Upcoming Festivals

America/Chicago
61st Chicago International Film Festival

Wed, October 15, 2025

AMC NEWCITY (1500 N. Clybourn Ave.), Gene Siskel Film Center (164 N. State St.), Music Box Theatre (3733 N. Southport Ave.), Chicago History Museum (1601 N. Clark St.), Reva and David Logan for the Arts (915 E. 60th St.), National Museum of Mexican Art (1
America/Chicago
Tyler Michael Balentine Presents… Sunday’s Best

Sun, February 08, 2026

FACETS - 1517 W Fullerton Ave, Chicago, IL 60614
America/Chicago
16th Lake County Film Festival

Thu, March 12, 2026

College of Lake County (19351 W Washington St., Grayslake, IL 60030), Gorton Center (400 E Illinois Rd., Lake Forest, IL 60045)

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Best of the Chicago Underground Film Festival 2025

When
Fri, March 06, 2026
7:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Location
FACETS - 1517 W Fullerton Ave, Chicago, IL 60614

Award Winners: Best of the Chicago Underground Film Festival 2025

This program brings together four award-winning works from the 2025 Chicago Underground Film Festival, spanning speculative fiction, archival excavation, political documentary, and hybrid nonfiction. Collectively, these films examine labor, memory, disappearance, and resistance—using cinema as a tool for cultural inquiry and historical recovery.

The evening opens with three short films that approach social systems from radically different angles: a 16mm sci-fi satire about technological “solutions” in cooperative spaces; a video essay resurrecting a forgotten chapter of Chicago’s underground film history; and an archival documentary chronicling New York squatters who transformed abandonment into collective survival. A post-shorts Q&A with Isaac Brooks, Josh B. Mabe, and Ben Creech will explore process, collaboration, and the role of alternative exhibition in preserving marginalized stories.

The program concludes with Rajee Samarasinghe’s internationally acclaimed debut feature, a formally daring hybrid documentary confronting enforced disappearances in post–civil war Sri Lanka. Blending investigative nonfiction with allegorical fiction, the film expands the possibilities of political cinema while bearing witness to histories often erased from official record.

Together, these works reflect CUFF’s ongoing commitment to artist-driven cinema, historical preservation, and films that challenge dominant narratives—presented as a shared public experience.