Synopsis

Traversing all of his past films, master director and Festival mainstay Jia Zhang-Ke delivers an epic look at the romantic destiny of his perennial heroine, Qiaoqiao (played by his wife, Zhao Tao). Utilizing scenes from his past work as well as documentary footage collected over the decades, Jia invents bold new scenarios that track his muse over 21 years. In the process, he offers a survey of contemporary China that examines the emotional tumult of living through turbulent social change. An invigorating assemblage of material old and new, Caught By the Tides is a one-of-a-kind odyssey through a nation’s history and a legendary auteur’s work.

Past works shown by Jia Zhang-Ke at the Chicago International Film Festival include Unknown Pleasures (2002), Platform (2005), 24 City (2008), Mountains May Depart (2015), and Ash Is Purest White (2018).

Synopsis

South African photographer Ernest Cole was one of the first photographers to expose the horrors of apartheid to a global audience. But after Cole published his 1967 book House of Bondage, he was forced into exile in New York and Europe for the rest of his life. In this powerful tribute to Cole and the necessity of bearing witness, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro) recounts Cole’s wanderings and eventual descent into anonymity. Along the way, he rediscovers and reclaims Cole’s astute, vivid portraits and bracing observations of discrimination, both in his homeland and in the United States.

As with Samuel Jackson’s narration in I Am Not Your Negro, here actor LaKeith Stanfield (Judas and the Black Messiah) gives powerful voice to Cole’s sharp, defiant words: “I am collecting evidence,” he memorably says at one point, speaking about those who perpetuate injustice. “And sometimes the monster looks back at me.”

Synopsis

Faruk, a widower in his nineties, is fighting to save his Istanbul condo building, which is slated for total reconstruction amidst an earthquake crisis in Turkey. Stubborn and resistant to change, he clashes with contractors and the building’s board. Meanwhile, Faruk’s documentarian daughter, who’s making a film about her father, is pressuring him for power of attorney so that she can take control of the situation — and, ultimately, the apartment. These pressures quietly build as the demolition date encroaches. Is Faruk’s way of life slipping away?

Director Aslı Özge blends fiction and reality as she trains her camera on a fictionalized version of her father, lending an intimate touch to this tender exploration of family, aging, and modernization in the 21st century.

Synopsis

For Hamid, the past is never far behind. A former literature professor from Aleppo now working undercover in Europe, the Syrian exile spends his days trying to track down the  guard responsible for torturing him — and countless other political prisoners — at the infamous Sednaya prison. In weekly phone calls with his mom, who’s now living in a refugee camp in Beirut, Hamid tries to pretend like everything is fine. But a promising new lead has emerged at a university in Strasbourg, and every cell in Hamid’s body is screaming that this is the man. Will he be able to keep his cool long enough to get proof?

Director Jonatham Millet displays a remarkable command of tone in Ghost Trail, which engages with recent history in a tastefully controlled manner while still giving audiences the tension they crave. Star Adam Bessa is magnetic as the haunted Hamid, and his scenes with Tawfeek Barhom — who co-stars as suspected war criminal Harfaz — crackle with suspense. But the most skillful and subtle shift here is from the excitement of a political thriller to something much sadder, as Ghost Trail mourns the losses that have brought Hamid to this point in his life.

Synopsis

A deadbeat dad is trapped with his family waiting out a typhoon. There, the fractured clan reckons with their past as they look to an uncertain future.