At 92 years old, legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman (Titicut Follies) has made only a couple fiction films. His latest is one of those rare instances yet again, a collaboration with Nathalie Boutefeu who co-wrote and stars in this adaptation of letters and diary entries from Leo and Sophia Tolstoy.

Dialogue with Filmmaker Frederick Wiseman (virtual)

Reclaiming a collection of still and moving images taken by the IDF from the archive collection of the Palestine Research Center in Beirut in the summer of 1982, this poignant exploration of identity, memory, and resistance, uses a unique blend of documentary and experimental filmmaking techniques to create a counter-narrative to loss—a cinematic sabotage to restore looted memories.

The debut feature film of premier French provocateur Catherine Breillat, is an adaptation of her novel, Le soupirail. Fourteen-year-old Alice Bonnard as she returns home from boarding school on summer vacation. Burdened by boredom and her own burgeoning sexuality, Alice’s adolescent desires latch onto Jim, a surly young worker employed at her father’s sawmill.

A young teacher hopes to be appointed to Istanbul after mandatory duty at a small village. After a long time waiting he loses all hope of escaping from this gloomy life. However, his colleague Nuray helps him to regain perspective.

Musician Marc Ribot will perform a live score to accompany Yakov Protazanov’s pioneering 1924 sci-fi film Aelita: Queen of Mars, which is celebrating its centennial anniversary.

Loosely inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ short story The Aleph, Iva Radivojević’s Aleph is an exploration of Borges’ obsession with the infinite. Hybridizing interviews and scripted content with local actors and performers spanning from Greece to Nepal, we witness the ways in which our actions, however small, have vast, unforeseeable consequences, forcing the audience to reckon with their own significance in the grand design of human experience.

Willie Stark is a dynamic backwoods personality who rides a wave of populist fervor straight into the governor's mansion, only to fall prey to the corruption he pledged to fight. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Robert Penn Warren, this dynamic political noir took home the Academy Award for Best Picture.

In an old house in an unnamed Midwest town, former child-prodigy writer Barbara Fowler and her sci-fi author husband Richard are entwined in a love triangle with their pious maid Based on a true story and built around the labor of writing, Fairfield, Iowa-based director and screenwriter Graham Swon is currently adapting the film into a novel.

This modern immigrant story is a re-imagining of a traditional medieval legend in which a Ghanaian couple goes to Europe to find a better life only to land in a refugee camp in Serbia. When Strahinja's wife, Ababuo, goes missing, he must go on an epic journey to get her back, risking his safety and freedom in an inhospitable and unwelcoming land.

In loving tribute to the late master filmmaker, we present one of his many adaptations. Band of Outsiders was adapted from the novel Fool's Gold by Dolores Hitchens. Franz (Sami Frey) and Arthur (Claude Brasseur) don’t have money, jobs, or prospects, but they do have a black convertible and a shared romantic interest in Odile (Anna Karina). When Odile lets slip that a stash of cash is ineptly hidden in the isolated villa where she lives, the men hatch a plan to take it for themselves.

An ex-Foreign Legion officer recalls his once glorious life leading troops in Djibouti.

Iowa City based artist Tracie Morris remixes and reimagines the narrative of the 2018 blockbuster film through a live, experimental, multi-voiced reading accompanying a visual-only screening of the film.

Dialogue with Artist Tracie Morris and cast

Dai's life is completely changed the day he discovers jazz. A dedicated saxophonist, he moves from his small town to Tokyo and starts a young trio, determined to be the best player in the world.

Adapted by Iowa Writers Workshop alum David Kajganich from the novel of the same name by Camille DeAngelis, this unconventional tale of first love follows Maren (Taylor Russell), a young woman learning how to survive on the margins of society, and Lee (Timothée Chalamet), an intense and disenfranchised drifter. The two misfits venture across the midwest, searching for identity and chasing beauty in a perilous world that cannot abide who they are — cannibals.

Dialogue with Producer / screenwriter David Kajganich and novelist Camille DeAngelis

When Margot (Emilia Jones), a college sophomore goes on a date with the older Robert (Nicholas Braun), she finds that IRL Robert doesn't live up to the Robert she has been flirting with over texts.

Legendary film director Werner Herzog will receive FilmScene’s Cinema Savant award and appear in conversation to discuss his life in film and will read from his soon-to-be-released autobiography, Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir.

During the 1800s, paroled Brazilian bandit Cobra Verde is sent to West Africa with a few troops to man an old Portuguese fort and to convince the local African ruler to resume the slave trade with Brazil.

Using footage, form, and structure from big budget action blockbusters of the past four decades to create a climate disaster film that is just as bombastic and ridiculous as the films it's sourced from while also speaking to our current climate crisis is no small task. But the Anti-banality Union have managed to do just that complete with an all-star cast.

Dialogue with Filmmaker from the Anti-banality Union

Touching on themes of sexuality and class in contemporary Japan, this deeply moving story follows fashion magazine editor Kosuke and personal trainer Ryuta whose romantic relationship flies in the face of their society's traditional values.

Adapted from Ottessa Moshfegh's celebrated novel of the same name, this dark tale of friendship and unrequited love in the 1964 Boston suburbs follows Eileen, a young secretary (Thomasin McKenzie) at a juvenile correctional facility, who is immediately taken by the new psychologist (Anne Hathaway).

Ernest and Celestine fight a fascist ban on music in this loveable follow up to the Oscar-nominated film based on characters from the French children's book series by Gabrielle Vincent.

Inspired by Terry Masear's book, Fastest Things on Wings: Rescuing Hummingbirds in Hollywood, this joyous documentary offers profound truths and moments of wonder in a deceptively simple story. In tending to fragile yet resilient hummingbirds, Masear finds a sense of healing from her own past.

The #1 podcast for the movie buff according to the New York Times, Chicago’s Filmspotting has been going strong since 2005. In this conversation, Adam and Sam share their picks for some of the best recent films adapted from fiction, plays, musicals, and more.

Dialogue with hosts Adam Kempenaar, Sam Van Hallgren

An adaptation of a modern cult classic (One Cut of the Dead) that itself was an adaptation of a play from the Academy Award winning director of The Artist, this bloody zom-com stays true to its predecessor, even casting one of the the actors from the original film in one of many meta shoutouts.

After discovering the 1950s case files of a trans woman forced to choose between honesty and access to care, a trans director and cast interpret archival transcripts as talk show in a meta examination of the power, privilege, and perils of visibility.

Dialogue with the Filmmaker (virtual)

Filmed in live action and rotoscoped to animation, this manga adaptation follows 11-year-old Karin who finds herself abandoned by her father in a small Japanese town. Her grandfather asks his jovial but rather capricious ghost cat, Anzu, to look after her. As their spirited personalities collide, sparks fly.

This adaptation of a novel by André Boucler features a foreign-legion Casanova – the “lady killer” Lucien Bourrache – who meets his match in the mysterious seductress Madeleine.

This cerebral drama follows Clarisse who has left her husband and children without explanation. In almost a dream-like haze, details begin to emerge as we cut back and forth between this portrait of a woman in crisis and the family she has left behind.

John Irving is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop who he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. Irving will join us in person for a screening and discussion of how his acclaimed book became an Oscar-winning script.

Based on Arnold Wesker's 1957 play of the same name, this comedic drama follows a melting pot of restaurant workers at a Times Square restaurant. Amidst the pandemonium of the kitchen, an undocumented cook (Raúl Briones) falls for an American waitress (Rooney Mara) who coolly keeps their affair hidden until a shocking revelation.

Two billion years ahead of us, a future race of humans finds itself on the verge of extinction. Almost all that is left in the world are lone and surreal monuments, beaming their message into the wilderness.

A trio of fortysomething actors living in Mexico City who happen to be in a mundane love triangle navigate unorthodox auditions for the same film. In discussions they begin to reminisce on an acting workshop that leads into a unique retelling of Aladdin.

Adapted from the Hebrew language novel of the same name by Palestinian author Sayed Kashua, this gently comedic drama deals with charged issues of class and identity from the director of The Band's Visit as a bussinessman gets stuck in the Arabic village where he grew up when it is put under lockdown by Israeli soldiers without explanation.

An immersive journey through the New York music scene of the early 2000s. A new generation kick-started a musical rebirth for New York City that reverberated around the world.

Dialogue with Author Lizzy Goodman

An open-hearted, unrelentingly energetic orphan struggles to make the best of his life on the streets of Milan.

A Refocus Film Festival shorts block, featuring four selections that expand our understanding of art and adaptation, from directors Jean-Luc Godard, Anthony Ing, Elizabeth Hobbs, and Lonnie Holley & Cyrus Moussavi

A Refocus Film Festival Short Film Block featuring personal works from up-and-coming directors and anchored by the latest a piece by Leos Carax the reflects on his 40 year career while paying homage to Jean-Luc Godard.

When her parents split, Renko, a bright and energetic 6th grader, is left alone with her mother, Nazuna, in Kyoto. As Nazuna sets out new rules for their life together, Renko makes plans of her own, seeing to it that any changes happen on her terms. Adapted from Hiko Tanaka's novel, this gem of a film is a breathtaking masterpiece begging for rediscovery.

Freely inspired by the story of Oedipus, Angela Schanelec's latest is as terrifying as myth and as gentle as a folk song.

Oscar-nominated director RaMell Ross (Hale County This Morning, This Evening) poetically adapts Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel for his narrative debut. After being sent to the brutal Nickel Academy as punishment for a crime he didn’t commit, Elwood Curtis meets Turner, a kindred spirit who becomes his closest ally.

A woman (Amy Adams) pauses her career to be a stay-at-home mom, but soon her new domesticity takes a surreal turn when she believes she may be turning into a dog. Based on the novel by Iowa City's Rachel Yoder.

An audio-driven VR experience that reveals and dramatizes the fundamental injustice of a world held hostage by nuclear weapons. Open to the public throughout the festival, reservations suggested, beginning October 6.

Dialogue with Advocate from Games for Change

Inspired by Bernard Cendron and Gérard Chenu's 1974 biography Onoda, seul en guerre dans la jungle and the life of Hiroo Onoda, the film follows a 22-year-old Japanese soldier as he retreats into the jungles after World War II has ended only to continue the fight for 10,000 days.

Adapted from the novel of the same title by Virginia Woolf and presented in a stunning 4K restoration, Sally Potter’s Orlando recounts 400 years in the life of a shapeshifting poet who assumes the guise of multiple genders.

Academic virtuoso turned filmmaker Paul B. Preciado's doc tells his and others' stories of transition through unique reenactments and visual interpretations of Virginia Woolf's Orlando.

In this unconventional prismatic, narrative, scripted, documentary, musical, metatextual hybrid rock-doc, Alex Ross Perry blends performance footage and interviews with a biopic, a staged jukebox musical, and a gallery exhibit to tell the story of the iconic ‘90s rock group Pavement.

Peter Von Kant, a successful, famous director, lives with his assistant Karl, whom he likes to mistreat and humiliate. Through the great actress Sidonie, he meets and falls in love with Amir, a handsome young man of modest means.

High school seniors in the 1970s, Jun and Ibuki form a band, drawn to each other by their shared love of glam-rock. As the demands of adulthood loom, the young couple drifts apart. Years later, the band reunites. Will Jun and Ibuki reunite as well? Inspired by Kensuke Ide's 2021 concept album Strolling Planet ’74.

The first feature film to unpack the inimitable life and career of great American New Journalist Tom Wolfe is as illuminating as it is deeply personal, pulling back the curtain on the man in the white suit.

Director Alain Gomis recontextualizes the footage of Monk's time in Paris, before his evening concert, to give us a raw and intimate look at an artist who is in the grip of the violent factory of stereotypes from which he is trying to escape.

Pioneering director Sarah Maldoror presents a revolutionary bombshell–an electrifying chronicle of Angola’s awakening independence movement and a stirring hymn to those who risked everything in the fight for freedom. Based on the novella The Real Life of Domingos Xavier by José Luandino Vieira.

Set in rural California and Mexico’s Pacific coast, this documentary is a portrait of the unlikely friendship of two Mexican migrants, told within the frame of the dramatic clash between systemic forces and personal choices that envelop young, incarcerated men of color in America.

Dialogue with Director Rodrigo Reyes

When the community of Covas do Barroso, Portugal discovers that the British company Savannah Resources plans to build the largest open-pit lithium mine in Europe just a few meters from their homes, they decide to organize and expel them from their lands. Using the people as actors, incorporating footage from their protests, and playing their protest songs, director Paulo Carneiro worked with the villagers to document their resistance as a tool for intervention. U.S. PREMIERE

See this special screening before its official U.S. premiere! Kids bring your parents for this brand new animated film featuring a beloved storybook character come to life.

While making a delivery to the local convent, devoted father and coal merchant Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy) makes a shocking discovery kept by the convent in his sleepy Irish town that threaten to disrupt his perception of the past and the peace of his community.

Subject explores the life-altering experience of sharing one’s life on screen profiling the participants of five acclaimed documentaries. The filmmakers allow the film’s collaborators to have the last word, contextualizing their own participation in the project. As tens of millions of people consume documentaries in an unprecedented, “golden era,” the film urges audiences to consider the impact on documentary participants.

Using footage from hundreds of films over decades of film history, this ghost story, of sorts, brings together an ensemble cast of actors with one thing in common: each is no longer alive. There exists only a single 35mm print of the film that is touring around the world and is meant to deteriorate with each projection.

Dialogue with Director Charlie Shackleton (virtual)

Young Edmond Dantès is arrested for a crime he did not commit. After a daring escape from his island prison he assumes the identity of the Count of Monte Cristo to exact his revenge in this thrilling adaptation that is Alexandre Dumas by way of Mission: Impossible.

In collaboration with Brazil’s indigenous Yanomami people, this documentary follows leader and shaman Davi Kopenawa as he fights to return the world to balance in closely observed rituals and trenchant comments on the ruthless logic of a materialistic outside culture. Based on the shaman's book of the same name, the film holds up a mirror to capitalist societies that threaten the survival of humanity as a whole.

A compilation film designed to evoke nostalgia for the shared entertainment experiences of early baby boomers, including clips from television programs and B-movies of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as commercials, newsreels, blooper outtakes, satiric short films and promotional and government films.

A fallen aristocrat's crumbling opulence is on full display in this incandescent depiction of the clash between tradition and modernity, one of the defining works of the master filmmaker Satyajit Ray.

An examination of the perception and processing of the phenomenon of mass destruction of the German civilian population in European post-war literature.

In this adaptation of Stephen King's horror story, a family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where a sinister presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from both past and future.

A young boy dodges monsters, warriors, and natural forces on a rescue mission to save his surrogate father, who has fallen under a mysterious spell while searching for a legendary textile. In this latest film from China’s indie animation auteur, Busifan, traditional ink wash paintings become a vivid landscape for a colorful and fantastical adventure.

The story of Eugenie, an esteemed cook, and Dodin, the fine gourmet she has been working for over the last 20 years.

Orson Welles’ thrilling and cinematic adaptation of Franz Kafka’s novel follows Josef K (Anthony Perkins), a meek bank clerk as he is accused of an unspecified crime. Forced to navigate an increasingly hostile bureaucracy as he seeks both answers and the opportunity to clear his name, Josef K’s reality crumbles around him.

Armed only with the family video camera, Suha captures the Second Intifada from within the West Bank at the start of the 2000s. Woven into her images of family life under occupation, Suha makes promises to God to spare her family. Seventeen years later, her filmmaker son Yousef finds the footage and assembles it, excavating his own forgotten childhood in the process.

Do you remember making sure to power down and unplug your computer on December 31, 1999? Created using entirely archival footage, this documentary travels back to the turn of the millennium, showcasing a panoply of eccentric characters and all manner of hilariously dated clips.

Repurposing archival footage from personal recordings and news reports and incorporating diary entries of the time as voiceover, this city symphony starts with the arrival of the Beatles in New York for their August 1965 concert at Shea Stadium. But as the frame of reference steadily broadens, adjacent realities of 1965 are juxtaposed—the New York World’s Fair, the Watts riots filtering through from the East Coast on television.

Ubu, a crass duke, murders King Wenceslau at the suggestion of his scheming wife. When Ubu takes the throne, Poland plunges into chaos, with the country at the mercy of Ubu’s whims and eccentricities. Paulo Abreu’s adaptation of Alfred Jarry’s turn-of-the-century satire, rendered in stark black and white, captures the cruelty and irrational behavior living at the core of fascism. U.S. PREMIERE

When Jason isn't the only beast in the woods, no one is safe. An unauthorized fiction film for Friday the 13th fans.

A naive young man witnesses an escalation of violence in his small hometown following the arrival of a mysterious circus attraction.

Emilia Jones stars as the titular translator who leaked classified documents leading to a 63 month prison sentence in this humorous and heartfelt inside look into a public figure known for one courageous act and a funny name. Susanna Fogel (Cat Person) directs this adaptation of Kerry Howley's 2017 profile for New York Magazine.

A corrupt politician is cursed with impotence on the night of his third wedding after embezzling 100 tons of rice.

Using a unique, text-centered approach, Matías Piñeiro adapts Sea Foam, a chapter of Cesare Pavese’s Dialogues With Leucò. Exploring heartbreak and desire through a conversation between the poet Sappho and Britomartis, who threw herself into the sea to escape the advances of a man, Piñeiro creates a unique cinematic hybrid, asking the audience to read the film by filming both the act of reading and images associated with the story.