The 2025 Chicago Worldwide Movie Competition is across the nook. Immediately, it introduced its full lineup for the 61st version of the pageant operating October 15-26 all throughout town, with its hub on the AMC NewCity 14, in addition to the long-lasting Music Field Theatre, Gene Siskel Movie Middle, and the Chicago Historical past Museum, amongst others. Tickets will go on sale September 19 for members and on September 22 to most of the people right here.
As at all times, the lineup is a mixture of earlier pageant hits from all year long (“Prepare Desires,” “Hedda,” Centerpiece Movie “Rental Household,” “The Mastermind” — with Joel Edgerton and Clint Bentley, Nia DaCosta, Hikari, and Kelly Reichardt all in-person to obtain awards), Chicago-centric options (together with opening evening title “One Golden Summer time” from Chicago filmmaker Kevin Shaw), and, above all, non-U.S. movies that might issue into the Greatest Worldwide Characteristic race on the Oscars.
CIFF’s high prize, the Golden Hugo, is awarded to the most effective worldwide function at that 12 months’s pageant. Final 12 months, it went to Maura Delpero’s “Vermiglio,” with the Silver Hugo Particular Jury Prize going to “All We Think about as Mild.” In recent times, worldwide movies together with “Drive My Automobile,” “The Worst Particular person within the World,” and “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” additionally confirmed on the pageant, although CIFF could skew as cinephilic as any pageant in North America — Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Memoria” truly beat “Drive My Automobile” for the Golden Hugo.
Yearly, the pageant hosts a panel with 5 administrators of movies which have been submitted by their respective international locations to be their Oscar submission. That panel continues to be being finalized, however a few of the worldwide options being placed on show this 12 months are Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Simply an Accident” (France’s Oscar submission), Radu Jude’s “Dracula,” Sergei Loznitsa’s “Two Prosecutors,” Gianfranco Rosi’s “Under the Clouds,” Annemarie Jacir’s “Palestine 36,” Bi Gan’s “Resurrection,” Laszlo Nemes’ “Orphan,” Ugo Bienvenu’s “Arco,” and the Dardennes’ “Younger Moms.”
The closing evening movie shall be David Freyne’s “Eternity,” and different movies featured within the lineup shall be Bradley Cooper’s “Is This Factor On?,” Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” Yorgos Lanthimos’s “Bugonia,” Guillermo del Toro’s “Pinocchio,” and Rian Johnson’s “Wake Up Lifeless Man.”
Presenting the particular sections within the Competition’s personal phrases from its launch under:
Tributes and Retrospectives
For her eager eye for character, fearless method to style, and deep engagement with social points, the Competition presents Nia DaCosta with an Inventive Achievement Award along with her newest movie HEDDA; and in a profession outlined by imaginative and prescient, braveness, and an unwavering dedication to fact, director Euzhan Palcy is about to obtain the Black Views Tribute and Profession Achievement Award at a screening of her SUGAR CANE ALLEY. This 12 months’s Highlight Award goes to director HIKARI, celebrating her vivid and versatile storytelling as exemplified in Centerpiece presentation RENTAL FAMILY. At their screening of the soulful, visually beautiful TRAIN DREAMS, star Joel Edgerton receives the Inventive Achievement Award in Performing for his career-defining portrayal of grief and resilience, with director Clint Bentley accepting the Inventive Achievement Award in Directing. Acclaimed director Kelly Reichardt additionally joins the Competition for an in-person retrospective of her work, together with 2006’s OLD JOY, 2019’s FIRST COW, and 2022’s SHOWING UP, anchored by a Highlight screening of her 2025 standout THE MASTERMIND, following an unemployed carpenter turned artwork thief (Josh O’Connor) planning his first huge heist.
International Cinema Snapshots
Highlights of this 12 months’s Snapshots program, showcasing the range of latest international cinema, embody THIS ISLAND, Lorraine Jones Molina and Cristian Carretero’s coming of age story of a younger couple discovering refuge with a pastoral neighborhood within the mountains of Puerto Rico; Kalu Oji’s PASA FAHO, by which a Nigerian shoe salesman in Australia juggles fatherhood when his adolescent son involves stay with him; Taiwan’s official Greatest Worldwide Characteristic Academy Award submission LEFT-HANDED GIRL, following a single mom and her daughters as they encounter generations of secrets and techniques that threaten to upend their unity, from director Shih-Ching Tsou; and Hasan Hadi’s witty, playful, and transferring story of unfortunate nine-year-old Lamia, who’s pressured to get inventive when she is tasked with baking a cake in celebration of Saddam Hussein’s birthday in Iran’s THE PRESIDENT’S CAKE. When a curious time traveler falls from the sky, 10-year-old Iris resolves to assist her new pal return to the longer term in Ugo Bienvenu’s thrilling animated journey ARCO, from France; and in Charlie Polinger’s water polo camp-set thriller THE PLAGUE, newcomer Ben should determine if he’ll be a part of within the bullying or danger being forged out himself after being advised one of many boys has the “plague.”
Particular Occasions and Applications
Film lovers are in for a novel expertise because the Criterion Cellular Closet visits North America’s longest-running pageant, making Chicago its seventh cease from October 17 – 19. Stocked with greater than 1,700 of the best movies from world wide, the Closet could provide extra cinematic inspiration per sq. foot than every other place on the planet, proper outdoors the doorways to the Competition’s hub theater. Opening weekend additionally sees the return of Business Days, the Competition’s hub for filmmakers and trade professionals to attach, share concepts, and be impressed. This 12 months’s program features a Keynote Dialog with MINDING THE GAP director and Illinois native Bing Liu, discussing the journey to make his fiction debut PREPARATION FOR THE NEXT LIFE; a Documentary Summit that includes veteran filmmakers Lisa Cortés and Michèle Stephenson; and alternatives to attach with key executives from corporations reminiscent of Shudder and Steven Yeun’s Celadon Footage.
Body by Body: Screenings in 35mm
The 61st Chicago Worldwide Movie Competition options 35mm displays of 5 titles, together with Clint Bentley’s TRAIN DREAMS, László Nemes’s tender, heartbreaking coming-of-age story ORPHAN; and particular back-to-back screenings of NOUVELLE VAGUE, Richard Linklater’s love letter to cinema reimagining the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s BREATHLESS, paired with a 35mm screening of the French New Wave traditional. OLD JOY, introduced as a part of Kelly Reichardt’s retrospective, may even be screened in 35mm.
Worldwide Competitions
Filmmakers from world wide compete for the Gold Hugo award within the classes of Worldwide Characteristic, Worldwide Documentary, New Administrators, and OutLook, along with Shorts packages, in North America’s longest-running aggressive movie pageant. Earlier Chicago Worldwide Movie Competition award winners have gone on to Oscar recognition, together with THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG (2024), CLOSE (2022), DRIVE MY CAR (2021) and THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD (2021) which have been all nominated for Greatest Worldwide Characteristic Movie on the Academy Awards, and Greatest Documentary Oscar nominee FOUR DAUGHTERS (2023).
Chicago Movies and Filmmakers In Focus
The tales and filmmakers of Chicago and Illinois take heart stage within the Competition’s widespread Metropolis & State program. This 12 months’s picks embody Opening Night time’s ONE GOLDEN SUMMER from director Kevin Shaw; Wealthy Newey’s ADULT CHILDREN, a couple of sheltered Chicago 17-year-old trying to her older half-siblings for steerage; Alex Phillips’ raucous exploitation thriller ANYTHING THAT MOVES; Chicago-based James Choi’s BEFORE THE CALL, that includes a younger man in Seoul counting down the hours to his impending army service as a worldwide disaster escalates; Curtis Miller’s meditation on “twister alley,” A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHASING STORMS; and Nurzhamal Karamoldoeva’s ONLY HEAVEN KNOWS, an edgy, Chicago-set drama following a Kyrgyz household thrown into turmoil when the prodigal son will get in over his head with playing debt.
Brief Movies
The Competition presents quick movies from world wide, starting from comedies to dramas, documentaries to thrillers, and all the things in between, in ten Shorts Applications. Highlights embody the Metropolis & State program’s DEBATERS, that includes J. Smith-Cameron and Kenneth Lonergan, by which highschool strivers don their greatest apparel to compete at a congressional debate match; the Comedy program’s NERVOUS ENERGY, following two fiercely formidable aspiring filmmakers; The Departures program, which presents distinctive views by filmmakers new to the Competition, encompasses a lady’s journey to Los Angeles to deal with listening to loss the place she stays at her ex boyfriend’s home together with his new girlfriend in THE NON-ACTOR, starring Victoria Pedretti and Maya Hawke; and the Household Pleasant Animation program presents LILY, a spooky story concerning the terrors of elementary college, tailored by Stephen King from one among his first quick tales. A brand new shorts program joins the lineup this 12 months: Outré showcases filmmakers who unabashedly observe their very own singular visions into wildly new and peculiar territories with movies together with WATER SPORTS, which transports audiences to a hyper-stylized world ravaged by local weather change; the MS-paint type animation depicting a titular ABORTION PARTY; and a vampire’s quest to satisfy their coronary heart’s truest want in ONCE IN A FULL MOON.