North America’s longest-running international competitive film festival turned 61 in 2025 and screened 114 feature films along with 70 short subject films.
Presented by the non-profit organization Cinema/Chicago, the Chicago International Film Festival ran from Oct. 15-26 and was held in multiple venues across the city. Ticket holders attended screenings at multiplexes such as AMC NEWCITY 14, Music Box Theatre and Gene Siskel Film Center. There were special presentations held at the Chicago History Museum and the National Museum of Mexican Art, plus academic-focused screenings at Kennedy-King College and at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago.
For the first time, CIFF offered The Criterion Closet at the NEWCITY Plaza for three days with limited hours. Fans could enter a mobile replica of the New York Criterion Collection office and shop for their favorite cinematic picks at a discount price.
Meanwhile, inside the AMC venue at 1500 N. Clybourn Ave., there were red carpets galore on the second floor and multiple motion picture screenings held on the third floor throughout the festival.
A wide range of offerings from the 61st film festival included navigating illness in the feature If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, a Japanese agency inventing relationships in Rental Family and a third Knives Out mystery set in a church for Wake Up Dead Man. In the documentary category, there was Cover-Up, which followed journalist Seymour Hersh’s journey and revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah’s history lesson in The Eyes of Ghana, to name a few.
The LGBTQ+ community was well represented throughout the run of the fest and many artists traveled from across the globe to present their projects in person.
Two Times Joao Liberada’s creator, Paula Tomas Marques, journeyed from Portugal to promote their film. This trans femme non-binary talent stopped to talk on the red carpet of NEWCITY, stating they were inspired by “the echoes of forgotten queer history.”
They explained, “When I was doing my post-graduate work in sociology, it was a time when I was understanding myself as a trans person. I became obsessed with finding queer folks from the past. The idea was to legitimize myself and others around me. I did find a few hidden things concerning historical documents that were not transcribed incorrectly, with several things unfortunately left open for interpretation. This made things difficult to understand and I wanted to make a film about this process to help others. I wrote a synopsis about an invented character based on these trials. This is a philosophical film that takes audiences on a journey to question their own representation as well as their history.”
Other diverse highlights from the festival included the coming-of-age outdoor adventure Stranger River, told in multiple languages, as well as The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo.
Queer Chilean director Diego Cespedes revealed his casting process before his public screening on Oct. 17 and said, “It took a year and a half of complex casting to find the performers for The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo. I hope that audiences can see the tenderness shown in the film for people who are different.”
Gay Argentinian director Ezequiel Erriquez Mena walked the red carpet before the screening of his family drama Emi on Oct. 22. He gave a behind-the-scenes account of his script-writing by telling Windy City Times, “During the process of writing Emi, it was a process of sexual awakening for me and there were new possibilities to explore. The conflict in the film is not about his gay identity at age 18, but something different. Emi’s parents accept him the way he is, so the real conflict occurs when Emi wants to live with his biological family and not them.”
The following day, on Oct. 23, a late-night screening of The Holy Boy had ticket holders screaming for more. Directed by Italian gay filmmaker Paolo Strippoli, who attended the festival, The Holy Boy falls into the horror genre and follows a teacher discovering secrets in a small town. Strippoli spoke on his personal feelings of isolation while being gay in Southern Italy and found his safe place in the cinema during his awkward teenage years. He confessed, “I identify with weak or fragile characters who are living in the real world. I want to tell audiences something about the world we all live in through my movies.”
Queer programmer Sophie Gordon watched an avalanche of material before narrowing down the top contenders for judges to decide winners in the OutLook Competition. The Gold Q-Hugo was given to the animated hybrid film Bouchra. First-time co-director and co-writer Orian Barki described Bouchra, “The plot is based on real conversations of coming out of the closet to an immigrant mother and takes place in New York. It is fully nuanced with love in the storyline. It is told from my co-director Meriem Bennani’s perspective. Although we broke up while making this film, we are going to continue to work together in the future.”
The Silver Q-Hugo was awarded to Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s A Useful Ghost, a supernatural satire of Thai politics. The queer Bangkok-based filmmaker expressed his feelings before his screening by saying, “It is my goal to expand queer narratives from typical romantic comedies and show original situations.”
Openly gay filmmaker Gus Van Sant received the Visionary Award from CIFF’s artistic director Mimi Plauche before his latest work, Dead Man’s Wire, a historical film about the Tony Kiritsis hostage event in the ‘70s. As far as future projects, the legendary filmmaker told Windy City Times that there are still hundreds of stories he wants to tell and “about half of them are gay.”
Hedda director Nia DaCosta took home the Black Perspectives Artistic Achievement Award on October 19 at Music Box Theatre. Before she received the award, Nia talked about the queer spin on Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and said, “By placing three queer women at the center of a story about freedom, new questions were raised. What is power worth and is it freedom? I asked these questions all the time while exploring Hedda’s repressed world. The project became much more fascinating and more potent when it was told through their eyes.”
On Oct. 22, executive producer Lilly Wachowski and producer Caryn Capotosto accompanied trans director Rowan Haber and creator of the Saturday Night Live character Pat, Julia Sweeney, at NEWCITY for the feature-length doc We Are Pat. Haber described the documentary to WCT, “We Are Pat raised questions such as can a trans person reclaim this character? I approached it in a playful and personal way. It became about trans people in comedy and there are some amazing trans comics in the film.”
Their upcoming plans include writing a trans masculine buddy comedy film using some of those comedians from We Are Pat. Rowan said, “Things have become more intense for trans people since I started working on the new film. I feel we need light and humor to counteract the horror. I am also working on another comedy project involving New Yorkers and their relationships with rats.”
Sweeney followed right after Rowan and said, “We Are Pat is about the trans communities’ view of the character and it’s about me having mixed feelings while understanding Pat in a new way. When I reviewed the skits, they turned out better than I thought, which is such a gift when you are my age and thinking about something I did 35 years ago. Part of me was proud of it and the other part was embarrassed by it, but now I feel much better after being in this documentary.”
When asked her takeaway from We Are Pat, Sweeney answered, “I became friends with a trans comedian in the film named Grace Freud and we still talk to this day. When I watched the movie, I realized that was the beginning of our friendship. Grace is very similar to the Pat character and has an attitude of fun with sexuality, which was enlightening for me.”
Abby McEnany stars in the documentary and had previously addressed the Pat character in her Showtime television series Work in Progress.
She said, “What I love about the documentary is that everyone has different responses to it. It is wild that this character has touched so many folks and people have so many strong feelings about it. Julia being a part of the documentary was important and she was phenomenal.”
Towards the end of CIFF on Oct. 24, legendary filmmaker Spike Lee received a Lifetime Achievement Award. When asked about LGBTQ+ representation throughout his films, he said, “People have to live their life, and I am cool with that.”
On that note, the Chicago International Film Festival was brought to an end for another year on Oct. 26 with the closing night film Eternity at Music Box Theatre.
For year-round programming and future updates, visit chicagofilmfestival.com.