While traveling to attend film festivals is always a joy and a privilege, there’s nothing like enjoying them from the comfort of your hometown. This is what makes the Chicago International Film Festival so special; For almost two weeks, the city’s artists, creatives and film buffs come together to watch a wide range of films from around the world. Viewing the festival is his way of cultivating a family foundand it’s exciting to see a familiar space rendered with newness as people make new connections and the city fully embraces its cinematic roots. Fittingly, three dramas performed at this year’s CIFF deconstruct the safety and security that home offers, showing how fragile the rhythms we have orchestrated are and the relationship between where we are and where we come from is always changing and renewing. negotiated.

With 82 minutes, the first incisive from director Nnamdi Asomugha “The knife” is a masterclass in tension and tragedy, refusing to give the audience easy answers even as it gives them a family to sympathize with and root for. In addition to directing the film himself and co-writing the screenplay with Mark Duplass, Asomugha stars in the film as Chris, the patriarch of a black family, who investigates a mysterious noise in his house late in the year. evening. His daughters Kendra (Amari Alexis Price) and Ryley (Aiden Gabrielle Price) are sleeping, as is his wife, Alex (Aja Naomi King). Grabbing a pocket knife, he walks into his kitchen and sees an older white woman standing there. Asomugha doesn’t show what happens next, only its dire aftermath: the woman’s body on the ground, Chris’s knife not too far from his right hand. Alex, Ryley and Kendra arrive on the scene, and perhaps prematurely, Chris calls an ambulance. When police officers come to greet the family, Chris and Alex quickly realize the situation could put his family in even more danger. Naturally, in an attempt to appear more sympathetic towards people who prefer to be arrested first and ask questions later, Alex slightly changes the presentation of the situation, causing a chain reaction of suspense and apprehension as the family seeks to escape police interrogation unscathed.

The lack of a coherent or loud score often makes it feel like what we’re witnessing is just a documentary unfolding in real time. Asomugha and cinematographer Alejandro Mejía love faces, their camera frequently focusing on the tortured, calculating faces of the family and officers as they react in real time to what’s happening. The film ultimately tells the story of how a family falls apart. Asomugha does a remarkable job of making it seem like a cascade of naturally horrific calamities, inevitable even with the plausibility of being able to make “better choices.” Indeed, the film asks how disenfranchised people are in a police state, where one wrong word or misinterpreted body language can mean the difference between life and death. There’s an all-too-relevant scene where Chris’s prescription pill bottles are stared at for too long by the police as if to insinuate that they may not be legal or prescription-strength.

Melissa Leo also stands out as the detective tasked with finding out “what really happened.” It’s obvious, however, that the officers aren’t there so much to uncover the truth as to try to find a story that can fit perfectly into their preconceptions and narrative, and Leo strikes the right balance between corruption and a bias obvious to viewers while seemingly impeccable; she’s someone who has bought into the illusion that she’s really there to help. Asomugha also refuses to characterize his characters in archetypal ways, notably in his portrayal of Chris. Chris is flawed, but the film questions whether, in the American criminal justice system, people like him are allowed to be flawed and whether those flaws deserve the treatment he ultimately receives.

Filmed over 15 days in northern Illinois but in an unspecified town, “All right” is a dark subversion of the “prodigal son” story and will surely be an insightful and eye-opening watch for those who have felt they have grown beyond the reach and needs of their hometowns and communities. It centers on Louie (Scott Michael Foster), an acclaimed writer who returns home to gather his late father’s belongings. He only intends to stay for a few days, but he’s quickly drawn back into the orbit of his childhood friends and flames, including Travis (Kevin Bigley) and Lainey (Kate Cobb, who also serves as the director). It’s a sobering and ultimately horrifying story about how our relationship with home changes as we move through the world and how the pursuit of success leads us to hurt and forget those who love us and take care of us the most.

From the start, Cobb expertly shows that Louie’s return will be anything but a warm homecoming. Louie’s literary success is based on his stories, based on the people of his hometown, and he often uses their real names and life stories. While the exact nature of these stories is not discussed, it is evident that he has taken many creative liberties in the way he writes about his community and is not afraid to twist the truth to make it more exciting and more profitable.

Cobb has created a universal feel here, while also telling a very specific story about Louie. No matter how far we move away from home, we always feel that when we return, we can’t help but slip back into our old habits. Additionally, it shows how, when we leave, the people we leave behind are often frozen in time; there is an awkwardness when we try to connect because we are trying to reconcile who they are present with who we knew them like before. As Louie relives the motions of his old life and catches up with the people of his town, it’s as if he wonders if the only thing connecting him is that they are people he knew.

Cobb’s direction imbues an unsettling sense of worry and frustration into everything that happens; how nice the people are, but their subtleties reveal a deeper frustration and discontent with how they have been portrayed. Foster is also a revelation here, never straying too far from reminding viewers that he is self-obsessed and insensitive, but also deeply relatable. Especially in the moments when he tries to reconnect with Travis, it’s funny how his “high society” politeness clashes with the warmth and informality of those from his hometown; he thinks he’s being nice, but that only seems more shocking and further highlights his isolation and separation from these people he knew. Indeed, real life is often much more complex, nuanced, and less exciting than the films or books we read, and the film becomes a critique of how we can too easily ignore our past and criticize it for the sake of profit. The film raises important questions about how we should handle the stories of those who are not our own.

I fully admit that in light of Israel’s ongoing displacement and destruction of Palestine and its people, it has been difficult to watch (and rewatch) Israeli director Shemi Zarhin’s “Bliss.” The film does not comment directly on the current violence, having been written and shot before October 7. Tellingly, however, the film features locations, like a community center with a swimming pool, that no longer exist as they have since. destroyed due to the conflict. Although the film itself is a drama and romance, viewing it in this spirit nevertheless seems worrying as it visually already seems outdated and disconnected from what is currently happening; there is a shocking dissonance between the tenderness and the struggle he attempts to depict in light of the violence currently taking place in these regions.

“Happiness” explores how to find moments of contentment amid family disruption. Its characters often test their family members’ commitment to unconditional love, and it movingly captures the way members of a family play different roles in relation to each other as they grow. as life progresses. It centers on a married couple, Sassi (Sasson Gabay) and Effi (Asi Levi), who work various part-time jobs to earn a living. They rarely have a moment’s respite because Sassi’s son has accumulated excessive gambling debts, which they help him pay off. Despite their daily lives, they find a lot of humor and joy in their situation, even finding the good side of Effi’s sexual impotence. This fragile (but tiring) peace is tested when two young men come back into their lives in a noisy way: Omri (Maor Levi), Sassi’s tempestuous and free-spirited grandson, returns to live with Sassi and Effi , and David (Adi Alon), a former student of Effi with whom she had a relationship, comes to her for hydrotherapy.

As Sassi and Effi now attempt to create a new normal, the film explains how disruption is the rule in life and that we should learn to accept life’s unexpected wrinkles. Refreshingly, it portrays Sassi and Effi as people with full and rich lives; As much as I love coming-of-age films, there is often a cinematic, flattening disinterest in those over a certain age. Sassi and Effi are honest about how they express their doubts, frustrations, and desires, and the arrival of Omri and David becomes a gateway for them to reflect on their regrets and life choices. The strength comes from the way Zarhin frames these everyday moments, his commitment to seeing Sassi and Effi live their daily lives underscoring the key theme of finding respect in the ordinary. In a scene where Sassi helps Omri with hydrotherapy, Zarhin’s camera pulls back to frame the two as very small compared to the size of the pool they are in; it feels like nothing less than a baptism.