The 13th European Union Film Festival continues Friday through Thursday, March 26 through April 1, at Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800. $10, $7 for students, and $5 for Film Center members. Following are selected films screening; for a full festival schedule see siskelfilmcenter.com.
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Brotherhood Like The Believer (2001), this Danish drama follows a young man who falls in with neo-Nazis, regardless that his nature is at odds with the movement’s ideology. Thure Lindhardt (Flame & Citron) plays a soldier passed over for promotion after he’s been reported hitting on men in his unit. He quits the army and joins a local gang of gay-bashing fascists, where he comes to love the skinhead (David Dencik) assigned to mentor him. Director Nicolo Donato ratchets up the suspense as the closeted lovers grow careless, but delivers more than just another coming-out story. In spare, deft strokes he shows how demagogues target potential recruits by reinforcing their egos and appropriating their culture, as in the electric scene where a heavy metal band instantly transforms a political rally into a head-banger dance party. In Danish with subtitles. 90 min. —Andrea Gronvall Sat 3/27, 9:30 PM, and Wed 3/31, 8:15 PM
Helsinki, Forever Peter von Bagh uses paintings, historical photos, and archival footage to contemplate the title city in this lovely and lyrical 2008 documentary. Like Thom Andersen’s Los Angeles Plays Itself, the movie also doubles as a critical evaluation of filmmakers who’ve set their stories against the streets and buildings of the city (though the only one of them I know is Aki Kaurismaki). Helsinki can hardly claim a cinematic legacy as vast and deep as LA’s, but von Bagh understands the parallel between the cinema and any great city: both are experienced communally and sometimes magically, linking people to one another and to the past. In Finnish with subtitles. 75 min. —J.R. Jones Sun 3/28, 5 PM
The Secret of Kells
