Editor’s note

One theater; 51 countries.

This is what us three University students walked into, alongside hundreds of other moviegoers, Saturday morning in downtown Chicago.

Held annually during the month of October, the Chicago International Film Festival offers something of value to adventurous film lovers, wherever they’re from, wherever they’re going. We filed the following reports as the 2018-19 College of Media Roger Ebert Fellows in Arts Criticism.

We spent an afternoon and evening at the Chicago AMC River East 21 multiplex, near Navy Pier. (This year’s festival concluded over the weekend.) Some of the films we saw will screen at a theater near you in a few weeks or a couple of months. Most of the titles hailed from outside of the U.S. and many films are still seeking theatrical distribution.

Many of these films are worth your time, if or when they become available online or in theaters.

Movies provide cultural insight

Walking into a typical AMC movie theater, you’re unlikely to see films from Brazil, South Korea, Mexico or Germany. However, from Oct. 10 to Oct. 21 in downtown Chicago, the AMC River East 21 held the 54th Chicago International Film Festival.

This festival brought screenings of a wide variety of films from dozens of different countries.

On Saturday, I saw the Mexican-Colombian co-production “Buy Me a Gun”, “Family First” from Canada, “Clean Up” from South Korea, “Styx” from Germany/Austria and “Hard Paint” from Brazil. As someone who’s new to attending film festivals, it was eye-opening to experience five movies in 11 hours, each from a different cultural perspective.

“Hard Paint”, directed by Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon, topped my list. It provided a gritty yet endearing look into the life of Pedro — an antisocial young gay man — who works as a webcam performer under the screen name NeonBoy due to his trademark use of neon body paint during his performances.

The film is set in Brazil and follows Pedro as he navigates his life and relationships as a gay man living in a “macho” society.

The movie initially premiered in February at the Berlin Film Festival and won that festival’s award for best LGBTQ Feature. It’s scheduled to open in Brazil next month. After the screening, the directors talked to the audience about the timing of the release in the context of Brazil’s divisive presidential election this Sunday.

“The movie talks about how when you’re damaged, you have to find your strength. And I think Brazil, especially LGBT youth, needs that,” said director Matzembacher after the Chicago screening. “It’s going to be an important screening for the audience there.” 

“Hard Paint” makes great use of a melancholy electronic soundtrack and sprinkles some explicit webcam performances with black light and neon colors. Both of these aspects added to a strong city nightlife aesthetic. The film creatively utilizes webcam shots, which made me feel as if I was one of his viewers paying to see him perform through my computer.

Pedro is made out to be a troubled, lonely young man, but his “NeonBoy” alter-ego offers a whole new layer to his character development. The film is a dark and sensual coming-of-age story.

I also saw “Clean Up”, directed by Kwon Man-Ki. From South Korea, the film follows a woman whose criminal past comes back to haunt her when a new hire at her cleaning job appears on the scene.

An interesting aspect of the film was rooted in the use of flashbacks from the time the crime was committed. This allowed the viewer to piece the movie together little by little. However, the movie’s uninspired execution and sluggish pace made it difficult to watch.

“Family First”, a French-Canadian film directed by Sophie Dupuis, tells the story of a crime family and how its members’ relationships slowly break apart when one of them begins to question his life as a criminal.

Edgy and violent, the movie provides an emotional look into the unforgiving crime world and the ties which hold the family together during tough times.

Directed by Wolfgang Fischer, “Styx” is the story of an ER doctor who goes sailing by herself on the Atlantic Ocean only to encounter a sinking ship of refugees. The strong performance of Susanne Wolff makes the story very engaging. A vast majority of the movie took place on a small boat and the camera work was very intimate, with the sound of the ocean waves putting the audience in the character’s shoes.

However, the young refugee who boards the boat is not a well-developed character and comes off as heavy-handed. The film stayed on the surface and lost its urgency as the story progressed.

The Mexican-Columbian co-production “Buy Me a Gun” from director Julio Hernández Cordón relays a jarring tale of a Mexican drug cartel in which children and women are taken away from their families. A young girl must disguise herself as a boy in order to not be taken away from her father.

The film has a lot of unexpected charm and has many heartwarming scenes between the girl and her father as they build their relationship in her mother’s absence.

This movie had some of the most creative and beautifully executed images I saw at the festival Saturday, such as an extended shot of the girl running from behind under a sunset in the desert, and scenes of her and her friends putting on war paint and playing in the desert.

These moments stood out as sheer beauty, an other-worldly adventure displayed across a screen. The cinematography and relationships between the characters made for a powerful experience.

[email protected]