32nd Annual Chicago Underground Film Festival Came to an End with Awards and Announcement of Membership Program

 The film festival ended last month, awarding several films and launching a Patreon.

Outside of Harper Theater in Hyde Park, people socialize in between film screenings. (Photo Courtesy: Chicago Underground Film Festival)

The 32nd rendition of the Chicago Underground Film Festival came to an end last month with a celebration and award ceremony at Brandon’s Speakeasy.

Eight films walked away with an award, notably $POSITIONS and TRIPOLAR THE MOVIE. The former won the “Made in Chicago” award as it’s the brainchild of Brandon Daley, a filmmaker based in Chicago. TRIPOLAR won the “Best Narrative Feature” award, a film by Eleanor Gaver.

Posed as a comedy, $POSITIONS follows Kansan Mike Alvarado as he attempts to earn cash to pay off medical debts. Alvarado invested his money in a cryptocurrency platform in hopes of monetary gains. As he does various things to get money, from selling his home to a loan from a drug dealer, the money in his cryptocurrency wallet continues to fluctuate.

TRIPOLAR THE MOVIE is the brainchild of Eleanor Gaver who previously released Slipping into the Darkness (1988), Life in the Fast Lane (1998), and Here One Minute (2015)

The film ends with Alvarado driving to a warehouse to retrieve a hard drive containing the key to his crypto wallet. He lost the wallet after his brother, a former addict, sold it in order to get drugs. He was able to retrieve the hard drive, though the password phrase to his crypto wallet was deleted. 

Continuing in the light of comedy, TRIPOLAR THE MOVIE serves as a satire on the country’s current socio-political climate. The basis of this weed-infused, acid trip comedy is a mother, Dana, and her daughter’s friend, Daphne, trying to get their movie picked up.

The satirical film takes the audience on quite the journey as it pokes fun at gender politics. As the film's website describes it, imagine “John Waters meets Larry David, but with women, weed, and unapologetic chaos.”

Another satirical entry to this year’s rendition of CUFF, Kombucha, took home the Audience Choice Award. The Jake Myers film centered around a “mind-altering drink” that makes employees work themselves to death. Kombucha served as a punch to the work culture within corporate America.

Survival Without Rent, a film by Katie Heiserman and Elana Meyers, took home Best Short Documentary as it captured artists and activists transforming various abandoned buildings into artistic enclaves. The film highlights the history of the squatters’ movement of New York in the 1970s. As its website describes, the film captures the wave of building abandonment following the city’s financial crisis and the Giuliani Administration going after the squats in lower Manhattan.

The documentary as a whole tackles government disinvestment, anticapitalist critique, extralegal activism and the intersection of community arts and urban resistance movements. 

The Best Editing Award went to Your Touch Makes Others Invisible, a Rajee Samarasinghe film that traces the history of the Sri Lankan civil war and the disappearances that came from the conflict. The film features interviews, newsclips, dramatic re-enactments and symbolically coded photos.

Fresh Values, directed by Drew Durepos and Isaac Brooks, won Best Narrative Short as it follows a struggling urban co-op that adopts augmented reality technology to save its store. The film has been shown at various festivals this year, including its world premiere at Milwaukee Film Festival and its international premiere at Vienna Shorts.

Angelo Madsen’s documentary, A Body to Live In, took home the Best Documentary Feature. The 2024 film highlights the body modification movement, which took center stage in 1989 with Fakir Musafar’s “Modern Primitives” movement. Musafar worked as a photographer, performance artist, and ritualist — his work mobilizing a generation of artists, thinkers, and seekers.

Finally, Josh B Mabe’s American Alternative: Kurt Heyl won the Best Use of Archive Award. As the award suggests, the 11-minute video essay features archival footage of the South Side native, musician and the first film student of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 

American Alternative: Kurt Heyl highlights the work and life of the filmmaker, who directed films like The Neighborhood (1968) and Looking for America (2025).

During his time at SAIC, he held together the school’s experimental film program with “spit, spirit, and stubborn grit.” The film kicks off the Chicago Media Histories Project with a tribute to what can be described as a “nearly forgotten chapter in underground cinema.”

As curtain calls rang out for the year’s CUFF and its award ceremony, The Underground came to center stage. The quarterly membership program has three different tier levels, each offering different levels of access to the underground film community. 

The first level, for $5/month, allows members access to CUFF’s Quarterly Archive Program and events as well as their private Discord community. For an additional three dollars, members on Level 2 will have everything Level 1 has to offer as well as a 15 percent discount on tickets and festival passes. They will also have priority in buying said tickets and festival passes.

The final level, Level 3, includes everything of Level 1 and 2 as well as vintage items from CUFF’s archive and 25 percent discounts on tickets and festival passes. They will also have access to bonus archive content.

With The Underground making its debut, submissions for next year’s rendition of CUFF have officially opened. Any filmmakers who want their films featured in the festival can submit via the Film Freeway website. Selections will be announced on July 22, 2026 with information packets sent out a week later.

The 33rd Chicago Underground Film Festival will likely take place from September 23, 2026 until September 27, 2026 — though, the dates are tentative at the moment.