live, in-person

Chicagoans: I hope you're all making plans to attend the Chicago International Film Festival (and that you've all picked up one of my fabulous schedule guides being distributed all over town). If you don't know what you want to see, why not take the chance to watch me interview a director onstage?
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This is an important step for any film critic, but a first for me: conducting live, one-on-one Q&As for a crowd, and moderating a post-screening audience discussion. Stop by and ask good questions. (And the movies we'll be talking about are excellent, anyway.) Here's my schedule, which strangely includes a lot of films from the Middle East. Descriptions come from the schedule book.

You can follow the links or call 312.683.0121 to purchase tickets, or avoid the surcharge and get them at the door. See you at the movies!

Saturday, Oct. 15

“Hedi” with director Mohamed Ben Attia (3:30 PM, New Directors Competition)

A dependable worker and good son, Hedi has spent his life doing exactly what’s expected of him. But when he meets a free-spirited dancer at a beach hotel a week before his arranged marriage, Hedi is ready to give up everything he knows. Can he keep up with what the “new Tunisia” holds for him? Produced by the Dardenne brothers (Rosetta), this social-realist drama follows one man’s struggle to find his place in a maelstrom of social change. 

“Junction 48” with director Udi Aloni (8 PM, Spotlight: Musicals)

Tamer Nafar, the originator of the Palestinian hip-hop movement, stars in and co-writes a vibrant autobiographical story about the pursuits of fame and justice in a broken land. Kareem, a rising star in his hardscrabble hometown of Lod (a.k.a. Lyd), must contend with a family tragedy and the ever-present eyes of the Israeli government to follow his path to socially conscious hip-hop fame. This pulse-pounding musical drama drops a beat over the Israel-Palestine conflict.​

tuesday, oct. 18

“In the Last Days of the City” with writer-director-producer Tamer El Said (5:45 PM, World Cinema)

This requiem for a lost Cairo follows Khalid, a filmmaker trying to piece together footage of his ailing mother, his neighborhood, and his colleagues on the sidelines of an approaching revolution. In this profound, melancholic portrait, workers’ strikes alternate with Islamist marches and building demolitions, while prophetic conversations hint at the political and social upheaval on the horizon. For Khalid and his compatriots, life will never be the same.

Wednesday, Oct. 19

“In the Last Days of the City” with writer-director-producer Tamer El Said (5:45 PM, World Cinema)

“The Last Laugh” with writer-director-producer Ferne Pearlstein (8:30 PM, Documentary)

Can the Holocaust be funny? In this witty and moving documentary, spanning decades of humor on the most taboo of subjects, button-pushing comics like Mel Brooks and Sarah Silverman discuss why and how they joke about the genocide of their own people, from “Springtime for Hitler” to stand-up zingers. Meanwhile, Holocaust survivors and Jewish community leaders try to decide when they can laugh and when they draw the line.

Thursday, Oct. 20

“Samuel in the Clouds” with director Pieter Van Eecke (6:15 PM, Documentary Competition)

On one of the highest ski slopes in the world atop a Bolivian glacier, Samuel has tirelessly worked for decades as a lift operator. Every day he walks miles up the mountain to cater to tourists from all over the world. But now the glacier is melting, and with it, an entire way of life. More than a vivid snapshot of climate change, Samuel in the Clouds is a sublime, haunting study of a man who longs for a sacred past.

“The Happiest Day In The Life Of Olli Mäki” with writer-director Juho Kuosmanen (8:30 PM, New Directors Competition)

This fresh spin on the underdog sports film, winner of a top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, centers on Olli Mäki, a champion Finnish boxer in the 1960s. After winning the lightweight title in his early 20s, the mild-mannered Mäki becomes an unlikely cultural figure when he’s given the opportunity to go head-to-head in the ring with an undefeated American champion. The film’s inventive style mimics a vintage black-and-white newsreel.

monday, oct. 24

“Malaria” with writer-director Parviz Shahbazi (8:45 PM, World Cinema)

A young woman elopes with her boyfriend to Tehran. To cover her tracks, she tells her father she’s been kidnapped. With her family in hot pursuit, the couple takes up with a band of bohemian street musicians and forms an elaborate plan for a more permanent escape. Mixing real-life on-the-streets footage with a tense lovers-on-the-run drama, Festival alum Parviz Shahbazi crafts a lively look at the cultural clashes that exist deep within Iranian society.