News

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For regular updates, sign up for our weekly email newsletter and follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSHard Truths.Mike Leigh’s forthcoming Hard Truths will reunite him with Marianne Jean-Baptiste, star of Secrets and Lies (1996). It will be the British director’s first film set in the present day since Another Year (2010).Jia Zhangke has divulged some details of We Shall Be All, now in the early stages of post-production. In production off and on since 2001, the film will be his first feature since Ash Is Purest White (2018). “I travelled with actors and a cameraman to shoot, without a script, without any obvious story,” the director told Variety. “This is a work of fiction, but I have applied many documentary methods.”Robert Bresson’s rarely seen Four Nights of a Dreamer is being restored by MK2 Films, set for a spring release.

Film Festival

Restored classic films from Ernst Lubitsch, Stanley Kubrick and Roman Polanski are among eight older titles set to play at next month’s Hong Kong International Film Festival.

Lubitsch’s 1920 farce “Kohlhiesel’s Daughters,” will be presented with a live music accompaniment by the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble. And, despite rumors to the contrary, Kubrick’s first feature, “Fear and Desire,” has been preserved intact and will play at the festival with nine minutes of previously deleted footage. It forms an anti-war pair with Polanski’s 2000 Nazi occupation tale “The Pianist.”

Others selected include Michelangelo Antonioni‘s “Il Grido”; Manoel d’Oliveira’s “Madame Bovary” adaptation “Abraham’s Valley”; Arturo Ripstein’s director’s cut of “Deep Crimson,” restored in 4K with an additional 25 minutes of content; Jacques Rivette’s “L’Amour Fou”; and “The Dupes,” by Tewfik Saleh.

Format

Screentime New Zealand will adapt hit property format “Location,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For regular updates, sign up for our weekly email newsletter and follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSNotebook readers, rejoice—the Mubi Shop has launched anew in the US and UK, and you can finally broadcast your love for the world’s sharpest international film criticism via this stylish, crisply screen-printed Notebook tote bag, featuring a clapperboard calligram design. Also in the store is a Cannes Film Festival–themed print by Dutch artist and cartoonist Joost Swarte, which was commissioned for our limited-edition print broadsheet issue of Notebook, distributed in Cannes.Sundance announced its lineup last week, including new films from Jane Schoenbrun, Steven Soderbergh, Debra Granik, Yance Ford, Brett Story, and more. This will be the first Sundance under the directorship of Eugene Hernandez, formerly of Film at Lincoln Center.Keep that winter coat handy—the Berlinale has announced that Lupita Nyong’o will lead the jury.

The Dupes.The August sun is a fierce weapon. Amidst the war, occupation, and destitution that form the backdrop of Tewfik Saleh’s The Dupes (1972), it is the sun that ultimately represents the greatest danger to its Palestinian protagonists. Impoverished refugees searching for work, the three men attempt to cross the desert border from Iraq to an oil-abundant Kuwait. In a no-man’s-land too deadly to be policed, the trio must put their faith in a Palestinian smuggler to guide them through this trial of fire. The Dupes is set in 1958, ten years after the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” when 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes to enable the creation of the state of Israel. Its three migrant characters represent different generations of Palestinians confronting this great dispossession, their paths converging in the Iraqi port city of Basra. Shifting between past and present, the narrative recollects their lives and losses, culminating...

Festival has programmed 75 films from 36 countries.

The Marrakech International Film Festival has unveiled the full line-up for its 20th edition, which runs from November 24-December 2.

The festival is opening with Richard Linklater’s action comedy Hit Man, starring Glen Powell, and is screening 75 films in total from 36 countries.

Marrakech’s official competition, which comprises first and second feature films, includes Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s Cannes Competition title Banel & Adama, Lina Soualem’s Venice Giornate degli Autori documentary Bye Bye Tiberias and Moroccan director Kamal Lazraq’s feature debut Hounds, which premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes.

Scroll down for full line-up

Johnny Barrington,...

Following Main Slate and Spotlight, the 61st New York Film Festival has unveiled its Revivals lineup, featuring new restorations of classic and overlooked films. Highlights include Manoel de Oliveira’s Abraham’s Valley, Jean Renoir‘s The Woman on the Beach, Bahram Beyzaie’s The Stranger and the Fog, Abel Gance’s La Roue, Paul Vecchiali’s The Strangler, Lee Grant’s Tell Me a Riddle, Nancy Savoca’s Household Saints, Horace Ové’s Pressure, and more.

“This year’s edition of Revivals is a thrilling showcase of cinema history, packed with groundbreaking discoveries and long unseen classics alike, all in outstanding restorations,” said Florence Almozini, Senior Director of Programming at Film at Lincoln Center and NYFF Revivals Programmer. “We never cease to be amazed at the lasting influence of these cinematic gems on our collective sense of cinema, with the way they have tackled cultural, societal, or political issues with such modernity and artistry.

Fifty years of movie magic, from Tunisia to Iraq, as chosen by Omar al-Qattan, film-maker and chair of Shubbak – A Window on Contemporary Arab Culture

The Night (Al-Lail)

Mohammad Malas, 1993

A great Syrian film. It is about the director's home town of Quneitra, on the borders of the Golan Heights, which was almost completely destroyed by the Israelis after the 1967 war and remains in ruins. The film is a historical-autobiographical epic of three generations, taking you from the Syrian fight for independence against the French in the 1930s, through the 1948 war with Israel, and into recent times. Malas is probably the most highly regarded living Syrian director – he is still based in Damascus as far as I know – and this film is heavily influenced by Tarkovsky in the use of long, contemplative dream and memory sequences where time is as important an expressive element as space, dialogue or movement.

The...