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Lion And Cubs

Indian superstar Shah Rukh Khan, who was recently in Locarno for a celebration, has teamed up with his sons Aryan Khan and AbRam as the voice cast of the Hindi-language version of Disney’s upcoming feature film “Mufasa: The Lion.”

The film is directed by Barry Jenkins and tells the story of the unlikely rise of the beloved king of the Pride Lands, while also introducing an orphaned cub called Mufasa, a sympathetic lion named Taka—the heir to a royal bloodline—and their expansive journey alongside an extraordinary group of misfits. The film has original songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda and an English voice cast of Aaron Pierre as Mufasa, Donald Glover as Simba and Braelyn Rankins as Young Mufasa.

The film will reach Indian theatres on Dec.20 in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu versions.

Watch the trailer here:

Format Duo

Nippon TV has finalized a deal...

UK filmmaker Joanna Hogg is to be president of Venice parallel section Giornate degli Autori, running from August 28-September 7.

The jury consists of 10 former participants of the European young cinephile 27 Times Cinema programme. Jury heads in recent years have included João Pedro Rodrigues, Céline Sciamma, Mina Mileva, Vesela Kazakova and Nadav Lapid.

The jury decides the winner of a cash prize of €20,000, to be split equally between the filmmaker and the film’s international distributor.

Once again, the jury sessions will be coordinated by Karel Och, artistic director of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival.

The Quay Brothers’ Sanatorium Under The Sign Of The Hour Glass,...

Thea Hvistendahl’s atmospheric slow-burn “Handling the Undead” took top honors at this year’s Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival (Nifff), claiming the festival’s H.R. Giger “Narcisse” prize alongside the Silver Méliès for best fantastic European feature.

Toplined by “The Worst Person in the World” stars Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie, director Thea Hvistendahl’s feature debut repurposes walking-dead tropes, reimagining the traditional zombie movie as a more ambient reflection on family grief.

“Full of frail, mortal feeling and overcast last-days imagery, ‘Handling the Undead’ lingers coolly in the bones longer than many zombie films that offer more immediate, grisly gratification,” Variety’s Guy Lodge wrote out of Sundance. “It’s a living-dead nightmare with a brain and a heart, and, most importantly and indelibly, a soul.”

This year’s international jury – made up of sci-fi author Saul Pandelakis, filmmakers Ishan Shukla and João Pedro Rodrigues, festival programmer Annick Mahnert,...

The Jeonju International Film Festival, South Korea’s second most important generalist film festival, on Tuesday announced “The Major Tones” and “Time to Be Strong” as the Grand Prix winners of its two competition sections. The festival continues until Friday.

Directed by Argentina’s Ingrid Pokropek, “The Major Tones” is a mystery film about a youngster with a metal plate in her arm which begins to receive peculiar messages in Morse Code. It premiered at the Mar del Plata festival and also played in Berlin’s Generation KPlus section. In Jeonju it won the international section.

The Korean section was dominated by “Time to Be Strong,” the sophomore effort of director Namkoong Sun. In addition to the Korean competition’s Grand Prix, it also shared the best actor award and picked up the Watch award from a local streamer.

The film follows three former K-pop idol singers whose careers have...

A few weeks ago, as The Sweet East started gracing theatres across the States, Reverse Shot ran a sprawling conversation between critic K. Austin Collins and critic-turned-screenwriter Nick Pinkerton. It’s a delightful exchange I can’t recommend enough, both for all it has to uncover about Sean Price Williams’ film––which Pinkerton wrote and which, in my book, was one of last year’s finest––but also for what it sponges of our depressingly shortsighted, quid-pro-quo relationship with the films we watch, what we expect to receive in return for the time we invest in them. “If I wanted to say something,” Pinkerton reflects on the okay-but-what’s-the-message response Sweet East routinely encountered in the months since its Cannes premiere, “I would open my mouth and the words would come out. That’s not what one makes a movie for. You make a movie to go beyond the expression of simple concepts.

You don’t need to have lived in the proverbial middle of nowhere to understand the kind of terror Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s The Soul Eater mines from the fictional Roquenoix. As shot by Simon Roca, this remote hamlet in northeastern France isn’t a ghost town so much as a burial ground where humans and buildings alike are waiting to rot. A grandiose sanatorium once towered over the tree-shrouded hills, bringing in enough cash and tourists to fill the village’s coffers. But when a motorway was built across the valley, the tourists disappeared, the sanatorium was abandoned; and the few who stayed behind were left to wrestle with an ancestral legend and a series of murders that may or may not be connected with it.

The single most terrifying thing in The Soul Eater isn’t the titular devourer, but that spectral, lifeless town where its victims are stranded.

Special is the opportunity to speak with one of our great living filmmakers; doubly rare is a chance to do so as their latest project premieres on YouTube. Participating with the murderer’s row Film Fest Gent compiled for their 50th-anniversary series––Paul Schrader, Bi Gan, Jia Zhangke, Radu Jude, Helena Wittmann, Naomi Kawase, and João Pedro Rodrigues, to note a handful––Terence Davies has directed Passing Time, a three-minute view of Essex scored by Florencia Di Concilio’s stirring composition and anchored by his reading of a self-penned poem.

Speaking over email, Davies and I had an exchange on the project that, however brief, proves a skeleton-key-of-sorts to his modus operandi: how actors should work, what poetry conveys on-paper and read-aloud, why Essex of all places to capture this music. Therein is also an unfortunate detail about a long-developing project but embers of hope for something new.

Special thanks...

Marking perhaps the greatest coup any festival’s managed these last ten years, the Film Fest Gent––recently in our sights for their addition of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s new(er) feature Gift––are celebrating their 50th anniversary with 25 new shorts by an absolute murderer’s row of filmmakers, among them: Paul Schrader, Terence Davies, Bi Gan, Jia Zhangke, Radu Jude, Helena Wittmann, Naomi Kawase, and João Pedro Rodrigues. Ff Gent’s unusual method was to first hire composers for a short, one- or two-minute piece, then asking this range of filmmakers––”who engage in more “traditional narrative cinema, as well as experimental work and documentary, to ensure diversity––letting sound inspire image. The majority of them (Schrader being a notable exception) are showing completely free.

Find the available films below:

The post Film Fest Gent Are Now Streaming New Shorts from Terence Davies, Bi Gan, Jia Zhangke, and More first appeared on The Film Stage.

Ariane Louis-Seize’s “Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person” has picked up the director’s award at Venice Days.

“It bravely addresses crucial themes such as depression, mental health, euthanasia and neurodiversity. Nevertheless, it is able to do so with a light-hearted feel, which makes the film radical and courageous,” noted the jury, composed of European cinephiles from the 27 Times Cinema program and led by Portugal’s João Pedro Rodrigues, behind “The Ornithologist” and “Will-o’-the-Wisp.”

“While the film has unique tone and style, it joyfully reaches a wider audience thanks to its tenderness and emotional engagement,” they added, praising Louis-Seize’s “strong directorial vision.”

In the film, a young vampire has a problem: she is too sensitive to kill. When her parents cut off her blood supply, Sasha meets Paul, a teenager with suicidal tendencies who is willing to give his life to save hers.

It’s produced by...

Canadian feature is directed by Ariane Louis-Seize.

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person by Ariane Louis-Seize has won the 2023 Giornate degli Autori Director’s Award at the Venice Film Festival.

The film centres on a young vampire who is too sensitive to kill. After her exasperated parents cut off her blood supply, she meets a lonely teenager with suicidal tendencies who is willing to give his life to save hers.

The film was selected by a jury of young European cinephiles from the 27 Times Cinema programme, jointly organised by Giornate degli Autori, the European Parliament’s Lux Audience Award,...

Canadian director Ariane Louis-Seize’s comedy-drama Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person has scooped the Director’s Award at the Venice Film Festival parallel section Giornate degli Autori.

The coming-of-age tale revolves around a teenage vampire Sasha, who is too sensitive to kill. When her concerned parents decide to cut off her blood supply, her life is in peril.

Fortunately, she crosses paths with Paul, a desolate teenager with suicidal tendencies who willingly offers his life to save hers. However, what begins as a mutual agreement soon evolves into a nocturnal journey to fulfil Paul’s final desires before the break of day.

It was among 10 titles playing in the GdA competition this year.

The jury was composed of young European cinephiles from the 27 Times Cinema program, a joint initiative between the GdA, the European Parliament’s Lux Audience Award and Europa Cinemas.

It was presided over by Portuguese director...

More than 200 international filmmakers have rallied in support of ousted Berlinale artistic director Carlo Chatrian, pledging their names to an open letter imploring the cultural organization to keep the artist director in place. Among the first signatories were Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Joanna Hogg, “Corsage” director Marie Kreutzer, Andrew Ross Perry, and Olivier Assayas. Over the course of the day on Wednesday, another 130 directors joined them, the list swelling to include M. Night Shyamalan, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Tilda Swinton, and Claire Denis. 260 filmmakers have now signed the open letter.

“We, a diverse group of filmmakers from all over the world, who have deep respect for Berlin International Film Festival as a place for great cinema of all kinds, protest the harmful, unprofessional, and immoral behavior of state minister Claudia Roth in forcing the esteemed Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian to step down despite promises to prolong his contract,” says the letter.

Chatrian...

French director Élise Girard’s “Sidonie in Japan,” starring Isabelle Huppert as a French writer mourning her husband’s death while on a book tour of Japan, is among titles set to launch from the Venice Film Festival’s independently run Giornate Degli Autori.

The section, also known as Venice Days, has unveiled its lineup comprising 10 titles world premiering in competition – six of which are first works – and in other sections displaying a wide range of genres and visual styles, but tied together by “a common discourse,” said the section’s artistic director Gaia Furrer.

The selected films “with all their thematic or formal eclecticism, still dialogue with each other,” Furrer said in a statement.

Opening the section in competition is Italian director Tommaso Santambrogio’s black-and-white drama “Oceans Are the Real Continents,” set and shot in decadent contemporary Cuba (see image below). This is Santambrogio’s first feature, but...

Documentary looks back at a mysterious Lisbon through the lens of a 60s cult film, a very specific focus that’s likable even if you haven’t seen the earlier movie

Since his first film in 2000, the mesmerising O Fantasma, Portuguese auteur João Pedro Rodrigues has continually cast his gaze over the ever-changing landscape of Lisbon, its physical transformations and its well of mysteries. Co-directed with his longtime partner and artistic collaborator João Rui Guerra da Mata, this evocative documentary views the city through the lens of both autobiographical and cinematic nostalgia.

The film’s starting point is a personal one. Having inherited his grandparents’ flat, Rodrigues is intrigued by the fact that the window of this complex looks over the location of Paulo Rocha’s The Green Years, a 1963 cult classic that spearheaded Novo Cinema, the Portuguese new wave. Antonioniesque in its cinematography and plot, Rocha’s film charted a doomed working-class romance,...

Lukas Dhont’s Close, an intimate melodrama about an intense friendship between two 13-year-old boys, has won this year’s Lux European Audience Film Award, a prize handed out by the European Parliament.

Close premiered at the Cannes film festival in 2022, where it won the Grand Jury prize. It was Belgium’s Oscar contender and was nominated for an Academy Award in the best international feature category this year.

Close is Dhont’s second feature, after his 2018 directorial debut Girl, a drama inspired by the true story of a transgender ballet dancer, which premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section and won multiple awards including the Camera d’Or for best first feature and the Queer Palm for best LGBTQ+ movie. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Dhont said Close was a “continuation of the themes in Girl [but while] Girl really talked about gender identity and the relationship with the body,...

I honestly never expected Steven Spielberg in a Criterion Channel series––certainly not one that pairs him with Kogonada, anime, and Johnny Mnemonic––but so’s the power of artificial intelligence. Perhaps his greatest film (at this point I don’t need to tell you the title) plays with After Yang, Ghost in the Shell, and pre-Matrix Keanu in July’s aptly titled “AI” boasting also Spike Jonze’s Her, Carpenter’s Dark Star, and Computer Chess. Much more analog is a British Noir collection obviously carrying the likes of Odd Man Out, Night and the City, and The Small Back Room, further filled by Joseph Losey’s Time Without Pity and Basil Dearden’s It Always Rains on Sunday. (No two ways about it: these movies have great titles.) An Elvis retrospective brings six features, and the consensus best (Don Siegel’s Flaming Star) comes September 1.

While Isabella Rossellini...

“It was a contributor to the specialty box office, and I hope it will be again,” says Laemmle CEO Greg Laemmle of MoviePass, the subscription service that unsurprisingly went bankrupt in early 2020 after offering a movie a day for ten bucks a month.

A co-founder Stacy Spikes, who was pushed out amid strategic differences with new owners, including the $9.95 plan, acquired the assets out of bankruptcy in 2021. He relaunched MoviePass yesterday after months of beta testing. The movie-a-day-plan, which left the service subsidizing most tickets, “was never going to work,” Sikes tells Deadline. AMC had actually threatened to sue, saying the plan wasn’t sustainable and set consumers up “for ultimate disappointment down the road.” Its bankruptcy filing listed more than 12,000 subscribers it may have owned money to.

The new MoviePass has four tiers from $10 for 1-3 movies, to a limited availability $40 plan with 30 movies a month. Each plan also...

Composers including Howard Shore, Patrick Doyle and Daniel Pemberton have taken part.

The World Soundtrack Awards (Wsa), taking place annually at Film Fest Gent, is pairing 25 composers with 25 filmmakers for a short film project called 25 x 2 to celebrate the festival’s 50th anniversary.

Composers including Howard Shore, Patrick Doyle and Daniel Pemberton have composed a short piece of music (1-2 minutes) with many recorded by the Brussels Philharmonic orchestra. Filmmakers Including Terence Davies, Radu Jude, Paul Schrader, Naomi Kawase and Ildikó Enyedi are now creating shorts based on the scores.

The shorts will be presented at this year’s Film Fest Gent,...

Composers including Howard Shore, Patrick Doyle and Daniel Pemberton have taken part.

The World Soundtrack Awards (Wsa), taking place annually at Film Fest Gent, is pairing 25 composers with 25 filmmakers for a short film project called 25 x 2 to celebrate the festival’s 50th anniversary.

Composers including Howard Shore, Patrick Doyle and Daniel Pemberton have composed a short piece of music (1-2 minutes) with many recorded by the Brussels Philharmonic orchestra. Filmmakers Including Terence Davies, Radu Jude, Paul Schrader, Naomi Kawase and Ildikó Enyedi are now creating shorts based on the scores.

The shorts will be presented at this year’s Film Fest Gent,...

Composers including Howard Shore, Patrick Doyle and Daniel Pemberton have taken part.

The World Soundtrack Awards (Wsa), taking place annually at Film Fest Gent, is pairing 25 composers with 25 filmmakers for a short film project called 25 x 2 to celebrate the festival’s 50th anniversary.

Composers including Howard Shore, Patrick Doyle and Daniel Pemberton have composed a short piece of music (1-2 minutes) with many recorded by the Brussels Philharmonic orchestra. Filmmakers Including Terence Davies, Radu Jude, Paul Schrader, Naomi Kawase and Ildikó Enyedi are now creating shorts based on the scores.

The shorts will be presented at this year’s Film Fest Gent,...

Fairytales and fire stations merge in the new film from João Pedro Rodrigues.

Few filmmakers can count themselves as an ornithologist — or expert on birds — and a director, but Portuguese filmmaker Rodrigues is both. Now, he’s directed his first narrative feature since 2016’s “The Ornithologist” with the musical fantasy “Will O’ the Wisp.” The homoerotic, full-frontal-filled gay musical — Rodrigues himself, while also being a bird expert and filmmaker, is also openly gay — premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight last May before wending its way around the festival circuit. Watch the trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, via here or the link below.

In “Will O’ the Wisp,” His Royal Highness Alfredo (Mauro Costa) is a king without a crown and also on a death bed, from which he’s taken back to distant memories from his youth, a time when he dreamed of becoming a fireman. In this chapter of his life,...

"My little rascal, you gave your all!" Strand Releasing has unveiled an official US trailer for a very strange, one-of-a-kind film from Portugal titled Will-o'-the-Wisp, originally known as Fogo-Fátuo in Portuguese. This musical fantasy by João Pedro Rodrigues first premiered in the Directors' Fortnight section of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival last year, stopping by tons of other festivals including Toronto and New York. On his deathbed, his royal highness Alfredo, king without a crown, is taken back to distant youth memories and the time he dreamt of becoming a fireman. The encounter with instructor Afonso from the fire brigade opens a new chapter in the life of the two young men immersed in love and desire, and the will to change the status quo. Starring Mauro Costa, André Cabral, and Joel Branco. This film will primarily appeal to anyone brave enough to wade into experimental cinema, but it looks like...

Following 2016’s The Ornithologist, it’s been quite a wait for the next feature from João Pedro Rodrigues. It finally arrived at last year’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight with Will-o’-the-Wisp, a delightfully sexual and imaginative queer firefighter musical fantasy. Now set for a May 26 release beginning at IFC Center, featuring the director in person and screening with his 2019 short Potemkin Steps, the new U.S. trailer has arrived from Strand Releasing.

Here’s the synopsis: “On his deathbed, his royal highness Alfredo, king without a crown, is taken back to distant youth memories and the time he dreamt of becoming a fireman. The encounter with instructor Afonso from the fire brigade opens a new chapter in the life of the two young men immersed in love and desire, and the will to change the status quo.”

“I absolutely wanted to make a comedy,” said the director. “I’d already...

Ukraine is to host its first ever queer film festival, it was announced at Intl. Film Festival Rotterdam.

Sunny Bunny – named after Kyiv-based Molodist Film Fest’s non-competition section, established in 2001 – is eyeing a summer slot.

“Maybe it’s a bit stereotypical to do it in June, as it’s Pride Month, but it will give us more time to prepare,” programmer Bohdan Zhuk revealed to Variety on Tuesday. Pointing out that the standalone event might still continue to be a part of Molodist in some form.

“The war is unpredictable, so you just have to adapt and be flexible. When we did Molodist in December, there were blackouts, so we needed generators. We also needed to plan where people would hide in case of raids, plan out shelters in cinemas or nearby metro stations,” he added.

“The plan is to do it separately, but also to keep that connection.

Southern Californian director Jamie Dack’s coming-of-age drama “Palm Trees and Power Lines” was crowned best film as the 40th edition of the Torino Film Festival wrapped Saturday. The award is worth €18,000.

Dack, winner of the Sundance Film Festival directing award in the U.S. Dramatic section, also received Torino’s prize for best script, shared with her co-writer Audrey Findlay.

Based on the 2018 short movie of the same name, Dack’s film stars Gretchen Mol, Jonathan Tucker and Lily McInerny, who plays a 17-year-old who has a life changing encounter with a man twice her age.

“Palm Trees” was nominated for four Independent Spirit Awards, including first feature for Dack and Leah Chen Baker; first screenplay for Dack and Audrey Findlay; supporting performance for Tucker; and breakthrough performance for McInerny.

The jury awarded “Rodeo,” the debut feature from French photojournalist-turned-filmmaker Lola Quivoron, with the special jury award, and the...

It’s that time of year. Ahead of Sight & Sound’s once-a-decade poll launching later today, the 2022 lists are starting to arrive. One of our favorite annual traditions when it comes to the best-of-the-year movie list is a lineup that usually finds a more interesting path than all the various guilds and critics groups. The wonderfully eccentric director John Waters, whose eclectic tastes always includes a mix of the unexpected and underseen, hasn’t let us down this year with his top 10 films of 2022.

Published at Artforum, where one should click over to read his thoughts on each, his top 10 is topped by François Ozon’s Fassbinder reimagining and “Douglas Sirk perfect” Peter von Kant. Other selections include another film from François Ozon, Jerzy Skolimowski’s visually dazzling Eo, Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All, starring Timothée Chalamet as a “butch twink,” and João Pedro Rodrigues’ Will-o’-the-Wisp, which “makes Titane seem tame.

The festival runs January 25 - February 5

Action thriller Little Dixie from US director John Swab is one of four world premieres announced as part of the Harbour strand for the 52nd edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Little Dixie follows an ex-Special Forces Operative trying to negotiate a deal with the Mexican drug cartel while protecting his young daughter. The cast includes Frank Grillo, Eric Dane and Annabeth Gish. It is produced by Roxwell Films.

Giorgio Cugno’s Alien Food will also have its world premiere at the festival. The Italy-Denmark co-production explores the friendship between a 40-year-old man with bipolar disorder,...

The festival runs January 25 - February 5

Action thriller Little Dixie from US director John Swab is one of four world premieres announced as part of the Harbour strand for the 52nd edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Little Dixie follows an ex-Special Forces Operative trying to negotiate a deal with the Mexican drug cartel while protecting his young daughter. The cast includes Frank Grillo, Eric Dane and Annabeth Gish. It is produced by Roxwell Films.

Giorgio Cugno’s Alien Food will also have its world premiere at the festival. The Italy-Denmark co-production explores the friendship between a 40-year-old man with bipolar disorder,...

Further winners included ‘World War III’ and ‘by the window’.

Spanish-French rural thriller The Beasts has won a hat-trick of awards at Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF), including the Tokyo Grand Prix, best director for Rodrigo Sorogoyen and best actor for Denis Menochet.

The winners were announced at the closing ceremony of TIFF’s 35th edition in the Ginza district of Tokyo this evening (November 2).

The Beasts is a psychological thriller starring Ménochet and Marina Foïs as a French couple who settle in a remote Galician village to run an organic farm but whose arrival is seen as a threat...

Click here to read the full article.

Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s multi-layered thriller The Beasts nearly achieved a clean sweep of the Tokyo International Film Festival’s major awards categories Wednesday night in the Japanese capital. During a ceremony held in the city’s glitzy Ginza district, The Beasts came away with the Tokyo Grand Prix, the festival’s top honor, as well as best director honors for Sorogoyen and best actor for his star Denis Menochet.

A brooding, psychological thriller set in rural Spain, The Beasts tells the story of a cosmopolitan French couple, Antoine and Olga (Menochet and actress Marina Foïs), who settle in a small village hoping to connect with nature. Instead, their presence soon arouses hostility — and eventually, downright violence — from some of the locals. The film has been praised for its feral, even savage, portrayal of the hardscrabble realities of the majestic Galician countryside.

Tokyo’s...

Acclaimed film and theatre director Julie Taymor paid tribute to legendary Japanese filmmaker Kurosawa Akira in Tokyo on Tuesday, crediting his influence on her deciding to enter the film industry and contributing to her multi-cultural world view.

“I go back to when I saw my first ‘foreign film’ in Paris, when I was 15 years old. I watched ‘Rashomon’ and that changed my life,” said Taymor. “Kurosawa! He is the reason, his movies are the reason, that I became a film director.”

“Rashomon,” based on a Japanese folk talk, won the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion in 1951 and has since emerged as a classic of global cinema.

Taymor, whose credits include the original Broadway production of “The Lion King” and the 1997 film “Frida,” is head of this year’s jury at the Tokyo International Film Festival, which will decide winners in its competition section. Her words came at a jury press conference,...

Click here to read the full article.

In a welcome return to normalcy, the Tokyo International Film Festival rolled out the full red carpet, all 541 feet of it, for the first time since 2019, once again welcoming guests from around the globe to a new venue for its opening ceremony on a brisk autumn evening in the Japanese capital.

The Covid-19 pandemic had kept international visitors away for the last few editions, but the opening of the 35th Tokyo festival felt like old times. More than one hundred overseas guests are joining the proceedings this year — some paying their own way to Tokyo as sky-high airline ticket prices drained the event’s budget — up from just eight at the 2021 edition.

The red carpet, which clocked in at almost two hours, snaked its way from Toho’s famed Godzilla statue in front of Hibiya Midtown to the Tokyo Takarazuka Theater. Once a fixture of Roppongi,...

‘Fragments Of The Last Will’ opened 35th edition.

The 35th Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) has launched with its first full-scale red carpet in three years.

At the Takarazuka Theatre in the festival’s new main area of Hibiya-Yurakucho-Ginza, relocated last year from Roppongi, international competition jury president and US director Julie Taymor spoke from the red carpet: “It’s an incredible time now that – since Covid – you’re able to have many more international guests, which is so critical at a time in the world which is so divisive.”

TIFF was only able to host eight foreign guests last year,...

The 60th New York Film Festival kicks off on September 30th! Below you'll find all of Notebook's coverage of the films in the selection, gathered in one convenient place. As we cover more titles, this page will be updated with new essays and interviews, so check back frequently for updates.Main SLATEFilmmaker Interviews:De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor)Pacifiction (Albert Serra)Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella)Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt)Dispatch Coverage:All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)Armageddon Time (James Gray)Corsage (Marie Kreutzer)A Couple (Frederick Wiseman)Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook)Enys Men (Mark Jenkin)Eo (Jerzy Skolimowski)The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg)Master Gardener (Paul Schrader)No Bears (Jafar Panahi)The Novelist's Film (Hong Sang-soo)One Fine Morning (Mia Hansen-Løve)R.M.N. (Cristian Mungiu)Saint Omer (Alice Diop)Scarlet (Pietro Marcello)Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt)Stars at Noon (Claire Denis)TÁR...

Tokyo International Film Festival’s 35th edition will include titles from Bui Thac Chuyen, Olivia Wilde and Hiroki Ryuichi.

The 35th Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) today unveiled its line-up for its first full-scale physical edition since the pandemic started, with 15 international competition titles including its first from Vietnam - Bui Thac Chuyen’s Glorious Ashes.

Set to make its world premiere at TIFF, the film was a recipient of the Asean Co-production Fund (Acof) launched by the Film Development Council of the Philippines (Fdcp) and the Southeast Asia co-production grant (Scpg) established by the Singapore Film Commission (Sfc), as...

Click here to read the full article.

Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) will open with a full red carpet for the first time in three years as the event looks to bounce back from two relatively subdued editions held during the pandemic.

Fest chairman Hiroyasu Ando said at a line-up press conference that he expected around 100 overseas guests and participants to attend. A very limited number of visitors made the trip for the last two events.

Japan’s government has kept tighter restrictions on its borders for longer than most other countries and a daily limit of 50,000 inbound travellers currently remains in place. Further loosening is expected by the time the fest unspools, with a parliamentary discussion on border controls set for tomorrow.

TIFF will also revive the Kurosawa Akira Award, given to filmmakers for contributions to global cinema, after a hiatus of 14 years. Previous recipients include Steven Spielberg, Yamada Yoji and Chen Kaige.

Iranian action drama “World War III,” which won two awards at the recent Venice festival, will feature among the main competition titles at next month’s Tokyo International Film Festival.

The festival will operate as an in-person event with foreign filmmakers, media and other guests in attendance from Oct. 24-Nov. 2, 2022.

“World War III” is joined in the competition section by the world premiere of Milcho Manchevski’s “Kaymak,” Spanish director Carlos Vermut’s “Manticore” and Roberta Torre’s “The Fabulous Ones,” Michale Boganim’s “Tel Aviv Beirut,” and Youssef Chebbi’s debut film “Ashkal.”

The 15-strong competition also includes two Japanese films Imaizumi Rikiya’s “By The Window” and Matsunaga Daishi’s “Egoist” and two Japanese co-productions, Fukunaga Takeshi’s “Mountain Woman,” and Kyrgyzstan director Aktan Arym Kubat’s “This Is What I Remember.”

Winners from the competition section will be chosen by a jury headed by Julie Taymor, along with Joao Pedro Rodrigues,...

Positioned as a work of autobiography from first-time director Elegance Bratton, The Inspection is a flawed, if highly compelling promise of a new talented dramatist in American cinema. Bratton’s avatar in this case being Ellis French (Jeremy Pope), who we catch up with during his period as a homeless youth. Deserted by his unforgiving (yet of course Christian) cop mother Inez (Gabrielle Union) for being gay, he lives on the margins of society until making the last-ditch effort for redemption—or as he says, the chance to “die a hero”—by joining the Marines.

Ellis’ plan is nearly instantly foiled at boot camp when a gay day-dream (during which the movie almost promises to suddenly become a João Pedro Rodrigues film) leads to him getting an erection in the group shower, thus instantly revealing his sexuality to the unit. Becoming the literal punching-bag of his training, with only the...

Bertrand Bonello’s Coma, starring Louise Labeque from Bertrand’s Zombi Child is a Currents highlight Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Film at Lincoln Center has announced the Currents selections for the 60th New York Film Festival. Highlights include the Opening Night film João Pedro Rodrigues’s Will-o’-The-Wisp; Ruth Beckermann’s Mutzenbacher; Alain Gomis’s Rewind & Play on Thelonious Monk’s 1969 interview with Henri Renaud screened with Maria Schneider’s short Elisabeth Subrin; Jonás Trueba’s (Fernando Trueba’s son) You Have To Come And See It screening with Pedro Neves Marques’s short Becoming Male In The Middle Ages; Bertrand Bonello’s Coma, starring Louise Labeque from Bonello's Zombi Child, and Radu Jude’s short The Potemkinists screening with Balufu Bakupu-Kanyinda’s Le Damier (in the Revivals programme).

Dennis Lim with Bertrand Bonello for Saint Laurent: “Each Currents lineup is an attempt to distill the spirit of innovation and playfulness...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSWill-o'-the-Wisp.The New York Film Festival has revealed the lineup for their Currents section, dedicated to films "testing and stretching the possibilities of the medium." The program includes new films from João Pedro Rodrígues, Ashley McKenzie, Bertrand Bonello, Helena Wittmann, and more. This year's crop of Revivals was also unveiled, featuring the highly anticipated restoration of Jean Eustache's The Mother and the Whore.61 films will be preserved through funding from The National Film Preservation Foundation. Grant recipients include the 1921 mystery-western Trailin’—starring Tom Mix, considered the first on-screen cowboy—and The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy (1980), one of two feature films Kathleen Collins completed before her premature death.Cinema company Cineworld, owner of the Picturehouse chain in the UK and Regal Cinemas in the US, could be facing imminent bankruptcy, per recent reports.

Following the Main Slate and Spotlight announcements, the 60th New York Film Festival has unveiled its Currents section. The slate of boundary-pushing work features Bertrand Bonello’s Coma, João Pedro Rodrigues’ Will-o’-the-Wisp, Helena Wittmann’s Human Flowers of Flesh, Alessandro Comodin’s The Adventures of Gigi the Law, Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós’s Dry Ground Burning, Ruth Beckermann’s Mutzenbacher, and Ashley McKenzie’s Queens of the Qing Dynasty, plus new shorts by Bi Gan, Mark Jenkin, Simón Velez, Nicolás Pereda, Courtney Stephens, Ben Russell, and more.

“Each Currents lineup is an attempt to distill the spirit of innovation and playfulness in contemporary cinema, and this is, by design, the most expansive section of the festival,” said Dennis Lim, artistic director, New York Film Festival. “There are familiar names here—including multiple filmmakers who will be known to NYFF and Flc audiences—as well as some electrifying new talents,...

The first 30 titles in the running for the EFAs have been announced.

The first 30 titles in the running for the 2022 European Film Awards have been revealed with a second wave of titles due to be announced in September.

Scroll down for first selection of films

The titles include Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or winner Triangle Of Sadness, Carla Simón’s Berlinale Golden Bear winner Alcarras and Kenneth Branagh’s Oscar-winner Belfast. Also selected is Colm Bairéad’s The Quiet Girl, which is Ireland’s submission for the best international feature Oscar.

Further Cannes award winners to make the first...

“Where is This Street? or With No Before and After,” co-directed by João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata, is screening in competition at Locarno.

The pic revisits locations and themes from Paulo Rocha’s 1963 film “Os Verdes Anos” (“The Green Years”), a best first film winner at Locarno in 1964 and considered to be a point of departure for Portugal’s Cinema Novo movement.

“We believe that the film works at its own level, and also gains further levels of meaning when viewed in conjunction with ‘Os Verdes Anos,’” explains Rodrigues. “By revisiting locations from the 1963 film, but without people, we planned to make an ode to Lisbon, a symphony of the city, working in the tradition of directors such as Walter Ruttman. This idea, that predated the pandemic, foresaw the atmosphere created by the lockdown which suddenly emptied the city.”

Rodrigues studied under Paulo Rocha at Lisbon...

The WhaleWAVELENGTHS - FEATURESConcrete Valley (Antoine Bourges)De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Véréna Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor)Dry Ground BurningHorse Opera (Moyra Davey)Pacifiction (Albert Serra)Queens of the Qing Dynasty (Ashley McKenzie)Unrest (Cyril Schäublin)Will-o’-the-Wisp (João Pedro Rodrigues)Wavelenghths - SHORTSAfter Work (Céline Condorelli, Ben Rivers)Bigger on the Inside (Angelo Madsen Minax)Eventide (Sharon Lockhart)F1ghting Looks Different 2 Me Now (Fox Maxy)Fata Morgana (Tacita Dean)Hors-titre (Wiame Haddad)I Thought the World of You (Kurt Walker)Moonrise (Vincent Grenier)The Newest Olds (Pablo Mazzolo)Puerta a Puerta (Jessica Sarah Rinland, Luis Arnías )The Time That Separates Us (Parastoo Anoushahpour)What Rules the Invisible (Tiffany Sia)Gala PRESENTATIONSAlice, Darling (Mary Nighy)Black Ice (Hubert Davis)The Greatest Beer Run Ever (Peter Farrelly)Butcher’s Crossing (Gabe Polsky)The Hummingbird (Francesca Archibugi)Hunt (Jung-jae Lee)A Jazzman’s Blues (Tyler Perry)Kacchey Limbu (Shubham Yogi)Moving On (Paul Weitz)Paris Memories...

“Weird: The Weird Al Yankovic Story” will make its world premiere at TIFF, leading the Midnight Madness program’s 10-film lineup.

Starring Daniel Radcliffe as “Weird Al” Yankovic, the film chronicles the career of the music and comedy icon. Directed by Eric Appel, who co-wrote with Yankovic himself, the cast of the Roku biopic also includes Evan Rachel Wood, Quinta Brunson and Rainn Wilson.

As Midnight Madness’ opening night film, “Weird: The Weird Al Yankovic Story” will premiere on Sept. 8 at 11:59 Est.

Also Read:

Daniel Radcliffe Was Cast as Weird Al Thanks to a Graham Norton Appearance (Video)

“For TIFF audiences in the know, the Discovery, Midnight Madness and Wavelengths programmes are where you’re rewarded for taking risks and being adventurous,” offered Anita Lee, Chief Programming Officer, TIFF. “Whether it’s the discovery of an audacious new auteur, a brilliant visionary work that reimagines storytelling or the most...

The festival runs July 21-31.

Alexandru Belc’s Metronom has picked up the award for best international film at the 39th edition of the Jerusalem Film Festival (Jff) this week.

The Romanian film was selected from 11 international titles, which included Park Chan-wook’s Decision To Leave and Mia Hansen-Løve’s One Fine Morning. It centres around a teenage couple spending their last few days together in 1972. Belc also won the best director award when the film played in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard selection earlier this year.

Berlinale managing director Mariette Rissenbeek, Hungarian filmmaker László Nemes and Icelandic director Rúnar Rúnarsson comprised the jury.

Medusa Deluxe (Thomas Hardiman).The lineup for the 75th-anniversary edition of the festival has been announced, including new films by Helena Wittmann, João Pedro Rodrígues, Aleksandr Sokurov and others, alongside retrospectives, tributes, and much more.Piazza GRANDEAlles über Martin Suter. Ausser die Wahrheit. (Everything About Martin Suter. Everything but the Truth.) (André Schäfer)Annie Colère (Blandine Lenoir)Bullet Train (David Leitch)Compartiment tueurs (The Sleeping Car Murder) (Costa-Gavras)Delta (Michele Vannucci)Home of the Brave (Laurie Anderson)Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk)Last Dance (Delphine Lehericey)Medusa Deluxe (Thomas Hardiman)My Neighbor Adolf (Leon Prudovsky)Paradise Highway (Anna Gutto)Piano Piano (Nicola Prosatore)Printed Rainbow (Gitanjali Rao)Semret (Caterina Mona)Une femme de notre temps (Jean Paul Civeyrac)Vous n'aurez pas ma haine (You Will Not Have My Hate) (Kilian Riedhof)Where the Crawdads Sing (Olivia Newman)Human Flowers of Flesh (Helena Wittmann).Concorso INTERNAZIONALEAriyippu (Declaration) (Mahesh Narayanan)Balıqlara xütbə...

The fogo-fátuo, or will-o'-the-wisp, is a chemical reaction that resembles small phantasmagoric flames. The phenomenonon generally happens in marshy areas or burial grounds, where phosphorus and methane are released from decaying organic matter. After a reaction with the environment, these substances combust in ghostly bursts of light that float on swampy surfaces.This is a deeply accurate title for the new João Pedro Rodrígues film, a spontaneous explosion in the midst of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Thirteen years after Rodrígues’s last appearance on the Croisette with his fatidic melodrama To Die Like a Man (2009), Will-o’-the-Wisp takes a different approach to tragicomedy, a deconstruction of the musical genre embellished with a potpourri of hilarious eccentricities. A 67-minute package of voracious cinematographic twists and turns, Will-o'-the-Wisp recounts the long life of King Alfredo (Joel Branco). On his deathbed in the year 2069, he remembers a fleeting encounter with love and desire,...

it’s time for cannes!Rays of promotional sunshine will highlight 46 European finished and unfinished films at this year’s Marché du Film at the Cannes Film Festival (17–28 May 2022).‘Triangle of Sadness’ by Ruben Östlund (Sweden, France, Germany, UK/ Coproduction Office)

21 international sales agents are drawing on Film Sales Support (Fss) - totalling €78,000 - to bolster and innovate promotion and marketing campaigns of brand-new films to trigger sales to countries outside of Europe at one of the most prestigious markets of the year. Overseas buyers on-site and off-site will have the fortune to catch sight of a number of new films from Europe premiering at the Croisette.

Amongst the many to be discovered at the Marché are Competition titles, Pacifiction by Albert Serra (Spain, Portugal, Germany/Films Boutique,France), Triangle of Sadness by Ruben Östlund (Sweden, France, Germany, UK/Coproduction Office), Boy from Heaven by Tarik Saleh (Sweden, France, Finland, Denmark/Memento International), Un Certain Regard titles, Metronom by Alexandru Belc (Romania, France/Pyramide International) and Rodeo by Lola Quivoron (France/Les Films du Losange) as well as films in Directors’ Fortnight, Will-o'-the-wispby Joao Pedro Rodrigues (Portugal, France/ Films Boutique,Germany) and The Super 8 Years by Annie Ernaux & David Ernaux-Briot (France/Totem Films).

For the first time, Fss will also be awarded to a Ukrainian film in solidarity with the country. Indie Sales is the happy recpient for its film Pamfir by Ukrainian director, Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, a multi-coproduction between the Ukraine, Poland, France, Germany, Chile and Luxembourg. By a lucky twist, 3 of Efp’s Producers on the Move and their films will benefit from the support indirectly: Sick of Myself by Kristoffer Borgli (producer Andrea Berentsen Ottmar from Norway/Memento International), The Woodcutter Story by Mikko Myllylahti (producer Derk-Jan Warrink from the Netherlands) and Tel Aviv Beirut by Michale Boganim (producer Janine Teerling from Cyprus/Wt Films).

13 European films in the companies’ line-ups are yet unfinished but ready to be announced and promoted.

**Click here for the full list**

Thanks to Swiss Films, 4 films from Switzerland will similarly receive Fss for the promotion in Cannes: Men Caves by Céline Pernet (Lightdox), Continental Drift by Lionel Baier (Switzerland, France/ Les Films du Losange), 99 Moons by Jan Gassmann (m-appeal world sales) and The Black Spider by Markus Fischer (Switzerland, Hungary/The Playmaker Munich).

Fss is supported by Creative Europe Media and part of Efp’s (European Film Promotion) many activities for the promotion of European films and talent around the world.

1976 – Manuela Martelli [Review] [Interview]

Ashkal – Youssef Chebbi [Review]

The Dam – Ali Cherri

Continental Drift (South) – Lionel Baier [Review]

Enys Men – Mark Jenkin

De Humani Corporis Fabrica – Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel [Review]

Falcon Lake – Charlotte Le Bon [Review]

Les Cinq Diables – Léa Mysius [Review]

Funny Pages – Owen Kline

God’s Creatures – Saela Davis, Anna Rose Holmer [Review]

Le Parfum vert – Nicolas Pariser

Les Harkis – Philippe Faucon

Un varón – Fabian Hernández [Review]

La Montagne – Thomas Salvador [Review]

Un beau matin – Mia Hansen-Løve [Review]

Pamfir – Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk [Review]

Revoir Paris – Alice Winocour [Review]

L’Envol – Pietro Marcello [Review]

Les Années Super 8 – Annie Ernaux, David Ernaux-Briot [Review]

El agua – Elena López Riera [Review]

Will-o’-the-Wisp – João Pedro Rodrigues

Special Screening: Men – Alex Garland [Review]…...