Doc Films at the University of Chicago

07/20/2026

The first of our Angela Schanelec series, I WAS AT HOME, BUT... (2019) screens Tuesday, July 21 at 5PM and Friday, July 24 at 5PM.

Perhaps Schanelec’s most acclaimed film to date, I WAS AT HOME, BUT… draws on Bresson’s AU HASARD BALTHAZAR and HAMLET in this family drama of a prodigal son's return. Longtime Schanelec collaborator Maren Eggert gives a grounding performance as a mother in crisis dealing with the her teenage son's return after his unexplained disappearance. Ozu's influence goes beyond the title, a play on I WAS BORN, BUT...; Schanelec was inspired by the "very very deep kindness in those films. And mercy."

Courtesy of Cinema Guild.

07/19/2026

Ahead of today’s clash between Spain and Argentina, it’s worth revisiting at one of cinema’s most memorable depictions of the World Cup final: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s commercial success, THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN (1979). Set in the days of West Germany’s postwar economic miracle, the film’s dramatic reunification of Maria Braun and her husband transpires as a barely-audible radio set delivers updates on West Germany’s eventual victory in the 1954 World Cup, an event which became an icon of the country’s recovery. Fassbinder, however, dissects the supposed moral rehabilitation; just as Maria’s long-awaited reunification with her husband is overshadowed by her infidelity and ruthlessness, Germany’s miraculous rebirth came at the expense of morality in favor of ruthless exploitation.

Fassbinder himself was a devoted follower of football and a lifelong fan of his local club FC Bayern Munich; the club would feature prominently in VERONIKA VOSS. As Jonathan Wilson observes in “The Power and the Glory,” Fassbinder belonged to a generation of football enthusiasts who saw the game as something more than the tribalist pursuit of victory, but instead a cultural language — like film — through which a society could understand itself.

07/17/2026

07/16/2026

BRINGING UP BABY (Howard Hawks, 1938) screens tonight at 8PM and tomorrow at 5PM.

07/15/2026

Opening our DISCO NOSTALGIA series, THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO (1998) screens Tuesday, July 21 at 8PM and Friday, July 24 at 8PM on 35mm 🎞️

Ingenues Alice and Charlotte, recent graduates of Hampshire College, spend their nights after work at the social Mecca of 1980s Manhattan — the local disco — falling in and out of love with the club’s other regulars. The third installment in what director Whit Stillman calls his "Doomed-Bourgeois-in-Love series,” DISCO follows in the footsteps of METROPOLITAN and BARCELONA as a dry comedy of manners, and an insightful examination of the dying days of an era and way of life.

07/14/2026

DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS (Carl Franklin, 1995) screens on Thursday, July 16 at 5PM and Friday, July 17 at 8PM.

In need of work, private eye Easy Rawlins (Denzel Washington) accepts an offer to locate Daphne Monet (Jennifer Beals), the vanished fiancée of a mayoral candidate who was last seen in the Black jazz joints along Central Avenue. As Easy takes on the case, people around him start turning up dead, and the LAPD comes looking for someone to pin it on. The only ally he can summon is Mouse (Don Cheadle), a charming yet temperamental killer from the past, who solves most problems with a gun.

07/13/2026

Howard Hawks, Katharine Hepburn, and Cary Grant on the set of BRINGING UP BABY (1938). Hawks’ riotous screwball concludes our presentation of his pre-war films. Screening Thursday, July 16 at 8PM and Friday, July 17 at 5PM on 35mm 🎞️

Katharine Hepburn plays Susan Vance, an aloof but endearing socialite who waltzes into the life of mild-mannered paleontologist David Huxley (Cary Grant). In the first day of their meeting, Susan steals David’s car, endangers a crucial donation to his museum, and ropes him into raising her new pet leopard, Baby. Despite the film’s poor initial showing at the box office (Hawks mused it would’ve performed better “if there had been a few sane folks in it” instead of an erratic cast of characters) it has since become a classic of the screwball genre.

07/08/2026

THE DAWN PATROL (Howard Hawks, 1930) screens Thursday, July 9 at 8PM and Friday, July 10 at 5PM on 35mm. Print courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Hawks ventures into the war film with THE DAWN PATROL, which tracks World War I ace Dick Courtney’s disputes with Brand, his commanding officer. Brand, however, has nobly been begging the high command in private to give his soldiers more training time and better prepare them for battle. Hawks, who was a flight training instructor during the war, flew a plane during production in an uncredited role — the beginning of his filmic fascination with aviation.