Mubi Fest returns to Chicago with a creatively curated lineup of indies and art house fare. From sneak peeks at two of the London-based company’s summer releases to anniversary screenings of four classics, the weekendlong event is also a chance to catch up on three Mubi hits from the Chicago International Film Festival last fall.
This is the third year that the global film streamer, distributor and producer selected Chicago as its sole North American site for the event. The international fest started in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2022. Since then, Mubi has programmed and presented its short fests in 10 countries.
The theme of this year’s festival is “Better Together,” which yields “a variety of cinematic pairings that reflect and refract one another, each film either echoing or complicating the other,” Lilly Riber, Mubi’s chief marketing officer, said in an email.
The pairings of new titles include repertory screenings: a 10th anniversary sing-along showing of “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping”; the 25th anniversary of “Ocean’s Eleven”; the 25th anniversary of “The Royal Tenenbaums”; the 40th anniversary of “The Fly”; and “Sleepaway Camp,” a teen slasher cult hit from 1983. Each title is thematically paired with another film, respectively: “Lurker,” “The Mastermind,” “Rosebush Pruning,” “The Substance” and “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.” (Note: Not all of the paired titles are booked as double features in the same theater in back-to-back time slots.)
Two high-profile movies will be making Chicago premieres. Buzzy horror film “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” set for a national theatrical release Aug. 7, quickly sold out. Filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun continues her metamedia focus in 2024’s “I Saw the TV Glow.” This time a young filmmaker (Hannah Einbinder), schooled in horror theory, it seems, meets an aged “Final Girl” (Gillian Anderson) from an old slasher franchise.
Director Karim Aïnouza’s “Rosebush Pruning” — a perverse family implosion drama set near a steep cliff and a wolf pack — is the fest’s other Chicago premiere prior to its July 24 theatrical release.
Among films to be projected in 35 mm is Mubi’s “Lurker,” an unnerving inquiry into young male fandom in Los Angeles. Chicago-born writer/director Alex Russell, known for writing episodes of “The Bear,” “Beef” (which garnered him an Emmy Award) and “Dave,” will appear for a Q&A Sunday at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St.
“Our intention is to foster community, connections and conversation, bringing real people together to celebrate cinema in all its forms,” Riber added. One way the fest is doing that is bringing cinema back to offline life with tie-in events for festgoers.
Mubi Market is free on Saturday from 12-6 p.m. at the Salt Shed Outdoors, 1357 N. Elston Ave. Vendors include Shecago Vintage, Record Breakers, Bric-a-Brac Records & Collectibles, The Brewed (“a horror-themed coffee shop”) and the Paper Archive, which offers “vintage photographs, postcards, letters, diaries and other historical printed materials.”
Here are a few reviews for movies you won’t want to miss.
“The Substance”
Coralie Fargeat satirizes our female beauty fetish in this 2024 body horror movie. On her birthday, a downtrending 50-year-old (Demi Moore) is fired from her TV exercise show. She injects the title fluids. Not FDA approved. A young clone emerges and replaces her on air. Mubi will hand out a scratch-n-sniff card dosed with 12 scents for 12 scenes. Just hope the French haute cuisine cooking scenes are more fragrant than emissions from the monstrous mutating bodies. (noon Saturday, the Salt Shed)
“The Mastermind”
Josh O’Connor plays a Massachusetts family man who stages a daylight theft of four Arthur Dove paintings in 1970 in this 2025 film that had its Chicago premiere last fall at the Chicago International Film Festival. “Art School Dropout Robs Museum” reads a headline. This hapless son of a county judge hits the road, ending up in an Ohio police wagon for the wrong reason. Two of his priceless lines from different encounters in this deftly understated story: “You don’t look like cops” and “Are you guys cops?” Self-described “abstractivist” Rob Mazurek, a longtime contributor to Chicago’s jazz scene, comes back and plays with the Mastermind Quartet for a live performance of his score commissioned by writer/director Kelly Reichardt. Miles Davis’ trumpet score for a 1958 French film about criminals on the run was “a kind of benchmark” for his own score, Mazurek said in an email. He remembers watching that Louis Malle film titled “Elevator to the Gallows” at the Music Box. “I fantasized long ago about performing in this theater.” (3:30 p.m. Sunday, Music Box)
“Monster”
Hirokazu Kore-eda directs a beautiful tale of two fifth graders who experience a high-rise fire, official apologies, suicidal impulses, lies and a lethal mudslide. They channel tacit feelings into talk of pig brain transplants, reincarnation and the Big Bang. The perspectival narrative pivots between two classmates with single parents, their teacher accused of abuse and their principal dodging fault for her grandchild’s death. It was the winner of a Gold Q-Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival in 2023. (4 p.m. Saturday, Gene Siskel Film Center)