It often feels as though queer films fly under the radar, going relatively unnoticed in the grand scheme of yearly mainstream cinema. With major blockbusters still featuring predominately heterosexual and cis, binary characters, the landscape can feel bleak, unless you’re specifically seeking out queer voices. The Chicago International Film Festival is working to combat that.

Year after year, the Chicago International Film Festival continuously uplifts, celebrates, and programs queer stories throughout the entire festival, but specifically in their OutLook program. The OutLook program is dedicated to LGBTQ+ storytelling, and focuses on featuring a wide variety of stories, trying to capture as much of the queer experience as possible.

This year, the OutLook program is expansive in genre, geographical location, and themes. From animated movies to hybrid documentaries to comedies to new films from beloved directors, there is bound to be something for everyone. The program is also honoring many giants of queer cinema, such as Ira Sachs and Cheryl Dunye, as well as kicking off the entire festival with Jordan Firstman’s “Club Kid”.

Cinema Femme sat down with festival programmer Sophie Gordon to talk all things OutLook, Chicago International Film Festival, and what her journey has been like up until this point.

How did you begin your journey as a programmer?

Yeah. So I went to film school and I did a lot of filmmaking, still do, but I was looking for something after graduating that was still in film, but kind of in a different avenue. I went to my first international film festival with a film that I worked on in school. I went to the Locarno Film Festival and I just fell in love with the idea of festivals. I loved the experience of being there and I was really interested in programming and curating. So, I came back to Chicago and started looking for opportunities. I started out with an internship at Facets, shout out to Facets, with the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival and started getting some experience there. They ended up hiring me for that season and I really fell in love with that kind of work. It was just something I wanted to try out.

Then I really became quite enamored with the festival work. After that, I was extremely happy and lucky to get involved with the Chicago Latino Film Festival. I became their programming director and programming manager for a number of years there. I was there for about four years and that was an amazing experience. My background in film is Latin American cinema, and so it was an amazing experience to work with the Chicago Latino Film Festival. I learned so much and got so much experience working with both short and feature films. And then I started here and I’m now in my fifth year at the Chicago International Film Festival. Love working here and love programming quite a bit. I’m so happy I found this avenue. It wasn’t something that I was aware of when I was in film school

What is the purpose and mission of the Chicago International Film Festival’s OutLook program?

The OutLook program is a historic program of ours that celebrates LGBTQ+ stories and filmmakers, and it has a really incredible history at the festival. I have been overseeing this program in the time that I have worked here, which is just a true joy. This is a program that aims to, of course, put a spotlight on really the most exciting voices in queer cinema and the most groundbreaking stories of the year. But something I’ve been thinking a lot about in my whole time here, but particularly this year, is how important it is both to shine a light on queer cinema within the festival as a whole. These are not just the best queer films of the year. They’re some of the best films of the year. And I think while it’s so important to create spaces for queer cinema, that lift up queer cinema and shout it out specifically, I also think it’s an amazing thing to have these queer films in conversation with all of the films in our festival at such a historic and important festival in Chicago, in the Midwest, and in the US, and the world.

So the OutLook program is very near and dear to my heart as a queer filmmaker and programmer. And the work that we do with this program is so important. Something I think a lot about too is sharing, of course, a wide breadth of queer stories because every queer story is unique and different. But I also really, in my personal philosophy as I approach queer cinema, is really trying to lean as much into queer joy as possible. Of course, stories of adversity and struggle are important and need to be shared, but a lot of my favorite films in the festival this year and all of the years are really leaning into that sense of queer joy

OutLook focuses on queer perspectives from all over the world, in all different genres. How do you ensure diversity within the selections?

So I watch a truly staggering number of queer films every year.

We really want to watch as much as we can. Of course, even though I oversee the program, all of our programming is collaborative. For me, it’s really important to really get a sense of what is out there, to see films from as many parts of the world as possible, from as many different kinds of queer experiences as possible, because there is no one queer experience. Queerness is so expansive, both in how folks experience identity, and sexuality, and gender, and all of these things and how that manifests in storytelling. And so for the curatorial process for Outlook more so than some of the other sections that I work with at the festival is really about trying to make these stories as wide ranging and diverse as possible. That has so much to do with geographic diversity. This year we have an amazing queer film from Nepal where we don’t often get queer stories, films that really highlight different experiences of queer and trans people.

It’s just so important, I think. Also, even this year we really have a diversity in genre, which is really exciting to me. We have queer stories that are diverse in and of themselves, but that also elicit really different things from audience members, whether that be joy or sadness or fear or disgust. And when I’m talking disgust, I’m talking about some of our After Dark program, some of our genre films that are a little on the bloody side, which is always very fun as a lover of genre cinema as well. But yeah, it’s so important for the Outlook program. Of course, it can never touch on every kind of queer experience, but each year we work really hard to try and share with audiences as many kinds of queer stories as possible

What is the largest challenge that comes with programming a specific series?

I think part of it has to do with thinking about who we’re programming for. We’re programming for our audience, of course. All of our programming team, we bring our expertise, and our taste, and our experience to the table, but ultimately we are programming for our audience and trying to offer things that can both appeal to the audience we already have, reach out to new audiences, as well as push and challenge our audiences, giving them something that they might never have seen before. So that’s something that I think a lot about, and that can be a specific and unique challenge when programming a program that has a theme like OutLook, is thinking about who are these films for? Who are they benefiting? Who are the audiences who are going to really take something from this? And of course, that’s something we take into account with the whole program, but it’s something that feels particularly present when putting together this group of films for OutLook.

Yeah, I’m really excited for this year’s lineup. One of my most anticipated films is in the OutLook program, so I’m super excited.

Which film is that?

Tangles. I’m very excited for that one.

Oh, I’m very excited for you to see that. That was a real lovely surprise. We have kind of a focus on animation this year as well, and to find an animated queer film that has so much heart, that is both so joyful and also kind of devastating. It centers queerness, but it’s also first and foremost, a film about family and about memory and the relationships we have to these things. And so I’m excited for you to see it. I really hope you like it.

What makes this year’s lineup distinct, or how is it set apart from other years?

Yeah, I think – The genre. What I was saying earlier about genre. I mean, the fact that we have three films in our OutLook program that are also in our After Dark program that highlights genre cinema is very exciting. And all of these films are really different from each other, these three films.

Talking about genre, one of my favorites of the After Dark program is this film called “No Rest for the Wicked”, a Danish period piece that just really, really blew us away this year and it’s a period piece. It is kind of a horror film. It’s like a gothic romance. It has a little bit of a vampire, kind of culty thing going on to it, but it’s beautifully made. It is so sensitive and intimate and tender and also extremely dark and bloody and wonderful. I really think that is something that really excites me about queer cinema, queer genre cinema, is just how expansive it can be. And I feel like the expansiveness of this year’s program is very exciting to me, both in terms of genre.

We also have also in our After Dark program, the latest installment of Louise Ward’s “Castration Movie Chapter iii.ii: Junior Ghosts- Premorphic Drift.” We are so excited to have a piece of what is to be a 24-hour epic film by such an amazing, prolific and important trans filmmaker who is making really groundbreaking and also transgressive work that also really defies genre. It’s in our After Dark program, but it’s not horror. It’s really more this kind of deep dive into the darkest parts of the psyche, and especially into the mind of someone who is becoming a turf in this case.

It’s films like this that make me incredibly excited about just how expansive and boundary pushing queer cinema can be. I really feel that with all of the films in this program, they’re all so different from each other. And so many of them are playing with form in fascinating ways. They might appear to be one thing and turn out to be something very different. I think each film in this program is uniquely surprising. As a programmer, I love being surprised by films.

It’s hard to do because we watch so much, but one of that is very formally inventive and unique is a Mexican film called “Six Months in a Pink and Blue Building”, that is a really unique approach to a hybrid documentary narrative film that uses both documentary elements, like interviews with the filmmaker’s family members, and narrative filmmaking as a way to recreate and investigate the filmmaker’s own memories and unreliable memories from when he was young, from when he was 11 at a very pivotal moment in his life. In his kind of budding queerness and in a pivotal moment in his family as well. It’s like this playfulness with form and this inventiveness in storytelling and in queer storytelling that is really exciting to me. I feel like that’s present in all of the films that we have in the program this year.

What are you most looking forward to about this year’s festival?

Oh my gosh, there’s so much stuff.

It’s actually a really exciting year for OutLook, not just because of the program, but because we are honoring so many just amazing, groundbreaking queer filmmakers. Some of them are in our program. We have Ira Sachs’ new film, “The Man I Love”, and Ira Sax will be joining us here. Andrew Hague’s new film is here also. While his film is not in the OutLook program, we are honoring Andrew Hague with a tribute as well. Ira’s also receiving a tribute for his contributions to Queer Cinema. These two giants of Queer Cinema are going to be in conversation with each other, which is so exciting because these are two deeply important filmmakers in this space.

We also are hosting a 30th anniversary screening of “The Watermelon Woman” by Cheryl Dunye with Cheryl in attendance and we will be honoring Cheryl as well, which is just incredible. The “Watermelon Woman” is such an important and wonderful and a film that is as relevant today as it was in 1996. It’s amazing that we get to have Cheryl here to honor her career and her contributions to Black queer cinema.

We also have Stephen Winter coming, who is actually on our Outlook jury, also doing a 30th anniversary screening of his film “Chocolate Babies”. Another incredible, incredible piece of Black queer cinema that is so important.

It’s great to be honoring all of these giants in queer cinema, including our opening night film being “Club Kid” by Jordan Firstman, who we’ve been enjoying his contributions to film and television through his acting for many years, and he’s been making us laugh with these incredible queer characters. I cannot stress how wonderful of a film “Club Kis” is and how exciting of a new voice as a writer and director that we get to see Jordan Firstman shine as in this film.

I mean, it’s really important opening the 62nd Chicago International Film Festival with a queer film. It’s very, very exciting. So to be able to, again, lift up both the OutLook program and these incredible queer filmmakers and have so many of them in the same place and in conversation with each other. I mean, it’s so exciting to be able to meet these folks in person, to be able to talk with them and to have them in conversation with our audience and with each other.

I would love to hear more about other titles in the program.

I’m really excited about is this film “Summer Drift”. This is also a different take on a hybrid documentary. This is in our documentary competition. The protagonist of this film is unbelievable. She’s a trans woman who works at a watch factory. Her name is Joanna and she’s playing kind of a version of herself. This is both a documentary and also slightly more, and leans into the narrative at times. But she is kind of wanting to fix up her old Volkswagen Beetle to get back into car racing, a scene that is often kind of exclusionary and male dominated, and she’s wanting to get back to it as a trans woman. And it is so fun and playful and hilarious, and I’m just really excited to have audience see this really kind of unique film.

Another one of my personal favorites from the OutLook program is a Brazilian film called “The Riverbank”. This is a film also in our new directors program by two co-directors from Resifi, Brazil. This film shares a lot of collaborators with “The Secret Agent”. Resifi is really a city that is so important in both Brazilian culture and Brazilian cinema. This is a film that leans into magical realism. It’s a very kind of potent and really relevant, socially relevant fable that takes place in Resifi and centers around a queer community that uses the mangroves by the river as a place for cruising and also just hidden connections. When violence begins to creep into this community, these two new lovers try to enact a sense of spiritual justice. It’s incredibly beautiful, moody, sensual. With the Brazilian elections going on right now, it’s even more relevant in confronting some of the prejudice and hatred that can be found, especially in religious fundamentalist and religious evangelist spaces. This is just a really beautiful, dreamy film that is a really defiant cry of queer resistance and resilience. So I’m very, very excited about that one.

“Rose” is an unbelievable film. Talking about the expansiveness of queer storytelling, this is also a period piece that takes place in 17th century Germany in a small and very pious village. Of course our lead is the inimitable Sandra Hüller who, I mean, this is her film. She shines as the titular character in this film.

This is a very interesting approach to telling a queer story because in the terms of the moment in the 17th century, this is a film that follows a woman who decides to live her life as a man. By today’s terms, we might try and label this in how we see the world and how we approach gender. Within this village, she comes in as a stranger, as a soldier coming home from war and claiming ownership to land. And she takes a wife and they start a family and in a village that is very skeptical and not trusting of this stranger that comes in. It’s a very interesting question of in this time period, in this place and time, the decision that this woman makes to live her life pretending to those around her that she is a man. So there’s all these interesting questions around gender, around really the performance of gender and the embodiment of gender as well.

I can’t even stress enough how amazing Sandra Hüller’s performance is. It’s really beautifully shot. I wish the filmmakers or the actors were here to talk about it because I think there’s so much discussion that could be generated from this film, but I’m very excited about that one. I think because it will genuinely surprise audiences. People might read this log line and be like, “Oh, we’re talking about a trans film.” In a sense, it is, and in a sense it isn’t. This is a film that centers gender more than any kind of specific label of the experience of gender.

Also, “Trash Mountain” is so wonderful. I mean, Caleb Herron is just a delight. I love Caleb Heron, and this is such a wonderful and personal story coming from him and from amazing Chicago filmmaker, Kris Rey. This is a really beautiful kind of bittersweet family drama. It is a film that it centers around a queer character, and yet once again, this is really a film that’s more about family bonds and about reconciliation and grief. It’s so beautiful. It’s amazing to have the Chicago premiere of this really wonderful Chicago film. So we’re super, super excited to be having “Trash Mountain” here.

There are other great films in this OutLook program, but we just try and encourage everyone to see what they can. I always try and encourage audiences to dare to see something that might be outside of the things that you might normally gravitate towards, because I think this program is really full of surprises this year.

For more information about the OutLook program and how to see these films, visit https://www.chicagofilmfestival.com/. The 62nd Chicago International Film Festival runs through October 25th.