Screen collection highlighting the work of Germany’s most gifted auteur filmmakers.
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Film Credits
- Tony Copti, Jiries Copti, Dorothe Beinemeier, Jean Bréhat, Marco Valerio Fusco, Micaela Fusco
- Scandar Copti
- Scandar Copti
- Tim Kuhn
- Manar Shehab, Wafaa Aoun, Meirav Memoresky, Toufic Danial
- Pascal Lemercier
- Fresco Films, Red Balloon Film, Tessalit Productions, Intramovies
Sponsors
New Directors Program Patron
Robert and Penelope Steiner Family Foundation
With Support From
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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.
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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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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.
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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
Jacolyn and John Bucksbaum Family Foundation
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I’m Still Here Ainda Estou Aqui
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.
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Film Credits
- Maria Carlota Bruno, Rodrigo Teixeira, Martine De Clermont-Tonnerre
- Murilo Hauser, Heitor Lorega
- Alfonso Goncalves, ACE
- Adrian Teijido, ABC
- Fernanda Torres, Selton Mello, Fernanda Montenegro
- Warren Ellis
- Guilherme Terra, Thierry de Clermont-Tonnerre, Lourenço Sant’anna, Renata Brandão, Juliana Capelini, David Taghioff, Masha Magonova
- VideoFilmes, RT Features, Mact Productions
- https://www.sonyclassics.com/film/imstillhere
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It’s Not Me C'est pas moi
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.
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Film Credits
- Charles Gillibert, Leos Carax
- Denis Lavant, Kateryna Yuspina, Nastya Golubeva Carax, Loreta Joudkaite, Anna-Isabel Siefken, Petr Anevskii, Bianca Maddaluno
- CG Cinéma, Theo Films
Sponsors
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