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Green Border Photo: Courtesy of Venice Film Festival Green Border, Apple TV, streaming now

One of the most vital films of the past year regarding the ongoing refugee crisis, Agniezska Holland's docureal black and white drama charts the brutally inhumane situation experienced by refugees on her homeland Poland’s border with Belarus. Enticed by promises of a safe and easy way into the European Union by Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, little did the refugees realise they were just pawns in a deadly political game, becoming stuck in the no man’s land forests between the two countries, pushed back and forth with no mercy. Holland takes a multiple viewpoint approach, showing the situation from the refugees' perspective, that of a border guard Tomasz Włosok) and a freshly converted activist (Maja Ostaszewska). Holland pulls no punches and faced a backlash from her own government on account. “The press had been so...

Green BorderImage: Kino Lorber

Green Border, the latest from master Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland, is nothing short of a call to direct action. The film provides a nuanced, if at times frankly brutal, account of the treacherous conditions migrants face on the Polish-Belarusian border, which are either exacerbated or assuaged...

It's been a while since we've seen a true prestige film hit the top of the Netflix charts. Or, at least, it seems that way. Last week we saw Jennifer Lopez sci-fi outing "Atlas" have a strong showing on Netflix, a development made all the more upsetting by the simultaneous success of Antonio Banderas' B-movie "Security," which similarly blew up on the streamer seven years after its initial release. Prior to that, everyone's favorite Ogre, "Shrek," dominated the Netflix charts, while Scott Adkins Dtv actioner "One Shot" also managed to find its own success amid the Shrek-fever of May. All of this seemed a tad desultory and, dare I say, disheartening. Now, though, it may be Poland to the rescue, with murder mystery "Colors of Evil: Red" seeing global success on the service.

The crime thriller is adapted from Małgorzata Oliwia Sobczak's book "Czerwień" and directed by Adrian Panek.

Get to know actress Zofia Jastrzębska, who recently appeared in Netflix's Colors of Evil Red.

Colors of Evil Red is a Polish crime thriller directed by Adrian Panek, based on Małgorzata Oliwia Sobczak’s book Czerwień.

Zofia Jastrzębska's role is at the heart of the movie, as she plays murder victim Monika Bogucka, whose death is being investigated by prosecutor Leopold Bilski (played by Jakub Gierszał) and her own mother, Judge Helena Bogucka (Maja Ostaszewska).

Read full article on The Direct.

When the body of a young woman washes ashore on a beach, a prosecutor is determined to prove her murder is connected to a 20-year-old cold case. Directed by Adrian Panek (Werewolf), the Polish film Colors of Evil: Red is based on the book Czerwień by Małgorzata Oliwia Sobczak and stars Jakub Gierszał, Maja Ostaszewska, and Zofia Jastrzębska. The screenplay was written by Panek and Łukasz M. Maciejewski (The Getaway King).

Stream it now.

When officers discover the body of a murdered young woman, Monika Bogucka (Jastrzębska), washed up on one of Poland’s Tricity beaches, ambitious prosecutor Leopold Bilski (Gierszał), aka Bilski, is put on the case. After tracking down clues, he notices the circumstances of Monika’s death are similar to a case he saw over a decade ago — but his boss won’t let him reopen the old homicide investigation. In his pursuit for justice, Bilski teams...

“Colors of Evil: Red” is a Polish movie directed by Adrian Panek starring Jakub Gierszal, Maja Ostaszewska and Zofia Jastrzebska.

“Colors of Evil: Red” is among those films about serial killers, investigations, crimes, and nightclubs that, while not groundbreaking, leave a pleasant aftertaste for the audience. However, don’t expect a Hollywood-style thriller packed with action, chases, and shocking plot twists. Despite its initial presentation, the movie leans more towards dialogue and personal relationships than action and surprises.

Plot

A girl is found murdered on the beach with signs of sexual violence. The police investigate and discover a blood-stained shirt. Yet, everything seems too perfect, prompting a deeper investigation, especially since the victim’s mother, a judge, gets involved. The trail leads to one of the city’s nightclubs.

A Slow-Paced Thriller with More Dialogue Than Action

“Colors of Evil: Red” won’t leave viewers in awe or stick in...

Agnieszka Holland’s filmography will be celebrated this June thanks to the Museum of the Moving Image and the Polish Cultural Institute New York.

MoMI will host a retrospective featuring nine of Holland’s most beloved films leading up to the release of her latest “Green Border.” The nine features include highlights “Europa Europa” on and “The Secret Garden,” which both will screen in 35mm with Holland in attendance on June 20 and 21.

The retrospective will take place from June 7 through 21 and serve as a toast to Holland’s “undimmed ability to depict historical trauma and human struggle with sensitivity and compassion” across her 60 years in filmmaking, per the official press statement.

The retrospective will feature her initial work made in Poland, including “Provincial Actors,” “Fever,” and “A Woman Alone,” along with Holland’s 1990s art house features “Europa Europa” and “The Secret Garden,” and depictions of present-day political resistance like “Spoor” and “In Darkness.

"Helping is not illegal." Kino Lorber has revealed an official US trailer for an urgent, acclaimed Polish film titled Green Border, the latest from the masterful Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland. This premiered at last year's 2023 Venice Film Festival in the fall, where it won a Special Jury Prize at the end. Thirty years after Europa Europa, three-time Oscar nominee Agnieszka Holland brings a masterful eye for realism and deep compassion to this blistering critique of a humanitarian calamity that continues to unfold. The B&w film follows family of refugees from Syria, an English teacher from Afghanistan, and a border guard, who all meet on the Polish-Belarusian border during the most recent humanitarian crisis in Belarus. Green Border is a poignant and essential work of cinema that opens our eyes and speaks to the heart, challenging viewers to reflect on the moral choices that fall to ordinary people every day. Yes it's harrowing and unforgettable.

Netflix has unveiled nine new movies and series from Poland including the directorial debut of High Water writer Kasper Bajon and a thriller from the team behind Forgotten Love.

As the streamer continues to unveil international originals by the bucket load, Project UFO leads the Poland slate, a mini-series helmed by Bajon that will transport fans of stories inspired by real events to the 1980s in order to investigate the alleged UFO landing in a remote countryside village.

Bajon wrote the popular High Water series, one of the biggest to come from Netflix Poland, about the 1997 Central European flood and how it was managed by the authorities of the Polish city of Wrocław.

Meanwhile, Michał Gazda (director) and Magdalena Szwedkowicz (producer), the team behind last year’s Netflix Poland movie Forgotten Love, are re-teaming on a movie following a retired policeman trying to bring to justice to those behind a ruthless bank robbery case,...

The medium is the message in Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border, a piece of political cinema so freshly ripped from the headlines that you can still feel the jagged edges. Holland shot the film, which chronicles the wide ripple effects of a 2021 surge of asylum seekers along the Polish-Belarusian border, in just 23 days in March of this year and had it ready for fall festivals mere months later. In the end, her sense of propulsive, incandescent outrage is both the project’s reason for existence and its strongest attribute.

Holland, directing in collaboration with Kamila Tarabura and Katarzyna Warzecha, resists the impulse for urgency to trump all aesthetic considerations. Green Border moves beyond documentary-style realism as a shorthand for authenticity, and it’s at its most gut-wrenching when Tomek Naumiuk’s agile camerawork captures bodies in frequent, frightening motion, as well as the illusory sense of security that those bodies feel in moments of rest.

It’s a strange time for Agnieszka Holland. Green Border, the new film from the acclaimed Polish director — a three-time Oscar nominee — just celebrated the best opening for a Polish movie in cinemas this year with 137,000 admissions over its first weekend, according to local distributor Kino Świat. It’s particularly impressive given that the film, a black-and-white drama depicting the real-life plight of refugees stranded on the natural border between Poland and Belarus, can be a rough watch.

In late 2021, thousands of refugees from the Middle East and Africa were lured to the Polish border by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, who cynically engineered a geopolitical crisis, promising migrants easy passage over the Polish border into the European Union. But the Polish government refused to let them in, leaving families stranded and starving in the swampy, treacherous forests between the two countries. Holland’s film intertwines the perspectives of the stranded refugees,...

Controversy over Venice title “Green Border” continues to heat up as director Agnieszka Holland gave an ultimatum to Poland’s Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro following his comments about her film.

According to the statement shared with Variety, Holland has hired the lawyers Sylwia Gregorczyk-Abram and Michał Wawrynkiewicz. She is demanding a public apology and payment to The Association of Children of the Holocaust in Poland, arguing Ziobro’s words have “violated her personal rights.” Ziobro has seven days to fulfill the obligation outlined in the document, otherwise the filmmaker “will take legal action.”

“People who are afraid, as the Minister of Justice knows very well, are much easier to govern,” she stated.

Right-wing political figures have been taking to social media to criticize Holland, including Krystyna Pawłowicz who called the film “mindless, fake, irresponsible and disgraceful,” as well as accusing the director of “slandering families” and being “sick with hatred for Poland.

If cinema is an empathy machine, to paraphrase the late Roger Ebert, then Agnieszka Holland’s new film is one precision-tooled specimen.

This profoundly moving, flawlessly executed multi-strand drama, shot in stark black and white, tracks refugees from various nations in 2021 trying to cross the border from Belarus into Poland. With inevitably tragic consequences, they become pawns in a gruesome game of “pass the parcel” between guards on both sides of the title’s green border, the dividing line between European Union member Poland and Russia ally Belarus.

Although the violence shown isn’t gratuitous, the suffering in Green Border (Zielona granica) is painfully palpable. There is a moment where a Pole, a minor character in the story, refuses to look at a video on a friend’s phone showing a border guard beating a migrant; Holland’s film implicitly confronts everyone — and that would be most of us — who...

While you’re still in the vice-like grip of its multilevel narrative it may not feel like it, but a film like Agnieszka Holland’s bruisingly powerful new refugee drama ultimately comes from a place of optimism. It is optimistic to expect and to nurture a reaction of potentially motivating outrage, when you portray the brutality of which human individuals, at the behest of human institutions, are capable. It is optimistic to believe that, faced with extraordinary cruelty, a viewer’s ordinary decency will be compelled to rise and rebel. “Green Border” is a heart-in-mouth thriller set on the Polish-Belarusian border that wraps its social critique in the razor wire of punchy, intelligent cinematic craft in order to elicit precisely such emotions. If we can feel the horror, perhaps there is hope.

It is 2021 and a Syrian family are fleeing Isis and their ravaged hometown of Harasta on an airplane bound for Belarus.

Editor’s Note: This review was published during the 2023 Venice Film Festival. Kino Lorber releases “Green Border” in select theaters Friday, June 21, 2024.

If you’ve seen “Europa Europa,” the real-life story of a Jewish boy who escapes a Nazi concentration camp and joins the German army, you’ll know that the Polish director Agnieszka Holland knows how to make films about people wriggling their way through life. Her latest film, which is in competition at Venice, tells several interlinked stories in and around the swampy forest border region between Poland and Belarus. We meet border guards, activists, and refugees themselves. Despite biting off a bit more than it can chew, it’s an affecting introduction to a little-known crisis and the latest case of a master filmmaker showing us they can still do it.

Six weeks out of a national election in which Poland’s hard-right government is expected to extend its grip on power,...

As if to come to the aid of her national cinema after the debacle that was Roman Polanski’s The Palace, Poland’s Agnieszka Holland, soon to turn 75, restores some of her homeland’s cultural dignity with a devastating exposé that angrily, and quite brilliantly, questions its humanity and political integrity. At 144 minutes, and in black and white, it is not exactly a Trojan horse, and its moral rigor does not come with a spoonful of sugar. But Green Border earns every second of that running time, and with a focus and energy that belies its director’s age. Awards-wise, this may prove to be the international feature to beat.

It begins in October 2021 with Chapter 1: The Family, in which a Syrian couple, Bashir and Amina, their three children and their grandfather are traveling on a plane from Turkey to Belarus. Their mood is upbeat; they are planning to go from Belarus to Poland,...

On the JoBlo Movies YouTube channel, we will be posting one full movie every other day throughout the week, giving viewers the chance to watch them entirely free of charge. The Free Movie of the Day we have for you today is the thriller Jack Strong, starring Patrick Wilson. You can watch it over on the YouTube channel linked above, or you can just watch it in the embed at the top of this article.

Written and directed by Wladyslaw Pasikowski, Jack Strong has the following synopsis: In the midst of the Cold War, Ryszard Kuklinski, a colonel in the Polish army, challenges the Soviets when the communist regime was still powerful. The colonel discovers that Poland was the target of the US plans for a nuclear counterattack.

Wilson is joined in the cast by Marcin Dorocinski, Maja Ostaszewska, Dimitri Bilov, Dagmara Dominczyk, Oleg Maslennikov, Ireneusz Czop, Miroslaw Baka, Zbigniew Zamachowski,...

Berlin-based sales agency Films Boutique has closed multiple territory deals on Agnieszka Holland’s “The Green Border,” which just completed principal photography in Poland.

The film has been sold to Condor (France), September Films (Benelux), Movies Inspired (Italy), Leopardo Filmes (Portugal), McF Megacom (former Yugoslavia), Kino Swiat (Poland) and Aqs (Czech Rep./Slovakia).

“The Green Border” tells the story of a family of Syrian refugees, a solitary English teacher from Afghanistan and a young border guard, all of whom meet on the Polish-Belarusian border during the most recent humanitarian crisis triggered by Belarus’ president Alexander Lukashenko, who opened the country’s doors to migrants as a back door to enter the EU.

The screenplay, penned by Holland, Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Maciej Pisuk, is inspired by real events. Research for the film included hundreds of hours of document analysis, interviews with refugees, border guards, borderland residents, activists and experts.

A co-production between Poland,...

Rolling off a successful collaboration on “Charlatan,” Films Boutique has boarded Agnieszka Holland’s next film “The Green Border,” which just completed principal photography in Poland.

Now in post production, “The Green Border” tells the fateful story of a family of Syrian refugees, a solitary English teacher from Afghanistan and a young border guard, all of whom meet on the Polish-Belarusian border during the most recent humanitarian crisis triggered by President Lukaschenko opening doors to migrants in Belarus as a back door to enter the EU.

The screenplay, penned by Holland, Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Maciej Pisuk, is inspired by real events. Research for the film included hundreds of hours of document analysis, interviews with refugees, border guards, borderland residents, activists and experts.

A co-production between Poland, France, Belgium and the Czech Republic, “The Green Border” is produced by Marcin Wierzchosławski (Metro Films), Fred Bernstein (Astute Films) and Holland. Co-producers are Maria Blicharska,...

"Maciej, we have to finish what we started." Netflix has debuted the full-length official trailer for a Polish mountain climbing thriller titled Broad Peak, from filmmaker Leszek Dawid. This one will be streaming on Netflix in September for those interested. Broad Peak is based on the true events of Maciej Berbeka - the legendary Polish mountaineer, member of the Ice Warriors group, who wanted to reach the top of one of the most dangerous mountains. When it comes to fighting for honor, price doesn't matter. Berbeka returns to one of the most dangerous mountains in the world, Broad Peak on the Pakistan border (see Google Maps), to clear his name. Returning to the dangerous Karakoram mountain range comes with hard decisions that will forever change his life. Starring Ireneusz Czop as Maciej, Maja Ostaszewska, Dawid Ogrodnik, Marcin Czarnik, & Lukasz Simlat. I'm all in for this! Very strange choice of a pop song for the trailer,...

Never Gonna Snow Again (?niegu ju? nigdy nie b?dzie) Kino Lorber Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net linked from Rotten Tomatoes by: Harvey Karten Director: Malgorzata Szumowska. Co-director: Michal Englert Writer: Michal Englert, Malgorzata Szumowska Cast: Alec Utgoff, Maja Ostaszewska, Agata Kulesza Weronika Rosati, Katarzyna Figura,Andrzej Chyra, Lukasz Simlat Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 7/16/21 Opens: […]

The post Never Gonna Show Again Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

"I heard you had great abilities, sir." Kino Lorber has released an official US trailer for the strange Polish drama Never Gonna Snow Again, which first premiered at the Venice Film Festival this year. We ran a teaser and a full trailer last year in the fall. On a gray, foggy morning outside a large Polish city, a masseur apparently from Ukraine named Zhenia enters the lives of the wealthy residents of a gated community. With his hypnotic presence and quasi-magical abilities, he is able to get a residence permit and starts plying his trade. The well-to-do residents in their own cookie-cutter suburban homes seemingly have it all, but they all suffer from an inner sadness, some unexplained longing. The attractive and mysterious newcomer's hands heal, and Zhenia’s eyes seem to penetrate their souls. Starring Alec Utgoff, Maja Ostaszewska, Agata Kulesza, Weronika Rosati, Katarzyna Figura. I'd say that comparison...

Wealthy, curtain-twitching suburbanites have formed the basis for many a TV show, but the Polish feature Never Gonna Snow Again proves the setting can be profoundly cinematic and esoteric, as well as darkly funny. Co-directing and writing with director of photography Michal Englert, Malgorzata Szumowska revels in blending genres in this acutely observed festival hit that is Poland’s submission for the 2021 International Oscar race.

Most of the action takes place in a gated community made up of identikit white mansions. We enter along with Zenia (Alec Utgoff), a quiet but charismatic Ukrainian masseur. Arriving in Warsaw with his massage bed slung over his shoulder, he hypnotizes an official into a slumber before rubber-stamping his own permit. As Zenia leaves the man’s office, the camera pans to show the needle of a record player, which magically springs into action.

The music? Shostakovich: the waltz that Stanley Kubrick used memorably in Eyes Wide Shut.

“Never Gonna Snow Again,” which was chosen as Poland’s Oscar submission prior to its world premiere in Venice, marks a further step in cinematographer Michał Englert’s long collaboration with Małgorzata Szumowska. It started in the 1990s with her short “Silence,” followed by her feature debut “Happy Man” in 2000, and continues with “Never Gonna Snow Again,” with Englert serving as both cinematographer and co-director, alongside Szumowska, on the film.

“Our way of working, or our sense of humor, hasn’t really changed. Although the scope of my involvement is constantly expanding,” says Englert, who has been developing screenplays with Szumowska since 2013’s “In the Name Of,” and describes their process as “instinctive.”

“I definitely have an ego, but you can’t make movies all by yourself and in the case of ‘Never Gonna Snow Again’ we decided its power will be bigger if we sign it as a directorial duo.

Malgorzata Szumowska and Michal Englert’s “Never Gonna Snow Again,” one of the buzziest titles out of the Venice Film Festival, has found distribution in the U.K., Italy and Germany.

Following what’s understood to have been a competitive process with wide interest, Picturehouse Entertainment has swooped for U.K./Eire rights. I Wonder has bought the film for Italy, and Real Fiction are on board for Germany. The film is sold internationally by The Match Factory.

“Never Gonna Snow Again” world premiered in Venice on Sept. 7 to critical acclaim. The film tells the story of masseur Zhenia, who hails from the Ukrainian city of Pripyat, which was deeply affected by the nearby Chernobyl blast. Zhenia enters the lives of the rich but troubled residents of a bland, walled-off community in Poland, where he begins to heal them with his hands and companionship, and changes their lives for good.

How much healing can a good massage provide? A fast-fading hour or so of relaxation, or a more sustained sense of general well-being and peace with the world, so long as it’s topped up with repeat appointments? In “Never Gonna Snow Again,” a searching, cryptic satire of bourgeois insularity in modern Poland, the magic hands of an immigrant Ukrainian masseur are tasked with easing a litany of woes, from middle-class guilt to climate change anxiety to terminal cancer — though no one thinks to ask him about his own interior aches and pains. After last year’s moody but mildly received English-language diversion “The Other Lamb,” prolific Polish auteur Malgorzata Szumowska returns to home turf in this Venice competition entry, and the result is her most compelling and hauntingly realized film to date.

With a run of variously provocative, distinctively styled films through the 2010s — including the Juliette Binoche starrer...

"I am your healer. I am taking away your misery, your suffering, your sickness." The Match Factory has released a full-length trailer for the Polish drama Never Gonna Snow Again, premiering at the Venice Film Festival this year. We ran the teaser trailer a few weeks ago, and the film debuts this week in Venice. A Ukrainian migrant masseur becomes a guru-like figure in the gated community where his clients live. They seem to feel an inner sadness, a longing. Perhaps it is for the winter, which is no longer present in their country. Unlike them, their children don't build snowmen anymore. Maybe their emptiness runs deeper? ... His hands heal, his eyes penetrate the souls of the lonely women. To them, his Russian accent sounds like the song of the past, a peaceful melody of their childhood, when the world was a safer place. Zhenia, for this is his name,...

A man grieving the loss of his loved ones retreats into the safety of memory, a place where time stands still and the departed walk among him. Over the years an imaginary city grows, populated by literary idols, comic book heroes, family members and friends. But even that mysterious place is eventually threatened by the passage of time, and the protagonist must make the difficult decision to return to the real world.

“Kill It and Leave This Town” is the debut feature by acclaimed Polish animator Mariusz Wilczyński, who spent 11 years crafting a dreamlike journey into the subconscious and the past. Produced by Agnieszka Ścibior for Bombonierka and Academy Award winner Ewa Puszczyńska for Extreme Emotions, it features the voices of Krystyna Janda, Andrzej Chyra, Maja Ostaszewska, Małgorzata Kożuchowska, and Barbara Krafftówna. Pic world premiered in Encounters, the new competitive strand of the Berlin Film Festival.

A self-taught artist who...

The 70th Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 20 – March 1) unveiled its Encounters program today, featuring the premieres of new works by Tim Sutton and Romanian director Cristi Puiu.

Also screening is Josephine Decker’s Shirley with Elisabeth Moss and Michael Stuhlbarg, marking the film’s international premiere after its upcoming Sundance bow, and Gunda by Victor Kossakovsky, whose last pic was the 2018 Venice doc Aquarela.

Encounters is a newly-created competitive section at the Berlin festival that looks to highlight “new voices in cinema and to give more room to diverse narrative and documentary forms.” A three-member jury will choose the winners for Best Film, Best Director and a Special Jury Award.

“As a result of passionate research, the 15 titles chosen for Encounters present the vitality of cinema in all of its forms. Each film presents a different way of interpreting the cinematic story: autobiographical, intimate, political,...

The film is shooting in and around Warsaw and stars Stranger Things’ Alec Utgoff. Principal photography has commenced on Malgorzata Szumowska’s Wonder Zenia on location in and around Warsaw. The film stars Alec Utgoff in the title role, alongside Agata Kulesza, Maja Ostaszewska (Body), Weronika Rosati and Katarzyna Figura. "I’m really excited to work on this project with Malgo,” said Alec Utgoff. “Her passion and persistence are what attracted me most. I saw her most recent film — The Other Lamb — so beautifully shot and directed. I think this film is going to be striking and original, a real eye opener for audiences.” The screenplay is by Szumowska and her regular writing collaborator (and cinematographer) Michal Englert. The film tells the story of Zenia, an industrious Ukrainian migrant worker in Poland. Zenia works as a masseur who makes house calls...

Malgorzata Szumowska, best director winner at the Berlin Film Festival for “Body,” has started shooting “Wonder Zenia,” starring “Stranger Things” actor Alec Utgoff, on location in and around Warsaw.

Utgoff, who played Alexei in the third season of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” and also appeared in “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit,” stars in the title role in “Wonder Zenia.” The film also stars Agata Kulesza, who played “Red Wanda” in Oscar-winner “Ida,” Maja Ostaszewska (“Body”), Weronika Rosati and Katarzyna Figura.

Zenia, the film’s protagonist, is an industrious Ukrainian migrant worker in Poland who makes house calls as a masseur to the needy and aspirational residents of a middle-class gated community near Warsaw. He is privy to all of their problems, anxieties and secrets – and something of an unwitting guru figure. Zenia’s grounded spirituality, apparent healing powers and broad shoulders make him an object of lust for many of the lost souls in the community.

As always, a number of deserving film festival entries are stragglers in need of distribution or funneled away by buyers to be released in the following year. One of the downsides of attending a number of film fests is seeing great cinema sometimes plopped unceremoniously into a limited theatrical (or even VOD) release over a year later without any traction. And if a film happened to receive a cold shoulder at a prestigious venue like Cannes the chances of convincing audiences otherwise is a difficult feat.

Happily, all but two titles from this list currently have Us distribution (and with a little luck, someone will eventually get around to snapping those up, too). A thankful shout out to the following distributors is in order, with Strand Releasing responsible for three of the titles, while Kino Lorber, Sundance Selects, Drafthouse, A24, and Alchemy make up the others. Until then, here’s...

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Throughout his long and respected career, Jim Carrey has dabbled in numerous genres, though the likes of Dumb and Dumber, Liar Liar and Bruce Almighty have seen him become something of a household name in comedy. That’s not to say the actor hasn’t dipped his toe in the dark side of cinema before, with both Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and, to a lesser extent, The Number 23 showcasing the breadth of Carrey’s acting range.

Now, thanks to upcoming Polish thriller True Crimes, we’re about to see the actor flex his dramatic muscles once more. Currently filming in the country’s capital Krakow, the feature is being helmed by Alexandros Avranas (Miss Violence, Without), lifting inspiration from David Grann’s New Yorker article that exposed a forgotten piece of Poland’s criminal history.

First published in 2008, it documents the ways in...

Jim Carrey is taking a turn into dark territory with his next feature, the famed comedian currently in Krakow shooting Alexandros (Miss Violence) Avranas' thriller True Crimes. Based on a David Grann article from the New Yorker in 2008 the story follows a murder investigation following clues in a book about an earlier and eerily similar crime. With the rest of the principal cast made up of high end Polish stars - Agata Kulesza, Maja Ostaszewska and Robert Wieckiewiscz costar - the first stills from the shoot have turned up in the Polish press. We've got the Carrey-centric ones below but for a more comprehensive selection we recommend heading over to Filmstart, from whence these came....

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

Film fests such as the Toronto Int. Film Festival afford us the best of opportunities to get instantly familiar with new faces in the world of cinema. With last week’s The Conversation, I gave you a rundown of the talent behind the camera with the 2015 Tiff Top Ten New Voices. Today, we look back at the best performances from fresh and relatively new crop of actors and actresses. Almost evenly split genderwise, we’ll surely look back on these early performances from these youthful players as the moment where they received their big break and if they’re not familiar now, they surely will be in the coming years. In deliberating this top ten list, I focused on offerings either unique to the festival or near concurrent premieres in Locarno and Venice.

#10. Karelle Tremblay – Les Etres Chers

After Podz’s Miraculum (2013) Stefan Miljevic’s Amsterdam (2013) and Mathieu Denis’ Corbo...

After the initial slate for the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival was announced last month there were many observers, including this pundit, who wondered of the annual September event had once again lost the battle of premieres to its Fall festival cousins. While debuting Ridley Scott's "The Martian," Jean Marc Valle's "Demolition" and Michael Moore's "Where Do We Invade Next" is nothing to sneeze at the fact some of the most anticipated films of the year are heading to Venice and Telluride first has to be a bit disheartening. Especially when it's your 40th anniversary. Never fear fans of the Great White North, Toronto always seems to land some eyebrow raising last minute additions and this year is no different. Today Tiff announced that David Gordon Green's "Our Brand Is Crisis" with Sandra Bullock, Marc Abraham's "I Saw The Light" with Tom Hiddleston, Catherine Hardwicke's "Miss You Already...

The Toronto International Film Festival has added 5 Galas and 19 Special Presentations to its huge and highly anticipated international lineup including the Closing Night Film, Paco Cabezas’s Mr. Right.

In July, it was announced that Jean-Marc Vallée’s Demolition will open the 2015 Festival. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Watts, Chris Cooper and Judah Lewis, Demolition will have its world premiere on September 10 at Roy Thomson Hall.

Toronto audiences will be among the first to screen films by directors Ridley Scott, Deepa Mehta, Lenny Abrahamson, Brian Helgeland, Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, Jason Bateman, Cary Fukunaga, Catherine Corsini, Stephen Frears, Tom Hooper, Hany Abu-Assad, Meghna Gulzar, Terence Davies, Jonás Cuarón, Julie Delpy, Rebecca Miller, Rob Reiner, Catherine Hardwicke, Pan Nalin, Lorene Scafaria, David Gordon Green, Matthew Cullen, Gaby Dellal, James Vanderbilt and Marc Abraham.

The various films listed below star Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren, Susan Sarandon, Gary Oldman, Toni Collette, Drew Barrymore,...

New films by Jerzy Skolimowski, Filip Bajon and Marcin Wrona are among selected titles.

The 40th Gdynia Film Festival (September 14-19) will feature a total of 18 titles in its main competition this year.

Jerzy Skolimowski’s Polish-Irish co-production 11 Minutes, starring Richard Dormer, Agata Buzek, Beata Tyszkiewicz and Mateusz Kościukiewicz follows the same 11 minutes in the lives of several different characters, while the action of Bajon’s Panie Dulskie is set in 1914, 1954 and the 1990s, with a cast including Krystyna Janda, Katarzyna Figura and Maja Ostaszewska.

Wrona will be in Gdynia with his surrealistic third feature, the Polish-Israeli co-production Demon, starring Itay Tiran, about a Polish gangster whose body is possessed by the spirit of a young Jewish girl.

The competition will also include Kinga Dębska’s My Sister and Bartek Prokopowicz’s Chemo, which are both showing in closed screenings at next week’s Polish Days during Wrocław’s New Horizons Film Festival (July 23 - August 2) as well...

Stars: Marcin Dorocinski, Maja Ostaszewska, Patrick Wilson, Dimitri Bilov, Dagmara Dominczyk, Oleg Maslennikov | Written and Directed by Wladyslaw Pasikowski

The IMDb synopsis for Jack Strong describes the film as a “gripping spy thriller” that “tells the true story of a man who dares to challenge the Soviet empire.” While it’s true that the story involves spies, soviets and men, there’s not a great that’s daring, gripping or thrilling in this meandering yet overwrought snoozefest.

The Cold War is a rich seam for stories that has quite possibly been excavated of all its jewels at this point (mainly by John le Carré and Stanley Kubrick), so a plot involving state secrets being passed from Russia-controlled Poland to the slickly-suited USA has me stifling a yawn from the opening credits on. “Jack Strong” is the codename given to the Polish colonel disenfranchised by his Communist overlords and embarks upon...

With only a few weeks to go until the Berlin Film Festival unspools, much of the competition lineup still remains a mystery. However, today has added some clarity with several titles unveiled. Among them, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s latest effort. The director, who is under house arrest and a 20-year filmmaking ban, nevertheless manages to get a movie out every couple of years. His last, Closed Curtain, stirred up controversy in Iran when it won the screenwriting prize in Berlin in 2013. This latest film, Taxi, stars the director, although other details were not immediately available.

Also in the mix is the world premiere, out of competition, of Bill Condon’s Mr. Holmes, starring Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Milo Parker, Hiroyuki Sanada and Hattie Morahan. McKellen plays the titular detective as he nears the end of his days and revisits an unsolved case which forced him into retirement.

Werner Herzog...

Queen of the Desert, starring Nicole Kidman and Robert Pattinson, added to Berlinale competition line-up; Mr. Holmes, starring Ian McKellen as an aged Sherlock, to play out of competition.

The 65th Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 5-15) has added a further eight titles to its Competition programme, ahead of the complete line-up next week.

The films, which originate from across Europe, Asia, the Us and the Middle East, include the world premiere of Queen of the Desert, Werner Herzog’s biopic based on the life of British explorer Gertrude Bell.

Nicole Kidman plays the 19th century explorer, known as the female Lawrence of Arabia, and her co-stars include James Franco, Damian Lewis and Robert Pattinson (as Te Lawrence).

Berlinale 2015: new Competition films

Body

Poland

By Malgorzata Szumowska (Stranger, Elles, In the Name of)

With Janusz Gajos, Maja Ostaszewska, Justyna Suwala

World premiere

Cha và con và (Big Father, Small Father and Other Stories)

Vietnam / France / Germany...

Sebastian Schipper, Werner Herzog, Benoit Jacquot and Further Titles Added to the Selection

Another eight films have been selected for the Competition Programme of the 65th Berlin International Film Festival.

The productions are from the following countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Hong Kong/China, Iran, the People’s Republic of China, Poland, the USA, the United Kingdom and Vietnam.

Body

Poland

By Malgorzata Szumowska (Stranger, Elles, In the Name of)

With Janusz Gajos, Maja Ostaszewska, Justyna Suwala

World premiere

Cha và con và (Big Father, Small Father and Other Stories)

Vietnam / France / Germany / Netherlands

By Di Phan Dang (Bi, Don’t Be Afraid)

With Do Thi Hai Yen, Le Cong Hoang, Truong The Vinh

World premiere

Journal d’une femme de chambre (Diary of a Chambermaid)

France / Belgium

By Benoit Jacquot (Farewell, My Queen; Three Hearts)

With Léa Seydoux, Vincent Lindon, Clotilde Mollet, Hervé Pierre, Vincent Lacoste

World premiere

Mr. Holmes

United Kingdom

By Bill Condon (The Fifth Estate)

With...

Other projects supported by Romania’s film fund include Cristian Mungiu’s Rmd and Tudor Giurgiu’s Apropierea.

Romania’s Centrul National al Cinematografiei (Cnc) has become the latest European film fund to be raided by the ubiquitous film-maker Peter Greenaway for a future project.

Greenaway’s Walking To Paris (Mergand Spre Paris), which is being structured as a co-production between his regular producer Kees Kasander’s UK-based Cinatura, Switzerland’s Cobra Film, France’s Cdp Productions and Romania’s Abis Studio, received 291,000 Ron (€65,000) in the results of the 2013 call for projects.

Walking To Paris centres on the 27-year-old Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi who set off a month-long trek across Europe from Romania to Paris in 1903, and will show how Brancusi’s fight for survival and many adventures during his journey influenced his subsequent work.

Greenaway had previously accessed the Croatian Audiovisual Centre for Goltzius And The Pelican Company and the Polish Film Institute for Nightwatching, while...

Here’s a list of some of the new DVD and Blu-ray releases this week we’re particularly interested in. Plus, some old favorites (and not so favorites) coming out this week for the first time on Blu-ray.

Movies

About Last Night… ~ Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, James Belushi (Blu-ray)

Alien Trespass ~ Eric McCormack, Dan Lauria, Robert Patrick, and Jenni Baird (DVD and Blu-ray)

Blue Thunder ~ Roy Scheider, Warren Oates, Candy Clark, and Daniel Stern (Blu-ray)

Chaos ~ Jason Statham (Blu-ray)

The Class (Entre Les Murs) ~ François Bégaudeau, Agame Malembo-Emene, and Angélica Sancio (DVD)

Cutthroat Island ~ Geena Davis, Frank Langella, Matthew Modine (Blu-ray)

Eagles Over London ~ Van Johnson, Frederick Stafford, Francisco Rabal, and Luigi Pistilli (Blu-ray)

Gigantic ~ Zooey Deschanel, Paul Dano, John Goodman, and Ed Asner (DVD)

I Love You, Man ~ Paul Rudd, Jason Segal (DVD and Blu-ray)

Katyn ~ Artur Amijewski, Maja Ostaszewska, and Andrzej Chyra (DVD)

Michael Jackson: Moonwalking – The...

With all eyes on the upcoming Academy Awards (not to mention the Spirit Awards, the afternoon before), it's a relatively quiet week at the box office. There are some bubblegum high school antics, a couple of documentaries about the dysfunctional, a children's literary classic and a somber drama set during WWII. Take heart, we're nearly over the hump.

Download this in audio form (MP3: 6:11 minutes, 8.5 Mb)

"Delhi 6"

BAFTA-nominated director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra returns with this transatlantic journey of self-discovery that offers itself as another girder in the bridge between Bollywood and the U.S. American-born Indian Roshan (Abhishek Bachchan) makes a pilgrimage from New York to India to bring his ailing grandmother home. In the process, he discovers a little something about himself, his ancestral homeland and the proud traditions contained within it. Veteran composer A.R. Rahman, who's vying for an Oscar for his work on "Slumdog Millionaire,...

Spring is a season of renewal, particularly in the movie business, where the completion of the awards derby allows Amy Adams to segue from playing a solemn nun in "Doubt" to a klutzy crime scene cleaner in "Sunshine Cleaning." Along with "Sunshine," there are plenty of festival favorites about to get their day in the sun, whether that's in theaters, on DVD or on demand online or on TV. This preview recognizes the many ways to get your indie film fix, as well as the special events you might want to head out to if you live in New York or Los Angeles, including "The Brothers Bloom" director Rian Johnson's week-long con man movie "Festival of Fakery" at L.A.'s famed New Beverly Cinema, about which we recently spoke to the director. But regardless of whether we're watching films from the past or present, we're looking forward to the next couple months.

By Neil Pedley

With all eyes on the upcoming Academy Awards (not to mention the Spirit Awards, the afternoon before), it's a relatively quiet week at the box office. There are some bubblegum high school antics, a couple of documentaries about the dysfunctional, a children's literary classic and a somber drama set during WWII. Take heart, we're nearly over the hump.

Download this in audio form (MP3: 6:11 minutes, 8.5 Mb) "Delhi 6"

BAFTA-nominated director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra returns with this transatlantic journey of self-discovery that offers itself as another girder in the bridge between Bollywood and the U.S. American-born Indian Roshan (Abhishek Bachchan) makes a pilgrimage from New York to India to bring his ailing grandmother home. In the process, he discovers a little something about himself, his ancestral homeland and the proud traditions contained within it. Veteran composer A.R. Rahman, who's vying for an Oscar for his work on "Slumdog Millionaire,...