CHAMPAIGN-URBANA, Illinois—Chaz Ebert, Roger Ebert’s widow, made sure to remind the Ebertfest audience last month this was really it: the final curtain call after twenty-seven years. To underline the finality, Chaz led the Virginia Theater’s capacity crowd through a sing- and dance-along to Donna Summer’s “Last Dance.” She implored the audience to rise to their feet, clapping and singing along as Chaz beamed while sashaying before the Virginia’s red velvet curtain.

It was a fitting way to celebrate the end to this festival the Eberts started in 1999 as the “Overlooked Film Festival.” Roger Ebert put his name on the proceedings a few years later—appropriate given that his childhood home, marked with a plaque, sits a quarter-mile away. Chaz’s celebration also provided an appropriate callback to the moment in 2013 when actress Tilda Swinton, only weeks after Roger’s death, led the Virginia in a spontaneous dance- and sing-along to Barry White’s “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything” to lift the mood.

When it was announced that the 2025 iteration would be the final fest, the organizers put out a poll: A whopping 94 percent said they would return one final time. Hence, the 2026 edition would be known as “The Last Dance.”

“We weren’t sure we were going to be here this year, but we are, and we’re happy that you guys made it,” Chaz said. “For twenty-seven years, this festival has been a place where we gather not just to celebrate movies but empathy and storytelling. Roger said that movies are the engine that allows…us to gain a better understanding of people who are sharing this earthly journey with us.”

Chaz thanked the army that has kept the festival going since the end of the 20th century. She also praised her daughter, Sonia Evans, who stepped up to oversee the proceedings following the conclusion of the fest’s longtime partnership with the University of Illinois, Roger’s alma mater.

“You are the reason we come back year after year. This is my field of dreams: Build it and they will come,” Chaz said. “Urbana-Champaign is not my home town, but after twenty-seven years I feel like I belong here. This town has been very good to this festival.”

She also announced that the 2026 festival was dedicated to the memories of Robert Redford and Rob Reiner. Reiner had been scheduled to attend a screening of “The American President” prior to his murder, but that film would serve as the closing event in his memory. A sizzle reel of Redford played Friday morning, and a similar montage of Reiner’s directing and acting highlights rolled Saturday night prior to the last ever Ebertfest film.

Chaz introduced Friday’s opening film, “Charliebird,” and its writer and star, Samantha Smart, saying, “I love [that] women in the filmmaking world can direct, they can write, they can produce. They can be filmmakers.”

“Roger Ebert was a giant, and when you have a person like him, a critic like him, it makes you better,” Smart said following her introduction. “Thank you for being here to celebrate independent cinema.”

Smart stars in “Charliebird” as Al, a hospital musical therapist who performs for children with terminal diagnoses. During the film she develops a deeper relationship with a patient named Charlie (Gabriela Ochoa Perez).

Because the film shot in Smart’s native Houston, the screenwriter and star had her family record themselves so the rest of the cast could become more attuned to their mild East Texas accents. Smart’s third-grade teacher even loaned the production her house for filming.

And because “Charliebird” deals with love and loss, Chaz was emotional during the post-screening Q&A, recalling the day her husband passed away.

“The doctor came in and said Roger won’t be going home, and said it would be his last day. And this movie reminded me of that,” she said amid tears.

Prior to the morning’s second feature, “Nuremberg,” Michael Barker of Sony Pictures Classics said that years ago, Roger invited him to the festival. His first visit to the Virginia Theatre was in 2002, and he’s been attending ever since. Chaz related that Barker often read aloud to her late husband during his convalescence.

“This place is like a church to me,” Barker said of the Virginia. “I feel like I’m with family.”

Barker introduced “Nuremberg” director James Vanderbilt, whose writing credits also include “Zodiac” and several “Spider-Man” films. Both of Vanderbilt’s grandfathers served in the Second World War, and he said he’d been trying for over a decade to realize a film version of Jack El-Hai’s book “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist.”

Vanderbilt denied to panel moderator Matt Zoller-Seitz that the current political moment informed “Nuremberg,” and that any such echoes were coincidental, given the film’s lengthy gestation. However, Vanderbilt did allow that he needed an actor of profound talent and presence for the crucial role of Hermann Göring, Adolph Hitler’s second in command.

“I wanted somebody who was a movie star [and] seduces you,” Vanderbilt said of casting Oscar-winner Russell Crowe. “Part of the movie is watching [American psychologist Douglas] Kelley [played by Rami Mallek] get seduced by that. Your villain is only as good as how intelligent they are. I wanted somebody who could slowly disarm you and pull you in.”

“I love the fact that we’ve had that 30-year relationship with Russell as someone you root for, and I definitely wanted to use that against you,” Vanderbilt said, which drew a chortle from the Virginia audience. In addition to Oscar-winners Crowe and Mallek, “Nuremberg” also includes such high-caliber performers as Michael Shannon and Richard E. Grant. Vanderbilt likened drawing in such a cast to having a dinner party where no one wants to be left out.

Zoller-Seitz asked Vanderbilt if it’s worth debating online trolls who support fascism. Vanderbilt again deflected, saying he’d rather focus on positive outcomes. He was also anxious to help teach his sons, the oldest now a teen, about the horrors of the Final Solution.

“If you tell me I shouldn’t make a movie about something, that’s the quickest way to get me to make a movie about it,” he said. “Ignoring subjects doesn’t…help people understand them.”

Chaz, who minored in philosophy and studied treatises on evil while an undergrad, shared that she is terribly fearful at present. After speaking out at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, people told her she might not be allowed back in the United States and her passport confiscated at the airport.

Vanderbilt said that times of excessive nationalism also require a scapegoat of a group or person who is “responsible” for that society’s ills. At the same time, he wished to critique the “othering” of people who pursue evil ends. Vanderbilt also believes that “Nuremberg” is the furthest thing from being an “apologist” agent for Nazi atrocities.

Barker shared that he first saw Stanley Kramer’s “Judgment at Nuremberg” when he was 7. Vanderbilt’s film uses the same real-life footage of concentration camp victims that so upset Barker when he saw “Judgment at Nuremberg” as a young man.

That Friday afternoon’s films included “The Last Movie Critic” from Luke Boyce and Michael Moreci, produced by Ebertfest programmer Nate Kohn. It was somewhat surreal to behold a documentary about Roger Ebert partially shot inside the Virginia Theatre. In addition to actual recordings of Ebert, Boyce also approximated Ebert’s voice to make several of his film reviews come alive inside the documentary.

Filmmaker Tracie Laymon used part of her own life’s story for the fictional “Bob Trevino Likes It,” in which a young lady named Lily (Barbie Ferrera), while trying to find her actual father (French Stewart) on Facebook, inadvertently befriends another man (John Leguizamo) who happens to have the exact same name. Laymon said her real-life father, Bob Laymon, often disappeared for long stretches of time, and she befriended another Bob Laymon via Facebook. They stayed in touch for nearly a decade.

“Every year Bob said happy birthday, but my dad never said happy birthday,” Laymon shared. “I wrote to his widow, Terry, and said I never told [Bob] what he meant to me, so now I’m going to tell everybody” and make a movie about it.

Fictional Lily’s unstable dad Bob is played by French Stewart (“Third Rock From the Sun”). Stewart’s wife happened to be in a writer’s group with Laymon, which led to Stewart auditioning for “Good Bob” before being cast as “Bad Bob.”

“I was either playing creeps or befuddled messes,” Stewart said. “Same sweater vest either way.” Switching on the humor that helped make him famous, Stewart added, “Tracie kept reminding me that everyone’s the hero of their own story. So by the time the credits roll, you’ll realize how terrible his daughter is to him.”

Laymon said that Leguizamo became extremely emotional during an interview talking about how his son had been bullied as a lady. “That’s a dad,” Laymon said.

That Friday evening, as weather descended on Champaign County, Chaz introduced Jordan Peele’s “Get Out.” She praised Peele’s work (he won an Oscar for his screenplay), which she described as rather self-assured for a first-time feature filmmaker. Chaz then introduced Betty Gabriel, who played the maid Georgina in the mind-bending horror-thriller.

“It’s 2017, a new president is being inaugurated, and thousands of people are taking to the streets in protest…and a new movie from Jordan Peele is coming to a theater near you,” Gabriel set the scene. “Nine years later, here we are…protesting again. So maybe we take a look back…perhaps to understand where we are, who we are. Or, at the very least, to scream together once more.”

At the film’s midpoint, the phones of everyone inside the Virginia screamed in unison, warning that a tornado had touched down not far away. The screening was halted temporarily, and Chaz implored for calm. This intrusion of temperamental Midwestern weather only added to the tension of viewing Peele’s film.

Following the (thankfully safe) screening, Dr. Doug Williams said that when he heard the co-star of the “Key & Peele” comedy sketch show was making a movie, he assumed—as many people did—that it would be something along the lines of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” or perhaps “Jungle Fever.” (Chaz shared that it was no less than Al Pacino who implored her to watch the sketch show).

When actress Gabriel first read the script, she found it to be “strange and unique.” While on vacation in Peru, she made an audition reel and sent it to Peele and his team.

“But to see how it came together…it transcended even my initial awe of the story on the page,” she said.

Gabriel attended Julliard, which she said was populated by “lots of older white teachers” at the time. However, the esteemed school’s classical training prepared her for the range of emotions required for working on “Get Out.”

“Talk about the ‘sunken place,’” she said. “There’s a part of you that you have to deaden to go through drama school.”

Nearly a decade after “Get Out” hit theaters, Gabriel believes its racial politics are even more relevant during the second Trump administration. As “Get Out” was filmed in Alabama, Gabriel recalls seeing very many signs backing up the then-candidate in 2015.

“I’m sorry to say that a lot of older white people scare me more now. I’m conscious of the ways in which I’ve had to assimilate,” she said. “They won. Again. Twice.”

Although someone in the audience said “not for long,” her point was well taken.

Saturday, the final day of the final Ebertfest, commenced with a staple of the festival: a silent film accompanied by the two-person Anvil Orchestra, comprising Terry Donahue and Roger C. Miller.

“Roger [Ebert] always thought that Buster Keaton’s films aged better” than Charlie Chaplin’s, Chaz said in introducing “The General,” directed by and starring Keaton and his daredevil stuntwork. Released 100 years ago this December, “The General” even played at the Virginia in 1927. The film, essentially a Civil War comedy, wasn’t a huge success at the time of its release, a half-century after Appomattox.

“Here we are banging on drums, and we don’t want to ever overwhelm these films, but we want them to be powerful,” said the musician Donohue. “We want you to feel everything—but we don’t want to distract you. Ideally, we want people to forget that we’re there.”

“The General” was shot in Oregon, with National Guard troops playing both the Union and Confederates. Its famous bridge-collapsing scene cost $150,000—at the time, the most expensive shot in film history.

As part of the panel discussion, film critic Michael Phillips reminded the audience of Ebertfest’s earlier moniker, the Overlooked Film Festival.

“Not that this film was overlooked but…any film, any good film, needs champions if they’re passionate and sincere,” he said. “These films have a way of coming around and saying ‘you were all wrong.’ Roger’s writing on this film and so many others reminds us any film can be overlooked and rediscovered and reaffirmed.”

No stranger to Ebertfest, filmmaker Gregory Nava was here Saturday for a screening of “My Family/Mi Familia,” his Los Angeles-set epic covering multiple generations of the same Mexican-American family. The film is more relevant today than when it was released 30 years ago, Nava said, as White House rhetoric continues to otherize Hispanics who come to the United States in search of a better life and opportunities.

“In the 1930s the Hoover administration blamed the Great Depression on ‘evil’ Mexicans who were taking jobs, [using the slogan] ‘real jobs for real Americans,’ and they proceeded to deport between 1 and 2 million people of Mexican heritage…half of whom were citizens of this country,” Nava said. “This happened to my family. And every Chicano family I know was touched by these deportations.

“It’s not written in our history books, but the trauma from these deportations continues generation after generation. My family still suffers from the wounds of being ripped apart.”

Nava said that for the young mother who is deported near the start of “Mi Familia,” he needed a performer of uncommon talent. He found his muse in an unknown actress named Jennifer Lopez—even as the studio pushed for more famous non-Hispanic actresses such as Marisa Tomei and Annabella Sciorra.

“I gave her first close-up a very special treatment. And that closeup is the birth of perhaps the great Latino star in the history of the United States,” Nava said of Lopez, who later starred in his subsequent film “Selina.” “People said I created [Lopez], but no, I just gave her an opportunity. This shows how important it is for filmmakers to create such opportunities.

“My films are about Latinos because that’s who I am, but I believe we are all one family. And so ‘mi familia’ is ‘su familia,’ your family. I hope you all see your own families in this film,” he said, adding that he considers “Mi Familia” to have possibly the best Latino cast in American history.

Nava said certain plot elements were loosely based on his own experiences, and his mother joked she would never share family stories with him again. Nava also shared that he is working to turn his mother’s story—during the World War II she worked in counterespionage, helping stop German spies from infiltrating Mexico—into a movie.

He also said it was no less than Francis Ford Coppola who helped get “Mi Familia” off the ground, asking Nava “Who was the softest no?” in Hollywood, and promptly phoning up New Line Cinema. Coppola even funded a crucial stunt scene out of his own pocket.

“I don’t think artists should give orders; they should receive orders” from the universe,” Nava added. “All us creators are hollow bones and something flows through us. [We must] humble ourselves and allow” it to happen.

Before Saturday’s penultimate film, “Chili Finger,” Chaz shared that in her pre-lawyer days she danced backup for both Prince and the Jacksons. She said her favorite film is Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange,” and that she continues to believe in a mantra of forgiveness, empathy, compassion and kindness—which lent its acronym to her book, “It’s Time to Give a FECK.”

“That’s what this festival is all about,” she said.

“CHILI FINGER” (official image)

“Chili Finger,” filmed in Champaign-Urbana in 2025, tackles the popular urban legend about a severed human finger mysteriously showing up in a bowl of chili. (Local hangouts Rose Bowl and Riggs Brewing were used as practical locations.) Midwestern filmmakers Edd Benda and Stephen Helstad said they worked on the script during covid, and their fictional story was also inspired by the films of the Coen brothers.

“We are children of the Midwest, and we find ourselves among kindred spirits today,” said Helstad. “And all the craftspeople coming down from Chicago allowed us to make the movie we wanted to make.”

Actress Judy Greer, who plays Jess, the unfortunate woman who finds the severed finger in her lunch, told moderator Richard Roeper that as a mother, she connected with the ennui plaguing Jess and husband Ron (Sean Astin). She related that she even stayed in Roger Ebert’s Urbana home, now an Airbnb, while filming the movie, and practiced her lines in nearby Blair Park.

“I thought there was so much beauty in this character, even though she makes a really crappy decision,” Greer said of Jess, adding that the “sounds and smells” of the Midwest helped her get more into character.

However, a woman finding a finger in her bowl of chili is an idea not a story, said co-director Halsted. Making Jess an empty-nester helped unlock the key to her character for himself and Benda during the writing process.

Co-star and Missouri native John Goodman said that he and Bryan Cranston enjoyed their onscreen chemistry in “Chili Finger,” and he described their professional repartee in character as “like we were playing a little tennis.” “I just hung onto him and watched him,” Goodman said of Cranston.

Roeper, who replaced the late Gene Siskel on Roger Ebert’s TV show, related that on his first-ever show with Ebert in 2001, the pair reviewed “What Planet Are You From?”, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Goodman. Goodman mimed the sound of a bomb when the notorious dud was mentioned. Greer, who had a small role in that film, recalled a kindly moment when Goodman brought her a plate of fries. Her thoughts at the time: “I can quit now. I have had french fries with John Goodman and I’m [moving] back to Michigan.”

Ebertfest: The Last Dance concluded with “The American President,” the 1995 political drama starring Michael Douglas as a widower president who starts dating a lobbyist played by Annette Bening. The film was written by a pre-“West Wing” Aaron Sorkin and directed by Rob Reiner. Taking the stage in introduction one final time, Chaz thanked the Virginia’s projectionists, all of the critics and writers who had come in from points near and far, and everyone else gathered for the festival’s ultimate closure.

“I wanted to end on a note of hope with a little romance, something softer,” Chaz said, adding that she views her life’s mission now as spreading love and sharing the need to help others. She also pushed back on filmmaker Gregory Nava’s earlier, hopeful chants of “si su puede!” (yes we can!) as a push for future Ebertfests. “This film festival gives me hope.”

Lightening the mood somewhat, RogerEbert.com’s Matt Fagerholm said that Roger Ebert had given Reiner’s previous film, “North,” a zero-star review—which also inspired the title of his book “I Hated Hated Hated This Movie.”

“It made [Ebert] happy that the next movie he did was ‘The American President,’ [and] he gave it four stars,” Fagerholm said. “Thank you Rob Reiner for the gift of this movie.”

Following the film, Chaz and festival programmer Nate Kohn kept their farewells short and sweet. In addition to bringing in famous actors and filmmakers over twenty-seven years, seeing the same people return year after year to the Virginia for the love of movies in a darkened theater served as Ebertfest’s guiding light.

“We’ve seen people meet here, get married, have children,” Chaz said. “It’s been a privilege to be here every year to talk about movies.”

“As you get older, and I’m an older person now, you realize how fast time flies and how important it is to get together with people of like minds once a year to celebrate movies and what’s important about them,” added Kohn. “We really appreciate you sticking with us this whole time. It’s been an incredible journey—and all journeys of course have to come to an end.”

“And thank you to Roger,” an emotional Chaz concluded, “for starting this whole journey of empathy.”

(all photos courtesy of Eric Althoff, unless otherwise announced)