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The African Diaspora Film Festival, with films by Africans and hyphenated Africans from around the world, runs all week at Facets Cinematheque. Cliff Doerksen recommends the opening-night feature, Glorious Exit, in which a Swiss-Nigerian actor who’s trying to make it in Hollywood drops everything and flies to Africa to bury the father he never knew. Also reviewed in our sidebar are Gospel Hill, a star-studded drama that marks the directing debut of actor Giancarlo Esposito; Jacques Romain: Passion for a Country, about the Haitian journalist and political activist whose 1944 murder is still grist for the conspiracy mill; and Return to Goree, a music doc in which Senegalese singer and percussionist Youssou N’Dour travels the U.S. to round up musicians for a concert on the island that was once the epicenter of the slave trade.
If you’re looking for something older, Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole (1951) screens on Wednesday at Northbrook Public Library, Erroll Flynn stars in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1939) on Saturday and Sunday morning at the Music Box, Film Center’s retrospective on Max Ophuls continues with Lola Montes (1955) and The Exile (1947), and James Cagney gives an Oscar-winning performance as song-and-dance man George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) at Bank of America Cinema.
