One of the perks of attending a festival is getting to see films that you know nothing about or have no context for. Going in blind and stumbling upon a directorial debut, a film from a country whose canon you’re unfamiliar with, or an indescribable genre-smash that leaves you guessing. There are plenty of examples like this at this year’s Chicago Critics Film Festival that I’ve been attending, but here are just a few that have truly stood out. Be on the lookout for these should you get the chance to see them in the coming week/months.

It Ends dir. Alexander Ullom (2025)

A film that combines cosmic existential horror with a comedic on the road hangout movie a la Richard Linklater, It Ends is an impressive debut film that was over 4 years in the making from writer-director Alexander Ullom. The film follows four friends who take a wrong turn and end up trapped on a never ending road. The only options are to keep driving forward or let the horrors hiding in the woods around them catch up. If that sounds terrifying, that's because it is. The film does an incredible job creating a sense of constant unease as these four friends can't stop driving, but the film is then able to quickly expand into something much more dramatically and tonally complex.

There is a very contemporary, Gen Z sense of anxiety and despair portrayed in this film, and our cast of characters use comedy to numb themselves to the suffering around them and inside themselves. In a Q&A after the film, Ullom spoke at length about this all too common feeling in our world saying: "I think that there is a level of ironic or post-terrifying structure collapsing detachment going on." What better way to portray a feeling like that than our young 20 somethings stuck on a never ending road with humans chasing them down and constantly screaming "help me"?

Reflective, hopeful, hilarious, and terrifying all in one, It Ends is an incredible debut from writer and director Alexander Ullom, who I firmly believe has even more to show us in the future. It's a film about trying to accept and find meaning as you come into adulthood while also dealing with a world constantly trying to destabilize you with the existential horror of the unfair situations we find ourselves in.

April dir. Dea Kulumbegashvili (2024)

When it rains, it pours. The water falls until the ground becomes mud and you can't get out, stuck in place with no hope. April tells the story of an OB-GYN named Nina, who is under investigation for a stillborn child after accusations of negligence by the parent. This proves to be extremely dire for Nina, as the investigation might unearth her secret practice: that she performs illegal abortions for women in rural villages despite the country's prohibition of the medical procedure. This film's setting and origin is the country of Georgia, but given its subject matter it feels easily relevant to the American state of the same name or any of the 49 others.

The film is a brutally slow-paced and unnerving story about survival and being haunted. The opening images immediately challenge and shock you, giving way to despair at the realities being portrayed. While the film doesn't quite all come together, it sometimes feels like the point is the failure. As we make our way though this treacherous landscape surrounded by dark storm clouds and flaming sunsets, it is clear that if the world doesn't tear Nina and the other women in this world down, bureaucracy will. A sense of futility is ever-present like a ghost or shadow of a person, and with the dire state of the rights of vulnerable communities all around the world, it's easy to understand why.

OBEX dir. Albert Birney (2025)

Sometimes a movie feels like it was tailor made to pull out digitized and datamoshed childhood memories from your mind and put them on screen. A retro-analog arthouse creepypasta, OBEX is like if David Lynch got really into reading about Lavender Town Syndrome and Sonic.EXE.

Speaking of Lynch, Eraserhead feels like a major footnote on this film, both with its black and white aesthetic and the mundane living that goes into surreal territory. While the film's retro aesthetic hearkens back to the 80s and 90s, as a kid growing up in the 2000s and the early 2010s who spent long nights wide awake either playing video games or unable to go to sleep after getting scared from a Slenderman story, Albert Birney’s swirl of a film feels like it's exactly on my wavelength.

When the outside world it too scary with all its unknowable possibilities, the warm glow of a screen is what attracts us like moths to a light, or cicadas to the warm temperatures of Spring. It's just like Lana Del Rey said, "go play your video game."

This year’s Chicago Critics Film Festival is on its final day today. It’s been an incredible lineup, and I’ve been very grateful to get to attend. This Sunday I will be sharing one final newsletter post covering CCFF, where I will wrap up the festival and share all my favorite films I got to see. Stay tuned for one more dispatch from the field, coming soon.