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Luca Guadagnino was a lonely boy living in Palermo when he first read William S. Burroughs’ novella “Queer.” He would’ve been 14 when the book first came out in 1985, when gay liberation was already on its cultural downward slope because of AIDS, and the book was written in the early 1950s. But Burroughs’ story of American-expat-in-Mexico Lee and his obsessive romance with a lithe expat American soldier, Allerton, still emerged as an influential text for the queer literary canon but especially for Guadagnino’s imagination education.

Now, nearly four decades after first reading the book at 17, Guadagnino, one of the hottest filmmakers currently working — especially because of his other film this year “Challengers” — has finally realized the dream of bringing Burroughs’ world to the screen. Those men, Lee and Allerton, are played by Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey in respectively career-reinventing and career-inventing performances. And the film, as Guadagnino said...

If you’re looking for some moody introspection to start your Monday — and who isn’t? — look no further than the new trailer for the William S. Burroughs adaptation “Queer,” directed by Luca Guadagnino and starring Daniel Craig as an expatriate in postwar Mexico City exploring his homosexuality. Take a look at the new trailer for “Queer” below.

Just watching this thing is a haunting reverie set to some of Trent Reznor and Atticus’s lush score.

“Queer” has been some new cinematic ground for Craig as an actor. Look at how he awkwardly gives a tongue-in-cheek courtly bow to introduce himself in a bar to Drew Starkey’s much younger man. Clearly he’s infatuated with Starkey’s character from the start. And what follows is a torrid love affair, featuring some of the more graphic gay sex scenes you’d see this side of Pedro Almodóvar.

It’s...

We’re now just about a month away from the U.S. release of Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language The Room Next Door, starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton. The feature took Venice Film Festival by storm, picking up the festival’s top honors with the Golden Lion, and now ahead of its December 20 release from Sony Pictures Classics, one of its stars has revealed it may be her final film.

Speaking in conversation with her co-star Moore in an Elle feature, Swinton revealed, “I’ve always intended that each film would be my final one. It was not wanting to jinx anything because I have had such fun from start to finish. I always thought, ‘Well, that’s a good one to go out on. Let’s just quit while we’re ahead.’ And I feel it today. I feel The Room Next Door is the last film I make.

Few films have exposed the hollowness of the Oscars’ selection process for Best International Feature quite like writer-director Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light. The film marked India’s first feature to play in the Cannes Film Festival’s Official Competition in three decades, yet the country’s selection committee went in another direction with their choice in the category. “The jury said that they were watching a European film taking place in India,” a representative said, “not an Indian film taking place in India.”

Such a statement proves the necessity of Kapadia’s city symphony, which harmonizes the tales of three women from different backgrounds. The core dynamic of the film is the relationship between two colleagues and roommates—Prabha (Kani Kusruti), the stoic head nurse at a Mumbai hospital, and her energetic new hire, Anu (Divya Prabha)—as such cohabitation in the urban core of one...

Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia, who was awarded the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes film festival for her debut narrative feature All We Imagine As Light, talked about the challenges facing indie filmmakers in India during a conversation with Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda at Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF).

She also touched on how she felt about the fact that All We Imagine As Light was not selected by India’s Oscars committee as its submission for the Best International feature category, but was gracious about the snub.

Kore-eda was on the Cannes competition jury that awarded Kapadia’s film, and said he was impressed by her work, but due to the restraints of jury duty, had not been able to talk to her and find out more about her career. The Japanese director is a Cannes regular, winning the Palme d’Or for Shoplifters in 2018, while Yuji Sakamoto...

Tiffcom, the contents market that takes place alongside Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF), had a tough ride during the pandemic, moving online in 2020 and only managing to come back as a physical event for the first time last year.

But with a new home at the Tokyo Metropolitan Industrial Trade Center in Hamamatsucho, the market seems to be finding its feet in a crowded autumn festival season, in part thanks to the world’s renewed interest in Japanese film, TV and anime content.

With Japan-set series such as Shogun and Tokyo Vice also drawing audiences globally, and mainland China, once the big draw in the region, becoming less outward-looking, the international industry is becoming much more open to collaborating with Japan.

And the interest is reciprocated as a younger generation of Japanese filmmakers and producers are challenging long-held perceptions that their local industry is insular and slow moving. Increasingly, Japanese...

The Chicago International Film Festival is wrapping up its 60th edition by handing out its prizes. In fact, though the New York Film Festival has been around longer (it just wrapped its 62nd festival), Chicago is the longest running fest in North America to give out awards. And as you’d expect from this festival that’s especially focused on international film, its winners have also been standouts at Cannes and Venice.

The Best Film winner, or Gold Hugo, at the Chicago International Film Festival is Maura Delpero’s “Vermiglio,” a World War II drama centered in the Alps that drew praise out of Venice, though received a mixed reception from IndieWire. Italy has named the film its entry for next year’s Best International Feature competition at the Academy Awards. The previous three winners of the Gold Hugo at Chicago are Gabor Reisz’s “Explanation for Everything,” Hlynur Palmason’s “Godland,...

Sovereign Films has acquired U.K. and Ireland distribution rights to “Red Path,” the latest feature from Tunisian director Lotfi Achour, which competed for the Golden Leopard at this year’s Locarno Film Festival.

The film, set for theatrical release in the second or third quarter of 2025, centers on 13-year-old Achraf, who is forced into a gruesome and unimaginable act after his cousin Nizar is murdered by a group of men. Carrying the severed head of his cousin as a brutal message to his family, Achraf finds himself haunted by Nizar’s ghost. As his elders fail him, Achraf is torn between holding on to Nizar’s spirit and fulfilling his duty to recover his cousin’s body, while grappling with the overwhelming burden of grief and survival.

Achour, whose 2016 short “Law of Lamb” vied for the Palme d’Or at Cannes, drew inspiration from actual events. “This film is...

In Josh and Benny Safdie's 2019 panic attack "Uncut Gems," Adam Sandler plays Howard Ratner, a fast-talking jewelry store owner with several terrible habits. For one, he's been having a long-term affair with his mistress (Julia Fox) and his bitter, angry, soon-to-be-ex-wife Dinah (Idina Menzel) can't wait to be rid of him. Howard is also is a gambling addict with an unusual way of perpetuating his habit. He loans gems to celebrities and athletes, but takes their existing jewelry as collateral. He then takes the jewelry across town to a pawn shop and pawns it for a pile of money before betting the money on a sporting event. If he wins, he can get the jewelry out of hock and return it to the original owners with cash in his pocket, and no one is the wiser. If he loses ... well, he actually loses a lot.

"Uncut Gems" grabs you...

In an interview with Les Inrocks folks, Apichatpong Weerasethakul revealed that his upcoming project, the tentatively titled The Fountains of Paradise, is unlikely to begin shooting until 2026. The Thai filmmaker shared that he is currently in the process of writing, scouting locations, and essentially discovering the essence of the film in real time — no logline was offered. So we see this as a potential 2027 release. Tilda Swinton, with whom Weerasethakul expressed a desire to collaborate on many future projects, will star in their second film together, set against the backdrop of Sri Lanka.

…...

Tiffcom, the leading content market in Asia is affiliated with Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF). Featuring a variety of content holders from film, TV, animation etc., the market has been drawing in much interest from influential buyers within Asia and beyond.

The event will bring together a wide range of content holders, including those in film, TV, and animation, alongside leading buyers from around the world. In addition to sellers and buyers, Industry professionals will also attend for purposes such as international co-production, participating in seminars on the latest industry trends, and engaging in networking opportunities.

Tiffcom 2024 will be held for three days from October 30th (Wed.) to Nov.1st (Fri.) during the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival. Its outline was announced at the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival Press Conference yesterday, September 25th.

Expanded Seminars to Deliver the Latest Insights from the Audio-Visual Industry

Due to last year’s fully booked seminars,...

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.NEWSNo Other Land.Politically engaged documentaries—including some of the most lauded films of the festival season, like No Other Land (2024)—are struggling to find buyers, with many filmmakers resorting to self-distribution or service deals (in which a distributor is paid to release the film while filmmakers retain the rights).After the ignominious resignation of Italian Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano, many in the nation’s film industry are calling upon his replacement, Alessandro Giuli, to abandon plans for new legislation that would curtail government subsidies for film production.With drastically expanded tax incentives and brand-new soundstages, New Jersey hopes to again become a major hub for motion pictures. First Lady Tammy Snyder Murphy emphasizes the importance of every community,...

The Tokyo Gap-Financing Market (Tgfm) has revealed the 20 projects selected for financing and development at Tiffcom, the content market of Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF).

The 5th edition of Tgfm is set to take place from October 30 to November 1 and includes five more projects than last year due to a special focus on Italy. This follows the signing of a co-production agreement between Italy and Japan in 2023, which came into effect last month.

Scroll down for full list of titles

Several international projects hail from successful producers who have teamed with young directors.

They include family drama 9 Temples To Heaven,...

US filmmaker Ava DuVernay will receive the honorary Film & Beyond Award at the 30th edition of Geneva International Film Festival (Giff).

DuVernay will accept her award in-person at the event, where she will participate in a talk about her career.

The festival, which runs from November 1-10, 2024, is also playing a programme of DuVernay’s work.

Having worked extensively as a publicist in Hollywood, DuVernay directed her first feature This Is The Life, a documentary about the alternative hip hop MCs who came through the Good Life Cafe in Los Angeles, in 2008.

After her fiction feature debut I Will Follow...

Lisandro Alonso: “The Searchers is the main example of what a Western was by John Ford, films which I really admire.” (Chiara Mastroianni and Robert Alan Packard in Eureka)

Lisandro Alonso’s Delphic Eureka, co-written with Martín Caamaño and Fabian Casas (which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023 and was a Main Slate selection of the New York Film Festival), begins with Murphy (Viggo Mortensen) approaching a town in the old Wild West on a buckboard, driven by a nun. She cannot be trusted, so much is clear, and as though she were the coachman transporting Dr. Van Helsing to his destination in Transylvania, she tells her passenger that this is as far as she can go. In the saloon he will encounter El Coronel (Chiara Mastroianni channeling Joan Crawford in Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar), and a messy, loud and altogether corrupt atmosphere that...

That Truong Minh Quy’s new queer romance-cum-sociohistorical lament Viet and Nam was banned by the country whose name forms its title will probably surprise few Western audience members. And yet, it reportedly wasn’t the central relationship between two young men that was the sticking point for Vietnamese censors but, rather, the film’s “gloomy, deadlocked and negative view” of the country and its denizens. Which probably says as much for the increased stature of LGBTQ+ visibility on the global stage as it does about the troublesome uptick in reactionary nationalism as the world’s collective migrant crisis continues to widen in scope, which very well could threaten to diminish the progress made on the former.

As the film opens, Viet and Nam are shown working alongside each other in the dark yet twinkling depths of a mine, caked in soot and blithely musing about just how much coal dust their lungs can hold.

After crafting one of the most remarkable documentaries of the last few years with the Apichatpong Weerasethakul-backed, Sundance-winning, Oscar-nominated Hale County This Morning, This Evening, director RaMell Ross has moved into narrative fiction with an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s acclaimed, Pulitzer-winning 2019 novel The Nickel Boys. Going inside the true story of abuses at the juvenile reformatory Dozier School for Boys in Florida, the film features Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Ethan Herisse, Fred Hechinger, Hamish Linklater, Brandon Wilson, and Daveed Diggs.

With cinematography from Jomo Fray, who shot last year’s stunning All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, Nickel Boys sees Ross exude stunning formal power once again, telling this story with a unique, sensitive conceit that makes for a radical adaptation and one of the year’s best films. Ahead of the Opening Night premiere at the 62nd New York Film Festival and October 25 release from Amazon MGM Studios, the first trailer has now arrived.

Portuguese auteur Pedro Costa will host this year’s Creators Lab, organized and operated in Mexico by Playlab Films. The 2024 edition of the Lab will be held in Mexico, with a record 50 emerging filmmakers in attendance.

Pedro Costa Lab: Mexico will run from Sept. 23 to Oct. 3 at the Shambalanté, a space in the Yucatecan jungle curated by the Playlab Films team. According to its designers, the space uses “sacred geometry, ancient techniques, and modern eco-technology to achieve harmony across times, becoming a sanctuary of relaxation and healing.”

For 12 days, participants will share meals, walks, and stream-of-consciousness conversations about their craft. Each will get the chance to make a short film with input and support from their peers. Ten of the shorts will be picked to receive full-color grading and distribution at international festivals. All on-site transportation, accommodations, meals, and activities are included in the Lab’s €6,100 fee.

Attendees of this...

On quite a Hitchcockian-meets Twilight Zone streak with the one-two punch of Old and Knock and the Cabin, expectations are high for M. Night Shyamalan to deliver once again with his upcoming thriller Trap.

Featuring a much-deserved lead role for Josh Hartnett, starring alongside the filmmaker’s daughter Saleka Shyamalan, the film follows a father and daughter who realize the concert they are attending is set up as a sting operation by the police.

Featuring gorgeous cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, collaborator of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Luca Guadagnino, the film was recently moved up a week and will now open August 2, in almost exactly a month.

Watch the new trailer below.

The post Second Trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap Finds Josh Hartnett in the Crosshairs first appeared on The Film Stage.

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.NEWSNo Other Land.The Berlin-Brandenburg Broadcasting Corporation (rbb), a state institution, has withdrawn funding for the €40,000 Berlinale Documentary Film Prize. The prize was most recently awarded to No Other Land (2024), which depicts the displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank by the Israeli military. While accepting the award, co-directors Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham called for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the occupation of Palestine, statements which were met with opprobrium by German state officials.After more than three months of contract negotiations, IATSE has reached a tentative agreement with AMPTP, including structured wage increases matching those won by SAG-AFTRA last year and new streaming residuals to address the union’s pension and health plan shortfall.

Exclusive: As it preps for the release of notable titles like Nickel Boys, production company Louverture Films has added a handful of key execs and collaborators, including two principal partners and a chief financial officer.

As those new arrivals come aboard, co-founder Danny Glover has announced he is stepping down as CEO but will remain a partner. Melony Lewis and Adam Lewis have joined as principal partners and Longtime German film finance expert Frank Lehmann is now CFO. Colombian producer Diana Bustamante, a significant figure in South American cinema and former head of the Cartagena Film Festival, is collaborating with Louverture on a number of projects.

Along with the Lewises, the company’s partners include Glover, co-founder Joslyn Barnes, Susan Rockefeller, Sawsan Asfari, Tony Tabatznik and Jeffrey L. Clark.

Louverture is known for a number of acclaimed international co-productions, among them narrative titles Memoria, Zama, Capernaum and documentaries Gunda, Hale...

The saying goes that miracles are everywhere for those with eyes to see them, which helps to explain why Rita Lopez — the most pious and competitive member of her rural Argentinian community — seems to find one in the first place she looks. Nearing 70, terminally bored of her marriage, and desperate for a heavenly sliver of the recognition that she’s been denied here on Earth, our heroine decides that an old sculpture she uncovers in the musty storeroom of her local church must be the statue of Saint Rita that’s been missing for 30 years, and was assumed to be lost forever.

It’s a big deal. So big, in fact, that Rita (Argentinian icon and “Wild Tales” star Mónica Villa) enlists her sweet and doddering husband Norberto (Horacio Marassi) to help smuggle the statue out of the church so she can spruce it up and unveil it to the...

Welcome to Global Breakouts, Deadline’s fortnightly strand in which we shine a spotlight on the TV shows and films killing it in their local territories. The industry is as globalized as it’s ever been, but breakout hits are appearing in pockets of the world all the time and it can be hard to keep track. So we’re going to do the hard work for you.

This week, we head to Thailand and take a peak at a stirring, emotional film. How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies has broken box office records around Southeast Asia, with audiences lapping up the soulful tear-jerker and TikTok playing quite the role.

Name: How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies

Country: Thailand

Producer: Gdh

International sales: WME Independent

Distribution: Southeast Asia, China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Anz

For fans of: The Farewell, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s films

When Thai filmmaker Pat Boonnitipat...

The Clooney Foundation for Justice, the human rights campaign group established by George and Amal Clooney, has petitioned the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention over the death in custody of Thai activist Netiporn “Bung” Sanesangkhom.

Sanesangkhom died on May 14 following a 65-day hunger strike after repeatedly being denied bail while facing charges of insulting the monarchy (lèse majesté). She was 28.

The Clooney Foundation’s TrialWatch unit says that it is “seeking remedies for violations of Netiporn’s rights, including reparations for her family and, more broadly, an opinion from the Working Group urging Thailand to stop misusing detention to stifle criticism of the monarchy.”

Sanesangkhom had been in and out of prison following charges relating to her involvement in an informal opinion poll in February 2022, which sought the public’s views on whether the royal family’s motorcades were an inconvenience to the public. Thai authorities allege this...

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,...

When California State University Northridge’s head of film production Nate Thomas came to visit one of his first students, Paul Hunter, on the set of the new David Oyelowo-starring Apple TV Plus series “Government Cheese,” the Northridge alum and show co-creator could be heard boasting about his time in the program.

After learning to tell stories at Csun, Hunter spun a renowned career directing music videos for Beyonce and U2, among others, into helming Bacardi spots with Michael B. Jordan and Cannes Golden Lion-winning campaigns for Nike. Much of that has been through PrettyBird, a Hollywood commercial house he co-founded and uses in part to help foster and launch the careers of other underrepresented voices. “It all started at Northridge,” Thomas says. “We do filmmaking not just for the privileged. We make it for all people who have a story to tell.”

Since 2016, the Hispanic-serving institution’s film...

On quite a Hitchcockian-meets Twilight Zone streak with the one-two punch of Old and Knock and the Cabin, expectations are high for M. Night Shyamalan to deliver once again with his upcoming thriller Trap.

Featuring a much-deserved lead role for Josh Hartnett, starring alongside the filmmaker’s daughter Saleka Shyamalan, the film follows a father and daughter who realize the concert they are attending is set up as a sting operation by the police.

One may want to avoid the below trailer if they want to skip spoilers, but perhaps among the most intriguing elements of Shyamalan’s latest is the gorgeous cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, collaborator of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Luca Guadagnino.

Trap opens August 9.

The post Josh Hartnett is Caught in M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap in First Trailer for Concert-Set Thriller first appeared on The Film Stage.

Sovereign is proud to announce that award-winning Mexican director Amat Escalante’s powerful thriller Lost In The Night received its UK premiere at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival, as part of the ‘Thrill’ section, and now the film is available to rent/buy on Amazon Prime Video in the UK.

From acclaimed Mexican director Amat Escalante, following Heli, for which he won Best Director at Cannes in 2013, and The Untamed, which won him the Best Director prize at Venice in 2016, comes Lost In The Night, a taut, engrossing thriller that blends traditional elements of Latin American cinema with astute social commentary on Mexican society and contemporary influencer culture.

The film, which premiered at Cannes this year, stars Juan Daniel García Treviño (Narcos México), and Latin American influencer superstar Ester Expósito, who has 27 million followers, and features a superb score by Stranger Things composers Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein.

The film...

Thai cinema has a long history of misrepresenting the Lgbtqia+ community. Early films, such as “It's All Because of Katoey” (1954) contributed to the assignation of homosexuality as a social deviance. Today, Thai media have made significant progress in presenting nuanced experiences of Lgbtqia+ individuals in modern Thai society. This article presents a chronological list of 12 Thai fiction films that help understanding this evolution.

1. The Last Song (1985) by Pisan Akaraseranee

“The Last Song” tells the bittersweet story of Somying (Somying Daorai), a beautiful and successful showgirl working in a famous transvestite cabaret in Pattaya. Through her thwarted love affair with a handsome male singer, the film highlights the difficulties of being trans in Thai society. It is one of the first films to cast a transgender woman in a leading role. The film's release was a revolutionary moment, not only for the Thai entertainment industry, but also for the Lgbtqia+ community.

Indie streamer Mubi has acquired worldwide streaming rights to South African artist William Kentridge’s prestige series “Self-Portrait As a Coffee Pot” which explores how art is made in the digital age.

The nine-episode series by Kentridge – who is celebrated around the world for his influential works comprising animation, installations, theater, opera and films – first previewed as a rough cut at the 2022 Toronto Film Festival.

Kentridge lays bare his creative process in the nine 30-minute videos produced in the artist’s Johannesburg studio during the pandemic and its aftermath, between 2020 and 2023. In “Self-Portrait As a Coffee Pot,” Kentridge also invites audiences to reflect on the same philosophical questions that he poses to himself across the episodes, including how do our memories work, what makes us ourselves, and why does history always go wrong.

“Playfully deconstructing and assembling the pressing concerns of our time as works of art,” Kentridge uses “hand-drawn animations,...

Veteran Thai filmmaker Pantham Thongsang has rejoined Tifa Studios to spearhead international co-productions as Thai authorities gear up to enhance the country’s global competitiveness through soft power.

Pantham, who has 30 years of producing and directing experience, is a pioneer of international co-productions for Thailand, having produced through Tifa 2004’s Cannes award-winner Tropical Malady and 2006’s Syndromes And A Century. Both films were directed by Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Pantham was most recently HBO’s country lead for original productions in Thailand and a senior executive at Thailand’s The One Enterprise public limited company, responsible for the launch of...

In a remote region of Thailand, on the banks of the Mekong River, a group of soldiers haves been struck by a mysterious illness that causes them to fall into an endless sleep. As she takes care of one of them, Jen (Jenjira Pongpas) delves into his dream, revealing haunting visions of past conflicts. In the final scene, she sits on a bench and observes a wasteland where children play while excavators turn over the ground. She displays a strange expression of terror, and… end of movie.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul leaves us pondering Jen's gaze. Is she merely observing the scene or glimpsing something beyond reality? Does she see the shocking cycle of military violence that has taken place since Ayutthaya and the 1960s-70s? Is she about to fall into the strange sleeping sickness? Does she see a form of the future that terrifies her? Certainly a bit of all.

The title of Girish Kasaravalli's 1977 film "Ghatashraddha" is directly translated as "The Ritual," although the on-screen English title is "Ritual of Excommunication." Both titles reflect the bleak circumstances of the film's protagonist, even though "The Ritual" implies that women are abused and discarded as a matter of course. "Ghatashraddha" is a bleak tragedy about a woman named Yamuna (Meena Kuttappa) who lives with her religious schoolteacher father (Ramaswamy Iyengar) and who is already a widow at a young age. Yamuna is already seeing another man, also a schoolteacher, although their affair is secret ... as is her pregnancy. The only person who treats Yamuna with any friendliness is a young boy named Naani (Ajith Kumar), who serves as a witness to the story.

When her father goes out of town to raise money for his school, everything falls apart. The school deteriorates, gossip begins to spread, and Yamuna becomes an outcast.

Prior to embarking on the writing journey for La Otra Orilla, a project supported by the Cnc folks, Peruvian filmmaker Francesca Canepa premiered her short film “El silencio del río” at the Berlinale. This short film intertwined mythology and dreamscape with isolated reality, drawing parallels to the works of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and thematic explorations akin to Beatriz Seigner’s Los silencios. It was shortly after that Canepa connected with Argentina-based co-writer Miguel Ángel Papalini. Sharing similar sensibilities regarding subject matter and aesthetics, Papalini’s involvement in projects like feature film Packing Heavy, which also features a child’s point of view, solidified their collaboration.…...

Five years after the remarkable success of “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” that won the Palme D'Or at Cannes in 2010 and many more festival awards, director and eclectic Thai video artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul presented “Cemetery of Splendour”, another imaginative and enigmatic work that elaborates on the author's fascination with the act of sleeping as a means of accessing deeper layers of consciousness and understanding.

Cemetery of Splendour is screening at Metrograph

In order to be enchanted by the director's imaginative and hypnotic world you need to unlock a certain receptiveness towards a non-traditional narrative, a storytelling that is more stratified than linear. The film takes place in the town of Khon Kaen, Isan province, Northwest of Thailand where the director grew up, and more than a story, there are many places and many stories. There is a former school transformed into a small country hospital in a...

Beware, spoilers! You may witness the most astonishingly beautiful allegory of death in a movie. The kind of long takes that flashed your mind and remains diffused long after the details of the plot are forgotten. But Shh… these few words should be enough to convince you to watch “Tomorrow is a long time”, the first feature-length film of Singapore's brilliant new formalist, Jow Zhi Wei.

Tomorrow is a Long Time is screening at Black Movie

In a fantasized Singapore, as an archetype of any tropical Asian modern city, the 17 years old Meng is raised alone by an austere hard-working father after his mother has left home, seemingly without an address. Meng's narrative has been clearly devised upon two distinct movements. The first part immerses us in the day-to-day life of this dysfunctional family surviving in a cold and harsh society. While the silent Meng is struggling to exist among...

Possathorn Watcharapanit's contemplative slow-burner “Rivulet of Universe” opens with verses by the Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh who wrote about himself not been restricted whether by the present or future. For a film that doesn't stay in one time and space, but wanders from the past to the now and back again in form of dreams, poetic thoughts, tales and historic facts that overlap, this introduction measures up.

Borrowed Time is screening at International Film Festival Rotterdam

Time travel doesn't happen in a physical sense. It's the information about Thailand's mythology, history and its recent development that people are either telling each other- or being informed about through cultural institutions, that does it. There is a clear influence of Apichatpong Weerasethakul in the loose treatment of time and space, very long takes and long shots, but crucial differences between the two filmmakers is in their approach to the narrative.

The Berlin International Film Festival has confirmed its full juries for the 2024 edition (February 16-24), with Italian actress Jasmine Trinca and German filmmaker Christian Petzold among those joining president Lupita Nyong’o on the main international jury.

Also on the jury are filmmakers Ann Hui (Hong Kong) and Albert Serra (Spain) alongside Ukrainian novelist and poet Oksana Zabuzhko.

The international jury will select the winners of the Golden and Silver Bears from the 20 films playing in Competition.

The three-member jury for the Encounters strand comprises filmmakers Lisandro Alonso (Argentina), Denis Côté (Canada) and Tizza Covi (Italy).

The Encounters jury will choose the winners of best film,...

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell.All too frequently, the reception of recent Asian arthouse films at international festivals showcases an ambiguous predicament. When encountering new films—usually in the sidebars of Cannes, Venice, or the Berlinale—Western critics tend to resort to a repetitious discourse, conveniently labeling the films and making easy comparisons to the canon of the 1990s and 2000s. The pattern goes like this: meditative sonic sequences or notions of reincarnation become instant echoes of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s work, any neon extravaganza immediately points to Wong Kar Wai, and Tsai Ming-liang is a recurring reference whenever a film abounds in still long shots. In a sense, these touchstones and comparisons are all valid—these older filmmakers conceived cinematic miracles and attempted to redefine the boundaries of film art, and therefore have influenced many artists of the next generation.However, it isn’t difficult to find this labeling tendency to be ectypal Orientalization.

Exclusive: Tilda Swinton, the Academy Award- and BAFTA Award-winning actress most recently seen in yet another indelible role in David Fincher’s Netflix hitman pic The Killer, has signed with CAA.

One of the most esteemed screen talents currently working, Swinton has, in her nearly four-decade career, established ongoing relationships with such renowned filmmakers as Bong Joon Ho, Wes Anderson, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Luca Guadagnino, Jim Jarmusch, Fincher, and Joanna Hogg, having made eight films at the start of her career with director Derek Jarman.

Best known for roles in such films as Michael Clayton, for which she won an Academy Award and BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress, and We Need to Talk About Kevin, for which she received a BAFTA Award nomination, she also boasts credits including Orlando, I Am Love, Okja and The Chronicles of Narnia franchise, to name a few.

Swinton won the Venice Film Festival’s Best...

Tamara Tatishvili is going full steam into her first edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, which runs Jan. 25 – Feb. 4, following her appointment as the head of the festival’s funding arm, the Hubert Bals Fund. She started full-time in early January.

“I will use the festival to connect to professionals outside of IFFR, hosting informal think tank meetings with industry professionals, producers and sales agents within a close environment to see what their observations and ideas are, and how this could feed into the future thinking strategies of Hubert Bals Fund,” she tells Variety.

She went on to emphasize the importance of festivals from a funder’s point of view. “Festivals are key platforms to connect the stories funds help create to audiences. Audience engagement is a key topic. Funders and producers believe films need to be made to reach audiences. It’s how you create impact and how...

U.K.-based film production and distribution company Sovereign is expanding across the Atlantic with the launch of a distribution arm in the U.S.

With a plan to release two to three titles a year theatrically and across VOD platforms, the first film slated for release from the new entity is Laurent Nègre’s World War II thriller “A Forgotten Man,” which Sovereign also produced. Set in 1945 after the surrender of Nazi Germany, the story follows the Swiss ambassador (played by Michael Neuenschwander) after he leaves Berlin, but finds himself haunted by his past.

The film, which recently had its U.S. premiere at the Miami Jewish Film Festival and first bowed in Zurich, was released in the U.K. by Sovereign with support from the Swiss Confederation and Swiss Films. Its U.S. release is now slated for April.

Andreas Roald, who first founded Sovereign in 2008, and the head of U.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s influence can be traced in Spanish film-maker Lois Patiño’s whimsical meditation on the Buddhist cycle of life

Lois Patiño’s film is a delicate, exotic contrivance, a docu-realist diptych spectacle using nonprofessional actors, about the Buddhist concept of “Samsara”, the cycle of birth, death and life, and the transmigration of souls. Set in Laos and Zanzibar, it is mysterious and quietist, but flavoured with something whimsical and even playful; it is one of those ostensibly serious films best appreciated with the sense of humour, which Graham Greene said was the only thing that allowed him to believe in God. An agnostic might find something a little preposterous, even condescending in it: is it addressed to actual audiences in Laos and Zanzibar, or is this a film by and for western cinephiles? Well, there is charm and ingenuous directness here, and perhaps the influence of Thai film-maker Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Recently honored as one of Unifrance’s 10 to Watch, Franco-Moroccan filmmaker Sofia Alaoui will build on the rugged eeriness of her 2023 Sundance jury prize winner “Animalia” with “Tarfaya” – a slow-burn thriller that mines Morocco’s sweeping landscapes for ambient unease.

Named for (and inspired by) a remote, coastal town on the country’s Saharan border, “Tarfaya” imagines a not-too-distant world of extreme atmospheric swings, of severe heat giving way to more intense storms, all while daily life trudges on. The film will follow Meryam, a forty-something nurse working at a secluded hospital beset by a mysterious new plague linked to the destabilizing environment.

“At first, the patients become delirious, falling into delusions,” Alaoui explains. “Later they fall into a deep sleep, as if they’re disconnecting from the world in which they live. The film builds from this wistful tone where the characters become accustomed to a form of apocalypse.

Vietnamese director Pham Thien An’s debut feature Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell juxtaposes moments of great importance with the moment-by-moment stasis of everyday life. An has a terrific eye: the film’s colors are bright and vivid, popping off the screen. Using very long takes, he reframes the image so that a character can appear both in close-up and long shot.

In its opening scene, Thien (Le Phang Vu) watches a soccer game with two friends while debating the meaning of life. As costumed mascots and women selling beer walk by, the stakes seem pretty low, but the scene ends with a sudden motorbike crash. Thien’s sister-in-law is killed, while her 5-year-old daughter survives. (All of this is filmed in one take, with the camera moving to take in the street where this accident happens.) He’s tasked with taking care of the girl, returning from Saigon to...

Early into Pham Thien An’s sprawling, stupefying Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, there’s a shot that manifests Caravaggio inside a shack in rural Vietnam. Having traveled from Saigon to his home village to attend the funeral of his sister-in-law, Thien (Le Phong Vu) is visiting a local elder who sowed a shroud for the departed. The twenty-something wants to pay for the service; the old man doesn’t take money from neighbors. He does accept the company, though, and very generously spills a whole cascade of memories from the Vietnam War, laying bare an old bullet scar on his ribcage. And as Thien bends to graze the bruised skin under the warm, caliginous light, Pham frames the moment as one of reverential awe, an image modeled off of Caravaggio’s “The Incredulity of Saint Thomas.” It’s a beautiful shot in a film full of them. That it...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For regular updates, sign up for our weekly email newsletter and follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSDry Leaf.On Criterion’s Daily, David Hudson has shared a useful roundup of films that might be expected to premiere during 2024. Among the inclusions are: Mickey 17, Bong Joon-ho’s first film since Parasite (2019); It’s Not Me, Leos Carax’s latest collaboration with Denis Lavant; and Dry Leaf, the enticing-sounding new film by Alexandre Koberidze (What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? [2021]), which is said to be about “a photographer who shoots soccer stadiums [who] goes missing.”A list of international filmmakers including Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Pedro Costa, Radu Jude, Ira Sachs, Claire Denis, and Abderrahmane Sissako have signed a letter, published during the holiday season in the French newspaper Libération, demanding (as translated by the Film Stage) “an immediate end to the bombings on Gaza,...

KimiKat Productions Presents Onlookers, a film by Kimi Takesue

Opens Friday, Feb. 16th, 2024 in U.S. theatres

Metrograph (New York exclusive) U.S. theatrical premiere

“Onlookers” will screen as part of the series Fire Over Water: Films of Transcendence January 26 – February 25, 2024 at Metrograph featuring films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Kim Ki-duk, Kimi Takesue and more.

Official Selection:

World Premiere – Slamdance Film Festival 2023, Breakouts Feature Honorable Mention Winner

International Premiere – Cinéma du Réel 2023

Ridm: Montreal International Documentary Film Festival 2023

Dmz International Documentary Film Festival 2023

San Diego Asian American Film Festival 2023

Krakow International Film Festival 2023

Prismatic Ground 2023

Cinéma du Réel 2023

Onlookers, a film by Kimi Takesue

USA | 2023 | 72 minutes

Official site: www.onlookersfilm.com

Onlookers offers a visually striking, immersive meditation on travel and tourism in Laos, reflecting on how we all live as observers. Unfolding in painterly tableaux, Onlookers explores the paradox of travel: Why do people fly thousands of miles from home...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson)

A film that feels uprooted from deep beneath the earth, Raven Jackson’s poetic, patient debut is a distillation of cinema to its purest form, a stunning patchwork of experience and memory. Tethered around the life of Mack, a Black woman from Mississippi, as we witness glimpses of her childhood, teenage years, and beyond, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt becomes a sensory experience unlike anything else this year. Shot in beautiful 35mm by Jomo Fray and edited by Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s collaborator Lee Chatametikool, there’s a reverence for nature and joy for human connection that seems all too rarified in today’s landscape of American filmmaking. – Jordan R.

Where to Stream: VOD...

No reasonably intelligent person imagines an artist’s statement about the horrors in Gaza would, in fact, end those horrors, but there are always limits to what one can take and hopes for what one could do. It might even be said that, as observers of the world and human behavior, filmmakers are especially inclined to recoil. When I interviewed Pedro Costa last month he spoke, unprompted, of a situation that’s only grown worse: “It’s very clear that we cannot stand images anymore. I can’t. I can’t. The images of the world for me [Exhales] I can’t. I turn my eyes, and I’m sure you do the same. It’s unbearable.” When I spoke with Anthony Dod Mantle a couple of weeks later it, again, emerged––vis-a-vis The Zone of Interest, whose own cinematographer alluded to it the next day. It’s difficult being a person in the world,...