Shoplifters

Recipient of the top prize at Cannes, this film about a poor family thieving to survive continues a two-decade streak of superb movies for Hirokazu Kore-eda, the Japanese writer-director behind such engrossing works as Still Walking and Like Father, Like Son.

Peterloo

Mike Leigh, perhaps England’s greatest living filmmaker, ruminates on a dark moment in his nation’s history: the 1819 Peterloo massacre, when troops charged into a parliamentary reform rally with devastating consequences.

Cold War

In a follow-up to his Oscar-winning Ida, Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski once again considers the weight of history, this time with a romantic drama set against the backdrop of 1950s Eastern Europe.

Sorry Angel

French auteur Christophe Honoré (Love Songs) is the kind of director who’ll unexpectedly drop a musical number into a serious drama. Set in Paris during the AIDS epidemic of the early ’90s, his latest centers on an HIV-positive author and his young male lover.

Details:October 10 to 21. AMC River East 21, 322 E. Illinois St. From $8 per ticket; from $110 for passes. chicagofilmfestival.com