A look at Chicago’s International Film Festival and the importance of watching world cinema.

My dad introduced me to film. He was an avid lover of movies growing up in India. When he came to the United States, his ability to watch films grew exponentially (as I was writing this, I asked him if he could give me a couple of his favorite movies from his time in India and the U.S. He responded with two long lists of films and directors he found and loved in both countries, all before I was born.) My parents first came to the U.S. in the early ‘90s, and they lived in Manhattan, New York, the home of the Lincoln Center and the New York Film Festival. It is a city full of cinema lovers – what better place to be?

Growing up, our bookshelves were filled with biographies of famous directors, from Alfred Hitchcock to Satyajit Ray and Akira Kurosawa. I have been surrounded by world cinema since I first began to walk around the house. But, to my dad’s dismay, I never enjoyed watching foreign-language films. As much as he tried to get me to watch movies from all over the world, I chose to watch (and rewatch) American films and TV. Watching any other films as a kid made me uncomfortable. It was scary venturing out. Anytime my family wanted to watch a Bollywood movie, I found any excuse to sneak out and watch something mind-numbing upstairs in the safety of my room. Don’t get me wrong, I loved watching movies. I could escape to worlds unknown and dream bigger than I knew I could. But I never wanted to push myself. Even with the great cinema of Hollywood, I always settled for something much easier to consume. When escaping into something, I wanted to feel safe within my comfortable walls. Why venture out? It’s scary on the other side, and all I needed was right here in front of me.

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité

I wanted to be many things growing up: astronaut, chef, international crime fighter. But in May of 2020, I decided to go to film school. My love for escapism and good stories could be combined into a (relatively) sensible career choice that could fulfill me. But I knew that I was going to have to watch a lot of movies. I had to slowly catch up through the greats of American Cinema. For the record, in terms of movies watched to this point, if this were a marathon, I’d put myself somewhere between miles 3 and 4. Watching movies is tough to keep up as a habit (especially for a habitual slacker). It gets easier, but like working out, it’s never easy. However, no matter how many great movies I saw, there would always be a guilty pause on every non-English film before it was inevitably passed on. I’d watch a Hindi film now and then, but few and far between. Someone or something had to come along to give me the great push I desperately needed.

One of my dad’s favorite filmmakers is the renowned Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski. When they lived in Manhattan, my parents took an entire weekend to watch Dekalog, his series of ten short films inspired by the decalogue of the Ten Commandments. So when a new 4k restoration of his Three Colors trilogy was playing at the Lincoln Center, I had an obligation to see it with him. His name was prominent on my dad’s bookshelves, and he was recommended regularly, but my expectations weren’t high as we took the slow train into the heart of the city to see the first of the trilogy, Three Colors: Blue (Trois Couleurs: Bleu)

As I sat down in my seat at the Walter Reade Theater, there was a nervous excitement, the same one that rolls along with opening credits for any new film, especially a foreign-language film. It’s the anticipation of falling into a world where everything is completely new: the actors, the visual imagery and the language itself. There is nothing to anchor yourself onto, to feel any sort of comfort in familiarity as the lights dim. You have no choice but to fall in.

It wasn’t just that I thought it was fascinating. It was seeing my dad’s reaction to this film that cemented my infatuation with it. He watched that same film in that same theater 30 years ago at the New York Film Festival. 

Walking around Lincoln Square and talking with each other about the film, there was still a sense of joyous excitement about watching that film again, and I knew I had to see the entire trilogy. A month later, we saw Three Colors: White (Trois Couleurs: Blanc), and it couldn’t have been more different from the first, yet somehow just as exciting and emotional. A month after that, I saw Three Colors: Red (Trois Couleurs: Rouge) and walked out of the theater speechless, my worldview fundamentally changed.

With Kieślowski, no excuses for avoidance could possibly outweigh the potential cinematic beauty that can exist. There’s a whole worlds out there, sitting on the lowest shelves in the forgotten basement of streaming sites.  I thought I’d be lost in a sea of pure unfamiliarity, drifting too far from the shore. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. We live in a world of infinitely different lives, each as complicated and nuanced as the last, but what makes us different is always balanced by the common experiences we share. Love, hate, envy, guilt, shame … the daunting list of common emotions we as humans face in our day-to-day lives goes on and on. And I wanted to see more of it.

Photo by Varun Khushalani.

Going to the Movies

With my dad in mind and his stories of the New York Film Festival, I knew when I got the assignment of the Chicago International Film Festival, I would have to jump fully into it. Coming into this, a premium was placed on not grading or rating these films. I’m not a critic. Over those two weeks, I wanted to watch these movies as a part of a larger mechanism for changing my attitude toward film. This was the best orientation I was ever going to get.

During the two weeks, the strength and multitude of voices from all over the world reached me more than ever. Never in my life have I been able to see so many films in such a short period that left me feeling emotionally changed. Rather than filling my time with content meant to sedate me, these incredibly talented filmmakers grabbed me with their stories and forced me into hard conversations. Here were the standouts for me.

Photo by Varun Khushalani.

The first film I watched of the whole festival was Four Daughters (Les filles d’Olfa), Tunisia’s official submission for the 96th Academy Awards. The director, Kaouther Ben Hania, weaves a tragic story through the lives of those who lived it, along with actors portraying the family to tell the more traumatic events. It’s an incredibly sad and dark look at the human cost of religious extremism. At the core of it is a tragic story about a mother who, while misguided at times, would do anything for the betterment of her daughters. The news covering the Middle East doesn’t focus on stories like this, the pain that comes when young children fall prey to the predators in society. Instead, they show the numbers, the quick clips to incite the most panic or fear or hatred — it’s meant to separate us from them, from the Other. But when watching the film, I was devastated for this family. Hania doesn’t need to pull from the geographical politics of the region — the emotions come straight through the people on screen. Still, when she does invite you into the larger global narrative, the reality of the situation seems dire, almost impossible. But yet there is Olfa, with Eya and Teyssir, against all odds, stronger and closer than ever before.

One of my favorite films of the festival was the incredible Hungarian movie Explanation for Everything (Magyarázat mindenre), directed by Gábor Reisz. The film is elegant and bold in its cinematography and editing, and one of my favorite movies of 2023. It so humanly portrays how the rise of nationalism and political extremism affects my generation around the world, giving greatly needed international context to a worldwide ailment, proving that this isn’t just happening to us. 

It’s grounded by incredible acting from its ensemble cast, but especially from the leading actor, Gáspár Adonyi-Walsh, who portrays Abel, a senior in high school who stumbles around naively with pressure from the people around him pushing him around in so many directions. It’s a vast film taking place over a short time, intricately and convincingly covering the many different perspectives involved in one moment. Reisz embellishes at times, but it’s well-earned, especially when sitting in those still moments that make us feel alive.

A film I hope you hear about this awards season is Finland’s official submission for Best International Feature, Fallen Leaves (Kuolleet Lehdet) winner of the Silver Hugo for Best Director for Aki Kaurismäki. It’s slow and, to the passive observer, not very emotional. But don’t be fooled by its seeming calmness. The brilliant Kaurismäki holds the audience in a deep emotional tension throughout, pushing and pulling us through the sad flow of their life. The film is dark — it stands on the periphery of the Russian invasion of Ukraine as it deals with themes of human isolation and desperation, but it is never cowardly. Its’ subtle yet elegant cinematography underscores its trueness to life but ensures no character stands in an imperfect frame. The characters are funny, yet silently sad and they remain resilient despite their flaws as they trudge through every moment toward existence.

The (Not-so) Olympics of Cinema

One of the films I learned the most from I hadn’t heard of before the festival. After I was assigned to cover the Chicago International Film Festival, an email popped up asking me to cover Joram, the only Indian film to be featured in this year’s film festival. This film is an escape thriller centering around the region of Jharkhand, in rural Eastern India, and how the powers of capitalism severely disrupt the lives of rural village members. Through inventive visual imagery and gritty action sequences, the film takes a tense look at a less common protagonist: a father who is escaping the demons of his past with no desire to be in conflict yet is trapped at the heart of it.

I had the great pleasure of talking to the director, Devashish Makhija and producer Ashima Avasthi of Zee Studios, the largest distribution company in India.

Our conversation centered around the global phenomenon of storytelling and how international audiences interact with films from different areas of the world. Avasthi described the special experience of watching their movie at an international film festival by different audiences.

“That is the beauty about bringing films to different audiences, right, because everybody understands the film, but they may go away with something else,” Avasthi said. 

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In this discussion, we referenced Parasite quite a bit. This South Korean thriller, directed by Bong Joon-ho, made history in 2019 when, at the 92nd Academy Awards, it became the first foreign-language film ever to win Best Picture. It represented one of the biggest shifts in the history of the Academy. Of this historic feat happening, critic Justin Chang for the LA Times wrote:

“It frankly boggles the mind, in ways both thrilling and sobering, to realize that Bong has pulled off something that Fellini and Bergman and Kurosawa and Truffaut could not,” writes Chang. 

It’s an excellent underdog story, the news story the cinema world desperately needed to fight recent challenges against the #OscarsSoWhite campaign, exacerbated by the skewed nominations and wins from the year before. It was well-deserved, but Chang is right. How is it possible in all the years of the Academy that only one foreign language film has been deemed worthy enough of a Best Picture win?

India, especially, has had a lackluster history in this category. Only three Indian films have been nominated for this award: Mother India (1957), Salaam Bombay! (1988) and Lagaan (2001). This is due to a variety of factors, but what Makhija emphasized was that this was not simply an issue with the Academy.

“The onus is on all the other countries to choose the right films, to back more films that have artistic integrity. Like India not sending Ship of Theseus, India not sending Lunchbox, [are] mistakes,” Makhija said. 

To me, the Oscars have always been the Olympics of Cinema, the most skilled filmmakers in the world competing for the title of “Best” in the eyes of film lovers everywhere. These are awards, after all. But, in this discussion, it dawned on me that they aren’t just awards. This is a subjective (as well as incredibly biased) process of selecting the best of many entirely different pieces of art, even more complicated by the fact that not all great stories will be seen, which Avasthi lamented. 

“If you see in the last, maybe two, three decades, the [gems] that are coming out of everything outside of the US, right, it’s just fantastic. And […] you sit back and wonder, Oh, my God, how much is getting lost? Right? Because if this is what is coming out when only one is allowed, imagine that there were more?”

There’s no stopwatch. There’s only a show of hands in a dark room that we’ll never see a record of. And while it claims to be representing “all aspects of the film industry,” Avasthi and Makhija, as well as so many other international filmmakers from across the world, have to look at the system from the outside. When I asked Makhija about potentially changing the submission guidelines to allow more films to be considered for best International Feature, he wasn’t interested.

“Many countries are not putting in the effort and putting the onus on America to [..] just celebrate more foreign cinema, but they’re calling you foreign cinema. You are not their cinema. So it’s okay if the Oscars don’t open up any further because they’ve opened up enough. It’s up to us to open up to our cinema first,” said Makhhija. 

Inclusive implies we let people in. This conversation, as well as this whole experience of covering an international film festival, drew me to ask, why do the Oscars dictate the world of cinema anymore? In this world of streaming and the internet, where movies are more available to see than ever before, we hold all the cards. The Oscars used to be a way to showcase the great art of the world in an age where film was harder to engage with. Nowadays, it feels like a vanity project for the highest earners in Hollywood, an exercise to explain their latest political stance or to show off their new designer collaborations, then cash the checks.

The 2022 Oscars exemplified this diversion from truly celebrating film. While you may remember it for Will Smith walking up on stage and slapping Chris Rock, it was going to be different regardless because of the decision not to broadcast the eight smaller awards, including Documentary (Short Subject), Film Editing, Makeup and Hairstyling, Music (Original Score), Production Design, Short Film (Animated), Short Film (Live Action), and Sound [an award which was already a combination of the Sound Design and Sound Mixing awards]. In a letter explaining the new changes to the show, President of the Academy David Rubin said these changes were made to “keep the show vital, kinetic, and relevant.” Their decision, while not a simple one, still announced to the world that the Oscars weren’t about honoring the art of cinema anymore. It’s about the spectacle.

The stakes have gone and this artificial award system created to generate excitement is inherently flawed. It looks at the wrong things, is voted on by a group with troubling makeup and voting practices, and, most importantly, has no bearing on the cultural significance, box office, or personal appreciation of a film. I get the allure of the Oscars. It’s nice to see the gold statue and the sense of competition makes it a lot more exciting. But it’s not the Olympics. For some reason, we expect every live event nowadays to be the Super Bowl and are somehow surprised when ratings for a 4-hour infomercial, filled with the richest of the rich sitting in chairs, have dropped. It’s going to be challenging to make this event interesting for everyone. Not everyone cares about cinema, and that’s alright. But to move forward, let’s accept that maybe the Academy shouldn’t be considered a bastion for honoring cinema anymore, especially the world’s cinema. For that responsibility, we have to take that mantle on ourselves. To do this, honestly, we need to watch a lot more movies.

That’s the beauty of international film festivals. My dad loved watching films like the Three Colors trilogy at the New York Film Festival, not because they were competing for an award, but because they brought the world to him. At these festivals, the best art can be showcased, rather than pitted against each other, and films from across can be celebrated, rather than boiled down to an incomplete tally. There are awards given at the end, which help point the viewer in the right direction, but unlike the Oscars, that doesn’t restrict the incredible opportunity for exposure that is provided when so many great films are screened day after day. The Chicago Film Festival runs for two weeks at eight theaters across the city, featuring films of every genre from all over the world, based solely on merit. Once a film is accepted, everyone is on an equal playing field, and patrons get to decide what looks good or not. We get to see a cool statue and some incredible films – what more could you ask for? 

It’s on us, the audience, these cities filled with lovers of film, to go out and find the great cinema that is hidden in the corners of the world we don’t usually engage with. This film festival, not only showed me those corners of the world, but it changed the way I looked at them entirely–just like my dad said it would.

Edward Hopper “New York Movie” (1939). Oil on canvas, Museum of Modern Art, New York City

“Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to many more amazing films.” -Bong Joon-Ho in his 2019 acceptance speech for Best Director.

Header photographed by Varun Khushalani