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Anthology featuring a series of offbeat films from America's Harmony Korine, Russian auteur Alexey Fedorchenko and Polish director Jan Kwiecinski, each taking a character on a journey which leads them to reappraise life. In Korine's offering, an admirably up-for-it Val Kilmer subversively plays an unhinged celebrity-turned-motivational speaker. Elsewhere, Igor Sergeev plays a frustrated scientist whose investigation of time travel is constantly stymied and a group of slackers wander a village unaware of the approaching deluge.

The Fourth Dimension is an anthology piece comprised of three short films contributed by three different directors – Harmony Korine, Aleksei Fedorchenko and Jan Kwiencinski. Spearheaded by Vice Magazine’s Eddy Moretti and partly funded by Grolsch Film Works, The Fourth Dimension sees each director tackling the open-ended concept of the fourth dimension – the next, higher existence of your soul – in their own unique ways, while adhering to a set of strict rules and precepts.

Kicking off this oddball collection is Korine, arguably the most well-known of the three. Her segment, titled The Lotus Community Workshop, sees Val Kilmer playing a scruffy, rapturous version of himself who uses his “skills” to reach out to others as a motivational speaker. Using Kilmer’s persona as her interpretation of the fourth dimension, Korine mixes unusual, yet effective sound effects and strobe lighting to effectively blur the already faded line between reality and fantasy,...

Russian Director Aleksei Fedorchenko's third feature - Silent Souls - is, as the name suggests, a quiet homage to the dead.

Aist (Igor Sergeev) is a 40 year-old photographer who collects “snatches” of traditional songs/rhymes, influenced by his deceased poet father. When his boss and friend, Miron (Yuriy Tusurilo), tells him his wife, Tanya (Yuliya Aug), has died the night before, he sets out on a road trip to help him put her soul to rest.

Silent Souls is an impressive second feature from writer, Denis Osokin, playing on traditional story-telling techniques to create a visual poem. His narrative lies intriguingly in past tense, occasionally using elements of the mystery genre to keep us guessing where the film will go. “It's one of those towns that no-one remembers these days,” says our narrator Aist, describing his home town, Neya, and leaving us to ponder what has changed. “I don't...

Silent Souls (15)

(Aleksei Fedorchenko, 2010, Rus) Igor Sergeev, Yuriy Tsurilo, Yuliya Aug. 78 mins

Even by Russian standards, this lyrical road movie is a strange world of its own. It's a journey back in time, as much as across a remote landscape, with a friend helping his boss to give his deceased wife her last rites, according to their ancient tribal ways. Along the drive, we're steeped in strange folklore involving vodka, rivers, small birds and ornamental pubic hair. Is it for real? Or an elaborate joke told with a very straight face? Does it matter?

The Five Year Engagement (15)

(Nicholas Stoller, 2012, Us) Emily Blunt, Jason Segel, Chris Pratt. 124 mins

The obstacle to true love is built into the title of this romcom, but it's at least smartly handled, as high-flyer Blunt keeps her fiance in perpetual limbo.

Where Do We Go Now? (12A)

(Nadine Labaki, 2011, Fra/Leb/Egy/Ita) Claude Baz Moussawbaa,...

★★★★☆ Aleksei Fedorchenko beguiles and rewards with his lyrical meditation on the passage of time, Silent Souls (Ovsyanki, 2010). Lonesome middle-aged man Aist (Igor Sergeev) is called up by his boss Miron (Yuriy Tsurilo), whose wife Tanya (Yuliya Aug) has just died, asking him to help give her a tranquil send-off becoming of their adherence to Meryan, an ancient, mystical civilisation.

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Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

The passage of time is a crazy thing – it has the ability to swallow up not only whole lives, but entire civilisations and cultures. In Silent Souls, by our sheer bemusement at much of what is going on, director Aleksei Fedorchenko illustrates this with a beautifully calm, trained eye.

When lonely middle-aged man Aist (Igor Sergeev) receives a call from his boss, Miron (Yuriy Tsurilo), that his wife Tanya (Yuliya Aug) has died, the pair embark on a quest to give her a tranquil final resting place. Living in Russia’s town of Neya, the two identify themselves as belonging to the ancient Meryan peoples, and their adherence to the traditions therein informs the entirety of their road trip.

Bringing a pair of birds along for the trip, they sit in their cage and serve as a metaphor, for the two men are similarly confined by...

In the omnibus film The Fourth Dimension, Brooklyn based Vice Magazine along with commercial company Grolsch Film Works dispatched three filmmakers to tackle on a subject matter that must have been elicited from a hazy drug fueled debate. At least that is how it seems to deal with its abstract subject matter, the concept of the fourth dimension otherwise known as the unification of space and time, or space-time continuum. Apropos to cinema, the concept seems to fit perfectly and offers up a treasure trove of possibilities both scientific and philosophical. But the lack of cohesiveness to each short film make the overall structure a chore to get through and will leave you scratching your head in bewilderment rather than having deep philosophical conversations about space and time.

The opening short film, and arguably the best of the bunch, is Harmony Korine’s The Lotus Community Workshop starring Val Kilmer as himself.

Last Friday night, the San Francisco International Film Festival hosted the world premiere of “The Fourth Dimension,” a production born out of a partnership between Vice Films and Grolsch Film Works.

“The Fourth Dimension” consists of three short films (though requests itself be called a feature film) by three directors, Harmony Korine (“Trash Humpers,” “Gummo”), Aleksei Fedorchenko (“Silent Souls”) and new-comer Jan Kwiecinski, all sprung from an identical creative brief. The brief itself is a list of over 50 instructions as incalculable as “You must forget everything you know” or specific as “A stuffed animal needs to make an appearance.” Even if you wanted to skip the context of the film’s roots, you can’t, as the shorts are hitched together with a series of bumpers that recall a number of the brief’s commands.

As the through-line between the shorts isn’t narrative or character based, there’s a...

“If something is doomed to disappear, then so be it,” decides Igor Sergeev, the narrator of Aleksei Fedorchenko’s tender, mournful third feature, Silent Souls. But that’s easier said (or thought—no one spends much time speaking in this film) than done, most of all when you’re burying a loved one. And Yuliya Aug, who appears alive in Silent Souls only in flashbacks, was very much loved—by Sergeev, and by her husband Yuriy Tsurilo, Sergeev’s friend and coworker. They’re Volga Finns, members of a Russian ethnic minority, though their people, the Merjan, assimilated centuries ago ...

Russian filmmaker Aleksei Fedorchenko’s Silent Souls plays at the New York Film Festival following its three awards at the Venice Film Festival, including the Ozella prize for Best Photography. This is one of the better films at the fest, and with its positive reception at Venice, Tiff and now Nyff, this will hopefully find some kind of a theatrical release, albeit it being a small art-house one. The story is based on a novel by the writer/director’s friend Aist Sergeyev. This is the fourth project they have collaborated on, and Fedorchenko claims they have five more to go. The story is a kind of historical fiction, with a little "extra" fiction added since the records of the people and events described are long lost. The story follows two men who live in a small village and are descended of an ancient race called Merjans that seemingly comes...

Ovsyanki or Silent Souls, another title In Competition for Golden Lion statue at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

This time, we’re here to present you a movie that comes from a Russian director Aleksei Fedorchenko that is already being described as “melancholy drama relates the journey of a man and his companion, who travel to a river with the remains of his companion’s late wife.”

Here’s the Silent Souls synopsis: “After a man’s young wife dies suddenly (the cause is never disclosed) he enlists the help of a colleague in disposing of the body in accordance with the local custom.

The characters here are Meryar, descendants of a 400-year-old Finnish tribe once native to that part of western Russia, but now all but forgotten. They have different and non-traditional names for places and people, but most strikingly different are their rituals to do with marriage...

#24. Silent Souls Director: Aleksei FedorchenkoCast: Igor Sergeyev, Yuriy Tsurilo, Yuliya Aug, Viktor Sukhorukov ;Distributor: Rights Available. Buzz: Silent Souls is leaving Venice with plenty of positive buzz and will then make its way to Nyff. This is Aleksei Fedorchenko's third film and I know nothing about the filmmaker or the film -- but this sounds like a good festival ticket gamble. The Gist: When Miron's beloved wife Tanya passes away, he asks his best friend Aist to help him say goodbye according to the rituals of the Merya culture, an ancient Finno-Ugric tribe from Lake Nero. The two men set out on a road trip thousands of miles across the boundless lands. Tiff Schedule: Thursday September 16 6:00:00 Pm Varsity 8 Friday September 17 4:45:00 Pm Scotiabank Theatre 4 Saturday September 18 9:30:00 Am AMC 6  ...

HollywoodNews.com: Here’s a rundown of what’s clicking at the Venice Film Festival as potential award season contenders.

The Black Swan directed by Darren Aronofsky

Most critics and bloggers are intrigued by this film. Variety’s Justin Chang pointedly exclaims on Twitter: “In the battle of opening-night films: Venice 1, Cannes 0.”

Guy Lodge who is covering the festival for In Contention gives his guess for “Swan’s” odds:

Anne Thompson and I agreed at lunch today that the film has its work cut out for it in the top races — wild psychodrama not being the Academy’s strong point, particularly if critical opinion turns out to be split — and the extent to which voters (and audiences) warm to her vehicle will be a determining factor for Portman, given how deep the Best Actress field already looks.

Meek’s Cutoff directed by Kelly Reichardt

Guy Lodge is very excited about...

Natalie Portman is superb as a troubled ballet dancer, Robert Rodriguez gets trashy, and a Jerusalem-set drama provides this year's turkey at the Venice film festival

The Venice film festival began with a feverish combination of burning heat and rainy thunderstorms that swept the Lido, and its opening film was appropriately hotwired with psychodrama, melodrama and ionospherically over-the-top theatrics. Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan is a heavily sexualised psycho-thriller about an over-wrought ballerina in New York about to take the lead role in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake; she finds that preparing for the dark "Black Swan" role, and fending off the ambitions of a rival dancer, is unlocking something disturbing within her own troubled soul.

Thoroughly outrageous at all times, Aronofsky's film is certainly watchable, though his inability to see a stop without pulling it out perhaps lessens the impact after a while. There are some scary moments and a queasy,...

Venice – "Ovsyanki" (Silent Souls), Russian director Aleksei Fedorchenko's in-competition drama of a factory worker's poetic and folkloric farewell to his dead wife, was among the Saturday highlights at the Venice Film Festival.

The festival also featured the world premiere of Carlo Mazzacurati's comedic drama "La passion" (The Passion), one of four Italian films in competition. It was the second film in three years on the Venice Lido for the 54-year-old Mazzacurati, following the 2008 success of "La giusta distanza" (The Right Distance), which won Venice's Gugliemo Biraghi collateral prize.

And Saturday also saw the world premiere of "Jean Gentil," from Laura Amelia Guzman and Israel Cardenas, the moving story of a Haitian immigrant's struggles in the neighboring Dominican Republic. The film, which screened in Venice's Orizzonti sidebar, is the first-ever Dominican film to screen on the Lido.

But it was "Ovsyanki" that created the most buzz Saturday, immediately sparking...

Are you guys ready for the oldest film festival in the world? Yeah, sure you are! Who’s crazy enough to miss all that glamour, great movies, and well-known faces? Guess nobody!

This year’s Venice Film Festival runs from September 1- 11th and some great titles will compete for Leone d’Oro, or if you prefer Golden Lion, indeed!

Just in case you don’t trust us, check out a list of all the films playing in competition:

In Competition

Black Swan, Opening Night Film (dir. Darren Aronofsky – U.S.) Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder

La Pecora Nera, (dir. Ascanio Celestini – Italy) Ascanio Celestini, Giorgio Tirabassi, Maya Sansa

Somewhere, (dir. Sofia Coppola – U.S.) Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning, Benicio Del Toro, Michelle Monaghan, Laura Chiatti, Simona Ventura

Happy Few, (dir. Antony Cordier – France) Marina Fois, Elodie Bouchez, Roschdy Zem, Nicolas Duvauchelle

The Solitude of Prime Numbers,...

Earlier this week, the fifty films showing at the Toronto International Film Festival were announced. Today, we have a list of the films showing in-competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Highlights of the Festival include Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, Richard J. Lewis’ Barney’s Version, Julian Schnabel’s Miral, and Tom Tykwer’s Drei. What’s also cool about this list is that we see the runtimes of each of the films. However, it’s not unusual for a film to undergo changes between a festival and its general release.

Hit the jump for a list of all the films playing in-competition and click here for the films playing out-of-competition. This year’s Venice Film Festival runs from September 1 – 11th.

Darren Aronofsky – Black Swan

USA, 103′

Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder

Ascanio Celestini – La Pecora Nera

Italia, 93′

Ascanio Celestini,...

The line-up for the 67th Venice Film Festival has finally been announced and we've handily posted the runners and riders below...

The Italian cinematic shindig, which runs from September 1-11 and features the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo Arriaga, Arnaud Desplechin, Danny Elfman, Luca Guadagnino and Gabriele Salvatores on the competition jury, has pulled out all the stops this year with some very exciting flicks.

Top on our list of must-see movies includes Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, Vincent Gallo's Promises Written In Water and Anh Hung Tran's Murasaki adaptation Norwegian Wood.

The films to be shown at the 67th Venice Film Festival are...

Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis and Vincent Cassel.

La Pecora Nera, directed by Ascanio Celestini and starring Ascanio Celestini, Giorgio Tirabassi and Maya Sansa

Somewhere, directed by Sofia Coppola and starring Stephen Dorff,...