Breakthrough Filmmaker Award will be renamed the Milos Stehlik Award

In addition to honoring the best films of 2019 at its annual awards dinner on December 14th, the Chicago Film Critics Association will be paying tribute to three colleagues and members who passed away over the past year. The Breakthrough Filmmaker Award, given annually to a newly emerging talent, will be renamed the Milos Stehlik Award for Breakthrough Filmmaker in honor of Milos Stehlik, who championed the careers of countless new talents as the founder of the internationally renowned Facets Multimedia and who died in July. In addition, the ceremony itself will be dedicated to the memories of Andrea Gronvall and David Schultz, two long-standing Chicago critics who passed away in September.

Stehlik, who was born in Czechoslovakia and moved to Chicago in the early 1960s, established Facets in 1975, first in a former church and later in its permanent home on Fullerton Avenue, to screen films from all over the world and give exposure to such talents as Werner Herzog and Errol Morris. Over the years, the business would grow to include a still-thriving home video business and rental establishment and an annual summer camp and children’s film festival destined to instill a love of film in new generations of moviegoers. He was also a regular contributor to the “Worldview” show on WBEZ-FM, where he would discuss the world of cinema.

Schultz wrote for the North Lawndale Community News, a rare example these days of a local weekly paper employing a regular film critic. As an astute cultural commentator for the African-American community, his reviews added a different and welcome perspective to the mix of local critical voices. Gronvall wrote regularly for the Chicago Reader and the Movie City News website and also served on the CFCA’s Board of Directors. Earlier in her career, she served as a producer of the highly influential film review show “At the Movies” with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, a job that earned her five Primetime and three Daytime Emmy nominations, and changed the face of film criticism.

The Chicago Film Critics Association will announce their nominees for the 2019 CFCA Awards on December 12. The final winners will be announced at their annual Awards Dinner, which will be held on December 14. Follow @ChicagoCritics on Twitter for the real-time announcements as well as updates on the 2020 Chicago Critics Film Festival. For further information, contact either CFCA president Brian Tallerico or board member Erik Childress at the following:

Brian Tallerico
BrianTallerico@gmail.com