The Chicago Critics Film Festival takes place at Chicago’s famed Music Box Theatre (3733 N. Southport).
All screenings are in-person, and all government and venue COVID mandates in effect at the time of the festival will be enforced.
Films begin on time, and seating is not assigned. The theater opens one hour before the first showtime each day. Arrive early to ensure you get your preferred seats.
Festival passes grant access to every film screening; a ticket is not required. Simply show your pass at the box office.
Tickets are required for individual screenings as well as non-film events

Schedule of Events:

May 3, 2024

6:30pm: Sing Sing With Guests - 105 Minutes
Directed by Greg Kwedar
Divine G (Colman Domingo), imprisoned at Sing Sing for a crime he didn't commit, finds purpose by acting in a theatre group alongside other men who are incarcerated in this story of resilience, humanity, and the transformative power of art, starring an unforgettable ensemble cast of formerly incarcerated actors.

9:30pm: Cuckoo - 102 minutes
Directed by Tilman Singer
Reluctantly, 17-year-old Gretchen leaves her American home to live with her father, who has just moved into a resort in the German Alps with his new family. Arriving at their future residence, they are greeted by Mr. König, her father's boss, who takes an inexplicable interest in Gretchen's mute half-sister Alma. Something doesn't seem right in this tranquil vacation paradise. Gretchen is plagued by strange noises and bloody visions until she discovers a shocking secret that also concerns her own family. Starring Hunter Schafer, Jessica Henwick and Dan Stevens.

12:00am: Sleep - 95 minutes
Directed by Jason Yu
SLEEP Follows Newlyweds Hyun-Su (LEE Sun-Kyun, PARASITE) And Soo-Jin (JUNG Yu-Mi), Whose Domestic Bliss Is Disrupted When Hyun-Su Begins Speaking In His Sleep, Ominously Stating, “Someone’s Inside.”  From That Night On, Whenever He Falls Asleep, Hyun-Su Transforms Into Someone Else, With No Recollection Of What Happened The Night Before. Overwhelmed With Anxiety That He May Hurt Himself Or Their Young Family, Soo-Jin Can Barely Sleep Because Of This Irrational Fear. Despite Treatment, Hyun-Su’s Sleepwalking Only Intensifies, And Soo-Jin Begins To Feel That Her Unborn Child May Be In Danger.

May 4, 2024

12:00pm - Fabulous Fleischer Cartoons - 65 minutes
The Fabulous Fleischer Cartoons Restored project is one dedicated to gathering and restoring as many of the 700-odd animated shorts produced by Max Fleischer at the studio bearing his name between 1919-1942. We are honored to be showing seven of these restorations, including appearances by such favorite characters as Betty Boop, Popeye, Koko the Clown and Superman. These shorts serve as an eye-popping and side-splitting representation of the works of one of the mostly unsung pioneers of animation that will delight and astound viewers of all ages.

1:45pm - Shorts Program 1 With Guests - 91 Minutes
Various Directors
ME - A mysterious new musical from Don Hertzfeldt, Academy Award-nominated director of “It’s Such A Beautiful Day” and “World Of Tomorrow.”

Trapped - A high school janitor runs into a series of dangerous obstacles. Winner of the Special Jury Award for Narrative Shorts at SXSW. Directed by Sam & David Cutler-Kreutz.

If I Die In America - A young man fights for a chance to grieve his husband after his traditional Muslim in-laws demand their son's body be sent back to the Middle East mere hours after the untimely death. Directed by Ward Kamel.

Patient - Fiction, reality, the private, and the performed overlap on a routine but emotional day at a medical center. Directed by Lori Felker.

Bob’s Funeral - Searching for the root of generational trauma, the director sneaks a camera into his estranged grandfather’s funeral. Directed by Jack Dunphy.

4:15pm - Thelma - 97 minutes
Directed by Josh Margolin
The feature directorial debut of Josh Margolin, THELMA is a poignant action-comedy that gives veteran Oscar® nominee June Squibb (NEBRASKA) her first leading role and features the final performance of trailblazing actor Richard Roundtree (SHAFT). Squibb, who did most of her own stunts in the film, plays Thelma Post, a feisty 93-year-old grandmother who gets conned by a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson (The White Lotus’ Fred Hechinger) and sets out on a treacherous quest across Los Angeles, accompanied by an aging friend (Roundtree) and his motorized scooter, to reclaim what was taken from her.

6:45pm - Babes with guest - 109 minutes
Directed by Pamela Adlon
BABES follows inseparable childhood best friends Eden (Ilana Glazer) and Dawn (Michelle Buteau), having grown up together in NYC, now firmly in different phases of adulthood. When carefree and single Eden decides to have a baby on her own after a one-night stand, their friendship faces its greatest challenge. BABES delves into the complexities of female friendship with a blend of laughter, tears, and labor pains. From co-writers Ilana Glazer and Josh Rabinowitz and directed by Pamela Adlon, BABES is a hilarious and heartfelt comedy about the bonds of friendship and the messy, unpredictable challenges of adulthood and becoming a parent.

9:45pm - In A Violent Nature - 94 minutes
Directed by Chris Nash
When a locket is removed from a collapsed fire tower in the woods that entombs the rotting corpse of Johnny, a vengeful spirit spurred on by a horrific 60-year-old crime, his body is resurrected and becomes hellbent on retrieving it. The undead golem hones in on the group of vacationing teens responsible for the theft and proceeds to methodically slaughter them one by one in his mission to get it back - along with anyone in his way. Co-presented by Music Box of Horrors.

12:00am - Oddity - 98 minutes
Directed by Damian McCarthy
In this supernatural spectacle, a blind medium uncovers the truth behind her sister's death with the help of a frightening wooden mannequin.

May 5, 2024

11:30am - Little Women: in 35mm - 115 minutes
Directed by Gillian Armstrong
Based on the classic 1868 novel about love, family and the female spirit, Louisa May Alcott tells the domestic saga of the March family in post-Civil War America with a cast that includes Winona Ryder, Susan Sarandon, Clare Danes, Christian Bale, Kirsten Dunst, Gabriel Byrne, Samantha Mathis, Eric Stoltz and Trini Alvarado.

2:00pm - The Dead Don’t Hurt - 129 minutes
Directed by Viggo Mortensen
The Dead Don’t Hurt is a story of star-crossed lovers on the western U.S. frontier in the 1860s. Vivienne Le Coudy (Vicky Krieps) is a fiercely independent woman who embarks on a relationship with Danish immigrant Holger Olsen (Viggo Mortensen). After meeting Olsen in San Francisco, she agrees to travel with him to his home near the quiet town of Elk Flats, Nevada, where they start a life together. The outbreak of the civil war separates them when Olsen makes a fateful decision to fight for the Union. This leaves Vivienne to fend for herself in a place controlled by corrupt Mayor Rudolph Schiller (Danny Huston) and his unscrupulous business partner, powerful rancher Alfred Jeffries (Garret Dillahunt). Alfred’s violent, wayward son Weston (Solly McLeod) aggressively pursues Vivienne, who is determined to resist his unwanted advances. When Olsen returns from the war, he and Vivienne must confront and make peace with the person each has become. Both a tragic love story and a nuanced depiction of the conflict between revenge and forgiveness, The Dead Don’t Hurt is a portrait of a passionate woman determined to stand up for herself in an unforgiving world dominated by ruthless men.

4:45pm - The Remarkable Life Of Ibelin - 106 minutes
Directed by Benjamin Ree
Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer, died of a degenerative muscular disease at the age of 25. His parents mourned what they thought had been a lonely and isolated life, when they started receiving messages from online friends around the world.

7:15pm - I Saw The Tv Glow With Guest - 100 minutes
Directed by Jane Schoenbrun
Teenager Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show — a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the television, Owen’s view of reality begins to crack.

10:00PM - The Last Stop In Yuma County - 90 Minutes
Directed By Francis Galluppi
A traveling knife salesman is stranded and forced to wait at a rural rest stop and suddenly finds himself in the middle of a violent hostage situation upon the arrival of two bank robbers who are on the run after a recent heist.

May 6, 2024

4:30pm - Shorts Program 2 - 89 Minutes
Baigal Nuur - Lake Baikal - The formation of Lake Baikal in Siberia is reimagined with hand-painted animation and mixed materials, featuring the voice of an Indigenous woman who can still recall some words in her endangered language in Buryat (a Mongolian dialect). Directed by Alisi Telengut.

Bug Diner - A dissatisfied marriage, a secret crush, and work-place fantasies come undone in a Diner run by a Mole Chef with a hot  a s s. Winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s Short Film Jury Award: Animation. Directed by Phoebe Jane Hart.

The Big Wait -  In a remote desert town in Australia, population two, a couple manages an emergency airport and keeps vacant cottages in pristine condition, waiting for visitors who never seem to arrive. Directed by Yannick Jamey.

Flail - An addled farce for the attention economy, Flail follows a distracted personal assistant as she frantically prepares for her boss’s birthday party. With her sullen brother David in tow, Allie careens through a blur of gridlocked parking garages and fast-casual salad chains, all part of her desperate quest to achieve a single thing that she initially set out to do. Directed by Ben Gauthier.

I Would’ve Been Happy - An attempt to map a fraught relationship through the use of intricately  coded pictographs and schematic abstractions applied onto glazed ceramic tiles and quilted cyanotype fabric. The aesthetics of architectural language are used to reconstruct memories of my family's domestic spaces in the hope to uncover logic to a broken home. Directed by Jordan Wong.

She (Snake) - Fei, a 16 year old British-Chinese girl, is the top violinist in an elite  London youth orchestra. When another Chinese violinist arrives to challenge her place in the orchestra, Fei’s anxieties and internalized racism grow to take monstrous physical form. They whisper to her, urging her to be the best, no matter the cost. Directed by Renee Zhan.

Au 8eme Jour (On the 8th Day)  - It took 7 days to create the world, it only took one to disrupt its  balance. Directed by Agathe Sénéchal, Alicia Massez, Elise Debruyne,  Flavie Carin, Théo Duhautois.

Welcome To the Enclave  - Two Texas sisters fled to the metaverse at the onset of the pandemic,  creating The Enclave, a cyber-haven for ‘like-minded women’. Years  later, the suburb is on the verge of bankruptcy, and owner Moni Calvioni  is crowdfunding to save her digital utopia. With no awareness of online  culture, she and her sister Blair turn to Twitch and Reddit to pitch  their idealized vision. Directed by Sarah Lasley.

7:00pm - Dandelion With Guests - 113 Minutes
Directed by Nicole Riegel
Dandelion, a struggling Cincinnati singer-songwriter in a downward spiral, takes a last-ditch-effort gig at a motorcycle rally in South Dakota where she meets Casey, a guitarist who walked away from his dream long ago. As Dandelion joins Casey’s nomadic group of struggling musicians, the kindred spirits make music together and strike up a whirlwind romance. The experience moves Dandelion from a narrow view of success to a deeper appreciation of her artistic journey, and the discovery of a voice that is authentically her own.

9:45pm - Flipside - 92 minutes
Directed by Christopher Wilcha
When filmmaker Chris Wilcha revisits the record store he worked at as a teenager in New Jersey, he finds the once-thriving bastion of music and weirdness from his youth slowly falling apart and out of touch with the times. FLIPSIDE documents his tragicomic attempt to revive the store while revisiting other documentary projects he has abandoned over the years. In the process, Wilcha captures This American Life icon Ira Glass in the midst of a creative rebirth, discovers the origin story of David Bowie’s ode to a local New Jersey cable television hero, and uncovers the unlikely connection between jazz photographer Herman Leonard and TV writer David Milch. This disparate collection of stories coheres into something strange and expansive—a moving meditation on music, work, and the sacrifices and satisfaction of trying to live a creative life.

May 7, 2024

4:30pm - What You Wish For - 101 minutes
Directed by Nicholas Tomnay
Ryan, a chef with gambling problems, meets an old friend in a Latin American villa where he's been hired to cook an elaborate private meal for incoming guests. After assuming his friend's identity to take over the lucrative gig, Ryan comes to realize he may have bitten off more than he can chew.

7:00pm - Bringing Out The Dead: in 35mm - 121 minutes
Directed by Martin Scorsese
This tense urban drama from Martin Scorsese stars Nicolas Cage as Frank Pierce, a paramedic on the brink of physical and emotional collapse. Frank has worked for years in one of New York's most brutal neighborhoods, and the pressure of his job has taken its toll; plagued with self-doubt, he is haunted by the spirits of the people he couldn't save, and while he desperately wants to quit his job, outside forces won't let him walk away.

9:45pm - Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence - 100 minutes
Directed by Naoko Kusumi, Mizuho Nishikubo & Mamoru Oshii
In the year 2032, Batô, a cyborg detective for the anti-terrorist unit Public Security Section 9, investigates the case of a female robot--one created solely for sexual pleasure--who slaughtered her owner.

May 8, 2024

4:30pm - Gasoline Rainbow - 110 Minutes
Directed by Bill Ross IV & Turner Ross
Follows 5 teenagers from small-town Oregon who, with high school in the rearview, decide to embark on one last adventure: to make it to a place they've never been -the Pacific coast, 500 miles away. Their plan, in full: "F**k it."

7:00pm - Good One With Guest - 90 Minutes
Directed by India Donaldson
In India Donaldson’s insightful, piercing debut, 17-year-old Sam (Collias) embarks on a three-day backpacking trip in the Catskills with her dad, Chris (Le Gros) and his oldest friend, Matt (McCarthy). As the two men quickly settle into a gently quarrelsome brotherly dynamic, airing long-held grievances, Sam, wise beyond her years, attempts to mediate. But when lines are crossed and Sam’s trust is betrayed, tensions reach a fever pitch, as Sam struggles with her dad’s emotional limitations and experiences the universal moment when the parental bond is tested.  

9:45pm - Handling The Undead  - 99 minutes
Directed by Thea Hvistendahl
On a hot summer day in Oslo, the dead mysteriously awaken, and three families are thrown into chaos when their deceased loved ones come back to them. Who are they, and what do they want? A family is faced with the mother’s reawakening before they have even mourned her death after a car accident; an elderly woman gets the love of her life back the same day she has buried her; a grandfather rescues his grandchild from the gravesite in a desperate attempt to get his daughter out of her depression. Handling the Undead is a drama with elements of horror about three families, a story about grief and loss, but also about hope and understanding of what we can’t comprehend or control.

May 9, 2024

4:00pm - Power - 85 minutes
Directed by Yance Ford
Driven to contain threats to social order, American policing has exploded in scope and scale over hundreds of years. Now, it can be described by one word: power

6:00pm - National Anthem - 99 minutes
Directed by Luke Gilford
A 21-year-old construction worker in New Mexico joins a community of queer rodeo performers in search of their own version of the American dream.

8:30pm - Ghostlight With Guests - 110 minutes
Directed by Alex Thompson & Kelly O’Sullivan
Dan (Keith Kupferer), a melancholic middle-aged construction worker grieving a family tragedy. Cut off from his devoted wife, Sharon (Tara Mallen), and talented but troubled daughter, Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer), Dan finds comfort and community in a misfit company of amateur actors. While moonlighting in a low-rent production of Shakespeare’s most protean tragedy, Dan is forced to confront his buried emotions.

Date: May 3-9, 2024

Location:
Music Box Theatre, 3733 North Southport Avenue
Chicago, IL 60613

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