The Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival (BWiFF) announced its 2021 Official Selections Wednesday, which will be screened at the 11th annual festival running July 24 – 30 at Chicago Filmmakers (1326 W. Hollywood Avenue, Chicago). Out of hundreds of entries considered this year, the festival’s selection committee has chosen 34 films from 10 countries for exhibition during the in-person event. The line-up will feature seven outstanding indie films made by local Illinois filmmakers.
The 2021 Official Selections include seven feature films. On Opening Night, Blue Whiskey will screen Director Timothy Hall’s drama Landlocked about a man who reunites with his estranged, transgender father, played by Chicago-based actress Delia Kropp in her feature film debut. A spooky British thriller Ribblehead plays later in the week. In Ribblehead, a horror novelist draws inspiration from a strange locale in Yorkshire, England for his next book, but as he learns more about the site’s dark history, he begins to have nightmarish experiences and confuse reality from fantasy.
A pair of Chicago filmmakers Travis Chandler and Daniel Greenstone, who also teach history and documentary film at the Francis W. Parker School on Chicago’s north side, will screen their feature documentary Far Out West at the festival. Chandler and Greenstone interviewed former members of California’s Kerista Commune who share their experiences from the utopian community that offered communal living, multiple sexual partners, and even a highly successful Apple computer sales business.
Blue Whiskey will screen a diverse selection of 27 short films during the week-long event. Among the selected short films is King Jaquell Martin and Deante Gray’s topical and personal film A War on Friendly Grounds, based on the true story of a black US Armed Forces veteran who was assaulted by a police officer in 2005 after returning home from serving overseas.
Illinois-made short films featured in the 2021 festival include Kyle Anne Grendys’ documentary short Fraser Syndrome & Me and screenwriter Isais Perez’s narrative short, The Audition. Grendys is the 75th person to be born with a recessive gene disorder called Fraser Syndrome. In her film, she documents her first time meeting and interviewing other individuals who share her rare condition. Perez’s The Audition, follows an aspiring Latino actor through a series of casting calls as he struggles to get a callback, revealing the bias and stereotypes that Latinos face in film and television.
The complete list of 2021 Official Selections includes films from across the country and the globe with foreign language selections this year from India, Taiwan, Lebanon and more.
2021 Feature Film Official Selections
- Bone Cage (Canada), director Taylor Olson
- Coda 77 (Spain), dir. Daniel Cabrero
- Far Out West (United States), dir. Travis Chandler, Daniel Greenstone
- Landlocked (United States), dir. Timothy Hall
- Molto Bella (United States), dir. Alexander Jeffery
- Ribblehead (United Kingdom), dir. Tom Young
- State of Agitation (Lebanon), dir. Elie Khalife
2021 Short Film Official Selections
- And Then (United States), director Jenn Ravenna Tran
- The Audition (United States), dir. Eric Liberacki
- Bear and Fred (United States), dir. Keith Famie
- Butter (Ireland), dir. Emma Brennan
- The Carducci Talent Show (United States), dir. Anthony Fanelli
- Fighting MSA Austin Crawford’s Story (United States), dir. Phil Gioja
- Forgive Me, Father (Germany), dir. Jona Schlosser
- Fraser Syndrome & Me (United States), dir. Kyle Anne Grendys
- F***ing Lonely (China), dir. Kayla Arend
- Fugetsu-Do (United States), dir. Kaia Rose
- Glitches (Taiwan), dir. Annie Chen
- Heirs (Spain), dir. Txema Ballano
- How to Fall in Love in a Brothel (United States), dir. Sunhui Chang
- I’ll Meet You There (United States), dir. Karl Fernandez
- The Inverted Woman (Spain), dir. Santi Planet
- Little Games (United Kingdom), dir. Stéfane Houssier
- Manasanamaha (India), dir. Deepak Reddy
- Mirage (United States), dir. Kylie Daniel
- A New Leash on Life (Canada), dir. Daniel Jeffery
- The Peach Scarf (United States), dir. Del Sego
- She Used to Laugh (United States), dir. Greg Berman
- Shots of Light (Germany), dir. Christian Scharfenberg
- The Single Line Theory (United States), dir. Patrick Belics
- They Grow Up So Fast (United States), dir. Michael Pomaro
- A War on Friendly Grounds (United States), dir. King Jaquell Martin, Deante Gray
- What Was the Deal (Canada), dir. Michelle Beaudoin, Marc-Antoine Jodoin
- Woman of the House (Spain), dir. Felipe Espinosa
“We want to congratulate all of the 2021 Official Selections” says Festival Programming Director Steve Coulter. “The team at Blue Whiskey is excited to showcase this truly unique set of independent films in what may be our greatest festival program yet.”
Festival Director Michael Noens is ready and excited to see the Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival return this summer as in-person event. “In the past year, many film festivals had to be postponed, canceled, or repurposed as online events in response to the global pandemic,” Noens explains. “I’m looking forward to experiencing these films in the theater and enjoying them with an audience.” Blue Whiskey’s own 2020 festival was postponed by a year and the 2020 Official Selections are scheduled to play at Chicago Filmmakers on July 16-21.
