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Voice cast includes Lake Bell and Michael Cera.

Leading German sales company The Match Factory has acquired international rights to Dash Shaw’s Cryptozoo, a feature animation set to receive its world premiere at Sundance this week.

The hand-drawn animation marks the second feature of US comic-book artist and writer Shaw, whose distinctive debut My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea premiered at Toronto in 2016 and went on to screen at the Berlinale.

His follow-up is a fantastical, psychedelic feature set amid the counterculture of the 1960s, with a voice cast led by Lake Bell and Michael Cera. It...

DVD & Digital Release Date: March 26, 2013

Price: DVD $26.99 each

Studio: KimStim/Zeitgeist

Ghosts from Central Europe's past haunt a train station worker in the animated feature Alois Nebel.

Alois Nebel (2011) from the Czech Republic and the Singapore/Japan animated co-production Tatsumi (2011) are two gorgeously animated, award-winning film dramas.

Inspired by classic film noir and rendered in mesmerizing black-and-white rotoscope animation (à la Richard Linklater’s Waking Life), Tomás Lunák’s Alois Nebel traces the haunted memories and mysterious visions of a troubled train dispatcher through the shifting cultural and political landscape in the waning days of the Cold War. It focuses on the experiences of a quiet man at a remote railway station on the Czech-Slovak border whose life is disrupted bu a fog that brings hallucinations of trains from the previous 100 years. These ghosts from Central Europe’s dark past ultimately send him on a nightmarish and ominous journey.

The...

The 45th Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia will be held from October 4-14, 2012. We already know that The Body, by debut director Oriol Paulo, is opening the fest, and now word has come as to several of the other films that will be shown. Some may not be pure horror, but we're including everything here so you'll be 100% in the know.

From the Press Release:

Catalan cinema will be one of the stars in the Festival’s Official Selection, with two films that will be going in for the María Award for Best Motion Picture, the Festival’s main prize, based on the popular robotic character from Fritz Lang’s classic Metropolis. The first is Painless, Juan Carlos Medina’s first feature film, a passionate fantastic fable that takes root in the Spanish Civil war and stars Alex Brendemühl. The second film is El Bosc, based on a...

Graphic novels might have a reputation for frivolity, but they also have been proven to be very good for dealing serious topics that require the kind of creativity offered to deal with trauma. Art Spiegelman's Maus and Joe Sacco's Safe Area Goražde both look at people and places of war, and their combination of words and images have proven powerful and successful. The animated documentary Waltz with Bashir extended our idea of how a true story could be told. Tomás Lunák's feature film debut Alois Nebel is not a documentary, but it is an adaptation of a graphic novel, and is based around real trauma. Animation does not have to be Disney or Pixar; as this film proves, it can be just, if not more,...

From Albania to Vietnam, 63 countries are hoping that their film entry will get picked to fill one of the five slots for Best Foreign Language Film for the 84th Annual Academy Awards.

Five slots, 63 countries, the competition is fierce! Is your country of choice one of the 63 hopefuls?

I'm happy that my home country, the Philippines, has an entry, the dramedy "The Woman in the Septic Tank" from director Marlon N. Rivera. Released in the Philippines on August 3rd, the film became the highest grossing independent movie in my country's cinema history. So keeping my fingers crossed for this movie!

The shortlist will be released in January and then it will be whittled down to five contenders when the nominations are announced on Tuesday, January 24, 2012. The winner will be announced on Oscar night on Sunday, February 26, 2012.

Take a look at the complete list of Best Foreign Language hopefuls:

Albania, "Amnesty,...

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia Oscar 2012: New Zealand/First Samoan Feature Among Best Foreign Language Film Contenders Albania, Amnesty, Bujar Alimani, director; Argentina, Aballay, Fernando Spiner, director; Austria, Breathing, Karl Markovics, director; Belgium, Bullhead, Michael R. Roskam, director; Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belvedere, Ahmed Imamovic, director; Brazil, Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, José Padilha, director; Bulgaria, Tilt, Viktor Chouchkov, Jr., director; Canada, Monsieur Lazhar, Philippe Falardeau, director; Chile, Violeta Went to Heaven, Andrés Wood, director; China, The Flowers of War, Zhang Yimou, director; Colombia, The Colors of the Mountain, Carlos César Arbeláez, director; Croatia, 72 Days, Danilo Serbedzija, director; Cuba, Havanastation, Ian Padrón, director; Czech Republic, Alois Nebel, Tomás Lunák, director; Denmark, Superclásico, Ole Christian Madsen, director; Dominican Republic, Love Child, Leticia Tonos, director; Egypt, Lust, Khaled el Hagar, director; Estonia, Letters to Angel, Sulev Keedus, director; Finland, Le Havre, Aki Kaurismäki, director; France, Declaration of War,...

We gave you an update a few weeks ago, but The Academy now has its final list of the 63 films competing for Best Foreign Film Oscar. This list will get cut down as films screen and the committee decides on a final five when the nominations get announced late January. The notable films include Iran’s A Separation, which we adored and China’s massive budget The Flowers of War starring Christian Bale (which isn’t even complete to my knowledge).

Mexico’s Miss Bala (read our Cannes and Vancouver reviews) and Finland’s Le Havre (our Cannes and Toronto reviews) are also contenders. Lebanon’s Where Do We Go Now? is also in the mix, a drama that won the top prize at Toronto. There are many others we’ve seen at festivals, so follow that coverage here as we head into Oscar season. Check out the press release below.

Press Release:

Beverly Hills, CA - Sixty-three countries, including first-time entrant New Zealand, have submitted films for consideration in the Foreign Language Film category for the 84th Academy Awards®.

The 2011 submissions are:

Albania, “Amnesty,” Bujar Alimani, director;

Argentina, “Aballay,” Fernando Spiner, director;

Austria, “Breathing,” Karl Markovics, director;

Belgium, “Bullhead,” Michael R. Roskam, director;

Bosnia and Herzegovina,”Belvedere,” Ahmed Imamovic, director;

Brazil, “Elite Squad: The Enemy Within,” José Padilha, director;

Bulgaria, “Tilt,” Viktor Chouchkov, Jr., director;

Canada, “Monsieur Lazhar,” Philippe Falardeau, director;

Chile, “Violeta Went to Heaven,” Andrés Wood, director;

China, “The Flowers of War,” Zhang Yimou, director;

Colombia, “The Colors of the Mountain,” Carlos César Arbeláez, director;

Croatia, “72 Days,” Danilo Serbedzija, director;

Cuba, “Havanastation,” Ian Padrón, director;

Czech Republic,”Alois Nebel,” Tomás Lunák, director;

Denmark, “Superclásico,” Ole Christian Madsen, director;

Dominican Republic,”Love Child,” Leticia Tonos, director;

Egypt, “Lust,” Khaled el Hagar, director;

Estonia, “Letters to Angel,” Sulev Keedus, director;

Finland,...

The Toronto International Film Festival has lined up 25 features for its Discovery program. All the descriptions that follow are from the festival. Additional notes and more are on the way.

Pablo Giorgelli's Las Acacias. A truck driver has been charged with transporting a woman on the long journey from Paraguay's border to the city of Buenos Aires. He is totally unprepared for the extra passenger that will accompany them, the woman's infant daughter Jacinta, whose penetrating gaze eventually disarms his gruff exterior. Subtle and poignant, Giorgelli's 2011 Camera D'Or winner is a movingly beautiful road movie highlighted by stunning performances. (See the Cannes roundup.)

Tomás Lunák's Alois Nebel. Stories from the past and present converge at a small railway in Billy Potok, a tiny village on the Czech-Polish border. The local dispatcher, Alois Nebel, is a loner who prefers old timetables to people and has hallucinations of trains passing...

Now that we've got an entry collecting trailers for the films competing at this year's Venice Film Festival, here's another gathering trailers for films screening in the other sections as well as in the two autonomous programs, Venice Days and International Critics' Week. What we've got here, obviously, is a pretty mixed bag, but here we go:

Out Of Competition

Rolando Colla's Giochi d'estate:

Ugo Gregoretti, Carlo Lizzani, Francesco Maselli and Nino Russo's Scossa:

Tomás Lunák's Alois Nebel:

Kike Maillo's Eva:

Takashi Shimizu's Tormented:

Tony Ching Siu-tung's The Sorcerer and the White Snake:

Steven Soderbergh's Contagion:

Orizzonti

Yves Caumon's L'Oiseau (The Bird):

Clarissa Campolina and Helvecio Marins Jr's Swirl:

Amiel Courtin-Wilson's Hail:

Jonathan Demme's I'm Carolyn Parker: The Good, the Mad and the Beautiful:

And here are a couple more clips.

Michael Glawogger...

This year’s line-up for the 68th Venice Film Festival, taking place between 31st August and 10th September, has been announced by the festival’s official website, and as expected, it’s more than a little bit fantastic, with a brilliant line-up of films set to screen in Italy.

Heading the jury this year will be director Darren Aronofsky, the BBC reported back in April, who won the festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion, back in 2008 for The Wrestler.

The list, as you can imagine, is a bit of a long one, so I’ve highlighted some of the hottest tipped to look out for beneath. Playing in competition will be:

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, directed by Tomas Alfredson Wuthering Heights, directed by Andrea Arnold Texas Killing Fields, directed by Ami Canaan Mann The Ides of March, directed by George Clooney Quando La Notte, directed by Cristina Comencini Terraferma,...