:: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21 - THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 27 ::

👁️ CINE-FILE CO-SPONSORED SCREENING

Trust Fall at The Davis Theater
Sunday, 7pm

Please join us at this installment of the Oscarbate Film Collective’s ongoing Trust Fall series for a screening of A MYSTERY FILM (19XX, 12X min, Digital Projection). This specific love letter to cinema is written with the most poisonous of pens—a bitter, madcap, comic-strip ode to the movies!

The show will also be a special fundraiser, as we will be collecting canned food and donations for those affected by the government shutdown. Please bring whatever you can—we will be handing out exclusive pins and coupons for the bar/concession stand for those that can help! Come hang out with us and watch some crucial viewing for a good cause. More info here.

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s FEAR OF FEAR (West Germany)

Chicago Film Society at the Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm

Early in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1975 TV movie nightmare, Leonard Cohen’s “Lover, Lover, Lover” erupts in a literal needle drop, floating through Margot Staudte’s living room as she begins to dance. The camera lingers on her face, capturing the choreography of despair. FEAR OF FEAR is less a melodrama of a mother’s breakdown than an indictment of post-war Germany, proving the so-called Wirtschaftswunder rested on the suppressed hysteria of the bourgeoisie. Fassbinder described it as a film about the human condition, in which mental illness emerges as the inevitable response to a life alien to one’s true self. Margot’s descent, exquisitely realized by Margit Carstensen, is a rational reaction to irrational social pressures: the invisible oppression of the nuclear family ideal enforced by her snooping in-laws who belittle her into nervous ennui. Adapting Asta Scheib’s 1974 story "Langsame Tage," Fassbinder transforms it into a pantone, Sirkian chamber melodrama, captured on 35mm in a 4:3 ratio that amplifies Margot’s claustrophobia. Fassbinder enjoyed the immediacy of critique that a TV film offered. In the same year, he made LIKE A BIRD ON A WIRE, FOX AND HIS FRIENDS, and MOTHER KUSTERS GOES TO HEAVEN, each painting Germany as both permissive and punitive, and sometimes within a single scene. Fassbinder’s obsession with Douglas Sirk came when he framed Sirk’s melodrama as proof of how “Love seems to be the best, most sneaky and effective instrument of social oppression.” Margot’s hysteria becomes a desperate, almost hopeful act of existential rebellion. The film’s critique extends to the medical establishment, whose male doctors enforce bourgeois conformity with little understanding. One misdiagnoses her as schizophrenic; another exploits her addiction for sexual gain. Valium, a blue-diamond-labeled bottle, embodies this oppressive passivity. It is a drug I knew too well through my mother’s own depression, anxiety, and agoraphobia. Her symptoms were treated with institutional weekend vacations and an addiction to pills rather than empathy. Only when Margot encounters a female doctor does the possibility of genuine care emerge. FEAR OF FEAR shares thematic resonance with John Cassavetes’ A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (1974), where housewives labeled “crazy” reveal the pressure to maintain the myth of domestic happiness. Gena Rowlands’ Mabel and Carstensen’s Margot collapse under expectation, yet while Mabel embodies improvisational chaos, Margot is trapped within claustrophobic frames, both spatial and social. Compared with any ABC Movie of the Week from 1975, Fassbinder’s work demonstrates unmatched artistry. Margot’s terror mirrors 1970s West Germany, gripped by the Baader–Meinhof Group and state counter-measures. The film is a cold-blooded indictment confirming that the psychological wreckage of the middle-class wife is seen as the necessary sacrifice for the prosperity of the German state. FEAR OF FEAR shows a woman’s private ruin rendered with a clarity that feels both cruel and impossibly tender. Reminding us of Leonard Cohen’s song that can be interpreted as someone who’s fed up with their inauthentic life: "I locked you in this body, I meant it as a kind of trial… Then let me start again, I cried, please let me start again. I want a face that’s fair this time. I want a spirit that is calm." Preceded by Dave Fleischer's 1937 cartoon short HOUSE CLEANING BLUES (6 min, 16mm). (1975, 88 min, 35mm) [Shaun Huhn]

Konrad Wolf and Wolfgang Kohlhaase’s SOLO SUNNY (East Germany)

Block Cinema (at Northwestern University) – Friday, 7pm [Free Admission]

It’s not often that we get a chance to screen films from the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), aka East Germany, so it is with some excitement and no small gratitude we have a chance to see SOLO SUNNY, co-directed and co-written by Konrad Wolf, East Germany’s most lauded director whose 1959 film STERNE won the Special Jury Prize at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival. SOLO SUNNY was a blockbuster hit in East Germany, playing to sold-out houses for 19 weeks at the Kino International theater in East Berlin. The film won a slew of awards, including Best Actress for star Renate Krößner at the 30th Berlin International Film Festival and the Chicago International Film Festival’s Best Script Golden Plaque for Wolf and Wolfgang Kohlhaase, East Germany’s most important screenwriter. Why did this story of a singer with a second-rate, traveling cabaret resonate so deeply for so many? I’d guess that Krößner’s mesmerizing performance as Ingrid “Sunny” Sommer, a young woman determined to succeed in the face of the everyday indignities of life in a sexist, repressive, petty society gave voice to the frustrations of young Germans with little to which to aspire. Sunny lives in a rundown Berlin tenement with a snoopy landlady who disapproves of her one-night stands, music, and apartment hygiene habits and reports her. Sunny’s interview with a government official about the complaint probably had special resonance for a rightly paranoid German audience. (Interestingly, Wolf’s brother was a high-ranking member of the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police.) Her work life is no less aggravating. Members of The Tornadoes, the troupe’s band, hit on her incessantly, the horribly unfunny emcee of the show insults her in front of their audiences, and the other female singer in the troupe ignores a harrowing attempted rape on Sunny in their dressing room because she wants to get some sleep. Hoping to find someone she can count on, Sunny falls for Ralph (Alexander Lang) a “certified philosopher” who subs in on saxophone when the regular player is punched in the mouth by the boyfriend of a woman he tried to pick up. Of course, Ralph cheats on Sunny, resulting in a very interesting incident in his bed. Cinematographer Eberhard Geick captures the depressing air of the GDR, with its crumbling walls and peeling paint. Whether by lucky happenstance or foreknowledge, he captures the felling of an apartment block like the one in which Sunny lives and emphasizes the Soviet remake of the city by shooting the cityscape’s empty lots interspersing the characterless apartment blocks going up throughout Berlin. Editor Evelyn Carow pieces together an episodic film, emphasizing the directionlessness of life in the GDR. By contrast, long takes of Sunny’s face center her as the vital heartbeat of the film. Despite disappointments and setbacks, including being dropped by the troupe, Sunny gives show business another shot. Her final line, delivered to an underground punk band she approaches for a job, speaks the in-your-face defiance of a disaffected populace: “I’m blunt, I sleep with whomever I want, The Tornadoes fired me. My name is Sunny.” Screening in conjunction with the Goethe-Institut in celebration of Konrad Wolf’s centenary. Lauren Stokes, associate professor of History at Northwestern, will introduce the film. (1980, 109 min, 35mm) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Luis Buñuel's ÉL (Mexico)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 11:30am

Much less well known than the other classics of his Mexican period due to its spotty availability over the years, ÉL (sometimes known as THIS STRANGE PASSION) nevertheless functions as a Rosetta stone of his favorite themes: Catholicism, crazy love, women's feet—all three of which he manages to combine in the very first scene. Rodney Welsh describes it: "During Holy Week, Don Francisco Galvan de Montemayor (Arturo de Cordova) is taking part in a Catholic foot-washing ceremony when he very suddenly falls in love—with a pair of feet. The middle-aged Don Francisco is a wealthy businessman, a devout Catholic, and, we come to find out, still a virgin. The problem isn't that he can't find anyone; he's handsome, vigorous, confident and a sharp dresser. The problem is that no one has ever been good enough. He's a romantic purist. These beautiful feet, then, present a challenge. He's a believer not just in love at first sight, but at first and last sight; having held out for a lifetime for the woman of his dreams, he is committed to possessing her for eternity." It doesn't turn out well. Always one for understatement, Buñuel once wryly wrote, "The hero of ÉL interests me as a beetle, or a disease-carrying fly does. I've always found insects exciting." Co-presented by the International Museum of Surgical Science and the Luis Bunuel Film Institute in conjunction with the Bunuel: Master of Dreams exhibit. (1953, 92 min, DCP Digital) [Rob Christopher]

Jean-Luc Godard's THE IMAGE BOOK (Switzerland/France)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Sunday, 4pm

When I screened A MAN ESCAPED in an Intro to Film class a few years ago, one particularly bright student seemed riveted by Bresson’s radical and extensive use of first-person voice-over narration, close-ups of hands at work, and the unusual way these elements interacted with each other. In a post-screening discussion, he made the salient point that “It was as if Lieutenant Fontaine’s hands were doing the thinking and the talking.” I was reminded of this remark at the beginning of Jean-Luc Godard’s THE IMAGE BOOK when a close-up depicts a man’s hands splicing together two shots of 35mm film at an editing table. On the soundtrack, Godard’s 87-year-old voice, now a sepulchral whisper, informs us that “man’s true condition” is to “think with hands.” This is shortly followed by what appears to be a documentary image of a concentration-camp victim’s emaciated fingers. Hand imagery from a variety of sources – from a shot of Bunuel wielding a straight razor in the opening of UN CHIEN ANDALOU to the detail of an index finger pointing upwards in Da Vinci’s painting John the Baptist – proliferates in the early stages of THE IMAGE BOOK. This serves to introduce the film’s structure (“five chapters like the five fingers of a hand”) and overall aesthetic strategy (mixing excerpts of narrative films with documentaries, high art, cell-phone videos, etc.); but, more importantly, it reminds us of Godard’s belief that a filmmaker is ideally someone who works with his or her hands, operating “small instruments” like the analog equipment on which Godard begins the process of slicing and dicing the contents of his vast image data bank before passing that footage on to his cinematographer/co-editor Fabrice Aragno for a digital upgrade. After this brief prologue, THE IMAGE BOOK proper begins: The first four “chapters” feature Godard’s associative montage at its most rigorous—he traces various images, ideas and motifs throughout film history (water, trains, war, the concept of “the law,” etc.) in a manner not unlike that of his mammoth video essay HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA. But, even when it feels most familiar, these passages in THE IMAGE BOOK still show Godard to be a restless experimenter: The famous scene in Nicholas Ray’s JOHNNY GUITAR where Sterling Hayden implores Joan Crawford to “lie” by professing her love for him (a scene Godard has already quoted in several other films) gets a new look by the introduction of a black screen during what should be a shot of Hayden, so that viewers only see the corresponding reverse-angle shot of Crawford in their charged dialogue exchange. Another new trick up the director’s sleeve is the way he presents shots in a deliberately incorrect aspect ratio (i.e., the images appear horizontally stretched) before having them “pop” into the proper ratio, an amusing and oddly satisfying poetic effect. The film’s darker and more disturbing elements, on the other hand, have caused some critics to categorize it as a “horror movie.” In one instance, Godard provocatively juxtaposes an execution scene from Rossellini’s PAISAN, in which Italian partisans are drowned by their Nazi captors, with eerily similar, non-fiction footage of recent ISIS executions. Elsewhere, he juxtaposes images of exploited performers—intercutting shots of a grinning “pinhead” from Tod Browning’s FREAKS with someone performing anilingus in a pornographic film of unknown origin (the latter is identified only as “PORNO” in the lengthy bibliography that makes up most of the closing credits). But it’s the fifth and final chapter, taking up almost the entire second half of the film, that sees Godard boldly striking out into truly new territory: This section examines how Western artists frequently misrepresent the Arab world by depicting it in simplistic and reductive terms (i.e., as either “joyful” or “barbaric”). Godard quotes extensively from authors I haven’t read (e.g., Edward Saïd and Albert Cossery) but the overall meaning is clear in an extended scene that focuses on a fictional Arabic country named Dofa whose “underground has no oil” but whose Prime Minister nonetheless dreams of submitting all Gulf countries to his rule. What’s incredible about this sequence is the startling way Godard conveys the “story” solely through his narration while the image track is comprised of a cornucopia of found footage from movies by both Western and Arabic filmmakers (not to mention some hyper-saturated shots apparently captured by Godard and Aragno on location in Tunisia that are the most visually ravishing in the film). That it’s often difficult to determine where these shots came from is, of course, part of the point. In an otherwise war-and-death-obsessed work that feels even more despairing than usual for this gnomic artist, Godard does, however, express hope for the possibility of a new poetics of cinema, one in which Middle-Eastern and African filmmakers might discover new ways of seeing and hearing themselves. The wild sound design, always a highlight in late Godard, reaches new levels of expressiveness here as voices, sounds and snippets of music aggressively ping-pong back and forth between multiple stereo channels—essentially doing for the ears what the groundbreaking 3D of GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE did for the eyes. In a lengthy post-credits sequence, Godard’s voice-over eventually devolves into a coughing fit while a rhapsodic dance sequence from Max Ophuls’ LE PLAISIR gets the final word on the image track. In spite of what some of his detractors think, Godard still believes in the elemental power of cinema, which is why the mesmerizing IMAGE BOOK is a more accessible work than even many of its champions would have you believe. Spotting references and decoding meanings is ultimately less important than the sensorial experience of simply vibing with the uniquely romantic/pessimistic tone engendered by this giant of the medium’s total mastery of “image et parole.” Preceded by Marcel Duchamp’s 1926 short ANEMIC CINEMA (7 min, 16mm) and Godard’s final completed work, the 2023 short TRAILER OF A FILM THAT WILL NEVER EXIST: PHONY WARS (20 min, DCP Digital). (2018, 90 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]

Sepideh Farsi’s PUT YOUR SOUL ON YOUR HAND AND WALK (France/Occupied Palestinian Territory/Iran/Documentary)

Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Fatma Hassona’s smile is infectious. Her beaming face, kind and inviting, appears near-constantly throughout Sepideh Farsi’s heartbreaking documentary, built from a series of video conversations between Farsi and Hassona, a photojournalist born and residing in Gaza. Fatma’s smile pokes out when talking about her love of cats, while quoting THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, and while talking about her religion, but this emblem of joy can’t help but poke out during darker conversations too; Farsi’s film mostly chronicles conversations held in 2024, right in the darkest moments of Israel’s military assault against the people of Gaza, with Fatma and her family members constantly struggling to find stable portions of food to keep them going, let alone a stable internet connection (many of Farsi and Hassona’s conversations are underscored by lagging screens and frequently interrupted signals). Throughout it all, Fatma maintains a hopeful disposition, early on proclaiming her belief that “There’s nothing that is without reason,” all of this carnage and chaos clearly part of some higher plan. Farsi remains a more cynical voice in this regard, as her own history as an Iranian artist and activist in opposition to her home country’s authoritarian government has led to a life where action takes priority above fate. Farsi fills the rest of the film with Hassona’s photography, stunning canvases of the utter destruction that has been wrought on the Palestinian people and their land, these images sitting alongside news broadcasts covering the futile efforts to bring peace to the region through empty promises of ceasefire. Fatma’s mood does noticeably change as the film goes on, a natural exhaustion and frustration sinking in over the months, compounded by the numerous documented attempts of Israel refusing aid to malnourished Palestinians. But Fatma smiles through it, knowing that there will be (and must be) something better on the other side, that the oppression of her people will somehow, some way, come to an end. “Whatever they do to us,” she proudly exclaims, “however they try to destroy us, or even if they kill us, we will laugh and live our lives, whether they want it or not. They can’t defeat us.” In a grand, horrible way, she was right; PUT YOUR SOUL ON YOUR HAND AND WALK was accepted into the Cannes Film Festival on April 15th, 2025. On April 16th, 2025, Fatma Hassona and six members of her family were killed in a targeted airstrike by the Israeli government. Fatma is not here, but this film is, a series of beautiful and terrifying images that chronicle a living record of a wonderful, smiling, shining life that could never be defeated. (2025, 113 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Jafar Panahi’s IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT (Iran/France/Luxembourg)

Music Box Theatre – Monday, 7pm

There’s a scene in this film, where the group of Iranians who have kidnapped their supposed torturer in hopes to identify him beyond a shadow of a doubt so that they may enact their own justice and ruin his life as he had theirs, are pushing the van that contains the man’s prostrate body—tranquilized but not yet dead, and in a wooden box that foreshadows his intended fate—after it has run out of gas. It’s a humorous scene, ironic but also openly laughable because one of the “kidnappers” is a bride wearing her wedding gown. But as the group pushes the van, one or two others, strangers, rush to help them. As much as it’s a film about a torturer, it’s also a film about helpers; there’s no clear connection between Panahi and Mister Rogers, but this thought brought to mind his famous statement that, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” The overall narrative of helping pertains to the central drama. A family pulls over after their car breaks down; at the place where they stop and are helped by a random person also works Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) who, upon hearing the squeak of what sounds like a prosthetic leg, suspects that the father might be Iqbal, or Peg Leg, the man who tortured him and countless others while detained as political prisoners several years prior. He meets some of those others when referred to another victim by his friend, also a victim but who doesn’t want to be involved; ultimately a ragtag group is assembled, which includes a photographer, her troubled ex-boyfriend, and a bride and her groom (they'd been taking pre-wedding photos with the photographer), all one-time political prisoners who are first eager to confirm the torturer is in fact who they think he is and then to decide what to do with him. Ambiguity is inherent to Iranian cinema, as much of it embodies a sense of irresoluteness. But while I wouldn’t go so far as to say this is a bait and switch, it at first seems more enigmatic than it ends up being. Eventually it becomes about retribution and whether it will ease their trauma; it’s a consideration on the prolongation of violence, not really about if the torturer is who they think he is, and if that violence will ever end if they exact revenge. This is obviously personal for Panahi, who has been imprisoned twice for dissent, most recently in 2022; he had been previously unable to leave the country and made this film, as well as many others, without permission from the Iranian government. The film’s meditation on the futility of revenge finds a real-world parallel: just as the characters confront the limits of retribution, Panahi receives support from a global network of artists and audiences, proving that solidarity, not violence, is what carries lasting power. Panahi in person for a post-screening Q&A. Please note this screening is sold out. (2025, 103 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Tim Burton's PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE (US)

Music Box Theatre – Wednesday, 7pm

By 1985, Paul Reubens' bow-tied TV man-child Pee-wee Herman had claimed a successful stage run, HBO series and specials, and sold-out performances at Carnegie Hall. The culmination of this popularity was PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE. The premise of the BIG ADVENTURE is simple: Pee-wee's beloved bike, an awesome cherry-red cruiser, has disappeared and, bindle in hand, Pee-wee sets across the country to recover it, come what may. In store for Pee-wee are phantom adventures on the American highway, a trip to the Alamo, and the hazards of a thousand other oddball incidents, leading to a roaring, studio-crashing finale that rivals the best of Mel Brooks. PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE is of course the feature debut of Tim Burton, who is perhaps the perfect directorial match for Reubens' funhouse comedy, and the film offers the curious objects, candy colors, and spoiled suburban malaise that have since become the hallmarks of Burton's all-too successful career. Some of the comedy has become even more relevant and complex (and unintentionally ironic) as the years have gone by, such as when Dottie asks Pee-wee if he would like to take her to the movies: Pee-wee responds that there are things she doesn't know about him—"Things you wouldn't understand, things you couldn't understand... Things you shouldn't understand." The two do eventually end up at the movies together, but thankfully Dottie and the audience are spared a TAXI DRIVER moment. Co-presented by the Horror House. Arrive early for exclusive merchandise drop in the lounge, themed drinks and a costume contest. (1985, 90 min, 35mm) [Liam Neff]

Charlie Shackleton’s THE ZODIAC PROJECT (US/Documentary)

Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 4:30pm

What do you do if you can’t make the movie you want to make? Perhaps make a movie about just that. This is what British filmmaker Charlie Shackleton (whose 2021 film THE AFTERLIGHT, a haunting collage of scenes from global cinema featuring only now-deceased actors, was distributed via a single 35mm print) did when he couldn’t secure the rights for Lyndon Lafferty’s 2012 book The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge. Rather than deliver the true crime documentary he originally set out to make, Shackleton instead crafts an essay film not just about the aborted project but also about its ostensible genre, which has beguiled the nation these past several years in the form of books (more proliferate and hastily written than ever before), podcasts (the playground of privileged white women), and documentaries, now often made as docuseries and stretched out into overly long, ethically dubious narrative sagas. There’s no denying that his subject, the infamous Zodiac Killer, is a pervasive one, though this does allow for the formal playfulness of his consolation-prize-project to assume prominence. At one point in the film, over the course of which Shackleton is sporadically shown sitting in a sound booth recording the narration, he explicitly says that he has no desire to rehash the details of the Zodiac Killer’s crimes, something he claims is a minor alleviation of not having secured the rights to Lafferty’s book. Of course not getting the rights is merely a technicality, as much of what Lafferty wrote about, sans a few key twists, has been discussed publicly and could therefore be disclosed in the film. Where Shackleton fills in the gaps are with what he would have done had he been able to make it, the kind of shots he’d set up or the sort of evocative B-roll he’d use in certain spots. What I found most illuminating about these parts is where he would show a location, say, and clarify that it wasn’t the exact location of wherever he was talking about, but that for the sake of the film it would do. Perhaps unintentionally Shackleton is pulling back a veneer of deceit around this so-called “true” crime content that prioritizes what might either be more exciting or convenient than what is real. He explores this more obviously in references to the consistent filmic grammar of other such documentaries, with examples from these films and series side-by-side on screen. This takes it into more film essay territory, which is interesting to compare and contrast to his own creative approach and ruminations over the entertainment and follies of the genre. His film is like an investigation, both into a hypothetical and a literal, perhaps in such a juxtaposition the ultimate true crime documentary. Or at least the ultimate in the “fake it til you literally make it” variety. Shackleton in person for a post-screening Q&A. (2025, 91 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Seijun Suzuki's BRANDED TO KILL (Japan)

Alamo Drafthouse – Monday, 7pm

John Zorn describes the infamous film that was the final straw for Suzuki's then-employer Nikkatsu (a genre-picture manufacturing machine) as "about as close to traditional Yakuza pictures as Godard's ALPHAVILLE is to science fiction." Less a re-imagining of the gangster film a la Melville, or a Tarantinoian rewriting of the rules, BRANDED TO KILL completely dismantles the genre from the ground up on both a formal and narrative level, and in this way shares a kinship with another (really punk) film from the previous year, Godard's MADE IN U.S.A. It's a little more fun than Godard's film though, in that its opening two reels do satisfy, albeit subversively, a few of the genre's most exciting tropes (sunglasses and suit-clad hitmen, moonlit car rides set to jazz, and an exciting, hilarious assassination sequence) before descending into complete madness. Suzuki was one of the Japanese masters of the scope frame, and here puts his eye to work in gorgeous layers of black-and-white. Although he fought back and sued the studio for wrongful termination after BRANDED TO KILL, Suzuki was effectively blacklisted by the Japanese film industry for over a decade, for directing one too many films that, according to Nikkatsu "make no money and make no sense." But this movie has gone on to rightfully earn a reputation as one of the great Japanese films of the 60's, and has influenced some of our most treasured modern independent filmmakers, including Wong Kar-wai and Jim Jarmusch. While BRANDED TO KILL may lack the emotional thrust of Suzuki's masterpiece GATE OF FLESH, it more than makes up for that in anarchist spirit, which makes it an essential work by one of the strangest artists to ever pick up a camera. Screening as part of Queer Film Theory 101. (1967, 91 min, DCP Digital) [Max Frank]

Wim Wenders' ALICE IN THE CITIES (West Germany)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm

Wim Wender's fourth film is a study in contrasts: between photography and the written word, between Europe and America, bachelorhood and parenthood, contrived soul-searching and genuine epiphany. A navel-gazing German journalist (Rüdiger Vogler) equipped with an early Polaroid camera returns existentially empty-handed from a road-trip across America, only to find himself the de-facto caretaker of an abandoned ten-year old girl, the eponymous Alice (Yella Rottländer). Traveling through Europe in search of Alice's relations, lost in the way which only humans who pre-date cell phones and the Internet can be, the pair form a strange albeit wholesome partnership in a sort of platonic take on the road trip section of Lolita.  Wenders is the warmest of the New German Cinema auteurs and, despite its bleak landscapes and damaged characters, ALICE is a surprisingly gentle and optimistic film. It is the first of Wender's road trilogy, and an early collaboration with cinematographer Robby Müller. Screening as part of the Conversations in Cars: Road Trips and Relationships series. (1974, 110 min, DCP Digital) [Mojo Lorwin]

Brittany Shyne’s SEEDS (US)

Cinema/Chicago at Kennedy-King College (U-Building Theater, 740 W. 63rd St.) – Saturday, 1pm [Free Admission]

When discussing her debut feature SEEDS, director Brittany Shyne has described the film as "the maintenance of legacy and cultural presentation." This becomes painfully clear as the full scope of her work comes into view, a kaleidoscopic look at the lives of Black farmers in the American South that, like the best documentaries, acts as both art and artifact. Originally conceiving of the film as a project while in grad school, Shyne, also acting as cinematographer here, wanted to use her filmic voice to capture a perspective that she had yet to see portrayed faithfully, if at all, on camera. Structurally, SEEDS exists as a “process” documentary; there are no talking heads, no descriptive voiceovers, simply the footage of these farmers in Georgia and Mississippi working, talking, and simply living, Shyne’s imagery providing enough context and artistry to paint a sumptuous picture as is. We are thrust, in pristine black-and-white, into the world of these “centennial farmers,” those whose families have owned their respective land for over a hundred years, their cultural footprint measured in acres, struggling to keep up with an agricultural community that has systematically left them far behind. Shyne’s compositions are gorgeously intimate, her camera finding its way into the deep crevasses of gigantic mechanical cotton pickers, into funeral homes during reverentially joyful services, and even to Washington DC, joining the farmer’s mass protests against the blatantly racially discriminatory practices of the Department of Agriculture (during the Biden Administration, mind you). Two figures who find themselves poking through the artistic morass of agricultural imagery are Willie Jr. and Carlie, two enigmatic farmers whose presence particularly highlights how this profession—for Black southerners, at least—still mainly rests in the hands of the elderly (Carlie is 89 in the footage here, but has since passed). There is an existential weight at the heart of SEEDS, of Black Americans finally owning land in a country that has brutally othered them for centuries, hoping that there will be someone to whom they can pass down these fields of legacy. Cotton and corn will continue to grow, but will those who have given their lives to cultivate these crops still be given the space to do so, to grow even fuller, even stronger? (2025, 123 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Kathleen Collins’ LOSING GROUND (US)

Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 12pm

"There's nothing wrong with telling stories." So says one artist when another expresses envy over his ability to work instinctively as opposed to narratively. Director Kathleen Collins' LOSING GROUND is composed of various such oppositions that manifest themselves through Victor (played by GANJA & HESS director Bill Gunn) and his wife, Sara (Seret Scott), a professor of philosophy. He's artistic; she's logical. This is the jumping off point from which other dichotomies—male versus female, creativity versus intellectualism, abstraction versus specificity—are explored. With regards to race, which is a de facto theme owing to its being one of the first fictional features to be directed by a black woman, the film shows rather than tells; many suspect that it was neglected upon its release because it portrays Black characters as well-to-do professionals instead of as victims or thugs. (In response to being asked if minority filmmakers have a duty to address their respective struggles, Collins said, "I think you have an even greater obligation to deal with your own obsessions.") Though LOSING GROUND isn't exactly autobiographical, Collins herself was a professor, and the name of the film comes from one of her own short story collections. Sara's almost obsessive study of aesthetic experience both parallels the aforementioned oppositions and prompts the changes that occur over the course of the narrative. "Essentially it's that change is a rather volatile process in the human psyche," Collins said in an interview with James Briggs Murray for Black Visions. "And, that real change usually requires some release of fantasy energy." This last part refers to the dance-centric film-within-a-film that Sara acts in at the behest of one of her students, which she does in an attempt to achieve the same creative ecstasy as her husband and actress mother. (The meta-film also mirrors the central drama of the narrative.) Overall, the film is an astute meditation on a great many things: the academic experience, the aesthetic experience, the Black experience, and Sara's experience as a woman. Collins was also a person of varied interests; in addition to teaching, writing, and making films, she was also a playwright and an activist. Collins once remarked, "I'm interested in solving certain questions, such as: How do you do an interesting narrative film?" LOSING GROUND is an exceptional solution to that dilemma. There's nothing wrong with telling stories, indeed. Screening as part of the Interiority on Screen lecture series at the Film Center. (1982, 86 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Ira Sachs’ PETER HUJAR’S DAY (US/Germany)

Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

It seems fitting for a film about a photographer to feel like a snapshot—a life captured briefly, but intentionally, in a moment of stillness that exists as a rich, textured object. Director and adapter Ira Sachs seems fully cognizant of the task, majestically exhuming a conversation between photographer Peter Hujar and nonfiction author Linda Rosenkrantz from December 19th, 1974, a dialogue originally destined to be part of a larger project of Rosenkrantz's, chronicling how artists fill up their days. The project was abandoned, with the disparate interviews seemingly lost to time, before Rosenkrantz miraculously discovered the transcript of her conversation with Hujar decades later. Thus, PETER HUJAR’S DAY exists as resurrection, roleplay, and altogether earnest experiment, a noble and meaningful attempt at remembering the act of remembrance itself, using the artificial construction of cinema to access an honest moment between two immortal artists. Sachs reteams with Ben Whishaw, a powerful force in Sachs’ previous PASSAGES (2023), who plays Hujar across from the equally beguiling Rebecca Hall as Rosenkrantz. Hujar has been tasked with meticulously noting the tasks of his previous day to recount in full detail across a conversation sprinkled with tea breaks, excursions to the roof, and brief dance interludes. There are metatextual flourishes across the film (we see a clapperboard open the film, alongside a boom mic being preset for a scene mid-film) alongside artful photoshoot-style montages of the two players, but for the most part, the film is concerned with little more than two figures in conversation, Hujar’s day primarily consisting of a photoshoot with Allen Ginsberg alongside other seeming mundanities of New York City living. Even as low-stakes as this might feel, Linda’s curiosity in “how do people fill up their days” has some urgency and value to it, turning the everyday into something meaningful, textured, and, yes, cinematic. It helps that Whishaw’s summoning of Hujar feels as lived-in as the best film performances out there, his ease withhis  interpretation immediately palpable to the viewer, his movements, speech, posture, existing simultaneously as a performance and a conjuring. Throughout the film, my mind wandered to Louis Malle’s immortal MY DINNER WITH ANDRE (1981), another conversational two-hander for the screen concerning New York artists contending with what makes up their lives. But where that film finds two forces directly colliding, here our two spirits glide side by side, their connection made not through conflict, but through shared space and understanding. Here, the truth of intimacy comes not through bared souls, but through exhaustive listening and shared space. This is perhaps how Hujar worked with his subjects, his vivid photography casting figures in poses carrying ease and intention. Hujar sits alongside fellow photographers like Nan Goldin and David Wojnarowicz and Robert Mapplethorpe, grand chroniclers of a queer dynasty on the brink of plague (Hujar himself would be diagnosed with AIDS and pass away at the age of 53, just thirteen years after this conversation). It’s a testament to his legacy that Sachs’ film feels like a worthy extension of the spirit of Hujar’s work without featuring a single one of his photos. (2025, 76 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (Italy/US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Saturday, 7pm

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST is a grand, summative mosaic of western-movie imagery and themes—it’s the western to end all westerns. Not for nothing did Sergio Leone shoot the film in Monument Valley, the location for many John Ford westerns; ONCE UPON A TIME harkens back to numerous films in the genre (not just Ford’s, but also SHANE, JOHNNY GUITAR, and DUEL IN THE SUN), suggesting that the film takes place not in the actual American past but in the fictional past created by the movies. (It goes without saying that the film is a major influence on Quentin Tarantino.) Leone, who wrote the story with Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci, sets the film in the last days of the Wild West, when progress (represented here by the construction of a railroad) completed its conquest of the untamed region. This temporal setting gives the film an elegiac air, while the dynamic, monumental imagery gives the film a palpable vivacity. Bolstering the theme of conclusions, the central drama hinges on the impending final showdown between an aging assassin and a younger bandit-cum-avenging angel in the Leone tradition. Playing the assassin, Henry Fonda delivers an atypical performance that also happens to be one of his greatest. Leone inverts the actor’s true-blue honesty to suggest something like pure evil, and Fonda dives into the role with scarifying precision. The specificity of his acting counterbalances Leone’s epic imagery, and it makes up part of a quartet of fascinating lead performances. Jason Robards, Charles Bronson and Claudia Cardinale deliver the other three; each one acts so differently from the others that they practically seem to inhabit different movies, yet the combination works, adding to the film’s mosaic-like form. Screening as part of the News Releases and Restorations series. (1968, 164 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Jean-Jacques Beineix's DIVA (France)

FACETS – Sunday, 1pm

DIVA was the flagship film of what came to be known as the “cinéma du look,” a wave of French movies released in the '80s and '90s that celebrated style over substance. At least this is how many critics characterized the films when they first came out. Time has been rather generous to the work of Léos Carax, who was initially grouped in with the movement as a result of his first two features, BOY MEETS GIRL (1984) and MAUVAIS SANG (1986), and Jean-Jacques Beineix, who made DIVA, displays an interest in narrative trickery as well as visual expressiveness. (The films of fellow “look” director Luc Besson, on the other hand, still seem pretty superficial.) DIVA abounds with double-crosses and unexpected twists, and these enliven an otherwise basic chase film. Jules is an opera-loving Parisian postal worker who secretly tapes the performance of a recording-averse American singer; gangsters mistake the tape for the recorded confession of a mob-connected police chief, and soon they’re after Jules in pursuit of his bounty. The film contains a famous motorcycle chase that partly takes place in the Paris subway; one of the most celebrated sequences of its day, it generates tremendous suspense while showcasing Beineix’s filmmaking chops. The rest of the movie is visually striking as well, as the director employs lots of extended tracking shots and surprising editing choices to draw you into the tale. (1981, 117 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs]

Harmony Korine's GUMMO (US)

FACETS – Friday, 7pm

Harmony Korine was just 22 years old when he made GUMMO, and the movie just spews youthful energy. The writer-director tries out all sorts of styles and techniques—Werner Herzog is clearly an influence, but so are vaudeville comedy and skateboarding videos—resulting in exciting shifts in tone that recall the 1960s films of Jean-Luc Godard. The film is alternately crass and tender, exploitive and loving; it revels in the sorts of contradictions that only cinema can engender. Certain images have stayed in my memory for decades: the stone-faced little boy eating spaghetti in a bathtub filled with green water; the black midget wearing a Hatikva t-shirt cheering on an impromptu fight club; a shirtless boy with cloth bunny ears loitering on an expressway overpass. These images are all weird and sad and distinctly middle-American; indeed the movie showcases a certain homegrown, regional decay one rarely sees outside of exploitation fare. Shot in derelict portions of Nashville, Tennessee (but set in post-tornado Xenia, Ohio), GUMMO evokes, to paraphrase Lisa Alspector’s rave review in the Chicago Reader, a climate in which there’s nothing to do except break social taboos. The preteen characters roam the streets, killing cats and sniffing glue; one man pimps out his developmentally disabled wife to two boys; a teenage girl dreams of becoming a stripper. Where the director’s sometime collaborator Larry Clark might adopt a sad, moralizing attitude toward such people, Korine throws a party with them—there’s a “let’s put on a show” quality to GUMMO that rivals the films of Busby Berkeley. Linda Manz, the indelible star of Malick’s DAYS OF HEAVEN and Hopper’s OUT OF THE BLUE, returned to movies for the first time in almost 20 years to play one of the boys’ affectionate, tap-dancing mom. She’s one of the few cast members with any professional experience—Korine found most of the players from his hometown and from daytime talk shows—yet everyone onscreen seems to jive with the director’s celebratory attitude. The inventive cinematography is by Jean-Yves Escoffier, best known for his work with Leos Carax. (1997, 89 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]
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Screening as part of the Cold Sweat double feature, followed by Kevin Phillips’ 2017 film SUPER DARK TIMES (103 min, Digital Projection) at 9pm. Co-presented by the SAIC Film Club. 

John Hughes' PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 6:45pm

Even in John Hughes’ first directorial deviation from the world of teenage angst he had explored so effortlessly in works like SIXTEEN CANDLES (1984), THE BREAKFAST CLUB (1985), and FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF (1986), he still found himself rooted in worlds of childish chaos, albeit of the grown adult variety. There’s nothing too complex about the formula that keeps the wheels on PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES spinning throughout its hour-and-a-half runtime, but Hughes’ traditional penchant for balancing whip-sharp dialogue with meaningful emotional stakes pays off in dividends here, especially when combined with a contagious dose of Looney Tunes-inspired antics. The set-up is simple enough: it’s two days until Thanksgiving, and a combination of inclement weather, less-than-savory personalities, and good old dumb luck leaves tight-ass Neal Page (Steve Martin) and blabbermouth Del Griffith (John Candy) inextricably tied together as they try to head home to Chicago in time for the holiday. Pitting two forces of opposite yet undeniably panicked energy at each other—Martin’s droll, angry straight man versus Candy’s chummy good-natured buffoonery—is comedic dynamite that never fails to deliver, as this devilish twosome barrel along across motel rooms, diners, train cars, and cold highways, their fading sense of sanity ever loosening with their grasp. Each set piece tops the last, building up to a delirious climax with Del driving a rental car towards impending death where, ever so briefly, he literally becomes the Devil in the eyes of his beleaguered travel companion. Though the canon of Thanksgiving Cinema isn’t nearly as heralded as those found within the Halloween and Christmas seasons, Hughes' tale of opposite personalities learning to find kinship with each other holds a deserved spot in any comedy lover’s November watch list. (1987, 93 mins, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

📽️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
Jess Franco’s 1973 film THE EROTIC RITES OF FRANKENSTEIN (74 min, Digital Projection) screens Tuesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Terror Tuesday series. More info here.

⚫ Chicago Cultural Center (Claudia Cassidy Theater)
John Sayles’ 1996 film LONE STAR (135 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 7pm, as part of the Siskel & Ebert at 50 series. Selected by Filmspotting co-founder Adam Kempenaar, in attendance for a live podcast recording with Michael Phillips. More info here.

⚫ Chicago Filmmakers
Sis Byers & Joshua M. Sparks’ 2025 film PLAYMOVIE (124 min) screens Saturday at 7pm. More info here.

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Wolfgang Petersen’s 1984 film THE NEVERENDING STORY (102 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday, 9:30pm, as part of the Charting Imaginary Worlds: Three Fantasy Films series.

Albert Serra’s 2024 film AFTERNOONS OF SOLITUDE (125 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 4pm, as part of the New Releases and Restorations series.

Hollis Frampton’s 1976 films THE RED GATE: MAGELLAN AT THE GATES OF DEATH, PART I (52 min, 16mm) and THE GREEN GATE: MAGELLAN AT THE GATES OF DEATH, PART II (53 min, 16mm) screen Sunday, 7pm, as part of the Infinite Cinema: The Films of Hollis Frampton series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ FACETS
Chad Hartigan’s 2025 film THE THREESOME (112 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 2:30pm and Sunday at 3:30pm and 6pm.

Benny Safdie’s 2025 film THE SMASHING MACHINE (123 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 5pm and 7pm.

Gerardo Herrero’s 2023 film UNDER THERAPY (93 min, Digital Projection) screens Tuesday, 7pm, as part of the monthly Reel Film Club. Arrive at 6pm for appetizers and a cash bar. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Film Studies Center (at the University of Chicago)
The program A.K. Dewdney: Discontinuous Film, curated by Zach Yost as part of the Graduate Student Curatorial Program, screens Friday at 7pm. More info here. 

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Noah Baumbach’s 2025 film JAY KELLY (132 min, 35mm and DCP Digital [check showtime to confirm]) begins screening and Joachim Trier’s 2025 film SENTIMENTAL VALUE (133 min, DCP Digital) continues this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

Corey Yeun’s 1993 film FONG SAI YUK (106 min, 35mm) screens Friday, midnight, as part of the Merciless Mayhem: Martial Arts Midnights & Matinees series.

Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 film THE ROOM (99 min, 35mm) screens Saturday at midnight.

Sammo Kam-Bo Hung’s 1993 film BLADE OF FURY (105 min, 35mm) screens Sunday, 11:30am, as part of the Merciless Mayhem: Martial Arts Midnights & Matinees series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Siskel Film Center
Off Center: Tenderness, in memory of Gunvor Nelson and featuring her short film MY NAME IS OONA, along with films by Su Friedrich, Shellie Fleming, and Bruce Baillie, all on 16mm, screens Monday at 6pm. More info here.

⚫ VDB TV (Virtual)
oliverio rodriguez and Victoria Stob's 2018 short film LYNDALE (24 min) and Sandi DuBowski's 1993 short film TOMBOYCHIK (15 min) stream for free on VDB-TV.  Programmed by Cine-File contributor Elise Schierbeek. More info here.

CINE-LIST: November 21 - November 27, 2025

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Rob Christopher, Max Frank, Marilyn Ferdinand, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Mojo Lorwin, Liam Neff, Michael Glover Smith