people
We have always seen ourselves as an audience-based festival, so our mission is to bring the best in international cinema to Chicago, with the view that film is a wonderful tool for cross-cultural understanding. There are other festivals that maybe are more market-based than we are. But every year there are films that do get picked up here. We have U.S. distributors as well as European distributors, and recently I’ve been getting requests from Asian distributors to come to the festival. We want to promote film in every way possible, so if we can help the filmmakers out, that’s an added bonus.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
What were the best attended screenings last year?
One of the motivations for the festival has always been the new director’s competition—first- and second-time filmmakers. We had an exceptionally high percentage of really excellent films by new directors last year. The film in the new directors competition that took the Silver Hugo was by a Brazilian filmmaker named Philippe Barcinsky. And maybe four, five years before that, his short film had won the Gold Hugo. This, I think, happened several years: we’ll have a filmmaker whose short film has won the prize, who then submits to the festival with their first feature, and it gets programmed. To see that transition, and then to see the film do well beyond the festival, is really exciting. —J.R. Jones
