If you went to the AMC Michigan Avenue or AMC River East over the past two weekends, you wouldn’t think anything special was going on in these cookie cutter multiplexes. Look up and you’ll notice that strange names, such as I’m Gonna Explode, are displayed on the digital marquee instead of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. Walk into an auditorium and you’ll find a packed audience watching Filipina transsexuals offering their services outside of a porn cinema. And then you realize that you’re at the 44th Chicago International Film Festival.

From October 17 until October 29, the annual film festival will screen almost 175 movies from 47 different countries. And it’s pretty cool to realize that the only thing that separates a movie about a family-owned porn theater from the more family-friendly Beverly Hills Chihuahua are two flimsy auditorium walls.

There were American films, to be sure, including the gala premiere The Brothers Bloom, featuring Rachel Weisz. The Wrestler, directed by Weisz’s husband Darren Aronofksy, has been hailed as a return to form from a man who last gave audiences 96 minutes of Hugh Jackman talking to a tree in outer space with The Fountain.

Yet for the most part, foreign and foreign language films were the highlights of the festival. The top award, the Gold Hugo, was given to the UK/Irish film, Hunger, Steve McQueen’s (not the dead macho one every male lists as their influence so they can forget that they’re doing an interview for Details magazine) debut feature about imprisoned Irish Republican Army leader Bobby Sands’ 1981 hunger strike. The Grand Jury Prize went to longtime cult director Kiyoshi Kurosowa for Tokyo Sonata, a drama about the quiet disintegration of a Japanese family after a father loses his job.

Sonata has been considered somewhat of a change of pace for the director who has been known primarily for his “J-Horror” (Japanese horror) work, but a film about the insidious threat of economic collapse seems to fit a director who has created movies of such unsettling dark humor and dread for over a decade. As a friend suggested, The Dark Knight might have been heavily influenced by his Cure (1997), in which the villain, like the Joker, chooses to forget his identity and persuades other people to murder for him.

In addition to the regular screenings, British director Mike Leigh, usually recognized for his partially improvised ensemble films like Vera Drake and Secrets and Lies, was given a special career achievement award in time for the Chicago premiere of his latest film–the poignant, lovely Happy-Go-Lucky. The comedy follows Poppy (Sally Hawkins), a London school teacher who approaches various situations with an eternal perkiness that alienates some of the film’s characters, and perhaps the audience. On paper, it’s a character that Meg Ryan could have played, but through steadily revealing more and more details about her life, Poppy becomes an interesting character-–she’s well-traveled, confident, open to a relationship, but not needy. Happy-Go-Lucky is a feel-good movie whose optimism seems so sincere because both Poppy and the movie — through its long, wide shots and distanced framing — acknowledge that life can be extremely difficult. Leigh’s been nominated for an Oscar twice before, and since the film is being distributed by Miramax in time for award season hullabaloo, expect actress Sally Hawkins to get, at the very least, a Golden Globe nomination. And judging from her film performance, she’d be fun to see sloshed at one of the most ridiculous indulgences of Western civilization (mildly more indulgent than the articles that mention them).

Mike Leigh has been a staple of art-house cinema since the early 90s, but two current world cinema trends of the aughts — the canonization of Chinese director Zhang Ke Jia and the revived interest in Mexican cinema — were also acknowledged in the festival. Jia’s latest film, 24 City, is a faux-documentary that features staged interviews with actors playing former factory workers from the Chengdu providence as the factory is being torn down to make room for 24 City, a set of super-modern condominiums. 24 City deals with the challenges and downsides of China’s “economic miracle” without any Michael Moore polemics. The film’s empathy is in the masterful shot framing: In one shot, a young woman, Sun-Ta, tearfully explains that she wants to earn enough money to put her factory-worker parents in the 24 City. She stands in front of two large windows looking over a spaghetti-junction of cars. As the traffic goes by and cars are going down the ramp, appearing lower in one window than the other, it’s clear that this woman is both a product and an accomplice of her environment.

Although Mexican director Gerardo Naranjo’s third feature, I’m Gonna Explode (Voy a Explotar), went away from the main competition empty-handed, it confirmed that Naranjo is a talent to watch. In the film, two teenagers, Roman and Maru, rebel against high school conformity by running away from their parents and, of course, engaging in a doomed love affair. The gimmick is that they deceive their parents by being right in front or on top of them: camped on the roof of the mansion belonging to Roman’s politician father. The camera whips around with flair, and it’s always fun to see characters wear what I could buy from Urban, but the best moments come from small scenes with the adults. For example, Roman’s father condescendingly consoles Maru’s single mother, and a guard in the foreground just plays with his cellphone.

Seeing lesser-known Swedish director Jan Troell’s Everlasting Moments made me interested in the director’s career, which included a stint in Hollywood in the 70s. When people discover a new film at a festival, they become curious enough to explore a cinema history they’ve never thought about before. And that is one of the reasons why the Chicago International Film Festival can be labeled a success.

Hunger and Everlasting Moments will be released by IFC Films late this year/early 2009. 24 City will be released by Cinema Guild in early 2009. Tokyo Sonata will be distributed by Regent Releasing in March 2009.