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Winner of Best Director at San Sebastian, along with a number of other awards in festivals around the world, “A Journey in Spring” is a distinctly art-house film that focuses on grief and the (inter) personal issues families and married couples face, even in their old age.

A Journey in Spring is screening at Five Flavours

Aging married couple Khim-Hok and Siu-Tuan leave a meager life in the wooded hills outside Taipei, where they fight, bicker and in general feel the misery of their life and age. An issue with the plumbing of the house and their disagreement over the way to fix it highlights their situation, with their interactions being dominated by irony, sarcasm, and an overall lack of patience and communication, which mostly seem to derive from the husband. However, when Siu-Tan dies unexpectedly, Khim-Hok finds himself at intense loss, keeping her body in an old freezer, remembering his past with her,...

The following article is an excerpt from the new edition of “In Review by David Ehrlich,” a biweekly newsletter in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the site’s latest reviews and muses about current events in the movie world. Subscribe here to receive the newsletter in your inbox every other Friday.

Given the state of things at home, I thought that I’d give this week’s newsletter a decidedly foreign bent and focus what little attention I have left on my favorite contenders for this year’s Best International Feature race. The United States might feel like a lost cause at the moment, but at least the movies can spirit us away to idyllic places like … um, modern-day Iran and 18th century Austria.

Okay, so maybe America isn’t special in its suffering, but until the shock of what just happened wears off...

Four filmmakers have been selected for the initial round of Japan’s Film Frontier Global Networking Program, aimed at supporting young filmmakers aiming for overseas festivals.

The initiative, which is sponsored by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs, will help creators refine their pitches, learn how to give presentations at overseas film markets and provide opportunities for networking.

The filmmakers and their projects were selected for their viability as well as their potential appeal to co-producers from outside Japan.

The four selected filmmakers are Shingo Ota, whose documentary feature The End Of The Special Time We Were Allowed was selected...

by Tiago Carneiro

Released in 1994 and preceding Gakuryu Ishii‘s more well-known “August in the Water” by just one year, “Angel Dust” represents a significant entry in Ishii’s career, showcasing his departure from his punk rock style as he transitions into the realm of psychological horror. While initially unknown outside of Japan, “Angel Dust” has since gained a little cult following and is now regarded as an essential and representative work of the Japanese horror genre, as well as an influencing piece for similar East Asian serial killer films.

“Angel Dust” offers a gripping detective/serial killer story that is as enigmatic as it is enjoyable. The story follows a female detective, named Setsuko Suma, investigating the connected murders of several young women who were all wearing red the night they were killed. It’s a mixture of goosebump-inducing moments and some more passive ones that are equally as unsettling.

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (Abigail)

The start of the home invasion in The Strangers (2008)

I don’t think anyone took a breath the entire scene. We collectively gasped when he appears behind her and we all screamed when she opens the shades and sees him up close on the other side of the window. It’s a masterfully orchestrated scene, from the use of handheld long takes to the haunting Joanna Newsom song and Liv Tyler’s pitch-perfect performance. From this scene on, all the idle whispering and chatter disappeared as the movie held the audience by the throat.

Leigh Whannell (Wolf Man)

The blood test in The Thing (1982)

The Thing (1982)

The blood test scene in John Carpenter’s The Thing is a high water mark of terror for me. Kurt Russell’s character MacReady is using a flamethrower to heat up a wire and then stab it into...

On October 22, 2024, the QCinema International Film Festival announced its much-anticipated lineup for this year, with The Gaze as its central theme. With 76 titles—22 short films and 55 full-length features—spanning across 11 distinct sections, the festival invites audiences to explore diverse perspectives through film. The Gaze seeks to challenge and expand how we view the world, from traditional masculine and feminine perspectives to new and transformative ways of seeing.

Quezon City Mayor Maria Josefina Belmonte officially opened the occasion, emphasizing QCinema’s vital role in advancing the city government’s cultural policies. She highlighted the festival’s contribution to Quezon City’s vision for sustainability and environmental friendliness, underscoring the partnership between the city and the festival to fulfill these goals.

The 12th edition of QCinema will open with Directors’ Factory Philippines, an omnibus film project in collaboration with Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. The project features four films created by Filipino directors alongside filmmakers from neighboring countries.

The Philippines’ QCinema International Film Festival has locked its 12th edition lineup, with Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Cloud” — Japan’s submission for the 97th Academy Awards — set to close the November event. The festival opens with “Directors’ Factory Philippines,” an eight-filmmaker omnibus collaboration with Cannes Directors’ Fortnight that pairs Filipino directors with counterparts from across Asia.

The omnibus features four films: Eve Baswel and Malaysia’s Gogularaajan Rajendran direct “Walay Balay”; Maria Estela Paiso teams with India’s Ashok Vish for “Nightbirds”; Arvin Belarmino collaborates with Cambodia’s Lomorpich Rithy on “Silig”; and Don Eblahan partners with Singapore’s Tan Siyou for “Cold Cut.”

The Quezon City-based fest will unspool 77 titles, including 55 features and 22 shorts, across 11 sections under this year’s theme “The Gaze.”

In the main competition Asian Next Wave, eight features compete: Duong Dieu Linh’s Venice Critics’ Week grand prize winner “Don’t Cry Butterfly”; Nelicia Low’s “Pierce...

As 2024 winds down, like most cinephiles, we’re looking to get our eyes on titles that may have slipped under the radar or simply gone unseen, so—as we do each year—we’re sharing a rundown of the best titles available to watch at home.

Curated from the Best Films of 2024 So Far list we published for the first half of the year, it also includes films we’ve enjoyed the past few months and some with which we’ve recently caught up. While our year-end coverage is still to come, including our staff’s top 50 films of 2024, this streaming guide will hopefully be a helpful tool for readers to have a chance to find notable – perhaps underseen – titles of late.

Note that we’re going by U.S. releases and that streaming services are limited solely to the territory as well. If you want to stay up-to-date...

Caroline Lindy’s Your Monster has what it takes to be catnip for a genre fan on paper: monsters, music, and Melissa Barrera. Yet, despite a likable lead performance and a premise that seems to be promising, Your Monster ends up being a disappointing film full of half-baked ideas. Although there is certainly an audience for this, it lacks the mainstream appeal that a high-concept indie like this needs to succeed.

Your Monster Review

Adapted from Lindy’s short of the same name, Your Monster follows an actress struggling to put her life together after a break-up as she finds unexpected companionship in the monster who has lived in her closet since childhood. In many ways, the premise seems like it would lend itself to a grown-up, horror-comedy version of Beauty and the Beast, but there’s too much “beauty” and not enough “beast” for it to work.

Related Hysteria!

In Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Cloud” (Original title: Kuraudo), anyone is capable of hiding secrets that stun and shock. Gradually, however, they spill out in an angry, vicious bid for self-preservation. But this film is a unique, diverting offering from the director whose career revels in unnerving sensations that create lasting dents in the mind. Here, however, he swaps those bone-chilling effects for a film that slinks into action thriller terrain in oblique ways initially before fully blowing out.

The seemingly placid Yoshii (Masaki Suda) has a job at a factory but he’s more invested in his online e-resell pursuit. That gives him quick money though he grows dissatisfied and aches to maximize his scam fortune. Despite a promotion at the factory, he quits and relocates to the countryside where he puts himself deeper into the online auction of fake products. Naturally swindling at the rapid progression that he does...

Every year is a good year to admire Kiyoshi Kurosawa, whose filmography runs far and deep enough to essentially guarantee you’ve yet to discover something wondrous. 2024 is of particular note, though: it’s brought Cloud, a thrilling detour into action cinema; the French-language remake of his essential Serpent’s Path; and Chime, which spends its fleet 50 minutes hitting every key note of his greatest projects sans one dull step.

Kurosawa appeared at this year’s Beyond Fest, where he took time from presenting 2024’s trio to speak with me, via Zoom, on the subjects of prolificacy, pride, and resurrecting an elder form of filmmaking.

Thanks to Junko Goda for providing interpretation.

The Film Stage: I’ve seen two of the three films you made this year––Cloud and Chime. You work at a frequent pace––one pleasure of loving your cinema is that there’s always so much of it...

Although one of the oldest film festivals with significant focus on Asian cinema, here in Asian Movie Pulse, we had not exactly followed Hiff so intently. It was a rather pleasant occasion thus, that this year we started a rather closer collaboration, that was definitely fruitful, since the Asian selection was quite significant, including a number of world premieres. The Japanese and Taiwanese presence was the most significant, including Neo Sora‘s “HappyEnd“, one of the best films of the year, but the Filipinos were also here, headlined by Mikhail Red‘s newest work, “Friendly Fire“. Without further ado, here is the sum of our coverage, which is bound to become more significant next year.

1. Film Analysis: HappyEnd (2024) by Neo Sora

Neo Sora has shot a film that is rather multi-leveled, to the point that frequently it functions as parable/metaphor/allegory, with essentially all characters and events hiding some sort of symbolism.

While there’s a few more fall film festivals popping up in the next month, the major ones are behind us, which means we have a strong sense of the films to have on your radar in the coming months and even through 2025. We’ve asked our writers from across the globe to weigh in on their favorite world premieres from Locarno Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and BFI London Film Festival.

Our coverage will continue with a few more reviews this week, and far beyond as we provide updates on the journey of these selections, so continue to explore all of our festival coverage here. In the meantime, check out top picks from our writers below and return soon for our extensive year-end coverage.

Soham Gadre (@SohamGadre)

1. April (Dea Kulumbegashvili)

2 and 3. Youth (Homecoming and Hard Times) (Wang Bing...

I saw Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest film, Cloud, at the 44th annual Hawaii International Film Festival, and man, am I perplexed. I love Pulse (Kairo) and I wanted to love Cloud, but I can’t even figure out what the title alludes to; an Internet kind of cloud? The clouds in the sunset at the end of the film? No idea, friend. Bear with me as I attempt to unravel my thoughts on this film, as it’s not an easy one to parse, and it feels like a few disparate genres and pieces. The logline: Yoshii, a young man who resells goods online, finds himself at the center of a series of mysterious events that put his life at risk. When the film begins, Ryosuke...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Writer-director Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns with this movie, “Cloud,” along with his 50-minuter horror-thriller revisionist “Chime” and the French remake of “Serpent’s Path” to treat the audiences waiting for him for four years since his period-thriller, “Wife of a Spy.” Genre-bending may be a good cinephiliac way to describe “Cloud”, but what Kurosawa achieves in this movie is not to merely bend and shift, but to stack genres one after the other. Or more accurately, to chain genres, in a way that his treatment goes back and forth after each one.

Cloud is screening at Hawai’i International Film Festival

Similar to the decision to have “Chime” run at merely short of an hour, the genre-chain is gutsy, risky, and at times imbalanced. But it is tricky over all: are we to trust Mr. Kurosawa because he is Mr. Kurosawa to treat his film in this way and not fail? But...

Kiyoshi Kurosawa has spent the fall festival season dazzling critics with “Cloud,” a thriller that follows the petty feuds of a sleazy online reseller to their bloody ends in a brilliant send-up of the internet’s unique ability to connect people who would never otherwise realize that they hate each other. The film earned rave reviews after its Venice premiere on its way to being submitted as Japan’s official entry to the Academy Awards. It has received the kind of response that would be a dream come true for any filmmaker — and it’s just one of three new films that Kurosawa released this year.

The “Cure” director is basking in the aftermath of a creative hot streak. Having also unveiled “Serpent’s Path,” his gender-swapped French-language remake of his 1998 thriller of the same name and the 45-minute horror film “Chime,” he’s currently in the midst of a globetrotting...

The London East Asia Film Festival (Leaff), the capital’s premier celebration of East Asian cinema and culture, proudly returns for its 9th edition, launching on 23rd October 2024 at the iconic Odeon Luxe Leicester Square with the UK premiere of Escape, a gripping drama by acclaimed director Lee Jong-Pil. The festival will run until 3rd November 2024, culminating in the highly anticipated world premiere of the Hong Kong feature, Little Red Sweet.

This year’s programme promises an extraordinary showcase of cinematic gems from Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam and Philippines, all woven around the powerful theme of survival, resilience, and aspiration. Through the visionary lens of East Asia’s most talented filmmakers, Leaff invites audiences to experience profound and thought-provoking stories that offer unique insight into the region’s rich cultural tapestry.

With over 20 UK and world premieres, Leaff will captivate audiences at Odeon Luxe Leicester Square and the Cinema at Selfridges,...

Renowned Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa received an award for his contributions to Asian cinema at the Busan International Film Festival (Biff) in South Korea. Festival organizers gave Kurosawa the prize for Asian Filmmaker of the Year. This award recognizes the impact Kurosawa has made through his movies and his work growing the Asian film industry.

The 69-year-old director shared insights from his long career during a class at the festival. Kurosawa discussed the creative process behind his films and recent projects. He also talked about how Japanese cinema has evolved over time. Kurosawa’s psychological thriller “Cloud” shows his skill at adapting classic storylines to modern issues. The film explores how ordinary people can turn to violence in extreme situations, similar to American action movies from the 1970s.

“‘Cloud’ follows a man named Yoshii who gets caught up in a series of troubling events after problems arise from his online business,...

Veteran Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa says he took on his latest psychological thriller Cloud with an attempt to make an atypical action film where ordinary people are led to violence under extreme circumstances.

In a masterclass of Kiyoshi arranged by the Busan International Film Festival on Sunday, the Japanese master of genre film talked about classic American action films he grew up watching in the 70s where ordinary people are pushed to the edge of life and end up pointing guns at each other.

“I wondered if I could turn a movie like the ones I saw in the ’70s into a story of Japan today,” says the 69-year-old director who was honored as the Asian Filmmaker of the Year in Busan, given to Asian film professional or organization that has made notable contribution to the development of Asian film industry and culture. “I wanted to make a story of...

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud, recently selected as Japan’s entry to the Oscars, has been sold to key territories in Asia and Europe by Nikkatsu Corporation.

The suspense thriller has been acquired for the UK and Ireland (Blue Finch Film Releasing), German-speaking Europe (Plaion Pictures Gmbh), South Korea (Media Castle) and Hong Kong/Macau (Golden Scene). They add to sales made to France, Spain, Italy and Taiwan.

The film premiered at Venice in August and went on to play Toronto. It is screening at Busan International Film Festival (Biff), where Japanese auteur Kurosawa collected the Asian Filmmaker of the Year Award on Wednesday.

Cloud.After four decades spent scaring moviegoers through all manner of supernatural subject matter, Kiyoshi Kurosawa has, with Cloud (2024), taken to exploring the psychological effects of a more everyday evil: capitalism. In this follow-up to his medium-length psychodrama Chime earlier this year (a film as cryptic and tantalizingly elusive as anything he’s recently endeavored), Kurosawa reconfigures a number of themes and ideas that have animated his long-running career in the horror genre, namely loneliness and the ways in which the internet can stoke malevolent forces from both within and without. Kurosawa has described Cloud as an “action film," a simultaneously apt and insufficient characterization for a movie operating on a slippery dialectical wavelength. It’s this cerebral approach to genre, rooted in the quotidian rather than otherworldly, that has led critics like Chris Fujiwara to place Kurosawa not alongside his contemporaries in the J-horror movement, but in the lineage...

Insiders, it’s me again. Jesse Whittock here to run you through the main international film and TV news. Off we go, and don’t forget to sign up to the newsletter here.

‘Cheers’ To That

Where everybody knows your script: Making your way in the entertainment world today can take everything you’ve got, so it makes sense that you might think remaking an existing program could make things that little bit easier. That feels part of the thinking behind Big Talk Studios’ plan to relocate the Boston bar that Cheers made famous to the UK. On Monday, Jake revealed that Big Talk, known for BBC/Prime Video comedy The Outlaws and many others, has tapped CBS Studios for the rights to remake iconic sitcom Cheers, 30 years after Ted Danson rang the bell for last orders in America. Simon Nye, writer of Men Behaving Badly and The Durrells, is...

Exiled Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof has described the gratitude he feels about having his film The Seed Of The Sacred Fig selected as Germany’s entry to the Oscars.

Speaking at the Busan International Film Festival as head of the New Currents jury, the director said that Germany’s decision to submit the feature “has great meaning. I felt they were opening their arms and understanding other cultures.”

Although set in Tehran, with a mix of German and Iranian cast and crew, The Seed Of The Sacred Fig is produced by Rasoulof’s German outfit Run Way Pictures alongside France...

Exiled Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof has described the gratitude he feels about having his film The Seed Of The Sacred Fig selected as Germany’s entry to the Oscars.

Speaking at the Busan International Film Festival as head of the New Currents jury, the director said that Germany’s decision to submit the feature “has great meaning. I felt they were opening their arms and understanding other cultures.”

Although set in Tehran, with a mix of German and Iranian cast and crew, The Seed Of The Sacred Fig is produced by Rasoulof’s German outfit Run Way Pictures alongside France...

Nominations voting is from January 8-12, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 17, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2 and air live on ABC at 7:00 p.m. Et/ 4:00 p.m. Pt. We update our picks through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.

The State of the Race

Now that submissions are closed for Best International Feature, the field of contenders has exploded, with more titles from different countries still to be announced.

While this is the case every year (think back to the whole debate over France snubbing “Anatomy of a Fall”), what has been striking about this year is that there seems to be the same buzz around titles that did not make the cut as there is about the films that are representing countries. For example, “No Other Land,” “April,” and “All We Imagine As Light,...

Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa, this year’s Asian Filmmaker of the Year at Busan International Film Festival, talked about the two films he has playing here, as well as the recent wave of young talent emerging in Japan, during a press event on the second day of the festival.

Mentioning that he turns 69 years old this year, Kurosawa said he decided to churn out two films in a short space of time – Cloud, starring Masaki Suda as a factory worker with a dubious online side hustle, and Serpent’s Path 2024, a French-language remake of his 1998 Japanese film of the same name. Both films are screening as Galas in Busan after Cloud premiered at Venice film festival and Serpent’s Path in San Sebastian.

“It wasn’t my intention, but when I received an invitation from a French producer to remake one of my films in France, I chose Serpent’s Path without hesitation,...

The 29th edition of the Busan International Film Festival opened Wednesday night with top stars like Lee Jung-jae (Squid Game), Song Joong-ki (Descendants of the Sun) and Gang Dong-won (Peninsula) walking the red carpet under the towering dome of the Busan Cinema Center, in front of more than 4,500 guests.

With a new leadership team headed by chairman and veteran filmmaker Park Kwang-su as well as Ellen Y.D. Kim, the festival awarded the Asian Filmmaker of the Year honors to Japanese auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Kurosawa won Venice’s Silver Lion for best director in 2020 with Wife of a Spy.

The festival’s congratulatory video for Kurosawa featured praises from fellow Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Korean director Bong Joon-ho — both sharing how Kurosawa’s works inspired their own cinematic craft.

In his speech onstage, Kurosawa acknowledged how Biff has provided a platform for many of his works, saying that the...

The opening night of the 29th Busan International Film Festival (Biff) saw a starry audience of more than 4,500 guests in fits of laughter as well as reduced to tears at a ceremony tonight (October 3).

Staged under the illuminated roof of the Busan Cinema Center in South Korea, directors, actors and producers from more than 70 films in Biff’s official selection walked the red carpet, including Thai star Billkin from blockbuster How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, India’s Banita Das from Village Rockstars 2 and Filipino director Brillante Mendoza. Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae was also in attendance as well as Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes,...

Held at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin, TX, Fantastic Fest is known as the largest genre film festival in the United States. From horror to action, wacky comedy, and everything in between, Fantastic Fest offers something for every genre film fanatic. At this year’s Fantastic Fest, we at FandomWire saw 34 feature films, and we have decided what we think are the five best films we saw — from restorations to new releases.

After we share our top five films of Fantastic Fest with you, we will also share our thoughts on some of the other films we saw at the festival, so be sure to keep reading!

Related Terrifier 3 Fantastic Fest Review — Bloody Threequel Attempts to Overexplain Its Mythos FandomWire’s Top 5 Films of Fantastic Fest 2024 5. The Guest Dan Stevens stars in the action thriller The Guest, opening in September.

Okay, this might be cheating because we knew...

Although Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa is best known for his horror films like Cure and Pulse, recent years have seen him operate in more dramatic territory. Kurosawa’s latest outing, Cloud, sees the filmmaker both return to form and push himself in exciting new ways, resulting in one of the most gripping thrillers of the year.

Cloud Review

Cloud follows a young man who makes a living reselling goods online — sometimes not in the most ethical ways — as he finds himself fighting for his life after a series of mysterious events occur. Although this seems like a simple premise, Kurosawa makes the most of it, adding plenty of intrigue to the movie in its just-over-two-hour runtime.

Related Teacup Creator Ian McCulloch and Stars Rob Morgan and Chaske Spencer Discuss the Twisty Sci-Fi Horror Show at Its Fantastic Fest World Premiere

Although the title may seem like it lends itself to...

These are not easy times for film festivals, with many of the world’s largest buffeted by political and financial headwinds, and South Korea’s highly-regarded Busan International Film Festival (Biff) has not been immune to the current instability.

Following last summer’s management turmoil, during which many of the festival’s founders and top executives quit, Biff put interim leaders in place and achieved a level of stability for its October 2023 edition. Earlier this year, Park Kwang-su, a veteran filmmaker with long ties to the festival, was appointed as chairman. Ellen Y.D. Kim, also an industry veteran who has previously worked at Biff and Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival, was appointed as head of Biff’s industry platform, Asian Contents & Film Market (Acfm).

But the recruitment process for a permanent festival director did not yield the desired results. With time running out for this year’s edition, former...

The 37th Tokyo International Film Festival, taking place from October 28 to November 6, has announced a lineup opening with Shiraishi Kazuya’s 11 Rebels and closing with Christophe Honoré’s Marcello Mio, in-between featuring new Asian directors, an animation sidebar, restored Japanese classics, and Akira Kurosawa’s favorite films (among them Breathless and Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A Time to Live and a Time to Die). Complementing these will be masterclasses from Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Sammo Hung, as well as a Béla Tarr-led symposium. I’ll be traveling there from October 28 to November 2, with coverage to follow.

The main competition’s jury is spearheaded by Tony Leung and features Johnnie To, Chiara Mastroianni, Ildikó Enyedi, and Ai Hashimoto, while the 15-film lineup comprises an eclectic mix: nine world premieres of predominantly Asian titles, five Asian premieres, one international debut, and only a handful of European features among them.

See the competition lineup below...

“The first version is the work of a talented amateur,” said Alfred Hitchcock to François Truffaut of his 1934 thriller “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” remade by Hitch himself in 1956. “The second was made by a professional.” Few are the filmmakers who gather sufficient career mileage and goodwill to take a second pass at their own work; fewer are those who make something worthwhile in the process. But Kiyoshi Kurosawa, not unlike Hitchcock, is the kind of tireless genre craftsman who seems to approach every feature as a test of his own proficiency: “Serpent’s Path,” a brisk, harsh and, yes, clinically professional update of his own 1998 thriller of the same title, passes said test without a moment’s strain.

There’s no urgent reason to remake “Serpent’s Path” except, one presumes, the primarily self-serving pleasures of doing so. The original, a cold-blooded little revenge tale that twists itself into ever more perverse psychological contortions,...

Tadanobu Asano is set to receive The Hollywood Reporter’s Trailblazer Award at the upcoming 37th installment of the Tokyo International Film Festival next month.

The chameleonic screen actor has been a mainstay of Japanese cinema for nearly three decades while regularly appearing in prominent supporting parts in big Hollywood productions. But his swaggering recent performance as the irascible samurai Yabushige on FX‘s smash-hit series Shogun has given him an all-new level of global recognition over the past year. In the process of becoming an indelible fan favorite, Asano also received his first Emmy nomination for the part.

THR’s Trailblazer Award, whose recent honorees include six-time Emmy winner Jean Smart, David Oyelowo, Eva Longoria, Matt Bomer, Niecy Nash-Betts and America Ferrera, is given to artists whose work and careers illuminate stories and characters who have been traditionally marginalized in Hollywood. International editor Abid Rahman will present Asano with the award on Oct.

This year, Toronto International Film Festival was back. TIFF typically kicks off the North American fall festival season alongside Telluride, but it has had a rocky past couple of years. The pandemic in 2020 put a temporary pause on in-person festivities, and 2021-2022 featured a tentative rollout of hybrid festivities. Though 2023 committed to total in-person attendance, the SAG-AFTRA strikes of 2023 limited the amount of American celebrity presence on the red carpet; festival buzz too had been similarly muted. This year’s edition, however, witnessed the famed festival in full swing. With 278 films in this year’s programming, the 2024 edition of TIFF was jam-packed with Berlin/Cannes favorites, Awards season’s to-be-darlings, and of course, a good chunk of independent cinema.

Among the Asian cinema contenders, Korean and Taiwanese cinema have held an especially strong presence this year. There were nine Korean and Korean-adjacent entries – almost 100% more than in 2022, when there were...

José Luis Rebordinos, director of the San Sebastian Film Festival, has just over a week until opening night when he sits down for an interview with Deadline, and he is still plagued by one niggling organizational issue.

“It’s always so difficult to close the jury,” Rebordinos explains as he rushes out of the room to take a call about his potential jury head.

When he returns, he explains: “A few weeks ago I was speaking with Thierry Fremaux. He said even for him it’s always a problem because jury members have to be at your festival for 10 days, you don’t pay, and it’s complicated because people are often working and when they aren’t, they want to spend time with their families and friends.”

A few days later, the competition jury is finally confirmed, with Spanish filmmaker Jaione Camborda leading alongside Leila Guerriero, Fran Kranz, Christos Nikou,...

In terms of stars — Cate Blanchett, Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem, Tilda Swinton, Pamela Anderson — and auteur power — Pedro Almodóvar, Sean Baker, Costa Gavras, Edward Berger, Mike Leigh, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Joshua Oppenheimer, François Ozon, Lupita Nyong’o, Mohammad Rasoulof, Walter Salles, Maite Alberdi — this year’s San Sebastián Festival promises one of its biggest editions ever.

Yet it’s the Spanish festival’s wealth of new talent and rising names in its industry competitions sets it apart. Here are 10 things to expect from the fest, which runs Sept. 20-28 at the stunning Basque seaside resort:

Blanchett, Almodóvar, Bardem, Depp, Swinton, Anderson

Blanchett, Almodóvar and Bardem will collect career achievement Donostia Awards, with Blanchett talking up Guy Maddin’s Cannes hit “Rumours,” set for U.S. theatrical release via Bleecker Street on Oct. 18; Almodóvar and Swinton will present Venice success “The Room Next Door.” Depp will unveil “Modi,” his second film as a...

Illustrations by Maddie Fischer.The cinema is a house. Part of the beauty and potential of this house is that it is at once material and metaphorical. The projection of a film onto a screen always denotes a living space around it, whether physical walls and roof or a more nebulous zone, as outdoors under a night sky. This space is inclusive of some things and exclusive of others; its center looks different than its perimeter. The movie itself can also create a house, building within and between shots an architecture of imagination abiding by unspoken rules and formed by plans known only to its makers, whose contours, coherence, and meaning are discovered through exploration by guests. What kind of house a film forms, on what ground it was built, what keeps it together, and what it’s like to move through it are questions whose pursuit animates some of cinema’s great pleasures.

From Italy to Canada and Colorado, the fall festivals unleashed a firehose of new films on the international landscape — the majority of which, as is ever thus, are still looking for buyers.

The Venice, Toronto, and Telluride film festivals all hosted plenty of splashy world premieres that attracted early or quick-to-respond buyers, like A24 with “Queer,” “The Brutalist,” and “Friendship,” TIFF opener “Nutcrackers” (Hulu), “Maria” (Netflix), and “September 5” (Paramount). But there are smaller films — and even some bigger, starrier ones from Naomi Watts in “The Friend” to Jude Law and Ana de Armas in “Eden” — still on the hook for stateside distribution.

While there are still plenty of industry-friendly festivals ahead to help locate buyers, like NYFF and AFI Fest, IndieWire rounds up the best films we saw at the fall fests so far that deserve distribution. Somebody, do something about these 22 titles!

Anne Thompson contributed to this story.

“April...

The Criterion Channel’s at its best when October rolls around, consistently engaging in the strongest horror line-ups of any streamer. 2024 will bring more than a few iterations of their spooky programming: “Horror F/X” highlights the best effects-based scares through the likes of Romero, Cronenberg, Lynch, Tobe Hooper, James Whale; “Witches” does what it says on the tin (and inside the tin is the underrated Italian anthology film featuring Clint Eastwood cuckolded by Batman); “Japanese Horror” runs the gamut of classics; a Stephen King series puts John Carpenter and The Lawnmower Man on equal playing ground; October’s Criterion Editions are Rosemary’s Baby, Night of the Hunter, Häxan; a made-for-tv duo includes Carpenter’s underrated Someone’s Watching Me!; meanwhile, The Wailing and The Babadook stream alongside a collection of Cronenberg and Stephanie Rothman titles.

Otherwise, Winona Ryder and Raúl Juliá are given retrospectives, as are filmmakers Arthur J. Bressan Jr. and Lionel Rogosin.

Fantastic Fest descends on Austin, Texas September 19 for another year of blood-soaked, eye-popping, mind-scrambling cinema! Big highlights this year for horror fans include Alexandre Aja’s Never Let Go (starting Halle Berry) the newest installment of the V/H/S franchise, and Damien Leone’s Terrifier 3. Not to mention a shitload of parties, cult classic restorations (including the world’s first monster musical from 1970), and a whole host of Secret Screenings.

Year-over-year Fantastic Fest is a playground for genre film lovers and horror fans. This year’s lineup is stuffed with insanity and must-see movies, and below we’ve compiled the 10 films every Horror won’t want to miss at Fantastic Fest 2024. More information, more movies, and more reasons to grab a ticket ‘n’ visit Austin, Texas can be found Here.

Courtesy of Fantasia International Film Festival Chainsaws Were Singing – US Premiere

Maria is having one of the worst days of her life.

Poster for the 2024 Beyond Fest

82 feature films will screen during the 2024 Beyond Fest, taking place September 25 through October 9 in Los Angeles. Among the offerings will be the West Coast premieres of Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, Sean Baker’s Anora, Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice, Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch, and Damien Leone’s Terrifier 3.

The 12th edition of the festival kicks off with the world premiere of Salem’s Lot, directed by Gary Dauberman and based on Stephen King’s bestselling novel. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud is this year’s closing night film. Plus, the genre festival hosts a reunion of Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, and director Jan de Bont in honor of the 30th anniversary of Speed.

“Combining a celebration of cinema whilst firmly focusing our gaze on the next generation of filmmakers has always been at the heart of the Beyond Fest,” stated Head of Programming Evrim Ersoy. “And...

"Beyond Fest announces its 2024 festival slate including the World Premiere of Salem’S Lot, a Very Special Screening of Devara: Part 1, International Premiere of Toho’s My Hero Academia: You’Re Next, West Coast Premieres of The Brutalist in 70mm with Brady Corbet, Palme d’Or winner Anora with Sean Baker and Mikey Madison, Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice, Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch, Damien Leone’s Terrifier 3 and in-person event screenings with filmmakers Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sam Raimi, Tarsem Singh, Jennifer Kent, Guy Maddin, Shane Black, icons Al Pacino, Kyle MacLachlan, Sarah Paulson, Ron Perlman, and a 30th Anniversary Speed reunion with stars Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock and director Jan de Bont."

Los Angeles, CA 12th September 2024 - Beyond Fest, the biggest and highest-attended genre film festival in the US, is excited to announce its complete slate of 2024 programming comprising 82 features, including 16 World Premieres, 4 International Premieres, 1 North American Premiere,...

Beyond Fest 2024 announced today its complete, insanely packed slate of programming comprising 82 features, including 16 World Premieres, 4 International Premieres, 1 North American Premiere, 3 US Premieres, and 25 West Coast Premieres. Buckle up for 15 days of cinematic mayhem.

The fest returns to Los Angeles for its 12th edition spanning September 25 – October 9. Beyond Fest opens with the World Premiere of Gary Dauberman’s chilling adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel Salem’s Lot whilst closing night honors are bestowed upon Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud with the legendary Japanese auteur joining in-person to launch a 7-film retrospective.

Genre spotlight events include the World Premiere of the brand new, never-before-seen ‘Shush Cut’ of Hush with Mike Flanagan and Kate Siegel in person, who also hosts the International Premiere of the 4K Restoration of Lake Mungo, Tobin Bell, Cary Elwes and Leigh Whannell join to debut the restored and unrated cut of their seminal shocker, Saw, and

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Beyond Fest 2024, the genre film festival based in the United States is returning for its 12th presentation with an 82-feature lineup for 15 days of cinematic spectacle! This year’s celebration includes a killer roster of firsts, special screenings, anticipated reunions, and more fan-favorite filmmakers than most cinephiles could handle for one momentous event! This year’s collection of films and creators is better than ever, so prepare yourself for a gauntlet of big-screen wonders, a popcorn diet, and random encounters with celebrities and fans alike.

Per Beyond Fest’s official press release (with some flavor text sprinkled in):

Beyond Fest, the biggest and highest-attended genre film festival in the US is excited to announce its complete slate of 2024 programming comprising 82 features, including 16 World Premieres, 4 International Premieres, 1 North American Premiere, 3 US Premieres, and 25 West Coast Premieres. After entertaining over 25,000 guests in 2023, Beyond Fest returns for its 12th edition, spanning September 25th – October 9th.

The long-awaited unveiling of Gary Dauberman’s Salem’s Lot, the west coast premiere of Terrifier 3, a 30th anniversary Speed reunion with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, and focus on filmmakers Sam Raimi and Shane Black are among the many highlights of the 12th edition of Beyond Fest, which will hit Los Angeles starting Sept. 25.

Other big-name titles include the international premiere of Toho’s My Hero Academia: You’re Next and the west coast premieres of The Brutalist, the immigration thriller that is coming off a Silver Lion award for best director at the Venice Film Festival. Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner Anora, Donald Trump origin story The Apprentice, and Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch are also on the docket And there will be the U.S. premiere of Sarah Paulson’s suspense thriller Hold Your Breath.

Billing itself the largest genre film festival in the United States,...

The 2024 Beyond Fest lineup has officially been unveiled, and fans are ready for a spooky good festival.

The genre film festival will open with the highly-anticipated reimagining of Stephen King’s “Salem’s Lot.” The novel was originally brought to the screen in 1979 with a two-part miniseries and a 2004 film.

Now, director Gary Dauberman is giving the horror classic his own twist, with Lewis Pullman starring. The feature had a delayed debut as Warner Bros. pushed its slated September 2022 until Spring 2023 before pulling the film from a U.S. theatrical release all together. “Salem’s Lot” will debut on Max October 3, and will have its world premiere on the big screen for Beyond Fest.

The festival will take place from September 25 to October 9.

Beyond Fest will close with Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Cloud.” Kurosawa will be in-person to launch a 7-film retrospective with the festival. A Guy Maddin retrospective will also take place...

Waiting for Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud to start, I wondered how much time I’d spent over the years watching his signature warehouses, offices and apartments. The man loves a purpose-built soundstage set, the drabber the better but counterintuitively showcased under unrepentantly artificial lighting—one rung down from “Lynchian” in terms of overt ominousness but similarly ready to radiate menace. Those sets’ simplicity offsets his films’ often elevated eccentricity levels, though by Kurosawa’s standards Cloud is comparatively sedate insofar as it has a fully explicable plot: Online reseller Ryosuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda) offloads one too many shoddy knockoff goods, attracting the ire of […]

The post TIFF 2024: Cloud, The End first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Waiting for Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud to start, I wondered how much time I’d spent over the years watching his signature warehouses, offices and apartments. The man loves a purpose-built soundstage set, the drabber the better but counterintuitively showcased under unrepentantly artificial lighting—one rung down from “Lynchian” in terms of overt ominousness but similarly ready to radiate menace. Those sets’ simplicity offsets his films’ often elevated eccentricity levels, though by Kurosawa’s standards Cloud is comparatively sedate insofar as it has a fully explicable plot: Online reseller Ryosuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda) offloads one too many shoddy knockoff goods, attracting the ire of […]

The post TIFF 2024: Cloud, The End first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The J-horrors that catapulted Kiyoshi Kurosawa from reliable gun for hire under the Japanese studio system to internationally revered auteur saw terror as indissolubly bound with tech. Conceived at the turn of the millennium, they spoke to those years’ paranoias about digital life: ghosts pouring out of dial-up internet, senseless murders upending pristine cityscapes, and lives aremodeled by perfect doubles. Cloud, his latest, offers a new equation, no longer anchoring dread to media but capitalism. It’s not that computer screens are nowhere in sight; the film’s hero, Yoshii (Masaki Suda), is a hustler who […]

The post “Ordinary People Who Become Very Violent”: Kiyoshi Kurosawa on Cloud first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.