Synopsis

In the quiet and impactful Memorial (U.S.) the community of Highland Park, Illinois, commemorates those who lost their lives in the Independence Day shooting of 2022. The documentary recollects the attack and chronicles a public memorial created in response by residents in the days that followed. A meditation on processing collective trauma, Memorial uses simple elements–the voices of survivors and site-specific images of the area–to mark the tragedy.

Followed by a post-screening discussion with director Jon Siskel, co-founder of Siskel/Jacobs Productions, whose Louder Than a Bomb and The Road Up screened previously at the Chicago International Film Festival. He will be joined by one of the subjects of Memorial, Jacqueline Von Edelberg, and activist, Delphine Cherry.

Delphine Cherry is the founder of the TY Foundation (Tender Youth); formed after the murder of her son Tyler Randolph. The foundation provides support, resources for family members and loved ones impacted by gun violence in our communities. Delphine is an activist for peace and is on the forefront of the movement to find solutions to America’s gun violence crisis. She also works as an Illinois state lead with Brady United Against Gun Violence.  Delphine has been a resident of Hazel Crest for sixteen years; she grew up on the south side of Chicago.

Jacqueline Von Edelberg is the artist activist who created and nourished the memorial in Highland Park after the deadly attack. Jacqueline is the founder of Arts4Impact.org, working to empower people through the transformative power of the arts.

This film also screens as part of the Shorts 4: Documentary – In Motion program.

Synopsis

In 2018, a shocking event made headlines around the world: A young American missionary, John Chau, was killed while attempting to contact one of the world’s most isolated Indigenous peoples in the South Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal. Combining an amazing collection of archival videos with soul-searching interviews with his father, friends, and colleagues, this absorbing documentary recounts the complex journey of a well-meaning and passionate — though perhaps misguided — man.

From Emmy-winning co-directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss (Boys State) and Oscar-winning producer Simon Chinn (Man on Wire), The Mission digs deep into a host of profound issues. It interrogates the same kind of anthropological documentary that it draws from, and asks penetrating questions about the lines between faith and fanaticism, exploration and exploitation, and imagination and destruction.

Synopsis

A triptych of sisters sing about their suffering after the eruption of a volcano in Cape Verde. Separated from each other and surrounded by darkness and fire, their voices overlap as we hear their moving words of pain and resistance: “There will come a time when we’ll know why we suffer, and the mystery will end.” The musical ends with silence and archival footage of Cape Verdean people and landscapes after a volcanic eruption in 1951.

Directed by Pedro Costa, The Daughters of Fire represents a radical step forward in form and ambition for the singular Portuguese maestro.

This short film screens along with in water.

Synopsis

At once a heist film, a hilariously plotted workplace comedy, and a wistful ode to the human desire for freedom, The Delinquents, like its main characters, is playfully elusive and difficult to pin down. Morán works a dead-end job at a bank in Buenos Aires. Tired of the grind, he dreams up a scheme to get himself and his coworker, Román, out of there for good. The plan is simple. The fallout is not.

Crafted with impeccable wit and surreal flourishes, director Rodrigo Moreno mischievously ponders the pitfalls of modern working culture, the rigors of urban living, and the seductive allure of an unburdened life in the wide open countryside.

Synopsis

In the small rural Mexican village of El Eco, a teenage girl, Montse, dutifully works alongside her family, caring for the sheep and her grandmother with the same sense of curiosity and devotion. While frost and drought punish the land, she learns the ways of life and death. As in her auspicious fiction feature Prayers for the Stolen, with this lyrical coming-of-age docu-fable acclaimed Mexican-Salvadorean filmmaker Tatiana Huezo beautifully captures both the preciousness of adolescence and the region’s unforgiving elements.

Exquisitely textured and deeply empathetic, The Echo unfolds like a dream, shifting between the sweet and the dark. In sumptuous, vivid images, Hueso observes how children’s lives in these hardscrabble towns mirror those of their parents and grandparents in a generational cycle of struggle and hope.