Milwaukee, like the remainder of the up to date American Midwest, is more and more making a reputation for itself as a spot that nurtures, showcases, and facilitates entry to artistic excellence. Most just lately, it was introduced that town might be receiving the world-renowned Michelin Information. Like Chicago, its beautiful lakefront’s infrastructure facilities automobiles over folks, and its movie pageant is weeks lengthy with programming designed to serve its neighborhood by bringing necessary, passionate tales to their proverbial yard.
I’ve been to Milwaukee many instances, but it was my first-ever go to to the pageant. Having attended solely six of the fifteen days of screenings, I nonetheless managed to squeeze in over a baker’s dozen movies and occasions (and a Brewers recreation), proof of town’s and pageant’s abundance and vitality.
Milwaukee Movie, the organizing entity for the movie pageant, operates year-round at two historic, superbly conserved theaters: the Oriental (an imposing film palace in operation since 1927) and the Downer (a modest image home that’s the oldest constantly working theater in Milwaukee). Between the 2 cinemas, 5 conventional theater-style auditoriums have been all devoted to pageant screenings. Like different indie theaters throughout the nation, similar to Music Field Theater in Chicago and The Plaza in Atlanta, these theaters’ allure comes from protecting their unique design and adornments intact, and their cinematic legacies linger within the air.
Whereas the overcast, chilly late Spring climate didn’t allow strolling between the 2, their proximity permits one to simply bounce forwards and backwards between screenings. Notably, even on weekdays, there are a handful of matinee screenings, primarily attended by an older cinematically curious viewers. Like all movie pageant or common movie-going outing, the gang could make an enormous distinction within the total vitality and expertise. On the Milwaukee Movie Competition, I’m surrounded by those that have silently agreed to indicate respect for the cinematic by staying by means of the credit, with the home lights saved down low.
After I spoke with Milwaukee Movie Programming Director and fellow native Oak-Parker Kerstin Larson, she remarked on the expansive nature of the workforce’s imaginative and prescient: “Each programmer actually has the liberty to resolve the titles for his or her part, and our technical workforce is basically robust with a ardour for good exhibition practices.”
The 2026 lineup included 106 characteristic movies and 138 shorts from around the globe, throughout each style. Though just a few repertory screenings are scheduled, together with an annual exhibiting of “Cease Making Sense,” their focus is on presenting newer movies that replicate town’s evolving, passionate cultural cloth and bringing contemporary, numerous narratives to Milwaukee County.
My private programming started on a Friday afternoon with French director Alice Dourd’s “Love Letters.” The familial rom-com is a midlife coming-of-age story about two girls navigating motherhood and adoption within the early days of France’s legalization of identical intercourse marriages. The 2 different options I noticed, curated beneath the pageant’s “Style Queer” class, have been documentaries about prolific girls creatives. “Barbara Endlessly,” by director Byrdie O’Connor, which premiered at Sundance earlier this 12 months, is an intimate have a look at the artistic, erotic, curious life and thoughts of filmmaker Barbara Hammer. Pegged as a “poet of pictures,” Hammer was a pioneer of capturing sapphic intimacy on celluloid and experimenting with the materiality and exhibition ambitions.
Just like many impartial theaters, Milwaukee Movie thrives on its common patrons and members. Throughout the pageant, members are celebrated at a brilliant secret thriller screening. Hosted in the principle, most spectacular theater on the Oriental, which seats over 1,000 company, the 4 pm screening was a full home of devoted film lovers, anxious to know what was in retailer. To my absolute delight, we have been graced with “Mary Oliver: Saved by the Fantastic thing about the World.” As solely the second-ever viewers to see the movie, after its premiere at True/False in March, I’m moved by its gentle nature that mirrors Oliver’s observe and thoughts.
Regional movie festivals are important in offering alternatives to domestically grown expertise. To raised floor myself within the scene, I attended a journalism and documentary panel centered on music. In discussing the totally different media and the way they manifest in distinctive methods to accommodate each industries, it was attention-grabbing to listen to the presenters contact on the similarities within the present struggles and options for distribution technique in each movie and music. Curious to see and listen to extra from native musicians, I additionally attended the Milwaukee Music Video Present, the place over 15 native musicians showcased their music movies on the massive display. Spanning all genres, the synchronicities of various motifs and cinematic inspirations have been woven into every story, exhibiting us that creativity will be advanced however unifying.
One other testomony to the energy of the tales featured within the pageant is that it attracts from festivals throughout and doesn’t concern itself with the politics of premieres. Curiously, and to my semi-biased profit, there’s a vital quantity of shared titles between the Milwaukee Movie Competition and the 2026 Chicago Critics Movie Competition, which speaks to the same tastes of regional movie festivals and their function within the ecosystem in creating alternatives for impartial filmmakers to succeed in audiences in markets they may not in any other case have entry to. A number of the films have been so excellent that I can’t wait to see them once more. Specifically, a few footage from the Black Lens program have been so highly effective that I really feel compelled to whip out the overused superlative “favourite movie of the 12 months” (to this point).
On a Sunday morning, I sat in my most popular space of the cinema (up shut and private) at one of many smaller theaters on the Oriental and sobbed silently on the heartbreak and therapeutic evoked by writer-director Walter Thompson-Hernández’s “If I Go Will They Miss Me.” The magical, mythological father-son story seared itself onto my coronary heart. Its sun-soaked heat, set within the housing initiatives beneath LAX’s flight path, is so dreamlike, and I’m struck by its capability to steadiness a mature but harmless perspective on childhood and parenthood.
Director Maya Annik Bedward additionally finds the intricacies of Black spirituality and selfhood by means of her spectacular documentary, “Black Zombie.” Tracing the origins of zombies from sugar cane fields in Haiti to novels by extractive anthropologists to variations by Hollywood’s horror filmmakers, it tenderly wraps a harsh historical past in trustworthy, passionate accounts from educated college researchers and Haitian Voudou practitioners, mentioning seemingly subliminal messaging.
Whereas taking part in my very own balancing act between narrative and documentary options, I loved different films like Gregg Araki’s new film, “I Need Your Intercourse,” and Milwaukee native Dasha Kelly’s “Makin’ Cake.” Nevertheless, to my shock, documentaries dominated my total expertise; titles like “Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild]” and “Paint Me A Street Out of Right here” spotlighted institutional inequities within the archiving, preservation, and entry to cultural artifacts and ancestral belongings.
In its 18th 12 months, and solely its sixth 12 months happening within the Spring, the pageant is discovering consolation in a unique spot on the calendar. Reflecting on my time there, I stay fairly taken and impressed by Milwaukee as a metropolis and its movie-going scene, as its cultural confidence is barely simply starting to succeed in new crowds. The pageant has instilled a need to return all year long to go to different important Milwaukee-based establishments, such because the just lately reopened American Black Holocaust Museum (which co-presented Makin’ Cake), The Rave music venue, and, most significantly, to take pleasure in extra of Milwaukee Movie’s programming.
