Celebrating its 25th anniversary, the Gene Siskel Film Center’s European Union Film Festival features the best programming the city has to offer. Reflecting back on previous years, I’m in awe of the catalogue of films screened, everything from Oliver Assayas’ Personal Shopper to Bruno Dumont’s Li'l Quinquin to Ramon Zürcher’s The Strange Little Cat. All these films are totems to my cinephilia and made me feel connected to the Chicago film community in a meaningful way. It’s all in the crowds, I suppose, but the discourse that happens around the films screened during CEUFF always seemed more urgent, where the Siskel Center’s sunlit gallery overlooking the Chicago Theatre made the act of discourse seem positively illuminating. Masks on, I’m eager to return, ready to thaw out of the winter doldrums and engage with cinema as communal catharsis.
