51st Chicago International Film Festival Chooses ’45 Years,’ ‘Brooklyn,’ ‘Carol,’ ‘Youth’

Erik Anderson August 20, 2015

The 51st Chicago International Film Festival has announced the first batch of officials selections for its fest and it’s starting to look familiar. Carol from The Weinstein Company and Youth from Fox Searchlight show up here as they have at many festival announcements already.

Included are international favorites like Thailand’s Cemetery of Splendor from Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Japan’s AN from Naomi Kawase. The Palme d’Or winner at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Dheepan, will also screen.

[box type=”shadow” align=”aligncenter” class=”” width=””]This year, our mission remains the same: to bring Chicago the unique opportunity to see world-class cinema, from new discoveries to international prizewinners, and hear directly from the talented people who’ve brought them to us. This year is no different, with filmmakers from China to Mexico and Hollywood to our backyard joining us for what is Chicago’s most thrilling movie event of the year. Here is just a small sampling of this year’s Festival.

Michael Kutza, Founder & Artistic Director[/box]

45 YEARS
Director: Andrew Haigh • UK
Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling deliver award-winning performances in this engrossing marital drama. A couple celebrating their 45th anniversary receive a jolt when they learn that the corpse of a woman from the husband’s past has been discovered in a melting glacier, and he’s listed as her next-of-kin.

AN
Director: Naomi Kawase • Japan
Sweet red bean paste is the filling in this poignant tale of life, compassion, and delicious desserts. An uninspired pastry chef is brought to life when a plucky septuagenarian’s irresistible homemade recipe turns his red bean pancakes into a local hit. The latest from highly regarded Japanese auteur Naomi Kawase is a tasty philosophical dish.

BROOKLYN
Director: John Crowley • Ireland, UK, Canada
Brooklyn tells the moving story of Eilis (Saoirse Ronan), a young Irish immigrant navigating through 1950s Brooklyn. Lured by the promise of America, Eilis departs Ireland for the shores of New York, where she finds love. But unexpected developments force her to choose between her family’s home and her adopted land.

CAROL
Director: Todd Haynes • US
In an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s seminal novel The Price of Salt, Carol follows two women (Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara) from very different backgrounds who find themselves in an unexpected love affair in 1950s New York. As conventional norms of the time challenge their undeniable attraction, an honest story emerges to reveal the resilience of the heart in the face of change.

CEMETERY OF SPLENDOR
Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul • Thailand
Thai surrealist master and School of the Art Institute of Chicago alum Apichatpong Weerasethakul astounds with a deeply spiritual drama about a group of soldiers who catch a strange coma after disturbing ancient royal graves. While a hospital volunteer nurses the ill, spirits lull us into a captivating cinematic dreamscape.

The 51 Chicago International Film Festival runs from October 15-29, 2015.

Full list of initial official selections can be found here.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.