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Director of Istanbul Film Festival's first feature film, “Oregon” seems to be a trip down memory lane, not just because it takes place on a summer day in 1985, but because it evokes a nostalgia for the popular comedies of the 60s and 70s that were quite prevalent in both the Turkish and the Greek movie industry.

“Oregon“ is screening at Thessaloniki International Film Festival

The story begins with a couple of former filmmaker students, Hakan and Gaye, who are now operating a souvenir shop in Bodrum, vacationing in Istanbul. During their last day, they have to leave a mix cassette in one of their friends from school, Selen, but the fact that she has left for Cappadocia and the overzealous caretaker of the building, Durmus, result in a series of unfortunate events that end up with them in the police precinct. While there, they stumble upon a very friendly prostitute,...

Festival also honours Elliot Page and Octavia Spencer.

Vivian Kleiman’s No Straight Lines: The Rise Of Queer Comics and Lyle Kash’s Death And Bowling have been named among the award winners at the 2021 Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival.

No Straight Lines took the documentary feature grand jury prize at the August 13-22 festival, back this year as an in-person event at several Los Angeles venues, and Death And Bowling won the narrative feature audience award.

The festival’s closing night awards ceremony also saw Elliot Page receiving the Outfest Annual Achievement Award and Octavia Spencer the Outfest Annual James Schamus Ally Award.

Outfest announced the winners of its 2021 edition, including Vivian Kleiman’s “No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics” for documentary feature and Brielle Brilliant’s “Firstness” for U.S. narrative feature.

The Los Angeles LGBTQ film festival also honored Pooya Mohseni with the grand jury prize for best performance in a U.S. narrative feature for her performance in “See You Then,” while Wes Hurley won best screenplay for “Potato Dreams of America,” a non-traditional portrayal of a gay immigrant’s transition to America and his relationship with his mother.

Park Kun-young was awarded best international narrative feature for “A Distant Place,” and Ümit Ünal won best international screenplay for “Love, Spells, And All That.” “Sweetheart” actor Nell Barlow took home the award for best performance in an international narrative feature “for her ability to emote even under a pair of sunglasses and a bucket hat.”

Xavier Seron won...

Outfest has announced the award winners of its 2021 Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival.

The nation’s leading LGBTQ festival ran from August 13th to August 22nd, holding its closing night at the iconic Orpheum Theatre, with Vivian Kleiman’s No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics claiming the Documentary Feature Grand Jury Prize, and Brielle Brilliant’s Firstness winning the U.S. Narrative Feature Grand Jury Prize.

For the first time ever, Outfest collaborated with IMDb in choosing Audience Award winners, selecting them based on IMDb ratings. Among other prizes and recognition, eligible Outfest Los Angeles winners received a one-year membership to IMDbPro.

The winners of the Grand Jury Prizes for Best U.S. Narrative Short, Best Documentary Short, and Best International Narrative Short all received a $2000 cash prize awarded in partnership with Entertainment Partners.

Also of note is the fact that the U.S. and International Narrative...

Leyla Yilmaz’s ’Not Knowing’ and Ümit Ünal’s ’Love, Spells And All That’ premiered at Antalya in 2019.

US-based Tla Releasing has picked up UK and North American rights to a duo of Turkish LGBTQ+ titles, Leyla Yilmaz’s Not Knowing and Ümit Ünal’s Love, Spells And All That, from Berlin and Istanbul- based World Sales ArtHood Entertainment.

Additionally, Tla’s sister company Optimale has acquired distribution rights to the two films for French-speaking Europe.

Derek Curl, CEO of Tla Releasing described the titles as “two very different, but equally illuminating and entertaining films set in the complex Turkish...

Outfest Los Angeles features two films with "RuPaul's Drag Race" winners BeBe Zahara Benet and Bianca del Rio in its lineup for its 39th Film Festival.

Season 6 winner Bianca del Rio will join the main cast members of "Everybody’s Talking About Jamie," Max Harwood and Lauren Patel, in the festival's opening event. Del Rio plays art teacher Miss Haywood in the feature adaptation of the musical.

Season 1 winner BeBe Zahara Benet will perform live before the premiere of "Being Bebe," which follows the Cameroonian-American immigrant's struggle to embrace being an LGBTQ performer against discriminatory cultural forces.

Named after the Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization Outfest, the 10-day festival will celebrate LGBTQ+ stories and voices in film and television and will return to in-person screenings.

Outfest will also host the 5th Annual Trans and NonBinary Summit on August 21 with a panel featuring established and emerging trans and nonbinary creators, Zackary Drucker and Our Lady J.

The Inside Out 2Slgbtq+ Film Festival on Monday unveiled winners for its just-wrapped 31st edition, bestowing its Audience Award for narrative feature on Ümit Ünal’s Love, Spells and All That and its best first feature honor on Marley Morrison’s Sweetheart.

A total of 143 films including 33 features and five episodic series unspooled during the Ontario-based virtual festival that ran May 27-June 6, with a total of 70% of this year’s selected films by women/trans/non-binary directors.

Love, Spells centers on the reunion 20 years later of two woman who were separated from their families after a love affair as teens; one believes they were reunited because she cast a love spell on the other. Sweetheart is a comedic coming-of-age story about a socially awkward girl (Nell Barlow) forced to go on a family vacation only to discover after a chance meeting with a local lifeguard that she has a chance...

London – A couple of idiots trying to outdo rock band U2, a 3D animated young barbarian with low self-esteem and a movie about four girls, three days, two cities and one chance are three titles from European shores vying for attention amid the hustle and bustle of this year's American Film Market.

The duo trying to outdo U2 are self-proclaimed idiots in Killing Bono, a movie that sees rising stars Ben Barnes and Robert Sheehan as hapless brothers Neil and Ivan McCormick who set up a band in Dublin, Ireland in the late 1970s.

Sadly for them, so did their classmates and rivals, who go on to become the global phenomenon U2. Based on a true story and grounded in Neil McCormack's book of the same name Stateside, the screenplay is written by British comedy writing royalty Dick Clement & Ian La Frenais alongside Simon Maxell. Nick Hamm directs.

The...

Turkey isn’t a country best know as a prolific producer of horror movies, but the quality of those they have released over the last couple of years has been varied but on the whole, on the rise. Ümit Ünal’s Ses was the last scare flick of any real note that really caught our eye, back February, so it’s about time we had a new one to take a gander at. And Arkin Aktaç’s 3 Harfliler: Marid (Aka ‘Three Letters’) might just fit the bill. Synopsis: Ayla’s life has become a horrifying nightmare because of the resurrection of the creature that had previously haunted her years before. The films events take place on one night, with a continuous attacks and terror as her parent’s battle to save here from an evil creature, feared by man throughout history…. A Djinn.

Turkey isn’t a country best know as a prolific producer of horror movies, but the quality of those they have released over the last couple of years has been varied but on the whole, on the rise. Ümit Ünal’s Ses was the last scare flick of any real note that really caught our eye, back February, so it’s about time we had a new one to take a gander at. And Arkin Aktaç’s 3 Harfliler: Marid (Aka ‘Three Letters’) might just fit the bill. Synopsis: Ayla’s life has become a horrifying nightmare because of the resurrection of the creature that had previously haunted her years before. The films events take place on one night, with a continuous attacks and terror as her parent’s battle to save here from an evil creature, feared by man throughout history…. A Djinn.

As Turkey continues to rise as a global film power, with rapidly growing production numbers and widespread acclaim for their art cinema, the question has long been when the commercial film from Turkey would match the quality of the art film.

Things have been improving steadily but there yet to be a true breakout hit to put Turkey on the map for genre film lovers. The latest title to try and change that is Ümit Ünal's Ses (Voice). At atmospheric thriller with dark supernatural overtones this one boasts a very aggressive trailer that promises good things.

Derya (Selma Ergeç) works in a bank's call center to support her elderly mother. One day her life is suddenly turned upside down as she begins to hear a strange voice whispering to her. The source of the voice is a mystery and it tells her things and facts noone else would know.

Turkey isn’t a country best know as a prolific producer of horror movies, but the quality of those they have released over the last couple of years has been consistently on the rise and the latest to surface, the horror thriller Ses (aka Voice) directed by Ümit Ünal really seems to upped the ante again. It looks beautifully shot, and absolutely chock full of atmosphere. To check out the trailer, head over to the films official site and crank up the volume. Whoever did sound production and score for this, really knows their stuff. Ses opens in Turkey March 5th. Synopsis: Derya (Selma Ergeç) works in a bank's call centers to support her elderly mother One day her life is suddenly turned upside down as she begins to hear a stange voice whispering to her. The source of the voice is a mystery and it tells her things and facts noone else would know.

Turkey isn’t a country best know as a prolific producer of horror movies, but the quality of those they have released over the last couple of years has been consistently on the rise and the latest to surface, the horror thriller Ses (aka Voice) directed by Ümit Ünal really seems to upped the ante again. It looks beautifully shot, and absolutely chock full of atmosphere. To check out the trailer, head over to the films official site and crank up the volume. Whoever did sound production and score for this, really knows their stuff. Ses opens in Turkey March 5th. Synopsis: Derya (Selma Ergeç) works in a bank's call centers to support her elderly mother One day her life is suddenly turned upside down as she begins to hear a stange voice whispering to her. The source of the voice is a mystery and it tells her things and facts noone else would know.

Turkey isn’t a country best know as a prolific producer of horror movies, but the quality of those they have released over the last couple of years has been consistently on the rise and the latest to surface, the horror thriller Ses (aka Voice) directed by Ümit Ünal really seems to upped the ante again. It looks beautifully shot, and absolutely chock full of atmosphere. To check out the trailer, head over to the films official site and crank up the volume. Whoever did sound production and score for this, really knows their stuff. Ses opens in Turkey March 5th. Synopsis: Derya (Selma Ergeç) works in a bank's call centers to support her elderly mother One day her life is suddenly turned upside down as she begins to hear a stange voice whispering to her. The source of the voice is a mystery and it tells her things and facts noone else would know.

Ian Fitzgibbon's black comedy 'A Film With Me In It' has picked up the Special Jury Prize at the 28th International Istanbul Film Festival in Turkey. The jury, comprised of film-makers Goran Paskaljevic, Christian Mungiu and Umit Unal, Holland Film and European Film Promotion head nm2543621 autoClaudia Landsberger[/link] and Screen International's Mike Goodridge, described the Irish feature as "a rare comedy which keeps you laughing from beginning to end with its unusual story and dark, dark humour."...