Synopsis

Accompanied by his friend Miyata, a heartbroken Sano returns to Izu, the Japanese coastal resort where Sano fell in love with his wife, Nagi, five years prior. With the hotel set to shutter in the coming days, Sano checks in one last time and ponders the exhilarating pangs of his lost love. Adrift, he wanders the grounds, and his memories of Nagi begin to take hold.

Narratively playful and profoundly affecting, Super Happy Forever is an unconventional seaside romance. Extended flashback sequences blend memory with reality to create a moving portrait of a relationship’s beginnings while reflecting on its untimely end. A crackling chemistry between leads Hiroki Sano and Nairu Yamamoto combines with director Igarashi Kohei’s elegant visual style to create a beautiful ode to a love gained and lost.

Synopsis

Through her decade-long quest to piece together fragments of her mother’s life, filmmaker Rachel Elizabeth Seed offers a moving and intimate portrait of Sheila Turner-Seed, who died a few months after Rachel was born. In her lifetime, Sheila shirked societal expectations by exploring the world as a journalist and photographer. Through a wealth of pictures, home movies, television interviews, and newly discovered audio recordings of conversations with iconic photographers such as Henri-Cartier Bresson and Gordon Parks, Seed pays homage to the thrilling life and impressive work of her mother as an artist, best known for her groundbreaking series “Images of Man.”

With inventive visual compositions that play with both cinematic and photographic forms, a hint of humor, and a nod to her mother’s Chicago ties, Seed explores questions of legacy, memory, feminism, and modern photography while attempting to close the gap between herself and the mother she never knew.

Synopsis

Transplanted from his African homeland to drug lord Pablo Escobar’s infamous Colombian compound, Pepe the hippo reflects on his tumultuous life in this bold, inventive cinematic essay. When Escobar abandons his plan for a private zoo, Pepe escapes to a nearby river, where his hulking presence unsettles the nearby fishing communities. The first and last hippopotamus ever killed in the Americas, he is feared and hunted. Through Pepe’s story, director Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias crafts a rich, layered narrative about displacement, dislocation, and the ecological consequences of human hubris. Pepe himself narrates a cacophony of events, from riverside beauty pageants to sentimental cartoons to historical inquiries. And his guttural, ghostly laugh is a constant presence in the film’s soundscape. Unpredictable and playful, Pepe is an unforgettable, immersive cinematic experience.

Synopsis

Matthias is a master of his profession. He’s the perfect chameleon, impeccably at ease in any social situation, wearing any costume, in any character’s skin. Do you need a “cultured boyfriend” to impress your friends?  A “perfect son” to influence your business partners? Or maybe just a sparring partner to rehearse an argument with a spouse? Whatever it is, Matthias is your man! And he is available for rent. Yet, while Matthias excels in all of these roles, just being himself with his partner and among his friends is a real challenge.

With an appealing absurdist tone and humor that deftly balances incisive wit with unbridled funny, Peacock takes the “rent-a” concept to the next level. Performance pieces that take delight in sending up the art world and sharp jabs at aspirational culture combine in this corrosive comedy that lays bare the darker essence of human relationships.

Synopsis

Louie Mulgrin is the one who got out of his rural Illinois town, becoming a bestselling novelist and writing searing literary tell-alls about his rustic Midwestern enclave. When Louie, newly engaged and successful, returns home to settle his late father’s affairs, he receives a welcome that’s equal parts admiration and resentment. Is Louie a local hero or an exploitive opportunist, getting rich off the stories of those he was once closest to?

In her accomplished feature debut, Chicago native Kate Cobb crafts a skillful tale that’s tinged with suspense, as Louie revisits relationships from his youth: a resentful best friend, an ex-girlfriend, a bully turned local cop. As he gets sucked deeper into the past, he must come to grips with what he’s done to get ahead in the present — and his loosening grip on reality. Shot in and around Dekalb, IL, Okie is an absorbing and complex dramatic thriller about the delicate balance between ambition and loyalty.