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Filmmaker Angela Schanelec weaves intricate, cerebral tales that stay with you long after. While her films can seem enigmatic, viewers who dive in are rewarded with glimpses of rarely seen creative visions.

Schanelec has quietly built an impressive body of work over decades, gaining acclaim in art house circles. Her films play like visual poems, prioritizing impression and abstraction over exposition. Music, her latest, premiered at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival.

Music reimagines the classic Greek myth of Oedipus Rex, though don’t expect a literal retelling. Schanelec transports audiences to an atmospheric realm where nothing is quite as it seems. Scenes unfold in a hypnotic style, revealing tantalizing clues about the characters while leaving much open to interpretation.

Who are these striking figures we meet, and what secrets might their fates portend? Schanelec trusts viewers to ponder these mysteries without unambiguous answers. Her gift is making the familiar feel mystifying once more.

And Bear Your Eyes: Hochhäusler’s Grim Sketch of a Tangled Underworld

Death, it seems, does not quite become Christoph Hochhäusler, the Berlin School alum making his French language debut with the enigmatically titled La Mort viendra (Death Will Come). His foray into French language, a country which first lavished considerable acclaim upon the wave of Berlin School directors who cropped up in the late 1990s German cinema scene (such as Christian Petzold and Angela Schanelec), feels like something of a logical full circle moment for Hochhäusler in particular, who spent years trying to make an Isabelle Huppert headlined WWII drama I’ve Seen You Smile.…...

Germany’s Christoph Hochhäusler, the acclaimed director of “Till The End of The Night” which premiered at the 2023 Berlin Film Festival, returns with his latest film, “Death Will Come.” The crime piece is set to debut at the Locarno Film Festival, produced by Heimatfilm in collaboration with Amour Fou Luxembourg and Tarantula.

Sold by Italy’s True Colors, the film sees Tez, a hitwoman played by Sophie Verbeeck, tasked to avenge the death of a crime boss’s courier. The boss (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) who hired her has motives more nuanced than they seem.

Tez remains an enigma, with the story only scratching the surface of what makes her tick as she goes about her work. For Hochhäusler, the mystery is intentional. “I believe spectator and character must meet. As a spectator, I am usually willing to go to greater lengths, investing in the fiction so to speak, if the...

Cinema Guild has secured U.S. distribution rights for “Matt and Mara,” directed by Kazik Radwanski and starring Deragh Campbell and Matt Johnson.

The film debuted in the Encounters section at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year and closed the Jeonju International Film Festival in May.

The narrative follows Mara (Campbell), a creative writing professor, whose life takes an unexpected turn when she reconnects with Matt (Johnson), an author from her past. As their relationship develops, Mara navigates the complexities of her strained marriage to an experimental musician. When her husband unexpectedly cancels plans to drive Mara to a conference out of town, Matt accompanies her instead and the pressure in their undefined relationship slowly builds.

Campbell and Johnson reunite for the film after their roles in Radwanski’s “Anne at 13,000 ft.”

The deal was brokered by Cinema Guild president Peter Kelly and the film’s producers, Medium Density Fibreboard Films.

Without music, life would be a mistake. —Friedrich NietzscheIllustration by Ivana Milos.Sometimes during a film, a fleeting moment occurs onscreen that changes everything, and you wonder whether you’ve really seen what you think you have. It was too short, too violent, too beautiful. You didn’t quite understand it, but you felt it. Was it just a dream? Whenever I encounter such moments, I understand something about the way time escapes the grasp of our perception. As my mind lingers on the shot I have just seen, the film moves on. For a second, everything seems unchanged, as if I just imagined this moment. But then I see that the film itself starts to move differently, its colors change, the light has a different taste to it, or the voices of the protagonists seem softer. It becomes clear that something has occurred that has changed everything. This can be a uniquely personal encounter,...

The indie market is feeling pretty good. A big film from India Kalki 2898 Ad may unseat Rrr’s North American opening weekend. June Squibb-starrer Thelma is blowing through midweek shows and stands at $3.75 million heading into week 2 steady at 1,280 theaters. Searchlight Pictures Kinds Of Kindness by Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things) starring Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons jumps to 500 screens from five after the best limited opening of the year last weekend.

Annie Baker’s Janet Planet from A24 goes from 2 screens to 300 and a handful of interesting indies open in limited release from Catherine Breillat‘s Last Summer to Jake Paltrow’s June Zero. Things are still quite tough but there’s room for optimism. Not clear if that will last, but it’s nice..

New: Telugu sci-fi epic Kalki 2898 Ad on 900+ screens is rivaling crossover blockbuster Rrr as distributor Prathyangira Cinemas said the film grossed $5.56 million in...

Oedipus Shrugged: Schanelec Finds Tragedy is the Song That Doesn’t End

There’s little use clinging to the description of Angela Schanelec’s latest film Music as being ‘freely adapted from the myth of Oedipus’ as the only players truly blinded are the audience members themselves in this elliptical, overtly self-indulgent post-narrative endeavor. For those who’ve experienced and enjoyed Schanelec’s last nine features, the structure of her latest should come as no surprise, effused with long shots filled with seemingly banal details and repetitive visual cues which sometimes seem to coalesce into an actual subtext and then drift away into some other strand of focal points.…...

Angela Schanelec's new, nearly silent film, simply titled Music, is supposedly 'freely' based on the Greek myth of Oedipus. It might be the most enigmatic offering from the esteemed German director. But its depiction of melancholy and fragility of human life is, nevertheless, so beautiful and timeless, that I can't help tearing up by the end. As always with Schanelec's films, there are striking images and a ghost of a narrative thread, with lots of gaps that you will need to fill in yourself. Time is elastic in Music; in one scene you see an infant being found and adopted, the next we see Jon (Aliocha Schneider) accidentally killing someone (his father?) and going to prison. There's a prison guard, Iro (French actress Agathe Bonitzer),...

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

Angela Schanelec’s cinema is one of details. It has not always been that way, though, or at least not so apparently; her early films, formally rigorous, with shots lasting long past the point where people vacate the frame or where choreographed pans are a kind of portraiture. They focus on characters in emotionally specific situations as they inhabit equally particular topographic and geographic spaces. In these films, Schanelec lays out the connection between a person’s internal state and their environment, be it a lonely artist adrift in Marseilles or travelers caught in the liminal spaces of Orly airports. With 2016’s opaque, challenging, ultimately revelatory The Dreamed Path, however, the close-ups became more frequent (and with them the Bresson comparisons), retrospectively spotlighting the attention she has always had in the peculiarity of the physique, light, and costumes. Since The Dreamed Path––first with I Was at Home, But… and...

New films by rising German directors Natja Brunckhorst, Fabian Stumm and Frédéric Jaeger are among the nominees for this year’s German Cinema New Talent Award, which will hand out prizes to the best director, producer, writer and actor.

It is open to all directors, producers, screenwriters, and actors whose first, second or third features have been selected for Munich International Film Festival’s (Miff) New German Cinema section.

Brunckhorst’s German reunification comedy Two To One will open the festival on June 29. It is in the running for the best director prize of € 30,000, with 12 other titles including Fabian Stumm’s second feature Sad Jokes,...

Exclusive: Cinema Guild has picked up U.S. distribution rights to Richland, the latest feature from British-American nonfiction filmmaker and artist Irene Lusztig.

The film debuted at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival and has gone on to play across the international circuit, including IDFA, Sheffield, Doctober in Chicago, and the San Francisco International Film Festival’s Doc Stories. Cinema Guild will release the film on DVD and digital platforms on June 11.

The pic is set in Richland, a town in Washington State next to the Hanford Nuclear Site which, from the early 1940s, housed nuclear government workers at the height of the Manhattan Project. It’s also a town that produced weapons-grade plutonium for decades, and its citizens have pridefully embraced their identity. The official synopsis reads: Richland offers a prismatic, placemaking portrait of a community staking its identity and future on its nuclear origin story, presenting a timely...

Hong Sansoo’s A Traveler’s Needs, starring Isabelle Huppert, has sold North American distribution rights to New York’s Cinema Guild.

The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, winning the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize.

A Traveler’s Needs will premiere in North America later in 2024, after which Cinema Guild will release in theaters. The pic is a comedy with a strong Korean connection, with Huppert playing Iris, a woman struggling in Seoul who turns to teaching French to make ends meet. Regular collaborators Lee Hyeyoung and Kwon Haehyo also feature as Huppert’s student and flirty husband respectively.

Sangsoo and Huppert have collaborated twice before, on 2012 comedy-drama In Another Country and 2017’s Claire’s Camera.

“A Traveler’s Needs hits like a meteorite from another galaxy,” said Cinema Guild President Peter Kelly. “Huppert delivers a beguiling and hilarious performance. Her Iris is a character that only Hong and Huppert,...

Cinema Guild has acquired North American distribution rights for “You Burn Me” (aka “Tú me abrasas”), directed by Argentina’s Matías Piñeiro.

The film had its world premiere at the Berlinale in February in the festival’s Encounters section. It won a special mention from the jury at Paris’s Cinéma du réel in March.

Cinema Guild will release the film in theaters following its currently unspecified North American festival premiere later this year. The company has also acquired rights to three earlies films by Piñeiro – “The Stolen Man” from 2007; “They All Lie” from 2009; and “Rosalinda” which will be released on home video and digital alongside “You Burn Me.”

An adaptation of “Sea Foam,” a chapter in Cesare Pavese’s Dialogues with Leucò, Piñeiro’s latest is an intimate and expansive meditation on death and desire. It is also a challenging exploration of the possibilities of adapting text to film.

Searching for and listening to movie soundtrack music for the year is an active quest of curiosity, discovery, and collage. For those fatigued and pushing through the chilliest season, I hope this mix can provide both energy and warmth, as it did to me in making it.Trends in film music over the last decade are continuing strong in 2023, particularly in the ambition of independent auteurs using complex and unusual scoring. The foundation for this mix is Angela Schanelec's beautiful and aptly titled Music, which provides both diegetic and non-diegetic moments to guide us. Samples range from The Old Oak, in which classical choral choir meets Syrian guitar and words of hope that now hit harder than ever, to a mix of sentimental strings courtesy of the legendary Joe Hisaishi. Abstract experimental sounds by two completely different kinds of artists—Harmony Korine and Thomas Newman—are mixed with sliced...

We are less than a year removed from Robert Redford’s provocative declaration, at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival’s opening presser, that “there are too many film festivals.” It was a comment that itself came a year after Redford’s even more contentious comment that, as far as he knew, his Park City annual was the only festival in the world that could claim to be “purely independent.” Most of the world’s film festivals are still in revival mode following more than three years of cancellations, hybridizations, shutterings and overhauls, and the persistent question of whether or not they’re still necessary to cinema culture should arguably begin with the regional film festival—a category that contains more than 95% of the world’s festivals, and also does not include Sundance. Without getting too hung up on the terms “regional” and “independent”—the latter, in particular, is prone to very...

Exclusive: Cinema Guild has acquired U.S. distribution rights to Deborah Stratman’s well-received latest Last Things, which premiered in the New Frontiers section at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

The film will open theatrically in New York at Anthology Film Archives on January 12 on a 35mm print before expanding across the country. The film’s broad synopsis reads: Last Things looks at evolution and extinction from the perspective of the rocks and minerals that came before humanity and will outlast us. With scientists and thinkers like Lynn Margulis and Marcia Bjørnerud as guides and quoting from the proto-Sci-fi texts of J.H. Rosny, Deborah Stratman offers a stunning array of images, from microscopic forms to vast landscapes, and seeks a picture of evolution without humans at the center.

After Sundance, Last Things went on to play Berlin and NYFF and picked up prizes at Dokufest Kosovo and Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival.

Ken Loach’s ‘The Old Oak’ takes Spanish festival’s audience prize.

The 68th edition of the Valladolid International Film Week, also known as Seminci, wrapped on Saturday (October 28), giving its top award, the Golden Spike, to Laura Ferrés’ debut feature The Permanent Picture.

It is the first time the best feature award at the long-running film festival has been won by a Spanish woman director.

Ferrés previously directed short film The Disinherited which won the Cannes Discovery Award for best short in 2017.

See below for full list of winners

The Permanent Picture is the story of an introverted middle-aged...

Two movies which come in on immigration from vastly different angles – Laura Ferrés’ “The Permanent Picture” and Ken Loach’s “The Old Oak” – won big Saturday night at Spain’s Valladolid Festival, walking off with its main competition Golden Spike and the Spanish event’s best actor (Dave Turner) and Audience Award plaudits respectively.

The prize ceremony also saw Charlotte Rampling, star of closing film “Juniper” from Matthew J. Saville, accept an enthusiastically applauded Honorific Spike for her career achievement.

Though decided upon by independent juries, Valladolid’s prizes say much about the new-fit festival after a first-year reboot by new director José Luis Cienfuegos, previously a Gijón and Seville fest head.

Under directors Fernando Lara (1984-2004), Juan Carlos Frugone (2005-08) and Javier Angulo (2009-2022), Valladolid has consolidated as one of Spain’s biggest festivals, after San Sebastián. and a bastion of auteurist, arthouse independent cinema. Few figures in Europe...

U.S.-based distributor Cinema Guild has acquired North American rights to the newly-restored 4K version of Somai Shinji’s 1993 classic “Moving” from French sales agent MK2 Films.

The Japanese coming-of-age drama won the best restored film award, the top prize in Venice Classics, when it premiered at the Biennale in September.

Cinema Guild, which also released restorations of Somai’s “Typhoon Club” (1985) and “P.P. Rider” (1983) earlier this year, will open the film in theaters in the U.S. and Canada in 2024.

When her parents split and her father Kenichi moves out of their family home, Renko (Tabata Tomoko), a bright and energetic 6th grade girl, is left alone with her mother, Nazuna, in Kyoto. As Nazuna sets out new rules for their life together, Renko makes plans of her own, and sees to it that any changes happening in her family happen on her terms.

Since its premiere...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.The Deep Blue Sea.REMEMBERINGTerence Davies has died, aged 77. Michael Koresky, who wrote a monograph on Davies in 2014, penned a beautiful Sight & Sound obituary, in which he wrote that “no one made movies like Davies, who precisely sculpted out of a subjective past, creating films that glided on waves of contemplation and observation, inviting viewers to join him in the burnished darkness of a past about which he felt complex, contradictory feelings.” Last year, Dan Schindel wrote for Notebook about the role of poetry in Benediction (2022), and in 2012, Michael Guillen interviewed Davies about The Deep Blue Sea (2011). "The problem with film is that it's always in the eternal present,” says Davies. “But it's closest, I think, to music. You don't have to be a musician to follow a symphonic argument. If you love the music,...

More than 200 international filmmakers have rallied in support of ousted Berlinale artistic director Carlo Chatrian, pledging their names to an open letter imploring the cultural organization to keep the artist director in place. Among the first signatories were Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Joanna Hogg, “Corsage” director Marie Kreutzer, Andrew Ross Perry, and Olivier Assayas. Over the course of the day on Wednesday, another 130 directors joined them, the list swelling to include M. Night Shyamalan, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Tilda Swinton, and Claire Denis. 260 filmmakers have now signed the open letter.

“We, a diverse group of filmmakers from all over the world, who have deep respect for Berlin International Film Festival as a place for great cinema of all kinds, protest the harmful, unprofessional, and immoral behavior of state minister Claudia Roth in forcing the esteemed Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian to step down despite promises to prolong his contract,” says the letter.

Chatrian...

Martin Scorsese, Radu Jude, Joanna Hogg, Claire Denis, Bertrand Bonello, M. Night Shyamalan, Kristen Stewart, Hamaguchi Ryusuke and Margarethe von Trotta are among the international filmmakers and talents who have signed an open letter in support of Carlo Chatrian whose mandate as artistic director of the Berlinale will come to an end next year. The number of signatories has now exceeded 400 names and keeps growing.

As we reported last week, Chatrian had been expected to stay on beyond 2024, and was surprised to learn that the German body which oversees the festival, Kulturveranstaltungen des Bundes in Berlin (Kbb), announced that it would no extend his contract. The org had previously said it would abandon the model of having an executive director and an artistic director and return instead to having a single director, following the next edition. The festival’s executive director Mariëtte Rissenbeek will also be leaving her post after the next edition.

Next Goal Wins (Taika Waititi, 2023).The lineup is being unveiled for the 2023 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, starting with 60 selections from the Gala and Special Presentations programs. The festival takes place from September 7–17, 2023.Gala PRESENTATIONSConcrete Utopia (Um Tae-Hwa)Dumb Money (Craig Gillespie)Fair Play (Chloe Domont)Flora and Son (John Carney)Hate to Love: Nickelback (Leigh Brooks)Lee (Ellen Kuras)Next Goal Wins (Taika Waititi)Nyad (Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin)Punjab ’95 (Honey Trehan)Solo (Sophie Dupuis)The End We Start From (Mahalia Belo)The Movie Emperor (Ning Hao)The New Boy (Warwick Thornton) The Royal Hotel (Kitty Green)The Holdovers.Special Presentationsa Difficult Year (Éric Toledano, Olivier Nakache)A Normal Family (Hur Jin-ho)American Fiction (Cord Jefferson)Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet)Close to You (Dominic Savage)Days of Happiness (Chloé Robichaud)The Rescue (Daniela Goggi)Ezra (Tony Goldwyn)Fingernails (Christos Nikou)Four Daughters (Kaouther Ben Hania...

In one of their festival announcements, Toronto International Film Festival have unveiled some of the most exciting international offerings of the year with Wavelenghts. Featuring Jean-Luc Godard’s posthumous short Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars, Pedro Costa’s Daughters of Fire, Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Bas Devos’ Here, Eduardo Williams’ The Human Surge 3, Phạm Thiên’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, Angela Schanelec’s Music, and much more, it’s quite an eclectic lineup.

“Wavelengths is a testament to the range of cinema celebrated at TIFF,” stated Anita Lee, Chief Programming Officer, TIFF. “It is also evidence that artist-driven experimental films are thriving and growing a new generation of cinephiles.”

“The increasing necessity to support artists willing to take risks, break rules, and challenge the status quo — especially in our over-saturated media landscape — bears repeating,...

The Toronto Film Festival has unveiled its Wavelengths program for artist-driven experimental work that includes films by avant garde directors Denis Côté, Radu Jude, the late Chantal Akerman and Wang Bing.

There’s selections for Isiah Medina’s He Thought He Died, an experimental heist film; Angela Schanelec’s Music, a retelling of the Oedipus myth; and Denis Côté’s Mademoiselle Kenopsia, which stars Larissa Corriveau and will first bow at the Locarno Film Festival.

Wavelengths also booked fiction debuts with Rosine Mbakam’s Mambar Pierrette, a portrait of a Cameroonian seamstress; and Phạm Thiên Ân’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, the Vietnamese director’s hypnotic first feature about a man haunted by past memories when returning to his hometown that picked up the Caméra d’Or in Cannes.

“The increasing necessity to support artists willing to take risks, break rules and challenge the status quo — especially in our over-saturated media landscape — bears repeating,...

A 4K uncut restoration of Chen Kaige’s 1993 Palme d’Or winner “Farewell My Concubine” is a highlight of the Toronto International Film Festival’s (TIFF) Classics strand while Jean-Luc Godard’s last film will feature in Wavelengths.

The Classics strand also includes Canadian producer-director Brigitte Berman’s Oscar-winning feature documentary “Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got” (1985), portraying the life of the clarinettist and bandleader, and, after decades of oblivion Jacques Rivette’s New Wave classic “L’amour fou” (1969), whose original celluloid elements were damaged in a fire. A 50th anniversary screening of “Touki Bouki” (1973), from Sengal’s Djibril Diop Mambéty and Ousmane Sembène’s “Xala” (1975), presented in 4K, complete the program. Classics is curated by Robyn Citizen, director of programming and platform lead, with contributions from Andréa Picard.

The Wavelengths strand has 12 feature films and 19 shorts, as well as a suite of four restored early films by...

The Toronto International Film Festival has announced this year’s Wavelengths and Classics sidebars, the former section known for its politically charged, geographically diverse fare with a wide range of work drawn from the worlds of documentary, contemporary art, and international art-house cinema.

Wavelengths this year counts 12 feature films and 19 shorts, as well as a suite of four restored early films by the singular Chantal Akerman.

Of note in the Wavelengths short section, North American audiences will finally get to see Jean-Luc Godard’s swan song short, Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars, which played Cannes this past spring.

Another highlight in the Classics sidebar is the 4K uncut restoration of Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine, the only movie from China to win the Palme d’Or. The original film had 20 minutes cut by then Miramax Boss Harvey Weinstein much to the chagrin of jury...

Classics includes restored version of Jacques Rivette’s New Wave film L’amour Fou.

Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has announced selections in the Wavelengths and Classics programmes ahead of the festival (September 7-17).

The expanded Wavelengths section offers 11 features and 19 shorts including the world premiere of Canadian artist and filmmaker Isiah Medina’s deconstructed heist tale He Thought He Died (pictured), Denis Côté’s Mademoiselle Kenopsia, and Angela Schanelec’s retelling of the Oedipus myth, Music.

“Wavelengths is a testament to the range of cinema celebrated at TIFF,” said Anita Lee, TIFF’s chief programming officer. “It is also evidence...

The Toronto International Film Festival has added an additional 17 films to its 2023 lineup, with the new entries the work of a variety of bold international directors, from Radu Jude and Kleber Mendonca Filho to the late Jean-Luc Godard and Chantal Akerman.

The Wavelength section contains 12 features, two films paired in a single program and 19 shorts grouped in three separate programs. It is devoted to “artist-driven experimental films,” in the words of TIFF Chief Programming Officer Anita Lee. “Wavelengths continues to be a celebration of subversion, personal expression, and the vast, inexhaustible capabilities of cinema to enlighten, inspire, awe, resist, disrupt, and propose new ways of seeing and being in the world.”

Films in the section include “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World” from the fiery Romanian satirist Radu Jude, “Here” from Belgian director Bas Devos,” the “Oedipus” retelling “Music” from Angela Schanelec, Brazilian Kleber Mendonca...

Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera with Alba Rohrwacher is a highlight of the 61st New York Film Festival Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Film at Lincoln Center has announced that Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall; Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone Of Interest; Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days; Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses, and Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves (all Cannes Film Festival award winners) will be among the Main Slate selections of the 61st New York Film Festival. Angela Schanelec’s Music (Berlin International Film Festival Silver Bear for Best Screenplay) and Bas Devos’s Here (Best Film in the Encounters section and the Fipresci prize) are also in.

Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days, starring Kôji Yakusho (Cannes Best Actor), is another highlight Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer; Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera; Marco Bellocchio’s Kidnapped; Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Pictures Of Ghosts; Andrew Haigh...

Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal in ‘All of Us Strangers’

The 61st New York Film Festival will feature 32 films in its Main Slate, with the chosen slate of films representing 18 countries. The lineup includes Cannes winners Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone Interest, Fallen Leaves, About Dry Grasses, and Perfect Days.

The 2023 festival runs September 29th through October 15th.

“The unsettled state of the industry is an unavoidable talking point these days, but my hope is that our festival, as it has done through its 61-year history, will serve as a reminder that the art of cinema is in robust health,” stated Dennis Lim, Artistic Director of the New York Film Festival. “The filmmakers in this year’s Main Slate are grappling with eternal questions—about how movies relate to the world, about what it means to make art from life, about the most interesting ways to approach the contemporary...

Taking place September 29-October 15, the 61st New York Film Festival has now unveiled its Main Slate lineup. Comprised of 32 films, the slate includes work by Lisandro Alonso, Annie Baker, Marco Bellocchio, Bertrand Bonello, Catherine Breillat, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Sofia Coppola, Bas Devos, Víctor Erice, Felipe Gálvez, Jonathan Glazer, Andrew Haigh, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Todd Haynes, Agnieszka Holland, Hong Sangsoo, Raven Jackson, Radu Jude, Aki Kaurismäki, Yorgos Lanthimos, Michael Mann, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Rodrigo Moreno, Paul B. Preciado, Martín Rejtman, Alice Rohrwacher, Angela Schanelec, Justine Triet, Wang Bing, Wim Wenders, and Zhang Lu.

“The unsettled state of the industry is an unavoidable talking point these days, but my hope is that our festival, as it has done through its 61-year history, will serve as a reminder that the art of cinema is in robust health,” said Dennis Lim, Artistic Director of the New York Film Festival. “The filmmakers in this year’s...

The Zone Of Interest, Poor Things and Last Summer among the new additions.

The New York Film Festival (NYFF) has unveiled another 29 films – including new projects from Catherine Breillat, Jonathan Glazer and Andrew Haigh – for the main slate of its sixty-first edition, set to run from September 29 to October 15.

In all, the main slate will comprise 32 features from 18 countries.

A special addition to this year’s main slate is the North American premiere of a newly unearthed and restored short directed by Agnès Varda and featuring Pier Paolo Pasolini while both were in New York for the 1966 NYFF.

The new...

The New York Film Festival’s Main Slate of films will consists of almost three dozen films from a lineup of international directors that includes Justine Triet, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Alice Rohrwacher, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Aki Kaurismaki, Wim Wenders, Yorgos Lathimos and Jonathan Glazer. Film at Lincoln Center announced the lineup on Tuesday morning.

Among the 32 films are three special presentations that NYFF had already announced. The opening-night film will be Todd Haynes’ “May December,” its centerpiece screening will be Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla” and its closing-night movie will be Michael Mann’s “Ferrari.”

The rest of the Main Slate lineup includes 12 films that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this year, including the prize winners “Anatomy of a Fall” from Triet, “The Zone of Interest” from Glazer, “About Dry Grasses” from Ceylan, “Perfect Days” from Wenders and “Fallen Leaves” from Kaurismaki.

Others films include “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World...

Film at Lincoln Center has set the 32 features from 18 countries making up the Main Slate of the New York Film Festival, from Cannes prize-winners Anatomy Of A Fall by Justine Triet (Palme d’Or) and Zone Of Interest by Jonathan Glazer (Grand Prix), to the latest by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Wim Wenders, Agnieszka Holland, Hong Sangsoo, Radu Jude, Yorgos Lanthimos and Alice Rohrwacher.

Wenders’ Perfect Days saw a Best Actor for Kōji Yakusho in Cannes, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses a Best Actress for Merve Dizdar. Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves received the Grand Jury Prize. Hailing from Berlin, Angela Schanelec’s Music, Silver Bear winner for Best Screenplay.

The lineup includes films from Lisandro Alonso, Marco Bellocchio, Bertrand Bonello, Catherine Breillat, Bas Devos, Víctor Erice, Kleber Mendonça Filho and Martín Rejtman. Appearing in the Main Slate for the first time: Annie Baker, Devos, Felipe Gálvez, Glazer, Andrew Haigh,...

The 2023 New York Film Festival Main Slate lineup has officially been revealed.

Presented by Film at Lincoln Center, this year’s NYFF Main Slate boasts the latest films from Wim Wenders, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Jonathan Glazer. As previously announced, the festival will open September 29 with Todd Haynes’ “May December,” followed by Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla” as the Centerpiece screening. The festival will conclude with Closing Night selection “Ferrari” by Michael Mann, debuting October 15.

The 61st NYFF includes Cannes winners “The Zone of Interest,” helmed by Glazer, “Anatomy of a Fall” directed by Justine Triet, and Wenders’ “Perfect Days,” as well as Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “About Dry Grasses” and Aki Kaurismäki’s “Fallen Leaves.” Berlinale Silver Bear winner “Music” will also screen.

“The unsettled state of the industry is an unavoidable talking point these days, but my hope is that our festival, as it has done through its 61-year history,...

Exclusive: Cinema Guild has acquired North American distribution rights for Portuguese director Pedro Costa’s short film The Daughters of Fire, following its buzzy world premiere in Cannes this year.

Set against the backdrop of Costa’s stomping ground of the Atlantic Ocean island of Cape Verde, the film follows three sisters who are separated by the eruption of the local Fogo Volcano.

They remain bound in spirit, singing the same words: one day, we will know why we live and why we suffer.

The Daughters of Fire received an enthusiastic reception in Cannes when it played as Special Screening Jean-Luc Godard’s Trailer of the Film that Will Never Exist: “Phony Wars” and Wang Bing’s 2023 Palme d’Or contender Man in Black.

For its North American theatrical release in late 2023 or early 2024, Cinema Guild is planning to play the short alongside Korean director Hong Sangsoo’s Berlinale 2023 Encounters title In water,...

The Cnc and Ffa each invest €3.2mi annually in the development and co-pro fund.

New films by Wim Wenders, Angela Schanelec, Ilker Catak and Sharbanoo Sadat are among six projects supported with a total of €1.23m by the Cnc and Germany’s Federal Film Board (Ffa), co-production fund at its second session of 2023.

Each provides €3.2m for the fund annually to support co-production and project development by German and French production companies.

A total of €150,000 production support has been awarded to Wenders’ next feature documentary The Secret Of Places (working title) to be shot in 2D and 3D as a...

The French festival closed in Marseille on Sunday July 9.

Background, the second feature from Syrian director Khaled Abdulwahed, won the €8,000 grand prix of the international festival at the FidMarseille festival in France on July 9. The fesival showcases discoveries and innovative features and projects to a public and industry audience.

The experimental documentary explores concepts of memory and identity as Abdulwahed pursues the story of his father who studied in Germany in the 1950s along with the director’s own journey to Germany, where he is now based following Syria’s devastating civil war.

Abdulwahed previously co-directed 2020 refugee documentary Purple Sea...

“Prince Aden,” a new drama by Italian directing duo Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio, known internationally for their immigration-themed “Seven Acts of Mercy,” is among projects selected by Locarno’s Alliance for Development initiative.

The platform, now in its 8th year, is geared towards fostering co-productions between France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland.

Inspired by the book “Partigiani d’Oltremare,” by Italian historian Matteo Petracci, the De Serio twins’ new colonial-era film follows the vicissitudes of a 16-year-old Somali named Aden Sicré who in 1935 becomes a soldier in the Italian army that invaded Ethiopia on Mussolini’s orders. In an unexpected turn, he becomes hailed as a war hero by the Fascist regime. Then a few years later Aden and other African fighters play a pivotal role in the partisan struggle against fascism in Europe.

The Aug. 4-6 Alliance 4 Development goes beyond being a mere co-production platform since it allows for...

Includes projects by Lorenz Merz, Ann Oren and Sara Fattahi.

New projects by directors Lorenz Merz, Ann Oren and Sara Fattahi are among those selected for Locarno Pro’s Alliance 4 Development initiative which runs from August 4-6.

The initiative is an integral part of Locarno Film Festival’s Locarno Pro industry strand and is aimed at encouraging co-productions between Switzerland and France, Germany and Italy.

Scroll down for full list of projects

11 projects were chosen out of 74 submissions. During the three Alliance 4 Development programme, participants will meet with potential partners and attend panels and networking events.

Lorenz Merz will attend with Who/Man,...

11 projects selected for Locarno Film Festival’s industry strand.

New projects by directors Lorenz Merz, Ann Oren and Sara Fattahi are among those selected for Locarno Pro’s Alliance 4 Development initiative which runs from August 4-6.

The initiative is an integral part of Locarno Film Festival’s Locarno Pro industry strand and is aimed at encouraging co-productions between Switzerland and France, Germany and Italy.

Scroll down for full list of projects

11 projects were chosen out of 74 submissions. During the three Alliance 4 Development programme, participants will meet with potential partners and attend panels and networking events.

Lorenz Merz will attend with Who/Man,...

German director Angela Schanelec to head international competition jury.

The Marseille International Film Festival (FIDMarseille) has selected 45 films for its competition sections, of which 34 are world premieres.

World premieres in the international competition include An Evening Song (For Three Voices) by US director Graham Swon, who previously directed 2018 feature The World Is Full Of Secrets.

Germany’s Khaled Abdulwahed also world premieres Background, having formerly co-directed 2020 refugee documentary Purple Sea.

FIDMarseille, which takes place July 4-9, bills itself as a pioneering festival, championing new styles and ways of production, and puts its First Film Competition and films by young filmmakers...

Near the halfway point of The Delinquents, a funny, existential epic from Argentina, a banker dips into an arthouse cinema. Though almost all the seats are free he can’t decide which one to choose. What’s the point of all those options, the film asks, if you’re always left wanting more? In another moment the elder statesman of a prison yard explains that the only advantage a cellmate holds over those outside is having all the time in the world to think. (What’s the point of freedom itself if you’re a slave to the algorithm?) “There wasn’t more freedom,” another man explains, reminiscing about an objectively worse era in Argentinian history, “but you could smoke anywhere.”

One of the very best films from this year’s Un Certain Regard, The Delinquents, the seventh feature from Argentine director Rodrigo Moreno, is set in motion with a delicious bit of game theory.

“In Our Day,” the new Hong Sang-soo film premiering later this week as the Cannes Film Festival’s closing night film, has been acquired by Cinema Guild. A theatrical release is planned following its North American festival premiere later this year.

The picture stars Kim Min-hee, Song Seon-mi, Gi Ju-bong and Ha Seong-guk. This character dramedy marks Hong’s 30th feature film, this time using long, elaborate takes to articulate simple pleasures like an interspecies encounter, the discovery of a new drink and a game of rock, paper, scissors.

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“Adding to the rich tableau of his work, Hong Sang-soo’s ‘In Our Day’ not only makes us laugh, it makes us think about what it means to be alive,” Cinema Guild president Peter Kelly said in a statement. “It’s a gift that we hope continues and continues.

Hong Sang-soo’s latest film “In Our Day,” which will premiere on closing night of Cannes’ Directors Fortnight, has been acquired by Cinema Guild for North America.

Cinema Guild will release the film in theaters following its North American festival premiere later this year.

“In Our Day” stars Kim Minhee as Sangwon, an actress who has recently returned to South Korea and is temporarily staying with her friend, Jungsoo (Song Sunmi), and her cat, Us. Elsewhere in the city, the aging poet Uiju (Ki Joobong) lives alone, his cat having recently passed away. On this ordinary day, each of them has a visitor: Sangwon is visited by her cousin, Jisoo (Park Miso) and Uiju, by a young actor,

Jaewon (Ha Seongguk). Each of them wants to learn about a career in the arts, but they also

have bigger questions.

Hong’s 30th feature outing, “In Our Day” demonstrates a new...

Hong’s 30th feature premieres at Cannes on May 25.

Cinema Guild has acquired North American distribution rights Hong Sangsoo’s In Our Day, the closing night film of Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, in a deal with South Korea’s Finecut.

Cinema Guild said it will release Hong’s 30th feature film in theatres following its North American festival premiere later this year.

The South Korean film follows an actress and old poet who each host a visitor and dodge questions posed by their guests using food, drink and games.

The feature has already sold to key territories, including France (Capricci), Spain...

Co-production

“Lioness,” an official Indo-u.K. co-production being made under the 2008 bilateral treaty, will star Aditi Rao Hydari (“Jubilee”) and Paige Sandhu (“Emmerdale”), it was revealed at the Cannes India pavilion on Tuesday.

Written and to be directed by Kajri Babbar (“Khoj”), the film is inspired by the research of Peter Bance, the historian who wrote about Princess Sophia Duleep, one of the key leaders of the suffragette movement in the U.K., the Princess of Punjab, granddaughter of Maharajah Ranjit Singh and the goddaughter of Queen Victoria. The film will tell the story of two British Punjabi women living in the U.K., a century apart. While Sophia’s story is rooted in history, the second story is a fictional tale of Mehak Kaur an educated, married immigrant woman living in 1990’s Southall.

Bance is also one of the executive producers on the film, which is produced by Vivek Rangachari,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.Newsa new short from Pedro Almodóvar, Strange Way of Life, will make its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The film—coming soon to Mubi in Italy and Latin America—is a “western shot in the south of Spain” and stars Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal. Keep an eye on Notebook tomorrow for more Cannes updates as the festival unveils its official selection.In production news, Paul Schrader has finished writing an adaptation of a novel by Russell Banks; he plans to shoot it this summer with Richard Gere. (The full profile in Curbed is worth a read.)According to Ioncinema, Kiyoshi Kurosawa begins shooting a French-language remake of his 1998 film Serpent’s Path in May.Recommended VIEWINGSink into this two-hour interview with Béla Tarr,...

The Berlinale (Berlin International Film Festival) comprises the annual pre-autumn festival circuit alongside Sundance, SXSW and Cannes. Though the competition isn’t exactly a pipeline to the Oscars, it has hosted premieres for past Best International Feature winners and nominees “A Fantastic Woman,” “On Body and Soul” and “A Separation.” Additionally, the festival launched “45 Years,” which earned Charlotte Rampling her first Academy Award nomination in 2016, and “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” which received nine bids and won four in 2015. The 73rd festival was held February 16 – 26.

This year’s jury was presided over by Academy Award nominee Kristen Stewart. The slate includes new efforts from Christian Petzold, Angela Schanelec and Christoph Hochhäusler, all three of whom belong to the Berlin school of filmmaking that emerged in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. 2023’s Golden Bear went to Nicolas Philibert’s “On the Adamant,” a documentary about a health care facility in...