41st Chicago International Film Festival: October 6-20, 2005
An overview of the film line up.
Film titles reveal a sexy edge with bits of romance, kiss, addictions, sex addictions, housewarming, The Courage to Love in the Buried Forest at Bee Season and a hidden blade to finish with 2 aurora...

Addictions and Subtraction
In Addictions and Subtractions (Columbia/Spain), director Victor Gaviria probes a hot-topic issue that few Latin American filmmakers dare to explore: drugs. This is the stunning chronicle of a construction worker who becomes.

Be With Me
Eric Khoo’s Be With Me (Singapore), the Director’s Fortnight Opening Film at the Cannes Film Festival, beautifully weaves together three stories having to do with love, hope and destiny. A lonely shopkeeper’s life.

Bee Season
Richard Gere and Juliette Binoche star in Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s drama Bee Season (U.S.), about the unexpected spiritual examination and downfall of a seemingly idyllic family. Just as the young daughter Eliza starts to.

Black Brush
Drugs play a more light-hearted role in Roland Vranik’s comedy Black Brush (Hungary), which seems destined for a serious cult following. The story concerns four stoned chimneysweeps and a large sum of their boss’s money lost.

The Buried Forest
In The Buried Forest (Japan), a group of friends invent dreamlike stories about people in their small town whose lives bear little resemblance to the tales these girls dream up. Following an unprecedented turn of events, parallels.

CCTV
Director Vassilis Katsikis’ daring CCTV (Greece) takes an experimental approach with a film whose central point of view is that of a wandering video camera. The film begins when thieves steal the camera from an 18-year-old boy.

The Courage to Love
Oscar winner Claude Lelouch (A Man and a Woman) returns with The Courage to Love (France), a romantic fable about a street singer and a pretty thief who fall in love. It has all the earmarks of a Lelouch film including exquisite.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
Cannes Film Festival favorite The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Romania) tells the mesmerizing tale of a 63-year-old man who may be on the verge of death. Living with his three cats, Mr. Lazarescu suddenly feels ill and calls for an.

The Devil's Miner
The Devil’s Miner (U.S./Germany) is a documentary chronicling the plight of a 14-year-old silver miner who must support his family following the death of his father.

Elizabethtown
Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom), a once rising star at a leading athletic shoe company who has just been fired due to the overwhelming failure of his design for a sneaker and the $972 million loss his company suffered because of the fiasco. As.

Fateless
Being Julia cinematographer Lajos Koltai makes his directorial debut with Fateless (Hungary/Germany), which depicts a young boy’s return to his native home of Budapest, still wearing his Auschwitz prison camp clothes, and.

Free Zone
Natalie Portman gives an astonishing performance alongside Hana Laszlo, winner of the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival, in the controversial Free Zone (Israel). Portman plays a woman living in Jerusalem who has just.

Guernsey
Also touching on the theme of death, Nanouk Leopold’s heartbreaking Guernsey (Netherlands) chronicles a woman dealing with the suicide of a colleague. She tries to make sense of the tragedy by applying it to her own life and.

The Hidden Blade
With The Hidden Blade (Japan), Yoji Yamanda (The Twilight Samurai) brings us an historical epic he says is “unlike any that’s ever been made before.” Munezo Katagiri is a Samurai faced with decisions that test his.

Housewarming
Brigitte Rouan brings us the inspired comedy Housewarming (France) in which Carole Bouquet plays a lawyer who has her house made completely uninhabitable in order to ward off a new admirer. Her plan backfires when he starts taking an.

How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)
As part of our Black Perspectives Series, Joe Angio’s insightful How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It) (U.S.) is a must for film buffs as it delves deeper into the life of legendary filmmaker Melvin Van.

I Am A Sex Addict
Caveh Zahedi bravely chronicles his compulsions in I Am A Sex Addict (U.S.), which encompasses documentary footage from Zahedi’s third marriage with hysterically funny re-enactments of his encounters with prostitutes, a sexual.

Johanna
Kornel Mundruczo brings us an outrageous, operatic interpretation of the Passion of Joan of Arc with Johanna (Hungary). When a young drug addict miraculously comes out of a coma, she finds that she can cure other patients in the.

Kissing On The Mouth
Chicago filmmaker Joe Swanberg’s Kissing on the Mouth (U.S) is a confrontational and startling film that pulls out all the stops in the way it explores issues of sex and infidelity within post-college relationships. With frank.

Mongolian Ping Pong
In the tradition of The Gods Must Be Crazy, Mongolian Ping Pong (People’s Republic of China) tells the gentle tale of Bilike, a young boy living with his family in the middle of nowhere. He finds a lost ping pong ball in a lake.

My Nikifor
Art plays a similarly vital role in the drama My Nikifor (Poland), the top prize-winner at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. It’s an exquisite, enchanting film about the life and death of accomplished Polish painter Nikifor and his.

The Squid and the Whale
Noah Baumbach’s uncompromising The Squid and the Whale (U.S.) won the Sundance Film Festival’s Director’s Award and Screenplay Award. His semi-autobiographical drama examines the self-destructive and sometimes comical.

Stories of Disenchantment
The lives of three unusual characters intersect in Alejandro Valle’s visually sumptuous Stories of Disenchantment (Mexico). Young Diego and Ximena experience a sexual awakening when they enter the life of Ainda, an eccentric.

That Man: Peter Berlin
Director Jim Tushinski’s That Man: Peter Berlin (U.S.) paints an uncommonly touching and vibrant portrait of gay porn icon and renaissance man Peter Berlin, the poster boy for sexual liberation in the ‘70s. more info

Too Much Romance...It's Time for Stuffed Peppers
Sophia Loren reunites with director Lina Wertmuller in Too Much Romance…It’s Time for Stuffed Peppers (Italy), a wonderfully crowd-pleasing comedy about family dysfunction. A grandmother’s birthday party brings home.

Transamerica
Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman won Best Actress at the Tribeca Film Festival for her compelling performance in Transamerica (U.S.). Huffman plays Bree, a man on the verge of a complete sex change who finds out his long.

Two Auroras
Family dysfunction also lies at the center of the dark Two Auroras (Mexico), which takes a look at the relationship between a wealthy mother and her depressive son and the secret that divides them. Mauricio’s mother Aurora will.

The Weatherman
Popular Chicago weatherman David Spritz (Nicolas Cage) has a shot at the big time when a national morning television show calls him for an audition. Professionally, Spritz is on the top of the world, but his personal life is in complete.
Bruno Chatelin