Chicago International Film Festival 2026 - A Preview
There are a lot of reasons October is my favorite month of the year. Halloween is my favorite holiday, so obviously there's that. It's horror movie season.
It's that beautiful time in Chicago when summer finally gets the hell out of here, the weather cools down, the leaves start changing, and you can actually walk around outside without feeling like you're being slowly cooked. I love autumn. I love October.
And I love October because every year it also means the return of one of my favorite Chicago traditions: the Chicago International Film Festival.
The 62nd Chicago International Film Festival runs October 14th through the 25th, and once again Chicago basically turns into one giant movie theater for almost two weeks. This year's festival includes 170 films—113 features and 57 shorts—with screenings and events at venues throughout the city, including AMC NEWCITY 14, the Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago History Museum, the Logan Center for the Arts, and, of course, one of my favorite places on Earth, the Music Box Theatre.
I've been attending the Chicago International Film Festival for years, both as a film critic and simply as somebody who loves movies, and there's nothing quite like it. As critics, we're fortunate because we sometimes get the opportunity to see certain movies at advance press screenings, but I still love going to the actual festival screenings.
I love standing in line, talking to people, running into other critics and movie fans, hearing somebody say, "I don't know anything about this movie, but it sounded interesting," and then sitting in a packed theater with a bunch of strangers and discovering something together.
That's what a film festival should be.
And that's what CIFF has been doing for more than six decades.
The Festival grew out of Cinema/Chicago, founded by filmmaker and graphic artist Michael Kutza in 1964 because he wanted Chicago audiences to have access to international movies that simply weren't appearing in the city's commercial theaters.
The first Chicago International Film Festival happened the following year at the Carnegie Theatre, and what began with eight films competing in the feature category eventually became North America's longest-running competitive international film festival.
Over the years, CIFF has introduced Chicago audiences to early work by filmmakers including Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders, Mike Leigh, Krzysztof Kieślowski, and many others.
Think about that.
And 62 years later, the basic reason for the festival still makes perfect sense. Movies are bigger than Hollywood.
I love Hollywood movies. I love movie stars. I love big studio films when they're good. But cinema is happening everywhere, and one of the great things about CIFF is that for almost two weeks you can walk into a theater and see movies from places you've never visited, made by filmmakers you've never heard of, starring actors you've never seen before, and dealing with lives and experiences completely removed from your own.
There are documentaries. There are animated films. There are shorts. There are comedies, dramas, thrillers, horror movies, experimental films, LGBTQ+ cinema, films from established masters, first-time filmmakers, Chicago filmmakers, and movies from all over the world.
That's the festival.
And my biggest piece of advice is this: take a chance on something.
Yes, there are some huge movies playing this year, and I'll get to those in a minute. There are films with major stars, acclaimed directors, awards buzz, and titles you're going to hear a lot about over the next several months. By all means, go see those. But leave room for the movie you've never heard of.
Go through the schedule. Read the descriptions. Find some strange little movie from another country with a director whose name means absolutely nothing to you and buy a ticket.
Some of my favorite festival experiences have happened that way. That's the magic of this thing.
Of course, there are also plenty of high-profile movies this year that I cannot wait to see.
The whole thing kicks off Wednesday, October 14th at 6:00 p.m. at the Music Box Theatre with the Opening Night presentation of Club Kid, written and directed by and starring Jordan Firstman.
Firstman plays a New York club promoter whose decade-long party suddenly gets complicated when a ten-year-old British son he didn't know existed appears at his door. Firstman is scheduled to attend, and he'll receive the Festival's Breakthrough Award.
Opening Night at the Chicago International Film Festival is always a blast. There is a wonderful energy around it because everybody knows we're about to start this crazy stretch of movies, conversations, filmmakers, parties, screenings, Q&As, and running from one theater to another trying not to miss something.
And this year's lineup has some movies I'm particularly excited about.
Pedro Almodóvar has a new movie. That's really all you have to say to me. I love Almodóvar, one of the great Spanish filmmakers and one of my favorite directors, and his latest is Bitter Christmas. It's another Almodóvar story about art, identity, relationships, filmmakers, and the strange place where real life begins bleeding into fiction. It plays Sunday, October 18th at 5:30 p.m. and again Sunday, October 25th at 4:30 p.m., both at AMC NEWCITY 14.
Jesse Eisenberg is following up A Real Pain with The Debut, starring Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti. Moore plays a shy suburban housewife who gets a tiny part in a community theater production and promptly becomes so consumed by acting that she begins waging an artistic war with the show's director, played by Giamatti. I love that premise, I love those actors, and after A Real Pain, I'm very curious to see where Eisenberg goes as a filmmaker. The Debut screens Tuesday, October 20th at 6:00 p.m. at the Music Box Theatre.
Then there's James Gray's Paper Tiger, with Adam Driver, Miles Teller, and Scarlett Johansson. Gray is a serious filmmaker, and this is a crime drama about two brothers getting pulled into a scheme that turns out to be much more dangerous than they expected. Give me James Gray, Adam Driver, Miles Teller, Scarlett Johansson, and a crime story, and I'm there.
I'm also very excited about Tender Loving Care, the latest from the legendary British filmmaker Mike Leigh. Leigh is one of the great actors' directors, and his films have always had this remarkable ability to find humor, pain, frustration, anger, and humanity in ordinary lives. The movie screens Saturday, October 17th at 12:30 p.m. at the Gene Siskel Film Center, with another screening on October 25th at AMC NEWCITY 14.
Martin McDonagh is back too, following The Banshees of Inisherin with Wild Horse Nine, and look at this cast: John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, Parker Posey, and Tom Waits. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents sent from Santiago to Easter Island as the 1973 Chilean coup approaches, which sounds exactly like the kind of strange, dark, funny, potentially nasty material McDonagh knows how to handle. It screens Friday, October 16th at 5:30 p.m. and Saturday, October 17th at 11:30 a.m. at AMC NEWCITY 14.
And Chicago's own Carrie Coon gets a major night at the festival with The Liberation. Coon plays a mother and bank executive in the early 1980s who becomes involved with a women's self-empowerment group that evolves into something much more cult-like. Lily James co-stars, Guy Nattiv directs, and Coon (who, of course, has deep Chicago roots through Steppenwolf) is scheduled to attend the Friday, October 23rd, 6:00 p.m. Music Box screening, where she will receive the Festival's Artistic Achievement Award.
One of the major events of the festival is the Centerpiece presentation of Mouse, the latest Chicago-made film from Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson. It's a coming-of-age story set in Arkansas in 2002, built around a teenage friendship, tragedy, grief, and an unexpected bond between a young woman and her late friend's mother, played by the great Sophie Okonedo. The October 21st, 6:00 p.m. Music Box screening will include a special tribute to Okonedo, who is scheduled to attend and receive the Festival's Spotlight Award.
That's the other thing CIFF does so well: you don't simply watch the movie and go home. Filmmakers come here. Actors come here.
You get Q&As, conversations, tributes, and opportunities to hear people talk about the work you just watched. The Festival says that at more than half of its screenings in a typical year, audiences have the opportunity to meet directors, producers, writers, or cast members. That completely changes the experience.
There are some terrific tributes this year too. In addition to Sophie Okonedo and Carrie Coon, filmmaker Ira Sachs will receive the Q-Hugo Artistic Achievement Award at an October 20th presentation accompanying The Man I Love, and the Festival's 30th anniversary celebration of its Black Perspectives program includes an in-person Career Achievement Award tribute to Marlon Wayans.
That Black Perspectives anniversary is worth celebrating. The program has spent three decades showcasing Black filmmakers and Black stories from the United States and around the world, presenting work from filmmakers including Barry Jenkins, Maya Angelou, Steve McQueen, and Ava DuVernay, whose first feature premiered through the program. This year's anniversary lineup continues that tradition with films, shorts, and special events throughout the Festival.
There's also something new this year that I think movie collectors are going to love: the Festival's first Physical Media Fair. And anybody who has ever heard me talk about movies knows I am very happy whenever people remember that movies can actually exist on something you can hold in your hand.
Remember those?
Blu-rays! DVDs! VHS tapes!
Physical objects!
What a concept.
The free two-day event happens October 17th and 18th at 1511 N. Halsted, right near AMC NEWCITY. Saturday includes conversations, trivia, and a physical-media swap, while Sunday features a pop-up shop with Blu-rays, DVDs, VHS tapes, posters, books, merchandise, and vendors including Kino Lorber, Reckless Records, Kartemquin Films, Bric-a-Brac Records, and others. I love this.
The Festival has also partnered with UIC for Disability in Focus, a group of disability-inclusive films accompanied by extended post-screening discussions about disability representation. Those films include Being Heumann, Stand Up, and While We Are Here, with screenings at the Gene Siskel Film Center and Chicago History Museum.
And finally, the festival closes Sunday, October 25th at 5:00 p.m. at the Music Box with Behemoth!, starring Pedro Pascal, Olivia Wilde, Eva Victor, and Will Arnett. It's directed by Tony Gilroy, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind Michael Clayton, and Pascal plays a gifted cellist returning to Los Angeles after twenty years on the road.
The film uses nine composers and is described as a love letter to movie scoring and the extraordinary connection between music, movies, and memory. Composer Michael Abels is scheduled to attend.
That sounds like a pretty damn appropriate way to close a film festival. But here's the thing: those are only some of the movies. There are 170 of them. You cannot see everything. Believe me, I've tried.
So don't approach the Chicago International Film Festival like homework. Don't worry about seeing every movie that somebody says might get nominated for an Oscar. Don't make yourself insane trying to create the perfect schedule.
Have fun. Pick the big movie you absolutely have to see. Pick the filmmaker you love. Pick an actor you want to see. Then choose something completely unknown because the description sounds weird. That's how you do a film festival.
So go through the schedule. Look at the programs. Check out the tributes. Find something you recognize, and then find something you don't.
The 62nd Chicago International Film Festival runs October 14th through October 25th, and individual tickets are on sale now. Festival passes are available as well, and the Festival strongly recommends buying tickets online in advance.
October in Chicago.
Cool weather. Halloween. Horror movies. The Music Box.
And almost two straight weeks of movies from around the world.
Come on.
How could I not love this month?
I'll see you at the movies.
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