2024 Chicago International Film Festival: 10 Movies To Be Excited About

The 2024 Chicago International Film Festival kicks off this week, and it is a film festival that I truly love. This was the first festival that I attended back in 2008, and I have attended it every year since. It is a great film festival that does not get the love and attention of some higher-profile festivals but deserves to be mentioned as one of the best film festivals in North America. It highlights so many unique movies from all around the world and showcases some of the best filmmakers working today.

This year’s festival includes over 120 feature films and 70 shorts from around the world. Like most years, the festival features some of the biggest and buzziest titles of 2024, featuring films from Steve McQueen, Edward Berger, Andrea Arnold, Robert Zemeckis, and Pedro Almodovar, among others. Here are my picks for ten of the most exciting movies playing at the 2024 Chicago International Film Festival.

You can find the full schedule of everything playing at the 2024 Chicago International Film Festival here.

Film descriptions courtesy of IMDb.

 

Blitz

What It’s About: Follow the stories of a group of Londoners during the events of the British capital bombing in World War II.

Why I’m Excited: Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen returns to the big screen with an emotional World War II epic starring Saoirse Ronan.

The Brutalist

What It’s About: When visionary architect László Toth and his wife Erzsébet flee post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild their legacy and witness the birth of modern America, their lives are changed forever by a mysterious and wealthy client.

Why I’m Excited: One of the buzziest films of the fall season, The Brutalist is a sprawling, nearly four-hour epic that has many claiming it as one of the best films of the year.

Conclave

What It’s About: When Cardinal Lawrence is tasked with leading one of the world’s most secretive and ancient events, selecting a new Pope, he finds himself at the center of a conspiracy that could shake the very foundation of the Catholic Church.

Why I’m Excited: A political thriller about picking the new Pope starring Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci? This movie is right up my alley.

Hard Truths

What It’s About: Ongoing exploration of the contemporary world with a tragicomic study of human strengths and weaknesses.

Why I’m Excited: Mike Leigh returns to the director’s chair for the first time since 2018’s Waterloo with this character drama led by an awards-caliber Marianne Jean-Baptiste.

Here

What It’s About: A generational story about families and the special place they inhabit, sharing in love, loss, laughter, and life.

Why I’m Excited: Say what you will about the quality of Zemeckis’s films of late, he continues to take chances and reinvent himself. Here, which is shot entirely from the same angle and point of view the entire, sounds like another fascinating experiment from the Oscar-winning director.

Memoir of a Snail

What It’s About: A bittersweet memoir of a melancholic woman called Grace Pudel – a hoarder of snails, romance novels, and guinea pigs.

Why I’m Excited: From director Adam Elliot comes a unique and inventive adult animation film told through gorgeous stop-motion animation.

Nickel Boys

What It’s About: Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, Nickel Boys chronicles the powerful friendship between two young African American men navigating the harrowing trials of reform school together in Florida.

Why I’m Excited: Along with The Brutalist, Nickel Boys is another title that has been making its way around the festival circuit and received nothing but glowing reviews. Can’t wait to see the movie others have called “beautiful”, “devastating”, and “major”.

The Piano Lesson

What It’s About: Follows the lives of the Charles family as they deal with themes of family legacy and more, in deciding what to do with an heirloom, the family piano.

Why I’m Excited: The Opening Night film of this year’s festival is Malcolm Washington’s August Wilson adaptation starring John David Washington, Danielle Deadwyler, and Samuel L. Jackson.

The Room Next Door

What It’s About: Ingrid and Martha were close friends in their youth when they worked together at the same magazine. After years of being out of touch, they meet again in an extreme but strangely sweet situation.

Why I’m Excited: Legendary Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar makes his English-language debut in this drama starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore.

The Rule of Jenny Pen

What It’s About: Confined to a secluded rest home and trapped within his stroke-ridden body, a former Judge must stop an elderly psychopath who employs a child’s puppet to abuse the home’s residents with deadly consequences.

Why I’m Excited: My most anticipated film in the festival’s After Dark category stars John Lithgow torturing Geoffrey Rush with a doll for 100 minutes. What’s not to be excited about?

 

 

 

 

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