Chicago Underground Film Festival (CUFF)

The Chicago Underground NFP exhibits the most genre-defying, groundbreaking, and unique films emerging from underground scenes via our yearly festival: the Chicago Underground Film Festival (CUFF). We welcome independent artists sidelined by the more typical, market-driven fests and champion their unconventional approach to form and subject matter - all while growing a diverse audience committed to supporting and embracing their work.

As the longest-running underground film festival in the world, CUFF continues to be one of the most innovative and accessible platforms for those interested in making, experiencing, and discussing underground art. In addition to our screenings, we facilitate this through panel discussions, workshops, filmmaker Q&A’s, and nightly after-parties.

"Underground" isn't always easy to define.

At its core, it's a fluid, inclusive, forward - thinking concept that has fueled movements and counter-culture revolutions overtime. The Chicago Underground Film Festival(501(c)3) is no different. We welcome visionaries, activists, and creatives, and are proud to be the longest-running incubator of the avant-garde, the controversial, the cutting-edge, and the transformational.

Co-founded in 1993 by Bryan Wendorf and then-Columbia College film student Jay Bliznick, CUFF is hailed by the Chicago Sun-Times as "the city's most eclectic, best-curated fest. " Now in its fourth decade, CUFF continues to transcend expectations, support up-and-coming filmmakers, and facilitate a cultural mixing pot for creatives of all kinds to connect, experiment, and catch a glimpse of emerging trends from Chicago's underground scenes. Unlike many other "independent" film festivals, CUFF doesn't seek to imitate old-guard, market-driven fests; instead, CUFF has cultivated a niche community around presenting films that go beyond expectations and genre—films made with passion, obsession, and drive. By seeking out and presenting this kind of work, the festival's diverse program of documentary, experimental, avant-garde, and cult cinema offers a mixture of both film and video work that varies in length, augmented by panel discussions, workshops, filmmaker Q&As, and nightly after -parties.

With one finger on the pulse of today’s underground and another rooted in the history of transgressive cinema, the Chicago Underground Film Festival bridges past and present through five days of programming that consistently challenges established filmmaking practices.