📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Sergei Eisenstein’s BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (USSR/Silent)
Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 7pm
BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN was intended as one in a series of artworks commemorating the twentieth anniversary of Russia’s “Great Dress Rehearsal of 1905,” when a state massacre of peaceful protestors in St. Petersburg sparked a nationwide uprising that lasted the rest of the year. The movement was ultimately quashed, but it signaled the start of the Soviet revolution and quickly became state lore under the USSR. Sergei Eisenstein, who was just 27 years old and had directed only one other feature film, STRIKE (1925), was entrusted by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee with the project. He and his assistant Grigori Aleksandrov reworked the script to narrow its focus (the original draft touched on the Russo-Japanese War, the Armenian-Tatar Massacres, and other episodes) and concentrate on the mutiny of the Battleship Potemkin, one of numerous military uprisings that occurred in 1905. Eisenstein didn’t focus on an individual protagonist, however; like all the revolutionary films from the first decade of his career, BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN presents a collective hero as a means of translating Marxist ideology into cinematic form. That form is rooted in some of the most celebrated montage in movie history, namely during the film’s fourth and most famous chapter, which depicts the massacre of peaceful protestors on the grand staircase of Odessa. A myth-maker first and a historian second, Eisenstein based this episode on the aforementioned massacre in St. Petersburg, which didn’t follow the Potemkin incident but actually preceded it by a few months. Whatever. It’s clear from the first few minutes of BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN that Eisenstein is a born poet and that facts interest him only insofar as he can make them into poetry. Who can forget the closeup of maggots crawling on the side of beef in the movie’s first chapter? This image summarizes powerfully the indignity that Russian sailors had to face under the Tsar; it doesn’t matter whether real Russian sailors were forced to eat maggots. It’s understandable why Charlie Chaplin (who befriended Eisenstein during his sojourn in Hollywood in 1929) considered BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN his favorite film—where Chaplin had his Tramp stand in for the masses, Eisenstein managed to dramatize swaths of people through his filmmaking process. His rush of images will always be breathtaking, which helps explain why the film was censored or banned in many countries for decades after it was made. Perhaps no other film generates such excitement through its meditation on Communist ideals. With live musical accompaniment by Whine Cave (Kent Lambert and Sam Wagster). Preceded by Izzy Sparber’s 1942 short film HULL OF A MESS (7 min, 16mm). (1925, 72 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Satyajit Ray’s DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE FOREST (India)
Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
Carnivalesque. Chekovian. Pastorale. Renoirian. All words I’ve seen used to describe Satyajit Ray’s DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE FOREST, based on a novel by Indian Bengali writer Sunil Gangopadhyay. Such lofty descriptors for a film whose plot is so seemingly simple; in it, four young, upper-caste men from Kolkata travel to the country for a short vacation. Each is an archetype of sorts. Two of the men, Asim (Soumitra Chatterjee) and Sanjoy (Subhendu Chatterjee), are the most alike, with comfortable jobs and their own snobbish quirks; Hari (Samit Bhanja) is a cricket player who’s hoping to forget a recent breakup; and Shekhar (Rabi Ghosh), unemployed, provides levity as the group’s resident joker. Though more defined characterizations emerge, they do so adjacent to the rural setting, where the group descends upon a bungalow and compels the watchman to let them stay there without a reservation. As the central plot unfolds, the group’s engagement with their surroundings lingers tensely, neither obvious nor incidental. For example, the watchman’s wife is ill, yet the men harangue him to tend to their needs, eventually soliciting a local man to do their bidding. At first they decide not to shave for the whole trip—that is, until they come across some beautiful women, one single, the other a widow, whose own vacation cottage is nearby. Asim and Sanjoy attach themselves to the former, Aparna (Sharmila Tagore), and the latter, Jaya (Kaberi Bose), respectively, while Hari lusts after a local tribal woman; in stereotypical fashion, the clown, Shekhar, remains alone. The women are upper caste as well, but are altogether more complex; it’s Aparna who reflects back to Asim their cruel indifference toward the watchman, and Jaya’s grief over her husband’s suicide is the most poignant emotion felt throughout. In such a way as the film’s social complexities reveal themselves through apparent superfluousness, the group plays a memory game during a picnic, and it comes down to Asim and Aparna, who lets the man win. He confronts her about it later, and she says he wouldn’t have liked it if she had won, revealing a sad fact about his character and the society in which they live. Disparities among class and gender, and the probing of fragile masculinity—all this, just during a boozy sojourn to the country. The film was largely unavailable before its recent restoration; per Michael Atkinson's review for Screen Slate, it was “known (if at all) mostly by way of Pauline Kael’s bonkers-swoony review in The New Yorker." (The film had received a standing ovation when it premiered at the New York Film Festival in 1970 but failed to find a distributor right away.) Kael calls it a “major film by one of the great film artists” and asserts that "Ray’s films can give rise to a more complex feeling of happiness in me than the work of any other director.... We accept the resolutions he effects not merely as resolutions of the stories but as truths of human experience.” She also writes, “There are always larger, deeper associations impending; we recognize the presence of the mythic in the ordinary. And it’s the mythic we’re left with after the ordinary has been (temporarily) resolved.” Mythic. Add that to the list of bigger-than-life descriptors for a work that shows us just how meaningful the smallness of it—the film, perhaps even life itself—really is. (1970, 116 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Kat Sachs]
Abderrahmane Sissako's BAMAKO (Mali)
Siskel Film Center – Wednesday, 6pm
Similar to the work of Ousmane Sembène, Abderrahmane Sissako's BAMAKO is an audacious piece of political filmmaking that imagines a trial in which the plaintiff, African society, has charged the defendant, international financial institutions such as World Bank and the IMF, with the crimes of neocolonialism and the unjust exploitation of African peoples. Shot almost entirely in Sissako's childhood courtyard, the film is an intriguing blend of fiction and documentary. On the one hand, the scenario couldn't be more fantastical, however, the film features real Malian denizens voicing their outcries as well as professional lawyers who approach the proceedings as if they were part of an actual court case. As the trial progresses, the hum of everyday existence continues in the periphery: a marriage disintegrates, women dye cloth, a wedding takes place. This attention to marginalia has a humanizing effect, reminding the viewer that amidst all the weighty political rhetoric, individual lives carry on. One of BAMAKO's most surreal moments is a mini-film parody of the western genre titled "Death in Timbuktu" starring Danny Glover (one of the film's producers), which satirizes the dispensability of African life and the omnipresence of American influence. When the trial reaches its crescendo, Brechtian detachment gives way to an impassioned indictment of global capitalism and a vociferous demand for a guilty verdict. Screening as part of the African Cinema from Independence to Now lecture series. (2006, 118 min, DCP Digital) [Harrison Sherrod]
S.R. Bindler’s HANDS ON A HARDBODY: THE DOCUMENTARY (US/Documentary)
Block Cinema (at Northwestern University) – Thursday, 7pm
Watching S.R. Bindler’s HANDS ON A HARDBODY: THE DOCUMENTARY, you may start to think to yourself, “Haven’t I seen this before?” Perhaps not this particular film, but the ideas here, these sorts of characters, and especially the stark and unmistakably American vibes emanating from the gritty Hi-8 video cassette frames; they all feel oddly familiar. You might go as far to say that HANDS ON A HARDBODY may just be as American as apple pie, the tasty hook of the contest at the center of its narrative (“Win this new truck by keeping your hands on it the longest”) knee-deep in capitalist desire, automotive obsession, and individualistic spirit. Hell, doesn’t the whole ordeal feel like the kind of bizarre, mind-melding game to be featured on a depressingly obsessive YouTube page like Mr. Beast? Bindler’s film, thankfully, is more interested in the humanity of this contest’s participants, an eclectic group of twenty-three who’ve brought themselves to Longview, Texas (just 125 miles east of Dallas, so we hear), for the chance to win a gorgeous blue Nissan truck. The contest draws out over the course of seventy-seven hours, and as the numbers dwindle, the true believers start to shine. Bindler’s use of montage balances hysterics with heartbreak, with contestants boasting in one frame, only to be seen limping away in defeat in the next, the Texas heat only adding to an already Herculean ordeal. Benny Perkins—a previous Hardbody winner competing again to further prove his mettle—is all too right in assessing that this is less a physical exercise than a mental one, with various contestants falling into dizzying stupors and uncontrollable fits of laughter. It becomes too easy to endear oneself to the lives and eccentricities of all of these contestants, from the religiously-guided Norma, to the old-timer J.D., to the young underdog Kelli, to the cantankerous and almost-toothless Janis Curtis. It’s entirely unsurprising that this ensemble-driven high-drama story was not only seen as a potential point of fiction adaptation for Robert Altman, but also successfully adapted into a Tony-nominated Broadway musical (by the lead guitarist of Phish, no less). What could be more American than that? (1997, 98 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Kaye]
Hong Sang-soo’s WHAT DOES THAT NATURE SAY TO YOU (South Korea)
Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
How many of Hong Sang-soo’s movies don’t contain a scene where someone gets drunk and makes a fool of themselves? No matter how much he evolves formally, Hong returns again and again to the same narrative and thematic fixations (his filmography may be the closest equivalent in narrative cinema to Monet’s haystacks), and drunken embarrassment happens to be one of them. So, if you’re a fan of the South Korean writer-director, then WHAT DOES THAT NATURE SAY TO YOU might play like a mystery for most of its run time, the mystery being, who will play the inebriated ass? In this film, Hong assembles a collection of characters who all seem likely to implode when drunk, puts them in close proximity of one another for long enough for their foibles to become apparent, then gives everybody booze. Here’s the set-up: Dong-hwa (Ha Seong-guk), a 30-something poet, goes with his girlfriend of three years, Jun-ee (Kang So-yi), to meet her family for the first time. Her mother, father, and older sister (who recently moved back home to “work things out”) live on the side of a mountain outside of Seoul; all three are interesting people with cool hobbies. Dong-hwa starts to clash with Junee’s socially awkward sister (Park Mi-so) in subtle ways, which may lead you to think that one of them will make a faux pas after the wine starts to pour. But what about Jun-ee’s dad (Hong regular Kwon Hae-hyo), who seems almost unnaturally happy about everything? Or her mom (Cho-Yun-hee), herself a poet of local renown? Who knows what resentments they’re harboring? As usual with Hong, the fun of WHAT DOES THAT NATURE SAY TO YOU lies in how the filmmaker unpeels his characters, revealing more about them as the story progresses until you reach their true natures. The film contains some jabs at the egos of poets, but for the most part, it maintains the gentle attitude that’s been running through Hong’s 2020s work so far. (2025, 108 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Alex Phillips' ANYTHING THAT MOVES (US)
Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 6:45pm
Perhaps you’re like me and, upon hearing the title of Alex Phillips’ latest Chicago-based genre rollercoaster hopped up on adrenaline, your mind went to Dennis Hopper’s inimitable delivery in David Lynch’s BLUE VELVET (1986), maniacally declaring that he will, indeed, “fuck anything that moves.” It’s not a huge leap, to be fair, as echoes of Lynch inarguably reverberate through the cheekily sordid and sickly sweet ANYTHING THAT MOVES like a dream folding in on itself to create something new. If BLUE VELVET exposed the dark underbelly of squeaky-clean American suburbia, then Phillips discovers the underbelly of the underbelly, a rot living deeper within the rot. Yes, the world is depraved and vile, but that’s just surface level, folks. What else can we find? This isn’t to say there aren’t moments of joy and absurdity throughout (far from it), as the tender core of the film slowly emerges through the muck of it all. Captured on visually sumptuous Super 16mm film—some shots feel like the film reels were unearthed from the depths of an abandoned grindhouse cinema—accompanied by a transfixing melodic score by Cue Shop, and luxuriating in frequent oscillating moments of ecstatic sex and gore-focused violence, Phillips’ protagonist, the lovable sex worker Liam (Hal Baum), is constantly told to question the authenticity of the love he doles out. “I don’t know if you love anybody,” an older client tells him early in the film, “but we love you just the same.” Off the clock, Liam gets plenty of love from his fellow sex worker/lover Thea (Jiana Nicole), similarly affectionate yet weary and watchful of the world outside their orgasmic bubble. One might call them partners in crime, were it not for Liam’s client list slowly morphs into a series of homicidal crime scenes, his litany of lovers mysteriously being brutally murdered one by one. With two maniacal, all-nonsense cops on their tail, Liam and Thea slink through this exciting genre exercise, a giallo lathered in giardiniera, touring through delightfully recognizable Chicago locales, from the side streets around Wrigley Field to the immortal Wolfy’s sign. Phillips is in full control of the tone and style that a piece like this demands, the emotional stakes of the characters never butting heads with the more absurd comedic beats encountered along the way (a personal favorite; a funeral for one of the murder victims leading to a young child sheepishly smoking a cigarette to honor his late deadbeat dad), as if A BAY OF BLOOD (1971) and MULTIPLE MANIACS (1970) were spliced together. Most noteworthy is another invention of cinematic fantasia, where moments of orgasm are captured with musical trills and bright shining lights, as if the angels themselves were on hand to deliver coital reward to the respective climaxing character. Once more, a delightful device where the elements at hand seamlessly entwine in sexual and cinematic congress. Featuring a post-film Q&A with Phillips. (2025, 80 min, 35mm) [Ben Kaye]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Monika Treut’s DIDN’T DO IT FOR LOVE (Germany)
Music Box Theatre – Monday, 9:15pm
DIDN’T DO IT FOR LOVE stands as a defining entry in Monika Treut’s ongoing investigation of erotic subjectivity and gender expression. Positioned between SEDUCTION: THE CRUEL WOMAN (1985) and GENDERNAUTS (1999), the film refines her commitment to interrogating desire through intimate portraiture. Where the earlier features staged queer identities within stylized fiction, DIDN’T DO IT FOR LOVE turns to documentary without losing any confrontational charge. The result is less conventional biography than a study of self-construction, power, and identity as performance. Trained as a literary scholar who wrote her dissertation on the Marquis de Sade, Treut approaches sexuality as discourse rather than spectacle; her choice of subject, Eva Norvind, is exacting. Norvind’s life of radical reinvention becomes a living archive of twentieth-century sexual economies. Born in Norway in 1944, she entered public life through beauty pageants, gained minor celebrity at Cannes, and appeared in European films. By the mid-1960s she had relocated to Mexico City, acting in genre titles such as ESTA NOCHE NO (1965) and SANTO VS. THE MARTIAN INVASION (1967). Recognizing her function as ornament within male-centered spectacle, she developed a philosophy of bodily autonomy that rejected shame around accepting gifts or money. Norvind resisted containment. Her televised advocacy for birth control in Mexico provoked scandal and professional exile. Even while maintaining mainstream visibility through a variety show, she engaged in sex work for elite clients and cultivated what she called a “macho woman” identity. Treut situates these decisions within a pattern of experimentation, as Norvind repeatedly tested the limits of autonomy available to her. Another metamorphosis followed through photography. Tired of objectification, Norvind moved behind the camera and earned a scholarship to NYU. In 1980s New York, she immersed herself in erotic power exchange, founding Taurel Enterprises and adopting the name Mistress Ava Taurel. By decade’s end she was among Manhattan’s most visible dominatrices, framing domination as structured theater, a ritualized confrontation with fear and desire. A 1996 master’s degree in Human Sexuality further affirmed her belief that erotic experience deserved academic legitimacy. Treut structures the film around the friction between performance and authenticity, intercutting archival Mexican film clips with contemporary session footage, domestic scenes, and family interviews. Each phase of Norvind’s life appears to displace the previous one, yet patterns persist. She describes sexuality as epistemology: intimacy with women taught her self-acceptance, and her body became a source of knowledge rather than shame. The film becomes a meditation on female sovereignty, tracing Norvind’s movement from marginal subculture to recognized expertise without relinquishing an ounce of radicalism. Treut resists closure. Norvind exceeds the frame, admitting she does not know what comes next. After the documentary, she coached actors including René Russo, consulted on films, and directed BORN WITHOUT, completed by her daughter after Norvind’s death in 2006 to strong critical reception. Within queer cinema, DIDN’T DO IT FOR LOVE endures as a rigorous case study in self-fashioning. Lacking the polished veneer of contemporary documentaries, it feels hand-stitched, intimate, and provisional. Its modest runtime can scarcely contain the epic scale of Norvind’s decades of sexual reinvention, yet that compression becomes the point: identity here is never settled, only continually authored. Screening as part of the Female Misbehavior: The Films of Monika Treut series. (1997, 81 min, Digital) [Shaun Huhn]
Kon Ichikawa's TOKYO OLYMPIAD (Japan/Documentary)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Sunday, 3pm
In 1964, Tokyo became the first Asian city to host the Olympics. With the Games returning to Tokyo 57 years and one COVID-related delay later, it seems as good a time as any to revisit (or discover) the epic splendor of Kon Ichikawa’s 1965 documentary TOKYO OLYMPIAD. Commissioned by the Japanese government—which had to find a new director after the initial choice, Akira Kurosawa, stepped down—the film helped pioneer a number of innovative techniques for filming sports, and it remains a touchstone among all subsequent athletic-themed documentaries. What makes TOKYO OLYMPIAD so thrilling lies, in part, in its blithe disregard for the tacit rules of sports coverage. Rather than adopt the journalistic approach that had been commonplace in prior IOC films, Ichikawa indulges in an immersive audiovisual impressionism, favoring kinetic and aesthetic sensations over the prosaic, results-driven concerns of competition. In other words, it’s a uniquely cinematic portrait that you would never see on broadcast television. In resplendent, vividly saturated CinemaScope images often shot with cutting-edge telephoto and wide-angle lenses, TOKYO OLYMPIAD presents a surplus of intensely dramatic images: athletes jumping hurdles in extreme slow-motion; sinewy flesh entwined on the wrestling mat; sweat dripping from brows; the cheek of a shooter draping ever-so-gently over the barrel of his rifle; the placid concentration of marathon champion Abebe Bikila as he blazes past a blur of spectators. Ichikawa also extends his attention beyond the competitors, granting peripheral details a level of importance that enhances the film’s maximalist scope. We see journalists clacking away on typewriters in the international press room; rain gathering on umbrellas; the devouring of meals in the Olympic Village cafeteria; and, in perhaps the most awe-inspiring image in a film filled with them, a panoramic shot of Mt. Fuji as a torchbearer trails like an ant across the bottom of the screen, smoke billowing behind him. Sometimes Ichikawa’s obsession with showing off his repertoire of cinematographic tricks (high shutter speeds, freeze-frames, animation, nearly abstract closeups, and localized sound) can overwhelm, even distract from the Games themselves. The Japanese government in 1965 expressed this very criticism, decrying Ichikawa’s unorthodox document of an event meant to showcase a new, modernized Japan to the world. Of course, TOKYO OLYMPIAD’s bold idiosyncrasies are exactly why it endures, as both a celebration of Olympic achievement and as a testament to cinematic possibility. Screening as part of the Screen Play: Cinematic Visions of Video Games and Sports series. (1965, 170 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
Howard Hawks' GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (US)
Music Box Theatre – Thursday, 9:45pm
Howard Hawks' glitzy sing-along of consumerism on tour is headlined by the hottest of commodities, Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe. GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES is, of course, far most interested in what these ladies prefer--which may be love or may be diamonds, depending on whom you ask--as opposed to the gents, here occupying a grand range of caricatures from buffoonish millionaires to meddling private investigators to rigidly-disciplined muscle men. Russell and Monroe are Dorothy Shaw and Lorelei Lee, two showgirls fresh out of Little Rock and adrift on an Olympian-infested ocean liner bound for Paris. Both women give career defining performances here, with Monroe playing up American extravagances to hyperbolic heights, and Russell as the lovelorn straight woman, a term infused with entirely new meaning during the great "Ain't There Anyone Here For Love" number. Here's a film that is an equal-opportunity objectifier, a carefree capitalist musical as essential for piecing together American identity in the 1950s as any film by Nicholas Ray or Douglas Sirk. Presented by Rated Q and Ramona Slick! - A Celebration of Queer, Camp, & Cult Cinema with preshow drinks and DJ in Music Box Lounge at 9pm and a dragshow performance in the Main Theater at 9:45pm, with the screening to follow. (1953, 91 min, DCP Digital) [Tristan Johnson]
Alain Gomis' FÉLICITÉ (Senegal/France)
Alliance Francaise de Chicago (Enter via 54 W. Chicago Ave.) – Tuesday, 6:30pm
Alain Gomis' FÉLICITÉ, an immersive, celebratory work of magical realism, won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival; it's also the first ever submission by Senegal for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. It can be a harrowing film, but it's also a joyous and vibrant one. With great dignity, Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu portrays Félicité, a magnetic singer in a juke joint in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. She's a proud, independent woman, "too tough for her own good," some say. When her son Samo (Gaetan Claudia) suffers a motorcycle accident, the doctor implies he'll lose his leg if they don't operate immediately. He also tells her they won't operate until she first coughs up a hefty pre-payment. (As Stuart Klawans has pointed out, this is a version of the system Republicans would like to see obtain in the U.S.) The first hour sticks to the classical hero's-journey structure, with suspense generated by a time-sensitive goal, as she races about trying to scrape up the cash. The sensory whirlwind of Kinshasa is captured by the tremendous French cinematographer Céline Bozon. She shoots from the shoulder, getting right in the middle of the action reporter-style, all the while rendering available light into beautiful, expressive images (she has spoken movingly of what Raoul Coutard meant to her). The second hour grows surreal, a storehouse of mysterious, even mystic, imagery. She's lost in the forest, searching in the starry night, and she meets an okapi (a little forest giraffe). These images evoke many things, including Novalis' Hymns to the Night, some lines of which Félicité intones, and themes of falling and rebirth—motifs of myth, or even the blues—of being lost and having to one's own way. (Samo seems to be in a kind of limbo; in fact, he only utters one word in the entire film—but it's an important one, and he says it over and over.) FÉLICITÉ is the fourth feature by Gomis, a French-Senegalese writer/director. In interviews, he's spoken about the various hybrids, or dialectics, his movie explores: urban and traditional, fiction and reality (the bar is a real Kinshasa joint; the actors interact with actual regulars), and perhaps most importantly in terms of culture and identify, Africa and Europe. Consider the music (and FÉLICITÉ is a great, life-affirming music film). Her backup band is portrayed by the Kasai Allstars. Well-known on the Kinshasa scene and even internationally, they're rural musicians who moved to the city and plugged in, playing a raucous, electrified, modern/traditional music for dancing. (Sound familiar, students of the blues?) However, we also get gorgeous, non-narrative, blue-tinted interludes of orchestral and choral music by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, performed by the Kinshasa Symphonic Orchestra, who may be of modest means but who play absolutely beautifully. Meanwhile, Félicité gets involved with Tabu (Papi Mpaka), a hapless, fundamentally decent would-be repairman who enjoys getting falling-down drunk at the club where she sings, during which episodes he becomes quite expansive, and usually ends up getting himself pummeled. He is a funny, lovable character, and his relationship with Félicité develops into something good in her life: he makes her laugh, and he loves her. All his chest-thumping has a self-satirical air: he doesn't take himself seriously enough to be patriarchal. (His efforts to fix her refrigerator become a running joke.) Yes, Gomis offers a withering social critique, and Félicité struggles mightily. Yet as the movie goes on, he sounds other notes as well, notes of acceptance and of finding joy in the actually-existing world. I will leave it to others to determine if this is a betrayal of political engagement (essentially, it's the serenity prayer), but to me it looks like wisdom. I won't soon forget the experience of empathizing with a person like Félicité, whose experiences could hardly be more different than my own, and of feeling our inner lives resonate. Gomis seems to be arguing that this is what movies are for, and I couldn't agree more. Presented by Dr. Eliana Vagalau, French Undergraduate Program Director and Associate Professor at Loyola University. Dr. Vagalau will lead a Q&A after the film. Guests will enjoy a pre-reception featuring a complimentary glass of Louis Jadot Bourgogne and the chance to win a $50 gift certificate to the Sofitel Magnificent Mile’s très chic Le Bar. (2017, 124 min, Digital Projection) [Scott Pfeiffer]
Samir Mallal and Ben Addelman’s NOLLYWOOD BABYLON (Canada/Documentary)
Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 12pm
According to the Guinness Book of World Records—a source I trust for such designations—Nigeria’s film industry is the second largest in the world after India’s in terms of output. Also like India, Nollywood, the nickname of said industry, is a clever portmanteau: Guinness says that, “according to estimates from UNESCO's Institute of Statistics,” Nollywood “produces around 1,000 feature films each year.” Other sources, including this documentary, claim as many as 2,500, most of which, at the time the film was made, were produced for under $15,000. Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal’s NOLLYWOOD BABYLON is a perfunctory and engaging overview of the industry, exploring its past, present, and future. A throughline is the production of a film by Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen, otherwise known as the De' Guvnor of Nollywood, a prolific director who’s made over 500 films; the film being shot here, BENT ARROWS, was his 157th. He appears frequently as an interviewee, dispensing critical insight into this singular, lucrative economy. The documentary also illuminates the stars of Nollywood as well as the unique distribution system that at one time propelled it, in which movies were distributed largely on DVD and not as often publicly exhibited. The documentary cites there being three movie theaters in Lagos at the time, none of which showed Nollywood films, exhibition once having been a thriving industry. A 2022 survey, however, says that Lagos is now home to more than half of the movie theaters in Nigeria. And according to a 2021 article on moviegoing in Lagos, Nollywood films have since become more popular in theaters, owing to the “emergence of high quality Nigerian films,” indicating that production standards may have increased. The history of filmmaking in Nigeria is interesting, with one director talking about how it was Charlton Heston who inspired him to become a filmmaker after he appeared in person and lamented that there wasn’t much of a film industry in the country at the time. The documentary doesn’t ignore the sociopolitical climate of Lagos, which one interviewee refers to as effectively being a giant slum, providing a history of the city and the emergence of Nollywood amongst the uptick of violence following the Nigerian civil war, after which people stopped going to movie theaters as often. Then, once the economy collapsed, making films became even harder. What emerged as a result—Nollywood—was and to some degree still is altogether scrappier and much more focused on appealing to a popular audience, with action, broad comedies, and dramas that resonate with peoples’ lived experience comprising most of the output. There’s also a connection to religion, the industry having been leveraged by ministries to further evangelize, both of the church itself and against witchcraft. Another throughline in the film are discussions of tradition and modernity, which the industry straddles; in some ways it reinforces the vibrancy but also sometimes the regression of tradition but in others advances progress and has the potential to influence the younger generations especially. It may not be entirely current, but as a snapshot of Nollywood it’s informative and entertaining. Screening as part of the African Cinema from Independence to Now lecture series. (2008, 75 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s THE BRIDE! (US)
Alamo Drafthouse, The Davis Theater, local AMCs and various others – See Venue websites for showtimes
The trailer for THE BRIDE! unfolds to Florence + The Machine’s “Everybody Scream,” cut like a feverish music video tracing the bond between Frankenstein’s monster and his reanimated companion. Its lyrics, insisting “Here I don’t have to be quiet” and “Here I can take up the whole of the sky,” frame the film’s central demand: autonomy. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s follow-up to THE LOST DAUGHTER (2021) revisits and revises James Whale’s THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935), reclaiming a figure who, in Whale’s version, appears for less than five minutes, never speaks, and recoils in horror. Capable of independent thought from the moment lightning strikes, her first sound is a ghastly scream. Given life only to be immediately subjugated to the will of men. It is a scream that echoes through time. Gyllenhaal begins from the absence of The Bride’s point of view. Set in 1930s Chicago, the film situates itself within the industrial and aesthetic history that produced Universal’s monster cycle. IMAX-certified cinematography by Lawrence Sher renders the period with architectural clarity while accommodating stylized departures, including surreal dance sequences and anachronistic music. The narrative introduces Mary Shelley, played by Jessie Buckley, in black-and-white sequences that place her beyond death, seeking continuation of a male-suppressed narrative. She finds a vessel to possess in Ida, also played by Buckley, a woman cornered by mob violence. After Ida’s death, she becomes the candidate for reanimation at Frankenstein’s request. Christian Bale’s creature adopts his creator’s surname, consolidating authorship and identity within one name. Dr. Euphronius, portrayed by Annette Bening, replaces Whale’s Pretorius. The name references the Greek artisan associated with the Sarpedon Krater, an image of divine escort of the dead. Unlike Pretorius, Euphronius resists the logic of manufacturing a woman for male consolation, articulating ethical objection within the diegesis. When The Bride claws her way back to life, expelling black viscous reagent, Buckley’s layered performance fuses Ida’s bruised defiance with Shelley’s historical rage. From this internal conflict emerges a self no longer divisible. Buckley has described the production as “proper punk,” and Bale reportedly cited Sid Vicious as a visual touchstone. The design merges 1930s material culture with gender-subversive costuming and abrasive performance registers. Early test screenings prompted reductions in graphic violence, which Gyllenhaal accepted, while insisting the suffering of the dying remain visible. Each murder carries consequence; brutality is not anonymous spectacle. The film includes Gyllenhaal’s husband Peter Sarsgaard as a detective, brother Jake Gyllenhaal as a 1930s film star whom Frankenstein idolizes, and Penelope Cruz attempting to assert authority within law enforcement. The film nods to Mel Brooks’ YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN through a “Puttin’ On The Ritz” performance, cites THE BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR through musical reference, and echoes BONNIE AND CLYDE and BADLANDS in its outlaw romanticism. This intertextuality strengthens its abrasive sensibility without diluting its critique. When saying, “yes,” to a man out of fear is replaced with, “I’d prefer not to,” The Bride becomes a monster. She isn’t the monstrous feminine because she’s a reanimated corpse. She’s considered vile for requesting individuality, agency, and embracing her sexual desires. Original music by Fever Ray, including a cameo by Karin Dreijer, and a score by Hildur Guðnadóttir heighten the tension between rebellion and acceptance, as the film embraces Frankenstein's unwavering acceptance of The Bride’s multitudes. Expanding from an intimate drama about motherhood to a studio spectacle, Gyllenhaal sustains her inquiry into women navigating power and self-definition, reframing a canonical horror narrative through consent, authorship, and the right to speak. (2026, 126 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]
Carson Lund's EEPHUS (US)
Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 11:30am
It’s a beautiful autumn day in Massachusetts, with the trees painting the sky various shades of green and orange, and the clouds taking up just enough space to leave room for plenty of sunshine. Sounds like a great day to play some baseball. Carson Lund’s debut feature—focused around a rec-league of ball players and their final game before the town baseball field is paved over to become a school—revels in this pristine sense of atmosphere, creating a baseball film less interested in who ends up winning than the feeling of watching the sun go down while heading into the ninth inning. Baseball is, after all, more than just the game; it’s the old man in the stalls muttering to himself, the crotchety obsessive keeping score in his worn-out notebook, the food truck parked nearby peddling slices of pizza for passersby, and the friendly barbs thrown back and forth between teammates. EEPHUS somehow lands somewhere between “Slow Cinema” and indie dramedy without ever feeling self-indulgent or crass, its respect for its suburban characters too earnest in practice. There’s something inherently noble and relatable about the seriousness with which the players take their sport; here's a group of men who don’t do this for a living but feel some kind of pull towards the game, whether it's passion, obligation, or just an excuse to get out of the house. That Lund’s film is able to capture the tactility of a New England autumnal day, and carry such emotionally lofty material without feeling overly sentimental, and have some of the funniest dialogue in a film I’ve heard in recent memory, is no small feat. Perhaps it’s notable that the first character we hear in the film is voiced by legendary documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, maybe a nod to the film’s pursuit of capturing life’s circuitousness, the great American pastime acting as grand metaphor for all great things having their great moment in the sun, until we’re well into the night, and it’s time to pack it in. After all, there’s always next year. (2024, 98 mins, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]
Ang Lee's CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (International)
The Davis Theater – Tuesday, 7pm
Like SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, which came before, and BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, which came after, Ang Lee's CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON both transcends and thoroughly embraces genre to illustrate astonishingly relatable characters who chafe against their constrictions and struggle to convey restrained romantic longing and unfulfilled passions. This exciting retrospective of Lee's work at Doc Films presents an opportunity to experience the wide variety of films that this successful filmmaker of the Taiwanese diaspora has directed since the early 1990s. CROUCHING TIGER is considered by many to be Lee's masterpiece. In every way, this is an almost flawless film. The acting, choreography, cinematography, soundtrack, production design, and the script weave together an absorbing blend of narrative and spectacle that appealed to both eastern and western audiences, launching a worldwide hunger for the wuxia genre. On its surface a martial arts film, CROUCHING TIGER is, more accurately, another Jane Austen novel in disguise. Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) and Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-fat) are two venerated warriors who have simmered with unspoken feelings for each other for decades due to an obscure obligation of honor, and moments of quiet longing between them provide an opportunity for western audiences to draw parallels between SENSE AND SENSIBILITY and CROUCHING TIGER, despite the exotic landscape and customs. The addition of Jen Yu (Zhang Ziyi in her breakout role), a rebellious young noblewoman who refuses to settle down and get married, catapults the plot into elegant and sometimes dizzying motion, with some of the most gorgeously choreographed fight scenes ever recorded, including a famous sword fight between Li Mu Bai and Jen Yu atop a forest of bamboo trees. Acclaimed fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping outdid himself with CROUCHING TIGER, having just completed THE MATRIX. What truly distinguishes CROUCHING TIGER from other thrilling wuxia films that preceded and followed and makes this film such a lasting masterpiece is clearly the emotional core and quietude of the narrative. This film is not afraid to linger in quiet moments, just as it is not afraid to erupt into raucous (and sometimes deftly comical) fight scenes to break the emotional tension. The action sequences, while undeniably a thrilling spectacle in their own right, advance the narrative and character development, allowing feelings to overflow when they are otherwise confined—especially for the ever-restrained Shu Lien, making CROUCHING TIGER more like a musical than a martial arts novel brought to life. The evocative score and cello solos by Yo Yo Ma round out this enduring adventure and haunting love story. Film nerds may enjoy this 35mm screening even more by imagining several Arriflex 435 cameras suspended by cranes and wires among the treetops to capture that iconic fight sequence; they'll also admire the artistry of the martial arts stars, who performed all their own fight sequences and delicate wire work so that we could appreciate long, hypnotic shots and close-ups of their faces as they battle to rescue the mystical Green Destiny sword. Screening as part of the Big Screen Classics series. (2000, 120 min, 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Alex Ensign]
Mike Cheslik's HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS (US)
Music Box Theatre – Saturday, Midnight
A largely silent film that draws on Looney Tunes aesthetics as well as video game logic, HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS balances slapstick, sight gags, and sound effects with a genuinely arresting visual aesthetic, combining live action with animated elements. While all the features are familiar, together they create an imaginative modern approach and clever take on cinematic comedy. Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, who also co-wrote the film) is a popular applejack salesman, but when he loses his business in an explosion, he’s forced to find a way to survive in the snowy Midwestern wilderness. Desperate to find food, Kayak must learn the ways of a northern fur trapper, receiving help from some locals, though mostly struggling on his own to succeed; his goal to earn better equipment—and ultimately the hand of a local merchant’s daughter—​by selling pelts is where HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS draws on a video game style, including recognizable sound cues, animations of how many pelts earn him which tools, and Kayak’s sneaking into the beavers’ hideout; it all adds to the uniqueness of the film’s storytelling. The cunning animals themselves are an annoying barrier to Kayak’s success. Larger creatures (such as the titular beavers) are performed by actors in mascot costumes, but director and effects designer Mike Cheslik also rounds out the animal residents with animation, puppets, and stuffed animals—​which themselves are filled with stuffing guts; there’s a constant concurrence of the adorable, the gross, and cartoonish violence. Shot in black and white in both Wisconsin and Michigan, the film also looks striking, the backdrop of the forest landscape grounding the silly antics that ensue. Due its silent nature, the jaunty score by Chris Ryan is also an important driving force in the film, demonstrated in its first few moments with a catchy theme song about Kayak’s popular applejack. (2022, 108 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
Yorgos Lanthimos' BUGONIA (US)
Northbrook Public Library – Wednesday, 2pm and 7pm
Within the dense pages of the Byzantine Geoponica—the sole surviving record of Constantinople’s agricultural methods—lies mention of the Bugonia ritual: a belief that bees were born from the carcass of a cow. Life springing from death. A spontaneous empire of bees birthed from decay. Yorgos Lanthimos’ BUGONIA opens with a similar conception. Teddy (Jessie Plemons), a beekeeper of sorts, narrates, “It all starts with something magnificent,” describing the kingdom of bees and their devotion to the queen. But his question lingers: what happens when the worker bees revolt? From the start, Lanthimos aligns this mythic order with political unrest. Teddy and his cousin Donnie (Aidan Delbis) are disillusioned Americans, suffocating under capitalism’s weight. Teddy, in particular, channels his resentment into a feverish anti-corporate crusade that gradually unravels into delusion. His manifesto—part political revolt, part alien conspiracy—culminates in a conviction that the planet is under threat from the Andromedans, a race of extraterrestrials poised to attack during an impending lunar eclipse. Donnie becomes the third point in this ideological triangle between Teddy and pharmaceutical CEO Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), whom the cousins kidnap to expose her supposed alien identity. Delbis gives Donnie an aching sincerity; his loyalty to Teddy feels both familial and tragic. “We are not steering the ship, Don,” Teddy warns, as if resigned to cosmic manipulation. Lanthimos juxtaposes the cousins’ rustic world with Michelle’s sterile minimalism—Teddy and Donnie framed in asymmetrical, natural compositions, while Michelle exists in crisp lines and geometric order. Rituals including yoga, running, and kickboxing mirror the discipline of hive behavior, showing the similarities as well as the disparity between the cousins and Michelle. These visual and thematic contrasts build toward confinement: a CEO bound and drugged in a basement, where philosophical arguments mutate into psychological warfare. The scenario echoes a cinematic tradition of class revenge fantasies—SWIMMING WITH SHARKS (1994), THE REF (1994), even NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION (1989)—where taking the powerful hostage serves as comic wish fulfillment. But Lanthimos transforms that fantasy into dread. As Teddy demands that Michelle contact the aliens to negotiate humanity’s survival, she retaliates with manipulations of her own. Teddy’s paranoia tries to outpace her corporate cunning. Despite its grim setup, BUGONIA thrives on absurd humor. “Don’t call it a dialogue; this isn’t Death of a Salesman,” Teddy quips, moments before using a homemade electroshock device to the tune of Green Day’s “Basket Case.” His awkward apology, “I didn’t realize you were a Queen; I thought you were just admin,” lands with the strange charm of Lanthimos’ earlier comedies. While less overtly Buñuelian than his previous work, Lanthimos maintains his surrealist flourishes. Flashbacks to Teddy’s dying mother (Alicia Silverstone), suspended by a string he holds like a balloon, reveal trauma fueling his delusions. His crusade against corporate aliens becomes an exorcism of grief and rage toward a pharmaceutical system that poisoned her. Adapted from Jang Joon-hwan’s SAVE THE GREEN PLANET! (2003), BUGONIA reimagines its source within the American landscape of YouTube manifestos, startup jargon, and class inequity. The bees pollinate while a Marlene Dietrich cover of Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” plays. This seems the most apt visual metaphor. If Teddy’s theories prove correct, like rabbit-hole conspiracies that embolden and foster violent rhetoric, would that mean we are supposed to believe angry young white men who develop clickbait conspiracy? Or are they themselves the front line of our own extinction? CEOs like Michelle Fuller, who present a workplace of false diversity and “self-managed” work hours, are part of the billionaire class—a concept very alien to most of us—who get away with pushing untested drugs and trampling anyone in their way, are equally (if not more) dangerous. The more we hear from Teddy and Michelle, the more we realize that there could be hope in the Bugonia ritual. Maybe one day, from our rotten carcasses a better species will emerge. (2025, 117 mins, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]
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In the Auditorium at the Northbrook Public Library on Tuesday from 1-2pm, film professor and journalist, Zbigniew Banas will present an in-depth talk about this year's Academy Award contenders.
📽️ ALSO SCREENING
âš« Alamo Drafthouse
Jon Moritsugu and Amy Davis’ 2026 film NUMBSKULL REVOLUTION (95 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Weird Wednesday series.
Terry Zwigoff’s 2003 film BAD SANTA (92 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday, 7pm, as a free Victory screening. More info on all screenings here.
âš« Chicago Public Library
View all screenings taking place at Chicago Public Library branches here.
âš« Cinema/Chicago
A member screening of Tony Benna’s 2026 film ANDRÉ IS AN IDIOT (89 min, DCP Digital) takes place Monday, 7pm, at AMC NEWCITY 14. More info here.
âš« The Davis Theater
Joe Swanberg presents NoBudge in Chicago, a program of ten short films by Chicago filmmakers, on Monday at 7pm. Each filmmaker will be in attendance for a Q&A,moderated by NoBudge founder, Kentucker Audley. More info here.
âš« Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Boris Barnet’s 1931 film THE THAW (65 min, Digital Projection) screens Friday at 4:30pm; Barnet’s 1962 film ALYONKA (86 min, 35mm) screens Saturday at 4pm; and Barnet’s 1951 film BOUNTIFUL SUMMER (87 min, 35mm) screens Saturday at 7pm, all as part of the By the Very Blue Sea: Boris Barnet and His Films symposium.
Patrick Yau’s 1997 film THE ODD ONE DIES (89 min, 35mm) screens Friday, 7pm, as part of the Revolution of Their Time: 30 Years of Milkyway Image series.
Chicago-based Korean filmmaker Chae Yu’s 2023 film GLISTENING SEAGULL (11 min, DCP Digital) and her 2025 film THE GOBLIN PLAY (47 min, DCP Digital) screen Sunday at 7pm. More info on all screenings here.
âš« FACETS
Award Winners: Best of the Chicago Underground Film Festival 2025, which comprises four short works from last year’s festival, screens Friday at 7pm.
Independent Labor Club of Chicago presents a screening of Daniel Goldhaber’s 2022 film HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE (104 min, Digital Projection) on Sunday, 11am, with special guests Jordan Sjol (co-screenwriter) and Adri Siriwatt (production designer). More info on all screenings here.
âš« The Film Studies Center (at the University of Chicago)
Boris Barnet’s 1944 film ONCE UPON A NIGHT (78 min, 35mm) screens Friday at 7pm. Co-presented with Doc Films as part of the By the Very Blue Sea: Boris Barnet and His Films symposium. Free admission. More info here.
âš« Music Box Theatre
Oliver Laxe’s 2025 film SIRĀT (114 min) begins. Most screenings are on 35mm, but some are on DCP Digital. See Venue website for showtimes and formats. Laxe and co-screenwriter Santiago Fillol will be in attendance for a post-film Q&A following the 7:15pm screening on Friday.
The 2026 Oscar Nominated Animated Short Films, 2026 Oscar Nominated Live Action Short Films, and Matt Johnson’s 2025 film NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE (95 min, DCP Digital) continue. See Venue website for showtimes.
Shareen Anderson’s 2025 documentary THE RIGHT TRACK (93 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 11:30am, followed by a post-film panel discussion with Janet Jensen, Brenda Myers-Powell, and Brenda Stewart.
Remsy Attasi’s 2026 experimental film THE WILTED FLOWER (60 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday at 7pm. Featuring a post-film Q&A with the filmmakers. More info on all screenings and events here.
âš« Siskel Film Center
David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin’s 2025 documentary MR. NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN (90 min, DCP Digital) begins screening. See Venue website for showtimes. More info on all screenings here.
âš« South Side Home Movie Project
As part of its 20th anniversary celebration, the South Side Home Movie Project presents Spinning Home Movies Episode 20: Quiet Still with Jason Campbell, a week-long exhibition that showcases the materiality, architecture and temporality of home through archival films and architectural design, at Washington Park Arts Incubator (301 E. Garfield Blvd.) from March 9 - 14. More info here.
CINE-LIST: March 6 - March 12, 2026
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Alex Ensign, Megan Fariello, Shaun Huhn, Tristan Johnson, Ben Kaye, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Scott Pfeiffer, Harrison Sherrod