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Dos presencias españolas, ‘Extraño Río’ y ‘Calle Málaga’, en la programación de la Biennale.

© Biennale

Ayer se desveló la impresionante programación de la 82 edición del Festival Internacional de Cine de Venecia, que se celebra del 27 de agosto al 6 de septiembre. Una selección potente, con claro protagonismo del cine en lengua inglesa, que busca posicionar a Venecia como la antesala decisiva de la temporada de premios. No es un gesto gratuito: Anora, ganadora en Cannes el año pasado, acabó llevándose el Óscar a la Mejor Película. Y ahora, todos miran a la Mostra como el próximo trampolín. Así, en la competición por el León de Oro hay nombres de peso como Guillermo del Toro, Yorgos Lanthimos, Jim Jarmusch, Noah Baumbach, Park Chan-wook, o Benny Safdie. La riqueza de la programación se extiende también a las secciones paralelas y fuera de competición. En ellas se presentarán, entre otros, los nuevos trabajos de...

Kathryn Bigelow’s A House Of Dynamite, Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine, and Luca Guadagnino’s After The Hunt are among the films selected for the 82nd Venice Film Festival (August 27 - September 6).

Scroll down for full line-up

The first two are among 21 Competition titles, with further Competition entries including Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly starring George Clooney, Olivier Assayas’ The Wizard Of The Kremlin starring Jude Law as Vladimir Putin, Mona Fastvold’s The Testament Of Ann Lee, and Guillermo del Toro’sFrankenstein starring Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi.

The selection was announced by artistic director Alberto Barbera,...

The line-up for the 82nd Venice International Film Festival (August 27-September 9) is being unveiled today at 11:00 Cest (10:00 BST) by festival president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco and artistic director Alberto Barbera.

Scroll down for lineup

The press conference is live-streamed above, and this page will be updated with the films as they are announced.Refresh page for latest updates.

Alexander Payne will preside over the jury, which also includes Mohammad Rasoulof, Fernanda Torres, Stephane Brize, Maura Delpero, Cristian Mungiu and Zhao Tao. Julia Ducournau will chair the Horizons jury.

The Venice Critics’ Week line-up was announced yesterday.

Competition

La Grazia

Dir.

Nebraska director Alexander Payne will receive the Pardo d’Onore at the Locarno Film Festival.

The American filmmaker will be presented with the honorary leopard on Friday, August 15. He will also present his 2011 pic The Descendants and 2013 title Nebraska and participate in a public discussion.

Payne, a writer-director also behind the likes of Sideway and The Holdovers, has won two Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and been nominated for Best Director on three occasions.

After studying filmmaking at UCLA, Payne wrote and directed politically-charged comedy Citizen Ruth, starring Laura Dern, in 1996. It premiered at Sundance and led to a run of seven influential films, which have starred the likes of Paul Giamatti, Reese Witherspoon and Jack Nicholson.

“Alexander Payne is an erudite auteur with an encyclopaedic cinephile knowledge,” said Giona A. Nazzaro, Artistic Director of the Locarno Film Festival. “Gifted with an unerring sense for the bittersweet facets of human comedy,...

If you loved the intense, immersive experience of Netflix’s Adolescence, where the camera follows the characters without cutting away, you’re in for a treat. Some filmmakers have taken on the daunting challenge of crafting an entire movie in a single, unbroken shot, creating a unique sense of intimacy and urgency. Achieving a one-shot film is no small feat—it demands meticulous planning, exhaustive rehearsals, and absolute coordination between the cast and crew. Directors and cinematographers often spend months strategizing every movement, ensuring that the choreography of the camera, actors, and environment flows seamlessly. When done right, this technique blurs the line between fiction and reality, pulling viewers deeper into the narrative and making every second count. Here are some of the most impressive one-shot movies that push the boundaries of filmmaking.

1917 (2019), Director: Sam Mendes

1917 (2019) is one of the most talked-about single-shot movies, directed by Sam Mendes. Although it cleverly uses hidden cuts,...

The Dutch film industry, often overshadowed by its European counterparts, finds itself at a potential turning point. Industry insiders are vocal about the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead, painting a picture of an industry at a crossroads.

In recent months, Dutch titles have impressed on the global stage. Johan Grimonprez’s Netherlands-Belgium-France co-production “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” is currently nominated for the best documentary feature Oscar, and two Dutch shorts – Victoria Warmerdam’s live-action sci-fi story “I’m Not a Robot” and Nina Gantz’s stop-motion gem “Wander to Wonder” – also scored nominations. Halina Reijn’s “Babygirl” had a fantastic festival run last year, earning Reijn a Directors to Watch Award at Palm Springs, and is currently in theaters around the world.

‘Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’

While the cinema landscape in the Netherlands is loaded with promise and potential, the region also faces several significant challenges in developing...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.NEWSLa région centrale.Donald Trump has been elected president of the United States for a second time.Major film distributors declined to pick up Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice (2024) under threat of legal action from the Trump campaign, just as recent documentaries, including No Other Land and The Bibi Files (both 2024) have been neglected.In a stunning blow to film preservation, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has laid off sixteen employees from its archive and library departments as part of a broad “restructuring” plan. Several were instrumental archivists who had been at the Academy for years.Not only are Moroccan filmmakers receiving plum spots in international festival lineups, but investments from foreign productions, a new streaming service,...

Tsai Ming Liang Guide: As the 20th century drew to a close, cinema, like other art forms, was undergoing a metamorphosis. Hollywood, in a desperate attempt to keep audiences engaged, embraced new technological advancements, such as improved visual effects. It sought to captivate the masses by blurring the lines between reality and imagination, producing sci-fi blockbusters like “Terminator 2” (1991), “Jurassic Park” (1993), and “Armageddon” (1998). However, thousands of miles away from sunny Los Angeles, another group of filmmakers across Europe and Asia consciously took cinema in a different direction. Rather than helping audiences forget the fourth wall, they aimed to reinforce it, creating films that were acutely aware of their own impact, intentionally distancing viewers from the on-screen events by withholding the cut.

In contemporary film theory, this shift is referred to as ‘Slow Cinema.’ To an avid cinephile, it is now a fairly common term. Maestros like Béla Tarr, Pedro Costa,...

When director Max Winkler first read the script for “Grotesquerie” Episode 5, he knew he wanted to film most of the episode using one continuous shot. The problem was getting everyone else on board.

“I just kept lying to everybody, ‘We can do this.’ I was like, ‘1,000,000% we can do this,’ ” Winkler told TheWrap. Throughout the entire process, Winkler was reminded of one of his heroes, Marcelo Bielsa, manager of the Uruguay national team, who famously never had a Plan B other than to do Plan A better. That’s exactly the mindset Winkler brought to “Red Haze.”

“In my head, I was like, ‘Oh my god, are you really going to get fired over this? Are you really going to burn your way out of Hollywood on this idea?’ ” Winkler said. “But we did it. I’m really proud of everyone involved.”

It’s not difficult to understand Winkler’s panic over “Red Haze.

My Friend Ivan LapshinImage: International Film Exchange

When I was an undergrad in film school, one of the pillar courses was a two-semester film history class that would act as a broad survey to give us a foundation as aspiring filmmakers and workers. Naturally, this course was also about its...

Distribution veteran Wendy Lidell will depart Kino Lorber as SVP of theatrical acquisitions and distribution at the end of June after eight years to pursue a new, undisclosed, chapter.

Kino Lorber chairman and CEO Richard Lorber made the announcement on Friday and hailed Lidell as “the rarest amalgam of smart cinephile and canny business executive”.

Kino Lorber chief revenue officer Lisa Schwartz will oversee theatrical distribution and acquisitions in the interim and continue to report to Klmg president Ed Carroll.

Lidell joined the company in 2016. During her tenure she shepherded three documentaries to Oscar nominations – Gianfranco Rosi’s Fire At Sea,...

Exclusive: Kino Lorber SVP of Theatrical Acquisitions & Distribution Wendy Lidell will depart the company at the end of June following a great eight year run at the indie distributor.

The company’s Chief Revenue Officer Lisa Schwartz will oversee theatrical distribution and acquisitions in the interim and will continue to report to President Ed Carroll. Reporting to Schwartz will be SVP Marketing and Communications Nicholas Kemp, VP Press and Publicity Kate Patterson, VP Theatrical Distribution & Repertory Acquisitions George Schmalz, and Director Theatrical Distribution Maxwell Wolkin.

Schwartz and Carroll, former top executives at AMC Networks, joined Kino Lorber in early 2023.

Lidell has been at Kino Lorber since 2016, overseeing all theatrical acquisitions and distribution efforts and shepherding three documentaries to Oscar nominations – Gianfranco Rosi’s Fire at Sea, Talal Derki’s Of Fathers and Sons most recently Kaouther Ben Hania’s decorated Four Daughters.

Other theatrical releases on her watch include Long Day’s Journey Into Night,...

Launched last year by Wes Anderson’s producing partners at Indian Paintbrush, Galerie has emerged as a well-curated film club publishing unique selections of films from artists with their personal annotations. With past lists from the likes of James Gray, Ed Lachman, Mike Mills, Karyn Kusama, Ethan Hawke, and more, today we’re pleased to exclusively share a sneak peek from the lists of two celebrated Chilean filmmakers, Pablo Larraín and Sebastián Lelio, which have recently landed on the site.

Both filmmakers are currently working on their latest projects: Larraín is helming the Angelina Jolie-led Maria Callas drama, while Lelio is handling the musical The Wave, inspired by Chile’s “feminist May” movement in 2018. While in post-production on the projects, they’ve shared their curated collections.

The Spencer and El Conde director features Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery of Splendor and Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing on his list,...

Veteran film festival director Marco Müller has been named the new artistic director of Italy’s Taormina Film Fest and will take over for Taormina’s 70th edition this year.

Müller is one of the great journeymen of the festival circuit, having run A-list events in Venice, Rotterdam, Locarno and, most recently, the Pingyao festival in Macao.

Sergio Bonomo, special commissioner of the Taormina Arte Sicilia Foundation, which runs the festival, said “Maestro” Müller will be “a driving force of success for the prestigious film event.”

Taormina is one of the world’s oldest film festivals, and one blessed with one of the world’s most beautiful locations in the sun-kissed region of Sicily overlooking Mount Etna that The White Lotus picked as the backdrop for its season 2. The festival centerpiece is the Teatro Antico amphitheater, an historic Greek theater used for Taormina’s premieres.

But the festival’s history has been a stormy one,...

Rotterdam Film Festival Sets ‘Head South’ As Opening Film

Jonathan Ogilvie’s post-punk, coming-of-age comedy Head South has been announced as the opening picture of the 53rd International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), running from January 25 to February 4. The festival has also teased a handful of early selections. They include Indian filmmaker Ishan Shukla’s dystopian, sci-fi animation Schirkoa: In Lies We Trust and U.S. director Billy Woodberry’s biodoc Mário, about African independence activist Mário de Andrade, which will both world premiere. Further confirmations include European premieres for Amanda Kramer’s So Unreal and Ann Hui’s Elegies as well as Omar Hilal’s Voy! Voy! Voy!, which is Egypt’s Oscar entry this year. The festival will unveil its full line-up on December 18.

Paul Schrader To Be Feted At Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Avellino Festival

U.S. director and screenwriter Paul Schrader will be honored with a Lifetime...

News of the death of Celluloid Dreams CEO Hengameh Panahi has sparked an outpouring of admiration and tributes from the independent film community.

Panahi, a pivotal figure in the global art house scene, died Nov. 5, aged 67. In her decades in the business — as a producer, co-financier and sales agent — Panahi introduced the world to international auteurs from Iran (Jafar Panahi, Marjane Satrapi), Europe (Jacques Audiard, François Ozon, Gaspar Noé, Marco Bellocchio, Aleksandr Sokurov, the Dardenne brothers) and across Asia (Takeshi Kitano, Naomi Kawase, Jia Zanghke, Hirokazu Kore-eda).

“She took films that were challenging, that were difficult to make, to sell, to promote, and she fought for them,” says Oscar-winning producer Jeremy Thomas (The Last Emperor) who knew and worked with Panahi for more than 30 years. “She was a unique part of the film ecosystem. She was really inspirational, with the films that she enabled to be made, and seen.”

Celluloid Dreams,...

Groundbreaking French-Iranian sales agent and producer Hengameh Panahi, who represented a myriad of renowned Cannes and Venice prize-winning auteur directors, has died at the age of 67.

Paris-based press attaché Viviana Andriani, who handled press campaigns for a number of Panahi’s films, announced the news in a short communiqué.

She said Panahi had died on November 5 after bravely battling a long illness.

Panahi was a force to be reckoned with on the international film industry circuit, who launched dozens of renowned arthouse directors at the beginning of their careers and accompanied them as they won awards and fame.

Born in Iran, Panahi was sent to Belgium to complete her education as teenager.

She got her first big break in the film industry as head of international at Brussels-based animation studio Graphoui.

In an early sign of her flare for scouting promising talent, Panahi connected with John Lasseter and Tim Burton...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Kira Kovalenko's Unclenching the Fists is showing exclusively on Mubi starting May 23, 2023, in many countries in the series Viewfinder.Unclenching the Fists.Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it has been almost impossible for members of the global film industry to ignore cinema’s soft power potential as a propagandistic tool of imperialism. Scrutiny over the ethics of supporting films funded by the Russian Ministry of Culture or tied in other ways to state oppression has ignited debate over what Russian culture constitutes—and exposed the fallacy of a monolithic identity within the lands the Kremlin claims as its own. Director Kira Kovalenko’s sophomore feature Unclenching the Fists (2021) counts Russia as its country of production (and was its official Oscar submission). But it was shot in the Ossetian language, in North Ossetia, an official...

Fairytale will have its North American premiere at Locarno in Los Angeles, running March 16 - 19, 2023.Fairytale, director Aleksandr Sokurov’s first film in seven years, arrived at its world premiere at last year’s Locarno Film Festival with little advance notice. A fanciful title and a cryptic artist’s statement was all most viewers had to go on when encountering what is, as I wrote in my festival report, arguably “the Russian master’s most left-field offering yet: a speculative fiction made with deepfake technology that imagines an encounter between Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, and Winston Churchill.”Composed almost entirely of lightly animated archival footage, Fairytale plays like a belated companion piece to Sokurov’s series of biographical and mythological portrait films (collectively known as the “Tetralogy of Power”) that explore the psychological nuances of tyranny. But whereas those films centered on single subjects, the director’s latest...

Russian director Alexander Sokurov makes weird films, or rather really special ones. Most famous of these is probably 2002's Russian Ark, an absolutely fantastic walk through 300 years of Russian history as displayed in the Hermitage museum, done in one gargantuan take with thousands of extras (and three orchestras thrown in for good measure). His latest film Skazka aka. Fairytale may be his self-proclaimed last one and let's agree that if this is true, it is a pity. For while Sokurov may be an acquired taste and not one for everyone, at least the man has a unique vision and finds interesting ways to tell people about his favorite topics. His films are regularly shown at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and as I had...

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

First-time writer-director Malika Musaeva is set to make history at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, where her female-centered coming-of-age drama “The Cage is Looking for a Bird” is the first Chechen-language film ever selected by the venerable German fest.

Musaeva’s debut, which world premieres Feb. 22 in the festival’s competitive Encounters section, focuses on a group of Chechen women living in a remote rural village, where they must defend their freedom and the right to live their own lives.

At the film’s heart is a friendship between two teenage girls, played by first-time actors Khadizha Bataeva and Madina Akkieva. On the precipice of adulthood, the duo seeks refuge in each other as they navigate difficult decisions about their futures.

“The Cage is Looking for a Bird” is produced by Hype Studios, the recently launched outfit of producer Ilya Stewart, whose upcoming slate includes new features from...

The exiled Russian producer is in Berlin with Encounters title ’The Cage Is Looking For A Bird’.

Berlin-based Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov’s The Disappearance, set to star August Diehl as Josef Mengele, will shoot in South America this summer, confirmed Ilya Stewart, the film’s exiled Russia producer of Hype Studios, at the European Film Market this weekend.

The director will move straight onto it after the completion of his latest feature, Limonov. A sales agent is likely to be announced in time for Cannes. Diehl will play the Nazi war criminal during the years he hid out in Brazil.

Paris-based international sales and production company Totem Films have boarded debutant Malika Musaeva’s “The Cage is Looking for a Bird,” which will receive its world premiere in the Encounters strand of the upcoming Berlin Film Festival.

The film focuses on a group of Chechen women living in a remote rural village and their struggles to defend their right for freedom and the choice to live their own lives. At the centre is a friendship between two teenage girls, on the verge of adulthood, who seek refuge in each other as they navigate decisions around their future.

Musaeva was born in Grozny, Chechnya, in 1992. During the Second Chechen War in 1999 her family fled and lived in Ingushetia and Ukraine, before settling in Germany. In 2003 her family returned to Russia and lived in Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria. In 2010, she enrolled in the Kabardino-Balkarian State University and studied under the acclaimed film director Aleksandr Sokurov.

In a major shift one of the nation’s premier arthouses, Karen Cooper will be exiting as director on June 30 after 50 years running the Film Forum in New York City. Deputy Director Sonya Chung will assume the role.

Cooper has led the nonprofit cinema since its first iteration in 1972 as a 50-seat loft space on the Upper West Side open only weekends, to a multi-million dollar operation with four screens and 500 seats in lower Manhattan. She’ll remain an advisor to Chung with a focus on programming premieres and fundraising

“To say this is a transitional moment would be a vast understatement – for virtually all of its history, Film Forum has been energetically and most ably guided by Karen, not least during the very challenging pandemic period from which we are emerging. My board colleagues and I are extremely grateful for her tenure, and excited that in Sonya we have...

ReviewThe makers of ‘Yuddha Kaandam’, screened at the Chennai International Film Festival (Ciff) this year, promoted it as the ‘first proper commercial single-shot film’.Saradha UScreengrab/ YouTube The first thing one would notice about the 2022 Tamil film Yuddha Kaandam is that it is a single-shot film. With an elaborate tracking shot of a police vehicle that the film opens, lasting for a good minute, the makers ensure that we notice this about the movie. The makers of Yuddha Kaandam have also promoted it as the ‘first proper commercial single-shot film’. But we shall get back to this in a bit. Yuddha Kaandam is ridden with so many cliches that it can seem like a tutorial video for making a quintessential mainstream Tamil action film. It has a protagonist who goes to great lengths to save his romantic partner. The antagonist is a police officer who has everything it takes to be the archetypical Kollywood villain.

The Torino Film Festival, which celebrates its 40th edition this year, will open with a special musical and visual event focusing on two of the most iconic British bands – the Beatles and the Rolling Stones – and their love for cinema, which led them to work with the likes of Richard Lester, Jean-Luc Godard, Jonas Mekas, Wim Wenders and Martin Scorsese.

The 70-minute event, set to be held at the prestigious Teatro Regio on Nov. 25 and broadcast by Rai Radio3, will feature “both rare and never-before-seen archive footage.”

Film critic Steve Della Casa, who served as the gathering’s artistic director from 1999-2002, is back at the helm. In his introductory remarks, he described Torino as “a true urban festival,” which places great importance on the theatrical experience, and set to attract both industry reps as well as a large young, cinephile audience. Moreover, this year’s edition will see the inauguration of Casa Festival,...

Russia’s relationship with the world began to deteriorate after it invaded Ukraine in February — and the film industry was no exception.

This week, the country announced that it wouldn’t submit a film to the Best International Feature category for the 95th Oscars ceremony. Russia’s own Oscar committee said the decision was a surprise and resigned, but the decision didn’t come out of nowhere. For months, Russia’s presence at major film events has been a contentious subject.

In early March, festivals ranging from Cannes to Venice banned Russian delegations from their gatherings; on the 94th Oscars broadcast later that month, the Academy brought out Ukrainian-born Mila Kunis to condemn the war. The country wasn’t exactly welcome in Hollywood, at least not on its own terms.

Within its borders, Russia sows confusion more than solidarity and the latest announcement falls in line with that. Pavel Chukhray,...

The late, great Jean-Luc Godard wrote in his 1960 film "Le Petit Soldat" that photography was truth, and that cinema is truth at 24 frames per second. Every edit is a lie. 

Editing is one of those alterations from truth that modern cinema audiences have long ago internalized and accepted as part of the medium's vernacular. We accept that a conversation between two on-screen characters will instantly shift from one person's point of view to the other. Shot, reverse shot. In terms of consumption, this provides a natural form of clarity and lends to cinema a certain kind of unconscious rhythm. In actuality, the shot-reverse-shot will, at the very least, require two cameras running simultaneously, one on each actor. More likely, a single camera will be used, and the actors will run through the scene several times, the camera filming both angles separately. Editors -- the eldritch wizards of the film world...

Iranian action drama “World War III,” which won two awards at the recent Venice festival, will feature among the main competition titles at next month’s Tokyo International Film Festival.

The festival will operate as an in-person event with foreign filmmakers, media and other guests in attendance from Oct. 24-Nov. 2, 2022.

“World War III” is joined in the competition section by the world premiere of Milcho Manchevski’s “Kaymak,” Spanish director Carlos Vermut’s “Manticore” and Roberta Torre’s “The Fabulous Ones,” Michale Boganim’s “Tel Aviv Beirut,” and Youssef Chebbi’s debut film “Ashkal.”

The 15-strong competition also includes two Japanese films Imaizumi Rikiya’s “By The Window” and Matsunaga Daishi’s “Egoist” and two Japanese co-productions, Fukunaga Takeshi’s “Mountain Woman,” and Kyrgyzstan director Aktan Arym Kubat’s “This Is What I Remember.”

Winners from the competition section will be chosen by a jury headed by Julie Taymor, along with Joao Pedro Rodrigues,...

The world premieres of Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light,” Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking” and Sebastian Lelio’s “The Wonder” will take place at the 2022 Telluride Film Festival, which announced its lineup on Thursday, one day before the festival begins.

Other notable films in the Telluride lineup include Alejandro G. Inarritu’s “Bardo,” Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All,” Todd Field’s “TÁR” and James Gray’s “Armageddon Time,” which are making their North American debuts after premiering at European festivals.

Among the documentaries heading to Telluride, premieres are Steve James’ “A Compassionate Spy,” Anton Corbijn’s “Squaring the Circle,” Ryan White’s “Good Night Oppy,” Mary McCartney’s “If These Walls Could Sing” and Eva Webber’s “Merkel.”

Also Read:

TIFF 2022 Lineup: Films From Tyler Perry, Peter Farrelly, Sam Mendes and Catherine Hardwicke to Premiere

Documentary director and film historian Mark Cousins will have two films at the festival,...

Human Flowers of Flesh.For its second edition under director Giona A. Nazzaro and the first fully physical iteration since 2019, the Locarno Film Festival sought to reestablish itself in 2022 as one of the preeminent destinations for cinephiles looking to simultaneously discover fresh talent, take in new work by veteran directors, and dive deep into film history. While Nazzaro’s stated intention to make the festival more audience-friendly—if not outright commercial—was met with skepticism by critics accustomed to Locarno’s tradition of championing art cinema, it’s clear after two years that these comments didn’t portend a drastic realignment of programming values so much as anticipate a reevaluation of the festival’s perceived strengths. Due to the elimination of a couple of sidebars, the curatorial focus is now centered directly on the International Competition and Filmmakers of the Present sections, with even some clever cross-pollination between these strands...

Julia Murat’s film is second from Brazil to win festival’s top honour.

The Golden Leopard at Locarno Film Festival’s 75th anniversary edition (August 3-13) has gone to Julia Murat’s Rule 34 (Regra 34), which had its world premiere in the Swiss festival’s international competition.

The award includes a cash prize of Chf 75,000 to be shared equally between the film’s director and producer.

Rule 34 is the story of a young law student whose sexual desires lead her into a world of violence and eroticism. It was part of the 2019 Berlinale Co-Production Market and last year received...

“Rule 34,” a challenging and sexually explicit film from Brazilian director Julia Murat, has emerged as the surprise winner of the Golden Leopard award at this year’s Locarno Film Festival — an edition where typically audacious and formally ambitious work dominated the program. Marking a strong ceremony for female filmmakers, the main competition jury at the Swiss festival also handed an impressive three awards — best director and a brace of acting prizes — to gritty coming-of-age drama “I Have Electric Dreams,” an auspicious debut feature from Costa Rican writer-director Valentina Maurel.

A character study of a young female law student pursuing a parallel calling in amateur online pornography — while defending female abuse victims in her day job — “Rule 34’s” title stems from the popular online meme that “if it exists, there’s a porn version of it.” Murat’s film wasn’t among the buzzier entries in this year’s competition,...

Latest feature from Nigerian writer-director due to premiere at TIFF.

Nigerian film director and novelist Biyi Bandele has died aged 54 in Lagos, Nigeria.

His family confirmed that he died on Sunday (August 7) but did not reveal a cause of death.

Bandele’s latest feature Elesin Oba, The King’s Horseman is set to premiere at Toronto as a special presentation in September. It comes nearly a decade after his directorial debut, Half Of A Yellow Sun, premiered at Toronto in 2013, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Thandiwe Newton.

Further credits include Fifty, which played the London Film Festival in 2015, and he directed...

All through Fairytale (aka Skazka), characters recite the opening of the Divine Comedy and Dante’s preamble to his plunge into hell. But the black-and-white world Alexander Sokurov’s souls are stranded in feels closer to a kind of purgatory. A liminal wasteland of derelict buildings, rubble, and skeletal trees, it’s a nightmare yanked out of a Gustav Doré print, and no surprise one of its denizens—none other than Winston Churchill himself—should wonder early on if it is all a (very bad) dream. Churchill shares the hallucination with a number of other iconic figures from the twentieth century, a sordid cast that includes the likes of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Joseph Stalin. But Fairytale has no cast, strictly speaking: these four play themselves. The film’s sleight of hand—and the source of its disquieting allure—lies in its technical wizardry. Brought to life by Sokurov...

Planet Terror: Sokurov Gets Purgatorial in Nightmare on 20th Century Tyrants

“Death is the solution to all problems,” said Joseph Stalin. It turns out this is something of a fallacy, at least as examined in the latest film from Russian auteur Aleksandr Sokurov with Fairytale, an ironic title for this nightmarish animated film about the leaders, oligarchs and tyrants who mangled and corroded the globe with a terror irreparably defining the twentieth century. Culling archival footage and splicing together the who’s who of WWII into a shadowy nether world wherein notorious historical figures bicker, berate, and exchange backhanded compliments with one another, it’s a subversive reflection on the past as well as a hypnotic provocation.…...

Many people, when faced with the old question of who they’d invite to their dream dinner party, dutifully reel off a list of historical titans, which tends to prompt further, usually unasked questions: Would these undoubtedly interesting and consequential individuals make for great company together? Would they have much to say to each each other? And would it make for a better evening than, say, a gathering of your regular, undistinguished drinking buddies? Ever-experimental Russian formalist Alexander Sokurov drolly hints at the answer in his eccentric new film “Fairytale,” though not exactly in a dinner party context: Most of us aren’t hungry to spend an evening clinking glasses with Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, after all. Still, this brief, dreamlike musing assembles them — along with other daunting dead men of history, from Churchill to Mussolini to Jesus himself — in a kind of misty purgatory where they’re at liberty to converse.

Ceremony set for August 13 in Hollywood.

American Film Institute (AFI) announced on Friday (August 5) it will bestow honours upon Everything Everywhere All At Once star Michelle Yeoh and AFI Trustee Emeritus Lawrence Herbert.

Yeoh will receive a Doctorate of Fine Arts degree honoris causa for contributions of distinction to the art of the moving image and will become the first Asian artist to receive the honour.

Herbert will receive a Doctorate of Communication Arts degree honoris causa for his commitment to the mission of the American Film Institute. The honourees will collect their awards at AFI Conservatory’s commencement ceremony...

For the tenth time in 11 years, the Locarno Film Festival is hosting 10 international film critics from various stages of development during the 10 days of the A-list Swiss festival.

Coming from places as far from the Swiss resort town as Bangalore, Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro and Jakarta, and from an even more varied matrix of backgrounds, disciplines, writing styles, and interests, participants in the anniversary edition of the Critics Academy will have the chance to interact face-to-face with a wealth of major critics, programmers, and filmmakers in attendance at Locarno.

Returning after one aborted edition in the first year of the pandemic and another for which there was no public call for applications, Locarno’s incubator for aspiring professional critics takes place once again in the midst of an extraordinarily trying moment both for the art and commerce of cinema but also, perhaps even more acutely, for writing about it.

While...

Easy to overlook in the looming shadow of the Venice, Telluride, Toronto, and New York Film Festivals (and all of the awards season hoopla they portend), Switzerland’s historic Locarno Film Festival has remained so distinct and essential precisely because of its refusal to concede to industry pressures or chase attention over artistry.

While the magical Piazza Grande has been home to its fair share of glitzy outdoor screenings over the years — the next few days will see the 8,000-seat town square transform into an impromptu “Bullet Train” station, for example — Locarno has always prided itself on providing a more curious and less hostile platform for elite auteurs whose work may not conform to the commercial demands of the international marketplace; recent winners of the festival’s prestigious Golden Leopard award include Pedro Costa (“Vitalina Varela”), Lav Diaz (“From What Is Before”), and the great Chinese documentarian Wang Bing (“Mrs.

Set during the shoot for a costume drama film in the countryside, events take an odd turn when the director suddenly disappears.

Screen can unveil the first trailer for Valentin Merz’s debut film De Noche Los Gatos Son Pardos (At Night All Cats Are Black) which is set to premiere in the international competition at this year’s Locarno Film Festival (August 3-13.)

Italian sales outfit The Open Reel has world rights for the film except Switzerland where Vinca Film will distribute.

Set during the shoot of a costume drama film in the countryside, events take an odd turn when the director suddenly disappears.

Medusa Deluxe (Thomas Hardiman).The lineup for the 75th-anniversary edition of the festival has been announced, including new films by Helena Wittmann, João Pedro Rodrígues, Aleksandr Sokurov and others, alongside retrospectives, tributes, and much more.Piazza GRANDEAlles über Martin Suter. Ausser die Wahrheit. (Everything About Martin Suter. Everything but the Truth.) (André Schäfer)Annie Colère (Blandine Lenoir)Bullet Train (David Leitch)Compartiment tueurs (The Sleeping Car Murder) (Costa-Gavras)Delta (Michele Vannucci)Home of the Brave (Laurie Anderson)Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk)Last Dance (Delphine Lehericey)Medusa Deluxe (Thomas Hardiman)My Neighbor Adolf (Leon Prudovsky)Paradise Highway (Anna Gutto)Piano Piano (Nicola Prosatore)Printed Rainbow (Gitanjali Rao)Semret (Caterina Mona)Une femme de notre temps (Jean Paul Civeyrac)Vous n'aurez pas ma haine (You Will Not Have My Hate) (Kilian Riedhof)Where the Crawdads Sing (Olivia Newman)Human Flowers of Flesh (Helena Wittmann).Concorso INTERNAZIONALEAriyippu (Declaration) (Mahesh Narayanan)Balıqlara xütbə...

One of the major titles premiering at the Locarno Film Festival next month is the latest feature from Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov. Fairytale (aka Skazka) utilizes newly shot material and archival footage to share a “civil and artistic statement about those who determined the fate of the planet: Stalin, Churchill, Mussolini, Hitler, according to a Russian newspaper. Ahead of the Locarno premiere, the first trailer has now arrived.

A Belgian co-production, the project utilized no state funds, and although it was submitted to Cannes, Sokurov has said that those festival organizers replied they were “afraid to show it.” He added, “This is a film about history, it is hard for Europe, and it is also hard for us, for everyone.” It’ll now make its debut at Locarno in the Concorso internazionale section and one can check back for our review.

See the trailer below.

Fairytale premieres at Locarno Film Festival.

Trailblazing publishing executive was a former managing director of Screen International

Elspeth Tavares, the founder of film industry trade publication The Business of Film and former managing director of Screen International, has died at her home in London following a short illness at the age of 71.

A larger-than-life personality and an industry trailblazer, Tavares began her career in publishing at The Observer newspaper, where she learned the ropes of the printing and advertising sales business.

Her success at the Sunday national newspaper led to an appointment at Screen International, where she rose to become managing director.

She then combined her experience in consumer,...

Italian critic Giona A. Nazzaro, artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival, has assembled what he defines as a “broad, diversified and inclusive program” for the 75th edition of the Swiss event, which will open with “Atomic Blonde” helmer David Leitch’s Brad Pitt-starrer “Bullet Train” screening on its 8,000-seat outdoor Piazza Grande.

The frothy U.S. action film is precisely the type of smart entertainment Nazzaro is becoming known for programming in this temple of European indie cinema, alongside smaller budget titles with more gravitas.

As always, the Locarno selection is a mix of potential discoveries from newcomers and works by known directors, including masters like Russia’s Alexander Sokurov, who is expected to make the trek to unveil his new work “Fairytale,” in competition. Nazzaro spoke to Variety the day after announcing his 2022 lineup about his selection criteria and why he decided not to boycott Sokurov despite...

German feature will world premiere at Locarno.

Chinese sales agent Rediance has acquired sales rights to Locarno international competition title Piaffe, the first feature by Berlin-based visual artist and filmmaker Ann Oren.

The German film, which will receive its world premiere at Locarno in August, is produced by Kristof Gerega, Sophie Ahrens and Fabian Altenried of Berlin-based Schuldenberg Films.

Shot on 16mm, the story follows an introvert foley artist who becomes empowered when a horsetail starts growing out of her body while working on a commercial featuring a horse. Written by Oren and Thais Guisasola, the cast includes Simone Bucio,...

Azerbaijani Hilal Baydarov’s drama will debut in competition.

Hong Kong-based sales firm Asian Shadows has picked up rights to Azerbaijani director Hilal Baydarov’s Sermon To The Fish, which is set to world premiere in Locarno Film Festival’s international competition.

It marks the fourth fiction feature by Baydarov, whose In Between Dying played in competition at Venice in 2020 and whose documentary When The Persimmons Grew won best documentary at Sarajevo in 2019.

The feature is a co-production between Azerbaijan, Mexico, Switzerland and Turkey. Baydarov’s Azerbaijan-based production company Ucqar Film and Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas’ Splendor Omnia Studios are among the main backers.

Ten world premieres among 17 international competition titles.

The Locarno Film Festival (August 3-13) has revealed the line-up for its 75th edition, which includes the world premiere of Russian filmmaker Aleksandr Sokurov’s Fairytale.

The international competition will comprise 17 films, including 10 world premieres, which will vie for the coveted Golden Leopard awards.

Scroll down for full line-up

These titles include Fairytale, a Belgium-Russia co-production written and directed by Sokurov, whose films have played in Competition at Cannes five times with features including Russian Ark in 2002. His debut The Lonely Voice Of a Man received the Bronze Leopard in Locarno in 1987.

The...

It’ll be a field of seventeen competition offerings from the likes of master filmmaker Aleksandr Sokurov (Fairytale) to a pair of first time (not unlike this year’s Berlinale) works from Swiss helmer Valentin Merz (De Noche los Gatos Son Pardos) and Costa Rican helmer Valentina Maurel (Tengo Sueños Eléctricos) that make-up Locarno’s Film Festival Golden Leopard competition (aka Concorso internazionale).

Fest topper Artistic Director Giona A. Nazzaro managed to land the likes of veteran French filmmakers such as Sylvie Verheyde and Patricia Mazuy (who launches Bowling Saturne – formerly titled Les jeunes filles à la peau blanche dans la nuit).…...

Returning for its milestone 75th edition, Locarno Film Festival has now unveiled its full lineup. Taking place from August 3 through 13th, the selection includes Helena Wittmann’s Human Flowers of Flesh, Jean-Paul Civeyrac’s Une femme de notre temps, Aleksandr Sokurov’s Fairytale, Patricia Mazuy’s Bowling Saturne, Abbas Fahdel’s Tales of the Purple House, Ana Vaz’s It Is Night In America, Leon Prudovsky’s My Neighbor Adolf, a massive Douglas Sirk retrospective, and much more.

“The selection of films that we have put together, after watching and appraising over 3,000 titles (of every length and format), is intended to be the mark of a time and of a cinema in motion,” Artistic Director Giona A. Nazzaro said. “A historic time that is moving in multiple directions simultaneously, and a cinema that is probing the issues facing the world, and how to live in it re- sponsibly, sustainably. The...