Inaugural City Of Lights Film Festival To Feature 6 Films, 12 Shorts

AURORA, IL — Curtains will rise on the inaugural City of Lights Film Festival Friday and Saturday, featuring acclaimed movies making their rounds through this year's festival circuit.

The two-day festival will showcase six full-length feature films as well as 12 shorts, each less than 20 minutes.

To kick off the festival, a ticketed, red-carpeted reception will begin at 6 p.m. at Aurora Public Art, 20 E. Downer Place, followed by a 7:30 p.m. viewing of three short films and an interview with "Ethan Lim: Cambodian Futures" director Dustin Nakao-Haider.

Saturday will be a packed day, with individual features showing from 2-9 p.m. at the Aurora Regional Fire Museum, 53 N. Broadway, and Paramount School of the Arts, 20 S. Stolp Ave. Short films will screen at Waubonsee Community College, 18 S. River St. Find the full schedule here.

"A celebration of the depth of our local artistry and culture, the City of Lights Film Festival aims to attract Midwest filmmakers and audiences to downtown Aurora," city officials said, describing the festival. "Critically acclaimed and carefully curated films will be presented all weekend at multiple venues, letting our city shine bright."

Here's a look at what features will be shown:

• "Bike Vessel," directed by Eric D. Seals. The 91-minute film chronicles the life of the director's father, who survived three quadruple bypass operations and later found a passion for cycling.
• "Canary," directed by Daniel O'Malley and Alex Rivest. The 104-minute film follows a professor and paleoclimatologist on a mission to save priceless historical records contained in glaciers buried at the top of the world's tallest mountains.
• "Rounding," written and directed by Chicago resident Alex Thompson. The 90-minute psychological horror film fixates on a medical resident who becomes consumed by the case of a young asthma patient.
• "The Gullspång Miracle," directed by Maria Fredriksson. In this 109-minute film, two sisters buy an apartment in Sweden and find its seller looks just like their other sister, who died 30 years earlier.
• "The Old Oak," directed by Ken Loach. The 113-minute film is split between the tale of a pub landlord who struggles to hold onto his pub and a town where tensions begin rising when Syrian refugees are placed in empty houses throughout the community.
• "Totem," directed by Lila Aviles. In this 95-minute Spanish feature, a family's foundations begin to fracture as chaos erupts while a 7-year-old spends the day with at her grandfather's house preparing a surprise party.

The following are the short films that will be presented at the Aurora festival:

• "Agustina"
• "Ball People"
• "Daughter of the Sea"
• "Deciding Vote"
• "Eco-Hack"
• "Ethan Lim: Cambodian Futures"
• Flip"
• "Honeybun"
• "Midwasteland"
• "Pickle"
• "The Old Young Crow"
• "Underpaint"

An all-access pass costs $35 and covers all showings on both days as well as the opening night reception. A full-day pass for Saturday costs $25, and tickets for all feature films on Saturday cost $12 each. Tickets are for sale through Eventbrite.

A full schedule of screenings is published on the City of Aurora's website.