COUNTRY OF HOTELS | IN-PERSON (6/18)
COUNTRY OF HOTELS | IN-PERSON (6/18)
Chicago Filmmakers (map) | June 18 at 7:00 PM: A room in an anonymous hotel has a profoundly dark effect on all who stay there.
COUNTRY OF HOTELS
Join us for the Chicago premiere of COUNTRY OF HOTELS at Chicago Filmmakers on Saturday, June 18 at 7PM. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with London-based director Julio Maria Martino, actor Charles Pike, and Chicago writer and artist David Hauptschein. The event coincides with an exhibition at CF of Hauptschein’s uncanny digital self-portraits.
Country of Hotels tells the stories of the desperate souls who pass through the doors of 508, a room on the fifth floor of an anonymous, decaying hotel. We are taken on a surreal and blackly comic journey down its lonely corridors and behind its outdated furnishings and stained surfaces. The story plunges us into the ever-turning carousel of haunted lives who check in and out of the establishment. Adulterers, lonely businessmen, and hustlers grapple with their demons while a prying, occasionally sinister hotel staff always seems to be within earshot. Inside this hotel the mundane transforms into an implement of threat; a faulty light fixture appears to contain a hidden camera; a heating unit whispers to guests with increasing menace; a television set randomly flips channels, displaying TV shows which reveal a guest's secret paranoid fantasies; and a stray look into the bathroom mirror becomes the quickest way to disprove your existence. (2020, UK, 105 mins)
"Country of Hotels is an unsettling standout." - Horror Buzz
"Anyone who associates low-budget horror purely with cheap slasher films will be profoundly surprised by how ambitious and weird Country of Hotels is... I found the film remarkably absorbing and seductive.” - Horrified Magazine
"This film’s unsettling aura lingers in the mind like stale cigarette smoke in a shabby hotel room. Three vignettes are showcased in the fifth-floor room of one of those Lynchian establishments found on the outskirts of Somewhere, USA.” - 366 Weird Movies
Directed by Julio Maria Martino
Written by David Hauptschein
Produced by Saba Kia
Key Cast: Siobhan Hewlett, Matthew Leitch, Adam Leese, Michael Laurence, Charles Pike
Chicago Filmmakers Firehouse Cinema
In-person screenings are held at Chicago Filmmakers firehouse cinema located at 1326 W Hollywood Ave in the Edgewater neighborhood. Please be sure to arrive 15 minutes prior to showtime and be ready to present your order confirmation number for admission. Proof of full vaccination or a negative Covid-19 PCR test result is required to attend all screenings and events. Click here for accessibility information.