DIRTY 30s

Shorts Program | Select filmmakers scheduled to attend. | This ain’t no rom-com; it’s complicated: 30, flirty, and navigating life one laugh (or cry) at a time.

FOR COLORED GIRLS

Shorts Program | Select filmmakers scheduled to attend. | In a world where Black girls are enough, these shorts reflect the powerful bond between sisters.

THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR

Feature Film | Dan Freeman, the CIA’s first “diversity hire,” becomes disillusioned with the agency and returns to a post-1968 Chicago, a city still mourning its beloved revolutionaries. In this charged environment, he trains young Black men in guerrilla tactics, transforming them into empowered freedom fighters.

NATIVE SONS

Shorts Program | Select filmmakers scheduled to attend. | The legacy of Black masculinity unfolds in this collection of portraits, celebrating beauty, struggle, and resilience.

COLOR BOOK

Feature Film | Following his wife’s passing, single father Lucky embarks on a journey with his son Mason, who has Down syndrome.

RISING UP AT NIGHT

Feature Film | In the wake of a tumultuous election, Democratic Republic of the Congo reignited its ambition to construct Africa’s largest power plant.

AMAKKI

Feature Film | AMAKKI, meaning “your mother,” is an intimate journey through Sidama’s coffee-growing hills.

FROM THE BLOCK

Shorts Program | Select filmmakers scheduled to attend. | The Windy City raised us, but the world is our oyster. Celebrate stories by local filmmakers with this dynamic slate of shorts.

MYSTERY MOVIE MONDAY: BLACK HARVEST EDITION

Special Event | Psst! Peer into the unknown, embrace the ambiguity, and show up to the Film Center for a screening that is entirely, absolutely, and ultimately “to be announced”—quite literally the moment the lights go down.

ALBANY ROAD

Feature Film | A corporate executive finds herself sharing a rental car with her ex-fiancé’s mother amidst a fierce storm.

PARENTAL GUIDANCE

Shorts Program | Select filmmakers scheduled to attend. | Tender, tumultuous, transformative—it’s not water, it’s thicker than that.

BLACK TABLE

Feature Film | At a dining hall table at Yale in the 1990s, a group of Black students sought sanctuary within the ivory tower, echoing the legacy of solidarity forged during civil rights protests at lunch counters decades earlier.