Finland

CHICAGO – What came first, the girl or the egg? The new Finnish film “Hatching” – a Sundance Film Fest sensation – is both answering that question and getting a general release in the U.S. on April 29th, and is one of the most effective horror films of the year so far. Writer Ilja Rautsi collaborated with director Hanna Bergholm to create the story of a family who is experiencing their daughter’s adolescent emergence through a creature the girl has hatched from an egg.

CHICAGO – The 2022 Sundance Film Festival is on Day Nine, and will be announcing their top film honorees on January 28th. The festival is wrapping up as virtual/online, meaning anyone/anywhere with a ticket or a pass (link) can indulge in the film offerings and events throughout the festival, which runs until January 30th.

CHICAGO – We are a sick society, consumed with fear. But the greatest art comes out of that fear, and the Strictly Arts Company – visiting from Britain – assesses the sum of our phobias regarding race relations in “Freeman,” now at the Physical Theater Festival in Chicago. There are two more performances of this must-see expression, Friday, June 7th, and Saturday, June 8th, 2019, at Stage 773 in Chicago’s Belmont theater district. Click here for more details and tickets.

CHICAGO – The visual artistry of the stage is often due to the picture that is created through the physicality and movement of the actors. This is brought to light in the 6th annual Physical Theater Festival in Chicago, a cornucopia of international imagination generating theater through the physical realm. Co-founders/Artistic Directors Alice Da Cunha and Marc Frost created the fest, which runs from May 31st through June 9th, 2019, Stage 773 in the Belmont Avenue Theater District. All the Festival information – including tickets – can be found by clicking here.

CHICAGO – As a film set in 1962, shot on glorious black & white 16mm stock, “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki” has both a feeling that it was made back then, and a timelessness that radiates from that quality. The film is about a boxer, but his heart turns out to be the champion.

CHICAGO – Last week, one of the most diverse film festivals of the year in Chicago opened with the Swedish film “The Paradise Suite.” The 19th Annual Chicago European Union Film Fest will be at the Gene Siskel Film Center on State Street. With countries ranging from Austria to Slovakia, European cinema voices will be available to the Chicagoland area through March 31st, 2016.