Schedule:
11:45am - Shorts Program
Gene Siskel Film Center
Runtime 105 min.
BOX CUTTERS
Naomi van Niekerk
In this dreamy animated tale, a young woman recounts being attacked and must struggle to move on.
PIÑATAS OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS
Tom Maroney
Roberto Benavidez makes stunning piñatas that reveal the form’s hidden history of religious colonialism, while also attesting to his own personal struggles.
STRONG GRANDMA
Cecilia Brown, Winslow Crane-Murdoch
An inspiring portrait of 95-year-old Catherine Kuehn, a world-record-winning powerlifter.
HEADSHOT
Dominic Yarabe
A filmmaker explores what it means to photograph Black Americans and their relationship with nature.
SANDCASTLES
Carin Jin-Yi Leong
As Singapore reclaims land to expand urban development, a town bearing its name on Lake Michigan lies buried beneath sand.
TWO SUN
Blair Barnes
This evocative visual poem explores a Black man’s relationship to his identity.
HOLD THE LINE
Daniel Lombroso
When the largest Protestant organization in the U.S. decides to purge women in leadership positions, one prominent female pastor tries to fight back.
THE SCHOOL OF CANINE MASSAGE
Emma Miller
At a unique training program, people heal dogs and dogs heal people.
WEEKEND VISITS
Pete Quandt
At a Virginia Correctional Facility’s Family Visitation Center, a young mother gets a chance to briefly visit her son.
2:15pm: Soundtrack To A Coup D’Etat
The Gene Siskel Film Center
Synopsis
Director: Johan Grimonprez
Producers: Daan Milius, Rémi Grellety
Belgium, France, 150min, 2024
"A mind-blowingly rich tapestry of research, music, and the jazziest history lesson imaginable" (Harper’s Bazaar), Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat exposes the West’s policies of extraction and exploitation in Africa, connecting Cold War intrigue, American racism, European imperialism, the 1961 assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, and jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and Max Roach, who were all dispatched around the world as players in a larger geopolitical game. An astonishing mix of image, sound, and text, this revelatory documentary landed at this year’s Sundance like a grenade, exploding audience’s minds and winning a Special Jury Award for Cinematic Innovation. From the Oscar-nominated producer of I Am Not Your Negro, the film has already been heralded as "remarkable" (New York Times), "thrilling, galvanizing [and] crackling with energy" (Screen Daily), and "a stunning screed against colonial racism and state-sanctioned violence" (Slant).
5:45pm: Daughters
The Gene Siskel Film Center
Synopsis
Directors: Angela Patton, Natalie Rae
Producers: Lisa Mazzotta, Justin Benoliel, Mindy Goldberg, Sam Bisbee, Kathryn Everett, Laura Choi Raycroft, James Cunningham
US, 107 min, 2024
A profoundly emotional eight-year journey of incarnated fathers and their daughters, this Sundance standout—winner of two Audience Awards and voted the festival’s best documentary by critics—Daughters is a miraculous wonder of humanity, compassion, and social conscience. Inside a jail in Washington, D.C., male inmates are invited to join a special rehabilitation program, which culminates with a Daddy Daughter Dance. (Meanwhile, we get to meet their daughters Aubrey, Santana, Raziah, and Ja’Ana, all different ages and very different relationships with their absent dads. Though Daughters builds to an incredible reunion, the film powerfully conveys their personal stories far beyond this single special night. "Rife with visually lyrical moments" (Variety) and "alternately shattering and hopeful … intimate and stirring" (Vanity Fair), this "enormously moving" (IndieWire) documentary will make you "want to follow these fathers and daughters deep into the future" (Los Angeles Times).
2024 Closing Night
7pm: War Game
The Davis Theater
Synopsis
Directors: Jesse Moss, Tony Gerber
Producers: Todd Lubin, Jesse Moss, Jack Turner, Mark DiCristofaro, Jessica Grimshaw, Nick Shumaker
US, 94 min, 2023
What if the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol spiraled further out of control? And U.S. military personnel and paramilitary groups joined forces to overthrow the government? That’s the scenario of War Game, a briskly paced, compelling docu-thriller following a "war game" future-simulation set on January 6, 2025 with prominent government experts role-playing parts in the hypothetical crisis as a kind of "stress-test for our National Security System." Featuring former Montana governor Steve Bullock as a level-headed U.S. President, and acting as his advisor, North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp ("If this movie has a star, it’s her"—Washington Post), the documentary provocatively reveals both imagined threats as well as the real-life individuals trying to prevent them. "Chilling" (Deadline), "fascinating" (POV Magazine), "excellent" [and] "exciting cinema" (New York Magazine), War Game is a bold and captivating chronicle of our explosive political moment.
