The films I’m most excited about at this year’s Chicago International Film Festival—Federico Veiroj’s The Moneychanger and Pedro Costa’s Vitalina Varela—weren’t available for preview, but I’m fairly confident that I can recommend both sight unseen. Veiroj and Costa are two of the most innovative filmmakers working today, and it speaks well of the festival that the programmers would choose to present their work. Many of the other filmmakers showcased in the festival aren’t as accomplished; in characteristic fashion, the programmers have emphasized the work of first- or second-time directors. As always, I recommend taking risks on films that sound interesting in the festival program and discovering what new voices have to say.
RGhost Tropic In modest fashion, this poetic Belgian feature manages to say a good deal about life, death, and the state of the globalized world. It centers on a Muslim cleaning woman from an unspecified country who’s lived in Brussels for about two decades. One night after work, she falls asleep on the train ride home, misses her stop, and wakes up after the routes have stopped running. She makes her way home on foot, stopping occasionally to chat with strangers and take in the depopulated cityscape. Writer-director Bas Devos depicts the heroine’s trek as a low-key odyssey—indeed the film comes to feel like a compressed epic. The painterly images of lonely urban environments (captured gorgeously on 16-millimeter film) suggest the influence of Belgium’s greatest filmmaker, Chantal Akerman, but Devos’s work is distinctive in its emotional directness. In subtitled Dutch and French. 84 min. Fri 10/25 at 6:15 PM and Sat 10/26 at 6:30 PM
10/16-10/27, River East 21, 322 E. Illinois, chicagofilmfestival.com, $140-$265 festival pass.
