Sundance

CHICAGO – Cooper Raiff was ready for his close-up. His improbable journey to filmmaker, aided in part by a random tweet to Jay Duplass, came to fruition with the success at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival with “Cha Cha Real Smooth.” The film streams on Apple TV+ beginning June 17th, 2022.

CHICAGO – After garnering a major honor at the Sundance Film Festival – the Audience Award in the NEXT category – “Ma Belle, My Beauty” will screen at the virtual/online South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival in yet another opportunity to see the modern and emotional expression of love. Idella Johnson and Hannah Pepper are two/thirds of a past polyamorous relationship.

CHICAGO – San Francisco is dying. Not from blight or fault lines, but by the excess of new tech money that has been buying the city block by block. The diversity that made the town is also going away, and this circumstance is poignantly rendered in the new film “The Last Black Man in San Francisco.”

CHICAGO – Finding identity, especially in the post-collegiate twentysomething time of life, is often fraught with accidental circumstance and heartache. The new film “C.O.G.,” adapted from a short essay from author David Sedaris, is a beautifully sensitive comedy about that rocky identity road, portrayed through a youthful and somewhat clueless preppy from Yale.

CHICAGO – The Sundance Audience Award winner, “Fruitvale Station,” opening in many markets this month, including Chicago this Friday, tells the story of the murder of Oscar Grant in the first hours of 2009. Killed after a fight on a BART train on New Year’s Eve, writer/director Ryan Coogler’s film flashes back 24 hours to detail the final day of Grant’s life.

CHICAGO – A little piece of Sundance is coming to Chicago for the third year in a row. The Sundance Film Festival USA is a one day tour of films in different cities across America that brings one of the biggest film festivals of the year even closer to the rest of us.