Chicago International Film Festival 2023: 10 Under-the-Radar Films You Shouldn’t Miss
Movies Lists CIFF 2023
Chicago International Film Festival 2023 returned in full force this year, handing out its Gold Hugo Awards to Gábor Reisz’s Explanation for Everything, Amr Gamal’s The Burdened, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster and Tatiana Huezo’s The Echo. But with over 100 movies showing at the fest, there were far more that either snuck under the radar with a Silver Hugo or didn’t earn any awards at all. Seeing as these movies came from all over the world, and represented premieres from films that were perhaps overlooked as their nation’s entry for the upcoming International Oscar race, looking for the hidden gems revealed cinema that you wouldn’t see or hear about otherwise.
I always try to see movies from first-timers (like Myriam U. Birara’s Rwandan The Bride and Maciek Hamela’s Polish-Ukrainian In the Rearview) and veterans (looking at you, Hong Sang-soo), but some always stand out from the pack, either because of their assurance or their impressive novelty. It’s hard to differentiate yourself during festival season, especially when you’re playing to audience who’ve already sat through a few films that day. But the following movies stuck with me and aren’t getting the kind of attention that some showstoppers I caught at the fest (The Boy and the Heron sitting atop them all) will continue to attract until the end of the year. This selection represents the depth of Chicago International Film Festival 2023’s programming, its diversity of genres and countries, and its dedication to spotlighting movies that might not get centerstage anywhere else.
Here are 10 under-the-radar films from Chicago International Film Festival 2023:
The Delinquents
Director: Rodrigo Moreno
Throughout most of The Delinquents’ three-hour-plus runtime, there’s a pervading sense that something is being held at arm’s length from the audience. This is not a bug but a feature, and an effective one; over the three-year timespan following a calm Buenos Aires bank robbery, executed by one of its own employees, writer-director Rodrigo Moreno patiently unfolds the mix of transparency and opacity that fuels his characters. Sometimes it feels too inaccessible, at other points too thematically digestible, but it’s certainly not too Argentinian. Like the best Argentine cinema, Moreno merges perceptive but mundane psychology with prickling social critique, and even though The Delinquents’ thematic clarity borders on obvious during its 189 minutes, Moreno demonstrates such command over his characters and actors that The Delinquents remains calmly compelling. Morán (Daniel Elías) is a competent but unremarkable clerk who, one ordinary day, takes advantage of being the only employee in the vault and lifts exactly $650,000—enough for him and one other person to live comfortably, without working, until retirement. Calling The Delinquents a heist film, even an arthouse one, feels grievously misleading: Heist films love to focus on the spiraling aftermath of their central crime, but the inciting incident in The Delinquents feels more and more insignificant as the film pushes into the third act. The robbery, which unfolds with such rehearsed poise that it could be mistaken for part of Morán’s duties, is not a lit fuse for a thrilling explosion, but rather a gradual dissolution that will change the lives of Morán and his accomplice (Esteban Bigliardi). The Delinquents is not a dialogue-driven film, but rather an experiential affair, where we observe parallels and contrasts between our two protagonists gradually liberating themselves. With an overture-like score from Fabio Massimo Capogrosso and a dry-as-dirt sense of humor, The Delinquents asks us to scientifically observe attempts to break out of systemic ennui by defying its most fundamental rules. Like an exhaustive documentary on urban spaces or a research paper on the social behavior of animals, The Delinquents finds it compelling how masculine identity prioritizes individuality when faced with a society that prefers only their unquestioning labor. Moreno translates enough of that fascination to its audience.–Rory Doherty
Evil Does Not Exist
Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Evil Does Not Exist opens with the camera languorously tracking through treetops, seen from the ground, until interrupting itself abruptly with a music-stopping shot of Hana (Ryo Nishikawa), a grade-school-aged girl with her neck craned up – suggesting we were previously sharing her point of view. The implied closeness of that opening shot is the nearest the camera gets to its characters for a while; it’s 10, maybe 15 minutes before anyone in the movie is seen in anything resembling a close-up. We meet Takumi (Hitoshi Omika), Hana’s father, and figure out some details of their life, explaining the remoteness of the cinematography: They live in a woodsy Japanese village, broadly isolated but not alone, enjoying the quiet. We watch as Takumi performs outdoorsy tasks — chopping wood, hauling fresh well water — until we realize that, put together with minding Hana, they form his job, of sorts. Takumi and Hana aren’t that far from society; Takumi delivers the well water to a local udon restaurant, not exactly a strictly survivalist outpost. But there’s something pristine and untouched about their environment, making the interest of a company called Playmode both natural and horribly unnatural all at once. For a little while, it seems like Hamaguchi has made his own quiet, non-cutesy version of the story where the company man is tasked with steamrolling a small town, only to find himself charmed by its inhabitants and way of life. Evil Does Not Exist doesn’t exactly swerve away from that narrative; instead, it shifts again, slowly but surely, this time into more unsettling (and unsettled) territory. Hamaguchi’s previous film, his U.S. breakthrough and recipient of a Best Picture Oscar nomination, was the deliberate, sometimes mesmerizing Drive My Car. Evil Does Not Exist is only a little over half that movie’s length, and though it allows its characters a certain measure of soul-bearing conversation, it plays certain offscreen developments even closer to the vest. Hamaguchi’s film – and the performance style of Omika, a Hamaguchi crew member moving into acting here – is too controlled to produce an anguished tragedy out of this material, but it’s too unsparing to offer an easy exit. Even the most formidable steamrollers can’t always clear a path out of the wilderness.–Jesse Hassenger
Fallen Leaves
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
A stiff romantic comedy positioned out of time and space by Aki Kaurismäki, Fallen Leaves combines melodramatic plot machinations with the settings of dreams to create a Finnish love story as dry as a pile of autumn leaves. Alma Pöysti’s Ansa and Jussi Vatanen’s Holappa (though both go unnamed at times, to both us and each other) scrape the kind of Helsinki lives by where anonymity and distance come with the weekly paycheck. Holappa copes with booze; Ansa with a minor bit of shoplifting. Both have the kind of larger-than-life aspirations embodied by karaoke and the cinema. Their loneliness blossoms into familiarity, overcoming the obstacles of poverty, with an intangible and imperfect sweetness. The only thing that grounds them is their constant lack of financial stability and the ongoing war in Ukraine. The isolating, stagnant camera doesn’t dare to hope. Its characters’ black humor (particularly a scene-stealing, charismatic Janne Hyytiäinen) scoffs at the idea. But hope is there, at the edges and in the small moments. A stray dog. A second set of flatware. Connections are still possible, even at the bottom.–Jacob Oller
In the Rearview
Director: Maciek Hamela
A heartwrenching war documentary with the camera squarely facing the civilians affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, In the Rearview finds humanity and heroism intertwined with mundane senselessness. The debut from Maciek Hamela, the film observes his evacuation efforts: He’s a man with a van, shuttling Ukrainian refugees displaced from their small villages, to Poland. He Ubers families who must leave their grandmother behind, couples who can barely contain a freaked-out cat, and children who’ve suffered immeasurable trauma, literalized in notecards they carry listing their identifying details. Rolling past wreckage and bombed-out homes, Hamela’s car cruises through checkpoints and U-turns away from minefields. Along the way, the Cash Cab-like camera, locked onto the crammed backseat, listens to its passengers. They, like strangers on a bus, share plenty, and open up in the hiccups and spurts natural to stuck strangers. Some worry about their phone’s charge. Others grimace as their children play “Rock, Paper Scissors…Gun.” One, en route to a hospital, simply tries to gut out the bumpy trip. In the Rearview isn’t just a harrowing piece of on-the-ground war reporting, but a constant and steady reminder of tangible, logistical suffering — writ large by an invasive evil and tightly binding viewers to each person on the road against their will.–Jacob Oller
Late Night with the Devil
Director: Colin Cairnes, Cameron Cairnes
The brothers behind Aussie cult horror-comedy 100 Bloody Acres, Colin and Cameron Cairnes return to the uneasy balance of genres for Late Night with the Devil — and they throw in a new one for good measure. Not content to simply be charmingly hacky or tightly gruesome, Late Night with the Devil is also a great movie about (and existing within the form of) talk shows. David Dastmalchian was born for the role of an underdog late-night host, occupying the uneasy space between slick smarm, hungry entitlement and genuine empathy. His piercing eyes and faltering smile persist through the patter and the cue cards, so when it’s clear that he’s brought something he could never hope to understand — let alone control — onto his program as a ratings ploy, we’re plummeting on the roller coaster right alongside him. The Cairnes’ dedication to their set and its stagecraft envelops you in the exploitative environment, ready to see a variety show of oddballs trotted out for America’s perverse pleasure. Add in some no-holds-barred gore and a few guests chewing the scenery, and you’ve got yourself a winning midnight staple – no musical guest necessary. Also, c’mon. If you throw in the owl mask from Stage Fright, I’m basically yours to lose.–Jacob Oller
Limbo
Director: Ivan Sen
Like a pickaxe chipping off sandstone, Limbo is a flinty Outback noir that revels in smashing its hard-edged characters against one another. A return to form for filmmaker Ivan Sen, this cold case thriller sheds its heavy clichés and Christian symbolism early so it can get to its charming, adrift, somber core. Simon Baker leads the way as a grizzled fuck-up detective revisiting the 20-year-old murder investigation of a small-town Aboriginal woman. Her siblings, played with measured stand-offishness by Rob Collins and Natasha Wanganeen, have been shaped by the ripples of that half-hearted, racist effort. Any hopes of justice seem nil. Any hope of helping this traumatized family…well, maybe there’s a glimmer — like an opal covered in this South Australia mining town’s dust. The black-and-white photography and stark frames emphasize the locale’s dried-mud buildings and well-worn ruts. It’s the perfect setting for a sweaty, not-so-satisfying mystery that was never much of a mystery in the first place. Combined with a few standout conversations in Sen’s script, one filled with little moments of endearing realism, Limbo‘s aesthetic takes you to a perfectly purgatorial realm.–Jacob Oller
Occupied City
Director: Steve McQueen
The poster for Occupied City is a lyrical mystery, one that quietly manages to encapsulate the film which mysteriously unfurls. Bundled up children are skidding down an icy hill, some sitting politely on sleds while others frozen in daring maneuvers; feet first, belly up, a flurry of limbs encased by lurking buildings. With so few reference points, the latest venture from director Steve McQueen feels bathed in hazy mystery, lending it anonymity as it slips into 2023 with barely any fanfare. Such intimidating silence surrounding Occupied City’s release is at least partially mandated by its bracingly long runtime. At four-and-a-half-hours long, McQueen’s documentary guides his audience on a tour through Amsterdam while an immaculately composed voiceover describes the Jewish families who were murdered during World War II and lost to the city forever. Present-day footage of the city quietly plays out while these stories are strung together; there is no twist, no narrative, it is a collection of tales and a city. All the images play with the stories heard, activating the described details and lending them tangible weight. Each moment coils around its successive scene in an unexpected way. A shot of children sprinting around a frosty field in muddied uniforms is abandoned only to be picked up with a shot of a stricken teammate comforted by his parents. A loosely strung story—feelings splintered across a city. Occupied City is a reflection on the World War II documentaries that have come before, many of which try to grapple such loss and devastation into a definite shape. But it’s Chantal Akerman’s New York City doc News From Home that is the true foundation for Occupied City’s deliberate and engrossing storytelling. Distance and objectivity conceal a staggering melancholy, longing seeping beneath every frame. Like Akerman’s masterpiece, Occupied City follows no plot, instead passing any discernible structure onto a waiting audience whose own interpretations will inform the emotional arc of the film. Like wandering into an art exhibition, your inconsistencies stick out at sharp angles, repositioning the weight of the film and forcing it to hang off your lived experience in striking patterns. Occupied City is a demanding watch, but this cinematic gamble is singular and rewarding in its emotional intelligence. What this film understands that most other documentaries ignore is that to condense a whole life into a runtime is a futile task, laden with cruel motivations. Occupied City is something purpose-built to fall short and, regardless, inspire.–Anna McKibbin
The People’s Joker
Director: Vera Drew
A feat of parody so outrageous that its legend (and strongly worded letter from corporate) precedes it, The People’s Joker is an endlessly amusing, deeply personal, wildly inventive collision of genres all bent to the will of filmmaker Vera Drew. Her queer coming-of-age is filtered through the language and imagery of Batman media, her transition and alt-comedy leanings all given hilarious reflections in the Rogues’ Gallery of Gotham. But it’s through the combination of DIY greenscreen work and effervescent, scrappy animation captured in populist media like Minecraft and VR Chat that the film’s indie production wins you over. The resulting collage is like visiting your childhood bedroom, and relating the sticker-covered walls to your adult life. Also, all the stickers are voiced by people like Maria Bamford, Scott Aukerman, Tim Heidecker and Bob Odenkirk. Drew herself is a charismatic performer, as is Kane Distler, who plays her romantic foil (who is also a Joker), but it’s Phil Braun’s ridiculous Batman that always steals the show. The riotous, anarchic result is everything the corporate use of the Joker isn’t, and everything it could be. The People’s Joker is a deftly assembled reckoning of how we use art — ranging from the cribbed comic aesthetic to the film’s Lorne Michaels-skewering comedy scene — to craft ourselves.–Jacob Oller
The Pigeon Tunnel
Director: Errol Morris
For a documentary about one of the most celebrated writers of spy fiction, The Pigeon Tunnel can seem—at first glance—deceptively placid. Clocking in at just over 90 minutes, the film features an extended conversation between David Cornwell, AKA John le Carre, and Oscar-winning docmaker Errol Morris. It’s just that. Two people talking, with Morris off-screen, their parrying question-and-answers broken up with archival images and re-enactments of Cornwell’s past, as well as snippets from the classic movies or TV adaptations based on his spy universe: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and A Perfect Spy. However, it’s a fascinating conversation that keeps its hold on the viewer for its duration. The Pigeon Tunnel begins with Cornwell wondering what kind of an interlocutor Morris might make. After all, an interview is a type of interrogation, he muses. Cornwell makes the comparison lightly, a bemused smile playing on his face, his polished diction never slipping. At once, you know he’s in control of this interview, and by extension this representation of himself—a famous author who borrowed from his own troubled past when writing fiction. For fans of le Carre, who may have read his 2016 memoir The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life, there isn’t much new information in the documentary. What’s engaging is Cornwell’s erudition as he outlines his life and the circumstances that led to his career as spy. Cornwell rarely gave interviews. His conversation with Morris would turn out to be one of the last he gave before his death in 2020. Throughout the process, Cornwell is perfectly at ease, dancing around Morris’ sometimes-speechifying questions with practiced polish. He speaks in perfect paragraphs, never searching or pausing for words. There are no grand revelations. Morris doesn’t push Cornwell far on his own betrayals—to his friends or in his love life. We don’t get a sense of what it was like for Cornwell to live in murky worlds of his own making as an adult, and whether he felt guilt—beyond a general attitude of shrugging away life’s messiness. It’s clear that Cornwell had determined in advance that there would be some questions that he would never answer, that he’s not an open book to be read through and through. There are some secrets he keeps. The Pigeon Tunnel, then, is a chance to see an expert raconteur, who seems to know every trick of the trade—answering a master documentarian’s questions when he wants, and deflecting with panache when he doesn’t, regaling you with such wonder that you can’t help but be enthralled.—Aparita Bhandari
Silver Dollar Road
Director: Raoul Peck
Raoul Peck does his audience a great kindness with a simple, unassuming gesture: The introduction of and recurring visits to the Reels’ family tree. Peck’s new documentary, Silver Dollar Road, draws on the Reels’ years-long real estate saga as its source, and Lizzie Presser’s jaw-dropping 2019 ProPublica article as its basis; he justifies his own interrogation of the family’s legal travails through variations on his usual sociopolitical filmmaking lens. Some documentaries would be better off as written journalism. Silver Dollar Road complements Presser’s work with Peck’s erudition and humane touch. The former comes up in his detangling of America’s longstanding, fundamentally racist real estate laws. The latter surfaces through his proximity to the Reels, best demonstrated by the presentation of that tree: Its textured background of rich, green tree branches, its burgeoning series of roots connecting Elijah, the Reels’ progenitor, to his children (notably Mitchell and Shedrick), and they to their own children, and so on, an ever-growing line of beneficiaries to Elijah’s wise decision to purchase land parallel to Silver Dollar Road in North Carolina, about a century ago and some change. Peck centers the film on the quiet outrage of how this splendor is co-opted or outright stolen from Black people in the United States. The legal jabber is tiresome, but if you are tired after mere minutes of listening to it then you must sit with yourself and imagine how exhausted the Reels are after dealing with it since about the 1980s, when Shedrick, invoking a legal procedure called “adverse possession,” first planted his flag on the most valuable slice of land in the Reels’ 65 acres, then sold it off to developers after somehow convincing the courts that he had a point despite not having lived there for almost 30 years. The Reels aren’t the first Black American family to lose what is theirs to white supremacist chicanery. They won’t be the last. But the notes of triumph the film ends on, as Licurtis and Melvin return home in their due glory after staring down America’s penal system, suggest that the tricks, and misdirections, and prejudicial advantages written into our laws to benefit whites and kneecap minorities, can be defeated by those of unyielding spirit. Resolve like that comes at a high cost. As Silver Dollar Road draws to a close, with drone footage rising from the street itself to the high heavens, surveying the land the Reels fought so hard for, and still do, we’re left with the certainty that it’s a cost worth paying.—Andy Crump
Jacob Oller is Movies Editor at Paste Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter at @jacoboller.
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