By Every year, Chicago’s preeminent queer film festival—the second-longest-running in the world—gears up at the height of festival season to highlight the best in queer independent cinema. For its 44th edition, the Reeling Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival is set to present 36 features and 59 shorts (over 10 shorts programs) that celebrate the depth and breadth of the queer spectrum: gay infatuation, trans heartbreak, bisexual chaos, lesbian commitment issues, and the intensely political and historical lenses underneath which all of these struggles lie.
You can check out the schedule and secure tickets here; in the meantime, though, here are a few of the titles we’re most excited about.
La bola negra
One of the most hotly anticipated queer films of the year (and Reeling’s opening night film) is Netflix’s “La Bola Negra (The Black Ball),” a sprawling epic spanning three generations of queer men along important moments in Spanish history. Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, known collectively as Los Javis, won Best Director at Cannes and have built a massive tome set across a grand scale that seeks to interweave a country’s history with the history of queerness. The cast includes Spanish singer-songwriter Guitarricadelafuente in a breakout role, alongside comparative unknowns buoyed by bigger names like Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close. Buzz for this title is high between its Cannes and TIFF premieres, to say nothing of the fact that Netflix is actually shelling out for a theatrical release before it hits the streamer. It stands to reason that it’ll be worth checking out on a big, big screen.
I Am Going to Miss You
Daniel Ribiero’s “I Am Going to Miss You” takes the long history of the breakup story and finally views it through the lens of a T4T relationship, as a trans woman (Alice Marcone) and trans man (Gabriel Lodi) find their long-standing partnership complicated by the messy complications of life and cohabitation. Filmed with a kind of handheld immediacy by Ribiero (whose Brazilian coming-of-age story “The Way He Looks” is also a queer standard) and buoyed by sensitive performances from its leads, whose quotidian conflicts about the longevity of their bond feel universal and yet highly specific to their queer experience.
Jaripeo
One of the more striking docs to come out of Sundance this year, Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig’s “Jaripeo” turns a lens on the machismo and longing inherent to Mexican rodeos (jaripeo) and the gay men who exist within them. Built through dreamlike asides and largely told from the backseat of a car, “Jaripeo” sets among the hills and deserts of Michoacán a hidden world of macho men acting out their queer desires in ways that allow them to stay secret from the world… and even themselves. It’s only 70 minutes long, but within that short span contains multitudes about the innate loneliness that heteronormativity and toxic masculinity can instill in people, and the brief glimmers of joy and community that can be found in finding (and hooking up with) your people.
Lunar Sway
A dark crime comedy with the feel of the Coen Brothers and the heart of David Lynch, Nick Butler’s “Lunar Sway” keeps the gay cowboy theme a-runnin’ with the tale of Cliff (Douglas Smith), a heartbroken man who can’t stop thinking about his ex even as he’s reacquainted with his estranged birth mother (“Gilmore Girls”‘ Liza Weil). That’s just the first of many twists and turns Cliff’s life takes, from mid-karaoke blowjobs to motel hookups and a lot of queer yearning (and some genre flexibility to boot). (Protip: This writer will be introing and Q&Aing the film at Reeling when it screens September 21st.)
Meeting Marsha
Those of us who obsess over “The Parent Trap” might get a lot of mileage from this quirky lesbian romantic dramedy from McKenzie Goodwin, in which a struggling actress’s bid to propose to her alt-comic girlfriend gets interrupted by the sudden presence of her estranged mother (Elaine Hendrix), a flagging TV actress whose narcissism suddenly throws a wrench in an already comically fraught dynamic. Cue the bids for attention, the divided loyalties, the sudden arrival of the cops… and, of course, a cameo from fellow “Parent Trap” alumna Lisa Ann Walter.
Mermaid
A tender tale of queer solidarity, Reeling’s Narrative Centerpiece is Fia Perera’s heartfelt story of the bond between a grief-addled drag queen (Arturo Luíz Soria) and Cassie (Devyn McDowell), a 10-year-old trans child whose greatest dream is to become a mermaid. Together, they embark on a journey of transformation, as they do what queer folks have had to do throughout our history: Lean on each other in times of strife and help support our respective becomings. Bright, bittersweet, and heartfelt.
My Brother’s Killer
Director Rachel Mason (“Circus of Books”) has long been focused on using documentary to expound on the life of adult film actor Billy London, who made headlines in 1990 when he was brutally murdered in West Hollywood, with nary a clue as to who might have done it and why. With “My Brother’s Killer,” we see queer Angelenos working to close the cold case after three decades of mystery, unfolding across archival footage and contemporary glimpses at a community working to find justice.
Son of Sara
Queerness is no stranger to horror, and Houston Bone’s horror-comedy riff on “Rosemary’s Baby” should serve some suitable spookiness. The Rosemary in this story is Sara (Chlie Van Landschoot), a pregnant woman suddenly revisited by the father of her child, who invites her to his family estate in exchange for some financial assistance with her baby. You can see where this goes from here: Satanic rituals, gaslighting, all kinds of supernatural chicanery.
Test
One of the most exciting films out of the fest is Sam McConnell’s “Test,” which stars former bodybuilder Brock Yurich (who also writes) in a based-on-his-life story of a bisexual bodybuilder trying to balance his struggling career with his fraught relationship with his religious mess of a mom (Tammy Blanchard). To find his training and the increasing onslaught of performance drugs he needs to bulk up, Yurich’s Eddie turns to sexy livestreams for gay audiences, while he balances his attraction to both his ex-girlfriend and his older daddy of a bodybuilding coach. Shades of “The Iron Claw” and “Magazine Dreams” abound, as muscles sit right alongside misery in this deeply affecting drama.
The Celluloid Closet
Reeling is closing out with one of the quintessential texts in queer documentary: a 30th anniversary screening of Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s recently restored “The Celluloid Closet,” which charts the history of queerness from the beginnings of cinema to the then-contemporary frontiers of the New Queer Cinema of the 1990s. Based on the seminal book by Vito Russo, “The Celluloid Closet” is a vital primer for both explicit and implicit queer readings of some of the most important milestones in cinema history, from the gender-bending trends of early silents to the stifling subtext of the Hays Code, to the growing representation that builds today.
