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Update: Twenty-five filmmakers linked with Mubi have added their names to a letter strongly criticizing the arthouse distributor for its relationship with investor Sequoia Capital over its ties to the Israeli military. The additional names include Israeli directors Ari Folman (“Waltz with Bashir”) and Nadav Lapid, plus Amalia Ulman, whose film “Magic Farm” Mubi released earlier this year, and Alex Russell, whose directorial debut “Lurker” was acquired by Mubi in Sundance and is set for release later this month.

The number of signatories now stands at 63, having almost doubled since Variety first published the July 30 letter, which urges Mubi to not just reconsider its relationship with Sequoia Capital but publicly condemn the company over what it describes as “genocide profiteering.” Radu Jude, Aki Kaurismäki, Miguel Gomes, Sarah Friedland, Joshua Oppenheimer and Cherien Dabis were among the first to sign.

Shortly after it was announced that Mubi had secured a $100 million...

Mubi has received fresh push back over a recent $100 million investment it received from Silicon Valley-based private equity firm Sequoia Capital, over the latter’s backing of a number of Israeli defence-tech start-ups.

Filmmakers with connections to Mubi – including Nate Fisher, Sarah Friedland, Cherien Dabis, Tyler Taormina, Aki Kaurismäki, Radu Jude and Joshua Oppenheimer – have signed a letter calling on the arthouse distributor and streamer to reconsider its relationship with the investment firm.

The signatories do not include the directors of Mubi’s recent high-profile Cannes acquisitions such as Lynne Ramsay, Mascha Schilinski (Sound of Falling), Oliver Hermanus (The History of Sound) and Kelly Reichardt (The Mastermind) and Akinola Davies Jr. (My Father’s Shadow).

In the statement, first reported by Variety, the filmmakers highlighted Sequoia Capital’s growing investments in Israeli military technology companies.

It cited Kela Technologies, which was founded in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Southern Israel,...

Nearly 40 filmmakers have signed a letter urging Mubi, the arthouse distributor, streaming platform and producer, to sever its ties with Sequoia Capital, an investment firm with ties to the Israeli military, and publicly condemn Sequoia for “genocide profiteering” in light of the war in Gaza.

The filmmakers to sign the letter have previously worked with Mubi, and join the mounting pressure on the company to reconsider its relationship with Sequoia.

These include Finland’s Aki Kaurismäki, whose Cannes 2023 Competition title Fallen Leaves was distributed by Mubi; US filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer, whoseThe End was bought by Mubi for UK-Ireland, Germany and Austria; Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude,...

Filmmakers including Robert Greene, Joshua Oppenheimer, Sarah Friedland, Radu Jude, Levan Akin, and Miguel Gomes are among the more than 35 who have signed an open letter from Film Workers for Palestine calling on indie distributor Mubi to part ways with investor Sequoia Capital.

The venture capital firm has recently invested in Israeli military-aligned businesses, and backlash against Mubi has been growing since the investor’s ties came to light in June. Sequoia had just given Mubi a $100 million investment. But since February 2024, Sequoia has also invested in Kela, a military tech startup that finds weapons and military-grade applications for AI and drone tech. Sequoia itself touts the partnership with Kela on its website as a way to “leverage Israel’s unique cadre of technowarriors to help defend the Western world order.”

When reached by IndieWire, Mubi had no comment.

Since June, the backlash against Mubi has been growing. These are...

The Vikings are coming back. In a huge development since its announcement, Prime Video's upcoming epic series Bloodaxe has announced that six cast members have joined the main cast as series regulars. The historical drama will chronicle the life and achievements of one of history’s most famous Norse raiders, Erik Bloodaxe. The series will begin filming in Ireland and Iceland later this summer, and the title character will be played by Xavier Molyneux (Take My Hand). Molyneux will be joined by Karlis Arnolds Avots, Rod Hallett, Alina Tomnikov, Sisse Marie, and Rune Temte.

Avots will play Egil, one of Erik's enemies who wants revenge after Bloodaxe's father exiled his family to Iceland. The adversary is described by Prime Video as "a poet, farmer, murderer, sorcerer, ladies’ man, and a bit of a psychopath." Avots previously starred in January, Soviet Jeans, and The Good Neighbor. The King of Wessex...

Kenneth Colley, the British actor who played Admiral Piett in the original Star Wars series and Jesus in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, died June 30 at his home in Kent, England, after contracting Covid and developing pneumonia. He was 87.

His death was announced by his agent Julian Owen in a statement first reported on by the BBC.

“Ken Colley was one of our finest character actors with a career spanning 60 years,” Owens said in the statement.

“Ken continually worked on stage, film, and television playing a vast array of characters, from Jesus in Monty Python’s Life of Brian to evil and eccentric characters in Ken Russell films, and the Duke of Vienna in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure for the BBC.”

The BBC reported that Colley had originally been admitted to hospital with an injured arm after a fall, but quickly contracted Covid, which developed into pneumonia.

Colley reprised the...

Lucia Garibaldi’s “A Bright Future” (2025) takes place in a reality that does not feel too far off from where we are in the real world. It places its 18-year-old female protagonist, Elisa, in a world that rewards her subservience. It expects her to accept a fate chosen for her. No one cares about her choice or preference. She is almost reduced to being a commodity, valued solely for her beauty, intellect, or productivity. So, she rarely reflects on how their decisions affect her. She remains mainly passive, and her muted existence seems rooted in years of suppression.

Garibaldi’s film presents the dullness of Elisa’s everyday life with a dystopian world-building. The saturated hues of reds, yellows, and blues surround her no matter where she stands. However, it is farthest from Pedro Almodóvar’s surrealistic maximalism. Instead, it is heavily stripped down to the point it feels like a somber medical drama.

In the aftermath of Europe’s 2008 economic collapse, director Francesco Sossai paints a landscape of fading prosperity and stubborn hope. Against the sun-bleached fields and silent villas of Veneto, we meet Carlobianchi and Doriano, two fifty-somethings for whom every drink is “the last one”—until the next. Their goal is simple: unearth a buried stash of cash, celebrate with one final round, and perhaps reclaim a shred of bygone grandeur.

Into this twilight world stumbles Giulio, a reticent architecture student whose shyness mirrors Italy’s own tension between tradition and reinvention. As the trio barrel through bars, brothels and dusty backroads, the film’s humor and elegiac moods swirl together like prosecco and bitters. Debuting in Cannes’s Un Certain Regard, The Last One for the Road signals Sossai’s ambition to fuse road-movie tropes with a distinctly Italian sensibility—one that resonates far beyond national borders.

Three Lives in...

Continuing its buying ways in Cannes, Mubi has acquired Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident for Latin America, U.K., Ireland, Germany, Austria, Turkey and India.

The film premiered in competition at Cannes on Tuesday and earlier Neon picked up its North American rights. It Was Just an Accident marks Panahi’s first since being released from prison in Iran, and was inspired in part by his second incarceration in that country.

The film stars Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi, and Vahid Mobasseri, and focuses on a minor accident that sets in motion a series of escalating consequences that in turn illustrate the traumas suffered by political dissidents and other opponents of power.

It Was Just an Accident is a Les Films Pelléas and Jafar Panahi Production from Iran, France and Luxembourg. The deal was made between Mubi and mk2, who are handling international sales.

Also in Cannes,...

Twin Palestinian filmmakers Arab and Tarzan Nasser, whose real names are Mohamed and Ahmed Abou, and who credit themselves on screen as “Nasser Brothers,” make movies whose titles can be somewhat deceiving — probably on purpose.

Their second feature, Gaza mon amour, owed much less to Alain Resnais than to offbeat auteurs like Aki Kaurismaki or Elia Sulieman, weaving a surreal love story centered around a Greek statue with a prominently erect penis. Their latest work, Once Upon a Time in Gaza, is rather far from the historical action epics of Sergio Leone, though it does have a few things in common with Quentin Tarantino in its TV-show-within-a-movie plot.

In both cases, titles and plot devices conceal what the Nassers are really interested in, which is depicting their homeland under Hamas rule and the Israeli blockade. Exiled in Jordan for over a decade now, the brothers have been able to make films about Gaza from afar,...

Sergei Loznitsa’s forensically objective, intellectually nuanced documentaries tend to stand in stark contrast to his fictional output; in films like My Joy, In the Fog and Donbass, the Ukrainian director is inclined to put his cards on the table, usually addressing his signature subject: the abject failure of the Russian state. Two Prosecutors follows in that tradition, being a very slow and very talky chamber piece that could be the most terrifying comedy that Aki Kaurismäki never made, or a Chaplin-esque horror film about the evils of bureaucracy in a world ruled by morons. This time, Loznitsa doesn’t just have the Kremlin in his sights; Two Prosecutors is one of his most accessible films to date, with relevance to every country wrestling with authoritarian political parties right now.

Based on a novella by Soviet and political activist Georgy Demidov (1908-1987), Two Prosecutors begins with a screen credit noting...

Jeanette Nordahl’s Beginnings opens on the quiet tension of Ane and Thomas, a Danish couple who have long agreed to part ways but can’t yet tell their daughters. Ane is a high‑powered marine biologist juggling lectures and lab work; Thomas counsels troubled youth and carries the weight of a secret affair. Their teenage gymnast Clara and curious ten‑year‑old Marie orbit the family’s simmering unrest, unaware that a single morning will upend every plan.

What follows is a story about how life redirects us when control slips away. Ane’s sudden stroke freezes her career and marriage in mid‑air, forcing both parents to confront obligations they’d thought were behind them. Moments of tenderness—Ane’s first solo steps in a pool, Thomas’s careful brush of her hair—gain significance against a backdrop of ordinary rooms and muted northern light. Shot with a simple,...

After launching just two months ago with a splash from Berlin, upstart distributor 1-2 Special has made two key hires, both of whom are former industry veterans from Mubi.

Amanda Trokan and Nico Chapin have joined 1-2 Special to bolster the distributor’s presence ahead of Cannes. Trokan will serve as Senior Vice President of Acquisitions, and Chapin will be Vice President of Publicity.

Former Sideshow executive Jason Hellerstein founded the company and wants to acquire and release films from top-tier domestic and international festivals. The first feature it acquired and plans to release is Radu Jude’s “Kontinental ’25,” which made its premiere at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival and won the screenplay prize.

The team will have a strong presence in Cannes as they look to strategically expand the current slate.

Trokan led the North American programming team at Mubi, overseeing platform curation and licensing and negotiating a...

Fledgling New York-based distributor 1-2 Special has made two announcements heading into Cannes, appointing Amanda Trokan as SVP of acquisitions and Nico Chapin as VP of publicity.

Former Sideshow executive Jason Hellerstein launched the company in February to champion international and US festival films and recently pick up its first feature, Radu Jude’s Berlinale dark comedy Kontinental ’25. The team will be attending Cannes as they look to strategically expand the current slate.

With nearly two decades of experience, Trokan joins 1-2 Special after leading the North American programming team at Mubi. While overseeing platform curation and licensing, Trokan...

New York-based distribution company 1-2 Special has appointed Amanda Trokan as senior vice president of acquisitions and Nico Chapin as vice president of publicity.

The company was founded in February by former Sideshow executive Jason Hellerstein with the goal of acquiring and releasing films from top-tier domestic and international festivals. The company recently acquired its first feature, “Kontinental ‘25,” from director Radu Jude, out of the Berlin International Film Festival. The hires come as 1-2 Special is gearing up for Cannes.

Trokan joins 1-2 Special after leading the North American programming team at global streamer Mubi. While overseeing platform curation and licensing, Trokan negotiated deals for new films from Hirokazu Kore-eda, Quentin Dupieux, Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Alex Ross Perry, Rebecca Zlotowski, Albert Serra, Tyler Taormina, Martín Rejtman, Vera Drew, Alonso Ruizpalacios, Radu Jude and others.

Trokan joined Mubi as a decade-plus HBO veteran, spending eight years as an executive on the company’s film acquisitions team.

“The Actor” (2025) feels like a Charlie Kaufman script directed by Damien Chazelle. It is bittersweet, charming, and immersive like a Chazelle film that lingers in your mind long after, but it follows a dreamlike logic and revels in its inherent absurdity like a Kaufman script. Somehow, their distinct styles coalesce in Duke Johnson’s surrealistic mystery film to offer a captivating confusion. It constantly puts its protagonist, Paul Cole (André Holland), at odds with himself. After waking up from an accident, he learns that he was beaten up for sleeping with a married woman. He loses most of his memories.

The husband shows no mercy to this man and throws him out. Suddenly, he finds himself stranded in a small town with no one to call his own. He enters with no recollection of the life he had led till then. He only vaguely recalls someone calling him ‘an actor’ in the hospital.

Released the year before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Karen Shakhnazarov’s absurdist satire Zerograd captures the disorientation and terror of gradually coming to realize that you live in a reality you no longer recognize. Arriving in a remote city in order to get a replacement for his company’s dysfunctional air conditioning unit, ordinary worker Alexei (Leonid Filatov) expects a short, uneventful visit before returning to Moscow. But when he runs into a secretary working in the nude at the manufacturing plant and witnesses a chef committing suicide after Alexei refused to eat a slice of cake that’s a full-size replica of his head, our protagonist is increasingly confronted with a world whose rules, behaviors, and morals are patently absurd. And, it turns out, he’s the only one that sees them as such.

There are certainly shades of Franz Kafka in this unnerving portrait of labyrinthine bureaucracy and existential despair,...

Succession creator Jesse Armstrong will be among the headline speakers at this year’s inaugural cinema programme at the Hay Literary Festival.

Running from May 22nd to June 1st, the longtime literary festival announced its plans earlier this month to expand with a new sidebar dedicated to cinema in collaboration with Mubi.

The full festival programme was announced this morning and Armstrong will feature in the cinema talks programme alongside Normal People and I May Destroy You intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien, director Marc Evans, producer Ed Talfan and screenwriters Tom Bullough and Josh Hyams (Mr Burton).

Rebecca Lenkiewicz will also pass through Hay to discuss her adaptation of Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk while novelist Robert Harris discusses the adaptation of his novel Conclave.

The festival’s screening programme, taking place at the newly erected Mubi Cinema, will screen titles from the Mubi catalog including Mia Hansen-Løve’s Bergman Island,...

By Imran Firdaus

Zahidur Rahim Anjan (1965-2025) was a profound admirer of filmmakers like Robert Bresson, Ritwik Ghatak, Yasujiro Ozu, Alain Resnais, and Aki Kaurismäki. Throughout the new millennium, he was a ubiquitous presence at film appreciation courses across Bangladesh, from the capital to divisional cities and rural districts. As a facilitator and screenplay expert, Anjan illuminated how Ozu and Bresson captured reality in fragmented ways, arguing that drama emerged not from sensational incidents but from the essence of everyday life, leaving a lasting impression. He would refer to Kaurismäki’s minimalist style as a tool to frame contemplation on screen. Needless to say, Anjan was immensely popular among his students, regardless of where he taught—universities, institutions, or workshops.

Through the trained eye of a film student, the zeal of a film activist, the dedication of a little magazine contributor, and the intuitive mind of a creative practitioner who wrote and drew rigorously,...

Dag Johan Haugerud’s “Love” was one of the 17 films which had their French premiere at the inaugural edition of the festival Visions Nordiques – French Nordic Film Days.

The fest is taking place March 5-9 across several locations in Paris, including the Grand Action theater; as well as the industry programme and co-production workshop taking place at Cnc and the Institut Suedois. Tributes were hosted for Lars von Trier and Aki Kaurismäki with the screenings of “Breaking the Waves” and “Le Havre.” The film lineup comprised “Love,” which premiered at Venice (and was followed by the Berlinale Golden Bear winner “Dreams (Sex Love)); Baltasar Kormákur’s “Touch,” Eirik Svensson’s “Safe House;” Lilja Ingolfsdottir’s “Loveable;” and Frida Kempff’s “The Swedish Topedo,” among others.

The event is jointly organized by The Five Nordics, France’s National Film Board, with the support of the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Embassies of Denmark,...

“Never in any part of my imagination would I have thought myself to be a representative of anything,” claimed Matthew Rankin, the co-writer and director of Universal Language, when asked about his film representing Canada in the Oscar race for best international feature. That expression didn’t indicate any doubts about the quality of the work. Rather, it was a nod to the irony of a film that deconstructs the idea of nations and borders being selected to compete in a race whose parameters were defined by those exact parameters.

While Universal Language might have missed an Oscar nomination, Rankin’s mode of empathetic and creative intercultural engagement is likelier to stand the test of time than the category’s putative frontrunner. His film blends the deadpan humor of Aki Kaurismäki with the formal playfulness of Abbas Kiarostami as it follows three stories that converge in a wintry setting that...

Universal Language could easily have overdosed on twee. Set in an alternate-universe Winnipeg where almost everyone is ethnically Iranian and speaks Farsi, it pays homage to films like Abbas Kiarostami’s Where Is the Friend’s Home? and Jafar Panahi’s The White Balloon. Director Matthew Rankin himself plays a character sharing his name, who travels home from Montreal to Winnipeg following news of his mother’s sickness. His story intersects with two subplots: children Negin (Rojina Esmaeili) and Nazgol (Saba Vahedyousefi) find a 500-riel note buried under ice and look for an axe so they can chop it out while Massoud (co-writer Pirouz Nemati) leads a guided tour of Winnipeg parking lots and highways.

Although Universal Language is very witty, with TV-commercial parodies and absurdist touches, fundamentally it’s a deeply sad film. This is reflected in its look: during the dead of winter, Massoud leads tourists around Winnipeg’s beige and grey districts.

Cannes Film Festival chief Thierry Fremaux had a special bond with David Lynch. During his very first edition of the festival as artistic director in 2001, Fremaux had programmed “Mulholland Drive,” which won best director at the festival and went on to earn an Oscar nomination.

From then on, Fremaux and Lynch became friends. A year later, he brought Lynch back as president of the jury. When Lynch presented his follow-up to the groundbreaking TV series “Twin Peaks,” he brought the first two episodes of “Twin Peaks: The Return” Cannes, which made an exception by showing the episodes as part of the official selection, traditionally confined to movies. Prior to Fremaux’s tenure, Lynch won Cannes’ Palme d’Or with “Wild at Heart,” then had “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” and “The Straight Story” in the official selection.

Fremaux felt connected to Lynch for many reasons besides his lifelong loyalty to Cannes.

The Cannes Film Festival has paid tribute to director David Lynch who was a long-time habitué, winning it Palme d’Or prize for Wild at Heart in 1990 and serving as jury president in 2002.

“It is with infinite sadness that we learn of the passing of David Lynch, a unique and visionary artist whose work has influenced cinema like few others,” the festival said in a statement following the announcement of the director’s death on Thursday at the age of 78.

“Winner of the Palme d’Or at the Festival de Cannes in 1990 for Sailor and Lula (Wild At Heart), then the Prix de la mise en scène (Best Director) in 2001 for Mulholland Drive, he elegantly presided over the Jury in 2002,” it continued. “He leaves behind a rare and timeless body of work, whose films will continue to nourish our imagination and inspire all those who see cinema as an art capable of revealing the unspeakable.

For Akira Kurosawa, “Man is a genius when he is dreaming.” While films like Seven Samurai, Rashomon, and Ran quickly spring to mind when one thinks of the Japanese filmmaker, some of his deeper cuts have inevitably slipped under the radar.

A still from High and Low | Credits: Toho Co

For a career that spanned over fifty years, with over thirty films released across multiple decades, even Kurosawa’s lesser-known works offer a compelling watch for film buffs.

Here, we rank ten overlooked Kurosawa films that show the breadth of the director’s cinema, his boundless curiosity, and his innate understanding of humanity.

10. I Live in Fear (1955)

Akira Kurosawa opens with Tokyo’s bustling intersections, scored by a theremin – a 1950s Atomic Age paranoia hallmark. We meet Dr. Harada, a dentist-cum-mediator, summoned to resolve a family dispute involving Kiichi Nakajima, a wealthy industrialist.

Nakajima’s obsession with nuclear fallout drives...

Illustrations by Stephanie Lane Gage.As the year draws to a close, we’d like to acknowledge the extraordinary efforts of our contributors. Here are some of their finest essays, interviews, festival coverage, and more from this year. We’re looking forward to much more in the new one. As always, thank you for reading.ESSAYSIllustration by Zoé Mahamès Peters.The current cinema:Sasha Frere-Jones on Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Eiko Ishibashi’s GIFTPhilippa Snow on Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor ThingsAdam Nayman on Pascal Plante’s Red RoomsCassie da Costa on RaMell Ross’s Nickel BoysAmanda Chen on Trương Minh Quý’s Việt and NamSanoja Bhaumik on Felipe Gálvez Haberle’s The SettlersNathalie Olah on Andrea Arnold’s BirdRobert Rubsam on Alice Rohrwacher’s La chimeraGrace Byron on Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV GlowZach Schonfeld on M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap and Michael Showalter’s The Idea of YouSam...

In recent years, many filmmakers have expressed their views on the death of cinema. Scorsese mentioned it in the context of the kind of films he grew up with being scarce. From David Cronenberg to Aki Kaurismaki, some other filmmakers also mentioned their discontent with the state of the currently-made films. More recently, Scorsese said that cinema is not dying but rather transforming. As it happens, several film-related artists are actively losing their jobs, making them lose their faith in the industry. So, there’s art and there’s a need for survival. Somehow, Quentin Dupieux’s ‘The Second Act’ (Original title: Le Deuxieme acte) touches upon both through its meta-comedy.

Dupieux, a multi-disciplined artist, is known for his eccentric and surrealist work in filmmaking. He often uses humor to drive a point in his endlessly amusing stories that examine different aspects of human experience. He is one of those...

With its stationary long-shots of domestic life, “Family Time” is like the “Paranormal Activity” of dysfunctional-holiday-gathering movies: There’s a sense of spying on people who don’t realize they’re under a microscope. Of course, Tia Kouvo’s debut feature is duly scripted, directed and professionally acted. But her approach is so effectively low-key, you might occasionally forget you’re watching a staged fiction.

There’s no new ground broken by this seriocomedy of three generations in one ordinary clan enduring each other over Christmas, then glimpsed in their separate lives afterward. Yet the canny level of observation — at once casual, caustic and empathetic — makes for a film that adds up to considerably more than the sum of its seemingly offhand parts. Finland’s Oscar submission won Jussi Awards for best film, direction and screenplay, and while it seems unlikely to make a splash internationally, it marks Kouvo as a promising talent.

Mubi, which recently planted a flag in the U.S. with the wide release of Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance,” has welcomed Zhang Xin to its board of directors, as part of a new chapter for the rapidly expanding company which will also see Zhang’s New York-based film production and financing group Closer Media become an investor in Mubi.

A billionaire entrepreneur, Zhang co-founded Closer Media and previously co-founded Soho China, a construction giant in Beijing and Shanghai known for its iconic projects designed by leading architects from around the world. She left the company in 2022 and partnered with William Horberg, a veteran producer whose credits include “The Queen’s Gambit” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” to break into the media world.

A patron of the arts, Zhang also serves as a Trustee of MoMA, and is a member of both the Harvard Global Advisory Council and Asia Business Council.

Cannes festival boss Thierry Frémaux will be presenting some of the world’s oldest moving images at the Red Sea International Film Festival when he premieres his latest documentary, Lumière! The Adventure Continues, a deep dive into the origins of cinema.

The doc, a sequel to Frémaux’s Lumière! The Adventure Begins (2016) will be screened as part of the festival’s International Spectacular sidebar. It features some 100 immaculately restored short films sourced from the Lumière Institute (where Frémaux is the director), shot by cinema pioneers Louis and Auguste Lumière.

The Lumière’s technical prowess, as inventors of the cinematograph, the groundbreaking photographic camera and projection technology that made films possible, is well-known. But in his new film, which he also narrates, Frémaux examines the Lumière’s artistic vision as they pioneered the “grammar of cinema” from scratch.

“Louis Lumière is the last of the inventors but the first of filmmakers,...

For those of you tired of the usual holiday movie diet of sleigh bells, snowflakes, and sugarplum fairies, The Hollywood Reporter‘s international team has whipped up a menu of new foreign films, currently available to screen in the U.S., that offer something for a more refined cinema palate.

Whether your taste runs to Irish hip-hop or Mexican musicals, Austrian horror or Danish romance, family-friend Thai comedy, or adult-only Aussie animation, we’ve got you covered for those long winter nights.

Banel & Adama (Stream/Rent On: Apple, Amazon, Fandango) ‘Banel & Adama’

French-Senegalese director Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s bold debut illuminates the complexities of love and identity in a Romeo and Juliet-style story set in rural Senegal. Featuring captivating performances by Khady Mane and Mamadou Diallo as the titular couple, Banel & Adama combines rich, humanistic storytelling with stunning visuals to conjure a deeply imagined world. While the director...

For a filmmaker on the rise, few honors are more exciting than an invitation to the legendary Criterion Closet. The latest auteur to share their picks is Payal Kapadia, the visionary director behind “All We Imagine as Light,” who stopped by the famed closet to pick up Blu-rays from some of her favorite directors. She took the opportunity to opine on everyone from Pier Paolo Pasolini to Aki Kaurismäki, explaining how her distinct style is a product of her truly global taste in film. Watch the video below.

Kapadia’s extensive knowledge of cinema should come as no surprise. In a recent interview with IndieWire’s Anne Thompson, the auteur explained that years of following the arthouse and festival ecosystem helped her cast the film’s two leads, Divya Prabha and Kani Kusruti.

“They are quite well-known in the arthouse cinema circuit in Kerala in the South,” Kapadia said. “They...

Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof’s Oscar hopeful The Seed of the Sacred Fig has won the sixth edition of the Arab Critics‘ Award for European Films, a joint initiative between European Film Promotion (Efp) and the Arab Cinema Center (Acc).

The drama, produced by Germany’s Run Way Pictures in co-production with Parallel45, Arte France Cinéma, was among 22 European-produced films in the running for the award, voted on by 89 critics from 15 Arab countries,

Taking inspiration from Iran’s Woman Life Freedom protests, the film revolves around a devout man who is promoted to the position of investigating judge at the Revolutionary Court in Tehran, just as his daughters become swept up in the pro-equal rights and democracy movement.

The award was announced on the fringes of Egypt’s El Gouna International Film Festival. Rasoulof could not attend in person, but sent greetings via a video message, while producer Mani Tilgner...

The Seed of the Sacred Fig, the Iranian drama from exiled director Mohammad Rasoulof has won the top prize for best film at the Arab Critics’ Awards for European Films.

The prize was announced at Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival. A jury of critics from 15 Arab countries picked Rasoulof’s drama from among 22 European productions. The Seed of the Sacred Fig is a French-German-Iranian production and is Germany’s official entry for the 2025 Academy Awards in the best international feature category.

The film, a depiction of a conservative Iranian family that breaks apart amid the political turmoil of the Women Life Freedom protests, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this year, where it won a special jury prize, and the Fipresci honor from international film critics.

Rasoulof, a sharp critic of the Iranian regime — Rasoulof had been arrested and imprisoned in Tehran’s notorious Evin jail in July 2022 for...

The independent movie service has become the streaming home to some of the best cinema in the world.

After just over a month in theaters, Coralie Fargeat’s acclaimed and outrageous body horror film “The Substance,” starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, will make its exclusive streaming debut this Halloween on the global film streamer Mubi, and to prepare from the switch, it’s time to countdown some of the platform’s best films!

Whether you’re activating or stabilizing your Mubi subscription to watch the must-see new release, the arthouse movie streamer is not only housed with classics like “In the Mood for Love,” “All About My Mother,” and more, it’s also packed with its own collection of Mubi-exclusive releases. From black comedies to neo-noir love stories, here are some of the best movies available to stream right now exclusively on Mubi!

7-Day Trial via amazon.com Mubi...

Entries for the 2025 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 97th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 3, 2025 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between November 1, 2023, and September 30, 2024. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 2, 2024.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is scheduled to...

Finland has picked the dramedy Family Time to represent the country for the 2025 Oscars in the best international feature category.

The film, by writer/director Tia Kouvo, is a sharp look at the familial ties that bind, following three dysfunctional generations as they come together at their grandparents’ house over the holidays. Ria Kataja, Elina Knihtilä, Leena Uotila, Tom Wentzel and Jarkko Pajunen star in the dark comedy which puts the cringe back in Christmas.

Jussi Rantamäki and Emilia Haukka produced the feature for Aamu Film Company together with Vilda Bomben Film. The film is a feature adaptation of Kouvo’s 2018 short of the same name.

Family Time premiered in Berlinale’s Encounters section last year and bowed in Finland last November. It went on to sweep Finland’s Academy Awards, the Jussis, taking best film, best director and best screenplay. The Match Factory is handling international sales.

Finland has...

Kenichi Ugana’s “The Gesuidouz” is a delightful deadpan oddity about a Japanese punk group, whose 26-year-old lead singer Hanako (Natsuko) is convinced she’ll be dead at 27, the same age as Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain. The quartet’s sardonic musical energy translates visually at every turn, with bright, subdued visual affectations that find humor in the morose.

The result is a fluffy, self-assured ode to creativity and finding one’s voice through genre cinema — the group’s songs and albums revolve around Hollywood horror films — with a particular viewer in mind. The film is, on one hand, undoubtedly Japanese in its sensibilities. Natsuko translates Hanako’s despondent mood into reflections and refractions on feeling trapped in her skin; she seldom strays from the character’s icy stillness, though she reveals a stunning sense of warmth on occasion. On the other hand, North American midnight movie fans who frequent...

Exclusive: TV industry veteran Katharina Feistauer has joined film service Mubi.

She has taken on a VP of Global Programming role at the film distributor, producer and streamer, having exited Paramount Global’s PlutoTV recently. Feistauer will report to Jason Ropell, Mubi’s Chief Content Officer.

Based in Mubi’s London office, she will lead Mubi’s programming team across all markets, driving the overall strategy of the streaming service and managing the pipeline of indie and filmmaker-driven content.

Mubi’s upcoming releases include Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, the Demi Moore-starring horror that was acquired for north of $10M in Cannes and will release wide in theaters on September 20.

Other films on the slate include Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, Ira Sachs’ Passages, Pedro Almodóvar’s Strange Way of Life, Molly Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex, Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves, Kevin Macdonald’s documentary High & Low...

The follow-up to his anarchic debut feature The Twentieth Century, a postmodern restaging of Canadian history that eschewed accuracy and realism in favor of strange psycho-sexual fetishes and aesthetic fixations, Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language takes a similarly irreverent approach to depicting his country’s geography and socio-political environment.

The film initially centers on what appears to be an Iranian middle school, albeit one situated in an incongruously wintry landscape, where an irate teacher (Mani Soleymanlou), ranting at his misbehaving pupils, asks them, “Can’t you at least fool around in French?!” We soon follow two young girls (Saba Vahedyousefi and Rojina Esmaelli) who set out to retrieve a banknote stuck inside a frozen puddle, as Rankin’s sophomore effort gradually reveals itself to be set in a parallel-universe Canada that recalls 1980s Iran as envisioned by one of the auteurs of the Iranian New Wave. Meanwhile, a character named...

Saudi Arabian film industry pioneer Faisal Baltyuor is opening the first arthouse cinema in Riyadh in what amounts to a milestone in the kingdom’s moviegoing trajectory ever since Saudi lifted its 35-year ban on cinema in late 2017.

The plush state-of-the-art 80-seat venue, called Cinehouse, is set to open in the Saudi capital later this month. The symbolic opening film will be a 1975 documentary titled “Development of Riyadh City” by Saudi helmer Abdullah Al-Muheisen. Before the religion-related Saudi ban on cinema went into effect, Al-Muheisen had been instrumental in laying the groundwork for the embryonic Saudi film industry. His vast body of work delved into social and humanitarian issues.

A curated program comprising local and international films at Cinehouse will follow after the “Development of Riyadh City” doc.

“For our opening film we actually went back to our Saudi film industry legacy,” said Baltyuor, a former CEO of the Saudi...

We first meet Remo Manfredini in a rundown Buenos Aires bar, nursing one too many drinks. As a champion jockey once feared on the racetrack, Remo now finds himself in a downward spiral. Alcohol and debts to the local gangsters have him firmly in their grasp. Into this gloomy scene emerge the thugs, who come to haul Remo to his next race. Though talented in the saddle, his drinking makes winning a losing bet.

This sets the stage for Luis Ortega’s genre-bending drama Kill the Jockey. Ortega proves himself a director to watch, weaving together elements of sports movies, gangster thrillers, and magical realism. When an accident leaves Remo badly injured, he awakens changed, embarking on an unexpected journey of self-discovery.

Led by a committed performance from Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Kill the Jockey takes us on a shape-shifting ride. Through colorful visuals and a surreal soundtrack, Ortega explores identity...

Luis Ortega’s absurdist comedy “Kill the Jockey,” which plays in Venice competition, is set in Argentina’s horse-racing community. “It’s a wild, wild world,” he tells Variety. “I encountered some very exotic jockeys and horse owners and I thought it’s so great. They’re so crazy and exciting, and [the jockeys] risk their life every race.”

The central character, Remo Manfredini, is clearly psychologically damaged – abusing drugs and alcohol to the extent that we see him fall off his horse even before it leaves the gate – but nonetheless he retains the self-possession and panache of a matador. “There is a lot of pride in that attitude,” says the Argentine filmmaker, whose previous film “El Angel,” about a baby-faced killer, premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard.

Remo, played by Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, always keeps his race-track cronies at a distance and can seem aloof. “The only way I could relate...

Nahuel Pérez Biscayart (Bpm) stars as a troubled jockey whose identity shifts radically after a serious accident on the track in Kill the Jockey (El Jockey), a Venice Film Festival entry by Argentinian director Luis Ortega (El Angel, Dromómanos). Visually lush and full of playful mystery, this equestrian-themed psychological thriller-comedy-whatsit strikes plenty of poses that may tickle the fancy of viewers with a taste for camp, surrealism and/or the absurd. However, others might feel underwhelmed by the film’s strenuous efforts to charm and find it slows to a trot by the end.

Ortega’s knack for nifty needle drops has been noted before, and Kill the Jockey, partly financed by Warner Music Entertainment, stays true to form with a killer soundtrack mixing Latin pop, synth-heavy Edm, local tangos and original music by Sune Rose Wagner. Paired with the saturated color palette, boxy 1:85 aspect ratio and deliberately still and stilted performances,...

To be a jockey is to be both athlete and adjunct. While the horse gets the glory, its human partner is a literal hanger-on: ostensibly in control, but subject to animal impulses. That paradox allows Remo Manfredini, the star rider at the center of “Kill the Jockey,” more scope for invisibility than most top-of-their-game sportsmen — though when an accident in a crucial race lands him in hospital, his very identity begins to disintegrate. Restlessly switching lanes from frenzied farce to pulpy gangster movie to gender-confusion musing, Argentine director Luis Ortega’s alternately dark and daffy eighth feature is suitably untethered for a story concerned with the malleability of the self. That comes at some cost to its impact, however: Awash with kooky gags and bolstered by the strange, soulful presence of leading man Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, it’s fun but flighty, liable to throw some viewers from the saddle.

Ortega...

Luis Ortega’s slow, unpredictable dramedy set in the world of mob-run racing in Buenos Aires, “Kill the Jockey,” plays its cards close to its chest. If surprising shifts into magical realism and existential rumination mean we are kept guessing about the film’s ambitions, there is also a sense that Ortega has let the material get away from him like a runaway horse.

Someone bested by a beast before the title even has a chance to flash up on screen is our titular jockey. We are first introduced to Remo Manfredini (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) catatonic in a bar before he is found by a menacing male search party. They revive him by the uncharming method of inserting a riding crop into his mouth and drive him to a race track. Here he pre-games with horse drugs mixed with booze and cigarettes and then takes a slow walk through a...

Announced as the big comeback of veteran Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki, Cannes Jury Prize winner 2023 “Fallen Leaves” was one of the biggest Nordic successes worldwide between 2020-2023 with over one million admissions.

So what inspired release campaigns were used by arthouse banners in territories as diverse as Taiwan, Norway and the Czech Republic to widen Kaurismäki’s core audience and make him a cool name on social media?

The topic was explored Aug. 22 at the Europa Distribution panel, Around the World in 80 Minutes: The Distribution and Promotion of Nordic Films Internationally, hosted by New Nordic Films in Haugesund, Norway.

One of the highlights of the three-day Nordic market, the Europa Distribution panel was moderated by seasoned industryite Petri Kemppinen, founder of Good Hand Production, a consultant at Finland’s post-production house Totalpost and co-head of Baltic Event’s TV Beats Forum.

First, outlining his domestic release strategy for Kaurismäki’s Helsinki-set love story,...

Finnish director Ulla Heikkilä chose the “best actors she could think of” for sophomore feature “Summer is Crazy,” featuring “Fallen Leaves” star Jussi Vatanen, Aamu Milonoff (“Girl Picture”), Jani Volanen (“Hatching”), Pirjo Lonka and Bruno Baer (“Light Light Light”).

“They brought their general ‘bestness’. It’s simply a luxury to work with such intelligent, skillful and charismatic actors. They are all very good at showing human condition in a bold and ‘naked’ manner,” she told Variety.

In the upcoming “Summer is Crazy,” set in the Finnish archipelago during the Midsummer week, one family – as well as their friends and lovers – deal with disappointments and dream of a better tomorrow.

After the bankruptcy of their fine-dining restaurant, the Eerolas are stuck in a seaside village. In the shadow of the father’s depression, both the mother and the teenaged daughter rebel against their stagnant life – each in their own way.

“I...

Dag Johan Haugerud’s Norwegian title Sex and Levan Akin’s Crossing are among six nominees for the 2024 Nordic Council Film Prize, awarded by the Nordisk Film & TV Fond.

The six nominees were announced during the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund.

Scroll down for the full list of nominees

Both Sex and Crossing debuted in Panorama at this year’s Berlin film festival, with Swedish production Crossing opening the strand.

The other titles include Baltasar Kormakur’s romantic drama Touch from Iceland and Aki Kaurismaki’s Golden Globes-nominated Fallen Leaves from Finland. Two documentaries round out the selection:...

Forget about “The Magnificent Seven”: It’s time for The Magnificent Six, competing for the Nordic Council Film Prize this year.

The nominees – consisting of four fiction and two documentary feature films and each representing one of the Nordic countries – were announced by Nordisk Film & TV Fond at the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund.

Denmark is represented by “The Son and the Moon,” directed by Roja Pakari and Emilie Adelina Monies. Written by Pakari – documenting her own struggle with cancer – and Denniz Göl Bertelsen, it’s produced by Sara Stockmann for Sonntag Pictures.

“Twice Colonized” by Lin Alluna, hailing from Greenland, was written by Aaju Peter and Alluna. Pic is produced by Emile Hertling Péronard for Ánorâk Film, Red Marrow Media and EyeSteelFilm.

“I’m extremely happy about the nomination and the fact that Greenland is now, for only the second time, represented at the Nordic Council Film Prize.