Our Most Anticipated Films at the 61st Chicago International Film Festival
by Emma Batterman
The 2025 Chicago International Film Festival (CIFF) kicks off this week, spanning from October 15–26. Celebrating its 61st year, CIFF is the longest running competitive international film festival in North America. An impressive 70 shorts and 120 feature films from more than 60 countries decorate its lineup, all screening in over six multi-theater venues across the city. The star-studded roster this year boasts everything from small-budget indie hits to possible Academy Award contenders. With over 15 films on our screening agenda in the next two weeks, we’re eager for whatever the midwestern festival has to offer. Here are our picks of the top 10 films we’re excited to see at CIFF in 2025.
10. Eternity
Closing CIFF this year is David Freyne’s newest rom-com starring Elizabeth Olsen, Callum Turner, and Miles Teller. For years the screenplay (written by Pat Cunnane) has sat idly on The Black List, a survey of Hollywood’s most celebrated scripts that have yet to be produced. Finally finding its home at A24, the film revolves around its title question: Who would you spend eternity with? A dramatic love triangle that takes place in the afterlife, Eternity boasts colorful cinematography, great performances, and a moving premise.
9. Black Rabbit, White Rabbit
With a meta setting rooted on a film set in the country of Tajikistan, Black Rabbit, White Rabbit focuses on a director attempting to recreate an Iranian film. The film’s production eventually sets off a chain of events threading together diverse characters from an anxious prop manager to a wealthy woman stuck in a failing marriage. Co-writer and director Shahram Mokri deftly explores overlapping narratives while exploring the fragility of art-making and human fallibility. Selected for International Competition at CIFF this year, Mokri’s drama was chosen as Tajikistan’s entry for Best International Feature at the 98th Academy Awards.
8. The Sound of Falling
Also competing in CIFF’s international competition is The Sound of Falling, a German drama co-written and directed by Mascha Schilinski. Taking place on a small farm located near the historic East-West divide, the film follows four generations of women enduring the reverberation of violence that surrounds their sober farmhouse. Schilinski’s haunting work was selected as Germany’s submission for Best International Feature for next year’s Oscars and is the winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize.
7. Is This Thing On?
Following his 2023 Maestro acclaim, Bradley Cooper returns to the writer-director’s chair with a dramedy centered around a failed marriage that is loosely inspired from the life of British comedian John Bishop. Cooper takes a step back from the spotlight while co-writer Will Arnett stars alongside Laura Dern as a couple navigating the fresh wound of divorce and awkward custody battles. Premiering at the New York Film Festival this past week and set to be released in December, CIFF is offering an early look at one of the most anticipated projects of the year.
6. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Rose Byrne stars as Linda, a stressed mother tasked with caring for her daughter’s unnamed illness when the ceiling of her home falls through. Forced to navigate living out of a motel and an increasingly chaotic schedule with her husband nowhere to be found, Linda’s psyche begins to crack under the pressure. With the writer-director scheduled to attend the CIFF screening, Mary Bronstein’s newest psychological drama promises strikingly innovative writing and an outstanding performance from Byrne.
5. Train Dreams
Screening in 35mm, director and co-writer Cliff Bentley and actor Joel Edgerton will be receiving the CIFF Artistic Achievement Awards in directing and acting (respectively) for their latest feature film Train Dreams. Based on the acclaimed novel by Denis Johnson, Edgerton stars as Robert Grainier, an orphan raised in the early 20th century Pacific Northwest who finds himself cleaving the dark trees around him to lay tracks for a budding railroad empire. Bentley’s somber adaptation bears a solemn devotion to an increasingly unrecognizable existence as Edgerton shoulders the weight of its isolation in a purported career-best performance.
4. The Mastermind
Josh O’Connor portrays unemployed carpenter James Blaine Mooney in Showing Up (2022), Director Kelly Reichardt's witty heist drama. Drawn to the escape from his meager middle class existence, Mooney executes a plot to steal Arthur Dove paintings from a local museum. When things don’t go as planned and Mooney suddenly finds himself in over his head, his double life as a ‘70s suburbanite and an art thief begin to collapse. Described as one of Reichardt’s funniest satires to date with a great performance from Josh O’Connor, we can’t wait to see what this film has in store for us on CIFF’s silver screen.
3. The Secret Agent
Set in the final years of Brazil’s military dictatorship, Wagner Moura stars as Marcelo, a former teacher on the run from the regime’s persecution in a new political thriller from Director Kleber Mendonça Filho. Premiering at Cannes in May, Filho was awarded for best director and Moura for best actor, the first Brazilian actor to take home the prize. The film is also Brazil’s official entry for the next year’s Academy Awards, a feat Filho has famously been snubbed for twice in the past with 2016’s Aquarius and 2019’s Bacurau due to far-right political interference by the Temer and Bolsonaro administrations respectively. With such a politically outspoken premise, it will be refreshing to see the director’s work with the knowledge it will be honored properly.
2. Dead Man’s Wire
Lauded filmmaker Gus Van Sant’s (Good Will Hunting, My Own Private Idaho) newest feature focuses on the real life 1977 Indianapolis bank heist committed by Anthony “Tony” Kritsis. Wiring the muzzle of a 12-gauge, sawed-off shotgun to the head of mortgage broker Richard O. Hall, Kritsis held Hall hostage for 63 hours. Starring Bill Skarsgård, Colman Domingo, and Al Pacino, Van Sant draws on the likes of Dog Day Afternoon (1975) to deliver an isolating thriller racked with tension. Van Sant will also be receiving the CIFF Visionary Award to “[recognize] his auspicious body of work defined by both experimentation and humanity.”
1. It Was Just an Accident
Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s latest film injects a personal vendetta against his home country. Fiercely critical of Iran’s track record of political repression and authoritarianism, Panahi has been imprisoned by the country’s regime several times over his career. The film centers on a group of people who fell victim to Iran’s political violence as they are confronted with an opportunity for revenge against their torturer. Racked with doubt and uncertainty in the man’s identity, the group spends the next 24 hours confronting both their past and their desire for retribution. As a co-production between Iran, France, and Luxembourg and France’s selection for Best International Feature at the 98th Academy Awards, Panahi’s newest thriller has been sweeping the festival circuit after its premiere at Cannes earlier this year, even winning the renowned Palme d’Or. With its steep acclaim and Panahi’s personal roots in the film’s subject matter, we’re picking It Was Just an Accident as the film we’re most excited to see at CIFF this year.