Closing Night! $POSITIONS
Schedule
Sun, 21 Sep, 2025 at 07:30 pm
UTC-05:00Location
The Harper Theater | Chicago, IL
$POSITIONSDir. Brandon Daley | USA | 97 min | DCP | Midwest Premiere
CUFF 2025 closes with the Chicago homecoming of $POSITIONS, a ferociously funny, full-throttle debut from local filmmaker Brandon Daley. Premiering earlier this year at SXSW, this hyper-anxious comedy-thriller follows Mike Alvarado, a blue-collar Midwesterner who thinks he’s found salvation for his struggling family in the crypto market. Instead, he plunges them, and himself, into a volatile spiral of gambling addiction, screen addiction, and emotional ruin.
Daley, a joke-forward writer with a gift for pacing, balances outrageous comedy with real emotional weight, think Uncut Gems by way of the Midwest, but funnier, scarier, and a hell of a lot more personal. Shot in rural Illinois and rooted in Daley’s own experiences trading crypto during lockdown, $POSITIONS is both a wild ride and a sincere portrait of economic precarity, misguided hope, and familial love.
Satirical, stressful, and darkly hilarious, it’s the rare indie comedy that doesn’t hedge its bets, just hard laughs and harder truths. We can’t imagine a better way to end CUFF 2025.
