News

Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui will be honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 29th International Film Festival of Kerala (Iffk), adding to her impressive collection of career recognitions that includes the Venice Film Festival’s career Golden Lion.

The award, which comes with a cash prize of INR1 million, a sculpture, and a citation, will be presented by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan at the festival’s opening ceremony on Dec. 13 at state capital Thiruvananthapuram’s Nishagandhi Auditorium.

Hui, 77, stands as a pivotal figure in Asian cinema, particularly known for her contributions to the Hong Kong New Wave movement. Her five-decade career has consistently focused on social issues, with particular attention to women’s experiences in Hong Kong society. Her work examines themes ranging from gender discrimination to the cultural shifts surrounding Hong Kong’s transition from British colonial rule to Chinese sovereignty.

Born in Anshan, China in...

Poland’s EnergaCamerimage film festival is kicking off under a cloud of controversy this year — but you wouldn’t know it from the opening ceremony that took place Saturday night in the host city of Toruń.

Festival founder Marek Żydowicz opened the 32nd edition of the event without any direct mention of his controversial statements that caused an industry backlash last week, resulting in two of the festival’s most high-profile guests — Oscar winner Steve McQueen and The Substance director Coralie Fargeat — pulling out in protest. Żydowicz emphasized, however, that he “founded Camerimage over 30 years ago to help restore dignity to the artists of the film industry who are overlooked, or who are treated simply as technicians whenever we celebrate film.”

Camerimage famously highlights the work of cinematographers and other craft artists integral to the filmmaking process. For years, the event has been akin to a cult favorite on the festival circuit,...

EnergaCamerimage festival director Marek Żydowicz opened the 32nd edition of the event without any direct reference to his controversial comments that caused a firestorm this past week, saying that the festival was founded to honor those “who are overlooked” and not recognized by other awards.

Hiroyuki Sanada

Speaking before a full house at the opening ceremony in Torun, Poland, he also noted that “we are surrounded by images that lie, that misinform” and praised cinematographers as the antidote. “It is they who create what we see,” he said, speaking through an interpreter.

In a recent column published in Cinematography World magazine, Żydowicz appeared to suggest that having greater representation of women DPs and directors in the event’s selection could lead to the inclusion of “mediocre film productions.”

This provoked allegations of misogyny, leading to responses from groups including Women in Cinematography, the British Society of Cinematographers, American Society of...

Green Border.Agnieszka Holland begs to differ with Claude Lanzmann. The director of Shoah (1985) had attacked the idea of depicting the Holocaust in a fiction film, claiming that its unfathomable horrors would inevitably be trivialized. In a 2013 National Gallery of Art lecture, “Viewing History through the Filmmaker’s Lens,” Holland made two counter-arguments: that feature films are a tool to educate as many people as possible about the Holocaust, and that “taking on issues that are impossible to explain or grasp rationally is one of the most important challenges of an artist.” Holland had made a number of provocative Holocaust dramas, including Angry Harvest (1985), Europa Europa (1990), and In Darkness (2011), all of which involve the plight of Jews who have improbably escaped capture and death. With these films, Holland looked back at events from decades in the past. In her latest film, she is dramatizing history while it is unfolding.Urgent without sacrificing artistry,...

The 54th edition of India’s Goa Film Festival concluded Tuesday evening with a tribute to Michael Douglas, who picked up the fest’s Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Cinema.

Previous winners of the award — which organizers say celebrates individuals whose unparalleled contributions have enriched the cinematic landscape — include Martin Scorsese, Bernardo Bertolucci, Dilip Kumar, Carlos Saura, Krzysztof Zanussi, and Wong Kar-wai.

“It’s a tremendous honor to receive this award. It’s a career life achievement. When I heard about the award, my family and I were elated,” Douglas said. The veteran Basic Instinct actor was joined by his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and son Dylan Douglas.

Later, during his acceptance speech, Douglas touched on world affairs, highlighting the role he believes cinema can play in bringing people together. Douglas also gave a shoutout to what he described as some of his favorite Indian films, including Rrr,...

The 54th International Film Festival of India (Iffi), Goa, concluded on Tuesday with Hollywood veteran Michael Douglas accepting the Satyajit Ray lifetime achievement award for excellence in cinema.

Previous winners of the award include Martin Scorsese, Bernardo Bertolucci, Dilip Kumar, Carlos Saura, Krzysztof Zanussi and Wong Kar-wai.

“It’s a tremendous honor to receive this award, a career life achievement. When I heard about the award, my family and I were elated,” said Douglas, who was accompanied by wife Catherine Zeta Jones and their son Dylan Douglas. The two-time Oscar winning actor said that his favorite Indian films are “Rrr,” “Om Shanti Om” and “The Lunchbox.” The award was conferred during the festival’s closing ceremony by Bollywood actor Ayushmann Khurrana and Pramod Sawant, chief minister of Goa.

At the festival’s international competition, the jury, presided over by veteran filmmaker Shekhar Kapur, awarded best film to Abbas Amini’s Rotterdam-winning Iranian film “Endless Borders.

Yorgos Lanthimos drama ‘Poor Things’ won two prizes.

Warwick Thornton was awarded the Golden Frog at Poland’s Camerimage International Film Festival on Saturday (November 18) for drama The New Boy.

The Australian Indigenous filmmaker received the festival’s top prize at a ceremony in the Polish town of Torun, where the director was recognised for his role as cinematographer on the film. Accepting the award, Thornton paid tribute to his fellow filmmakers and said: “I’ve had tears in my eyes the whole week and it’s not because of the alcohol or the cold weather. It’s the love of cinematography,...

Cinematographer and director Warwick Thornton scored top honors Saturday at the Camerimage cinematography film festival for his magical tale of an aboriginal youth, “The New Boy,” which film jurors called a distinctive “portrait of an extinguished spirituality.”

Thornton, in accepting the Golden Frog, said he had been so moved by the cinematography work onscreen at the fest, a top global event for directors of photography, he’d been “tearing for a week.”

Ed Lachman, director of photography for Pablo Larrain’s horror fantasy “El Conde,” inspired by the life of Chilean tyrant Augusto Pinochet, won the Silver Frog for what the jury called “cinematic high poetry,” while the Bronze Frog and Audience Award went to cinematographer Robbie Ryan for his Gothic dream-like imagery in Emma Stone-starrer “Poor Things,” directed by Yorgos Lanthimos.

Actor Peter Dinklage, honored with a festival director’s prize, expressed his gratitude for the Frog statuette,...

The New Boy — the story of a young Aboriginal Australian orphan boy that was written, directed and lensed by Warwick Thornton — collected the Golden Frog in the main competition of the 31st EnergaCamerimage international cinematography film festival, which closed Saturday night in Torún, Poland.

Cinematographer Ed Lachman received the Silver Frog for Pablo Larraín’s El Conde, which positions Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet as a vampire. Robbie Ryan’s lensing of Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, the story of a young woman (Emma Stone) brought back to life by an unorthodox scientist, claimed the Bronze Frog as well as the Audience Award. (Ryan collected the Golden Frog two years ago, for Mike Mills’ C’mon C’mon, and Lachman won the Golden Frog in 2015, for Todd Haynes’ Carol.).

The Fipresci Prize was awarded to Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, a chilling look at the life of Auschwitz concentration camp commander Rudolf Höss and his family,...

Just weeks before the 31st edition of Poland’s EnergaCamerimage gets underway, there was a groundbreaking for the planned European Film Center Camerimage, a Pln 600 million (roughly ($144 million) cultural center that will be built in host city Toruń and used in future years as the international cinematography film festival’s main venue. Plans call for the center to include a main screening room with seating for roughly 1,500, as well as three 200-300-seat screening rooms, a soundstage for production and postproduction facilities.

The new center underscores the growth of the festival, which has become a bellwether for what’s to come in the cinematography Oscar race. In three of the past four years, the winner of Camerimage’s Golden Frog has gone on to earn an Oscar nomination in cinematography, including 2019’s Joker and 2020’s Nomadland and 2022’s Tár.

According to festival director Marek Żydowicz, more than 1,000 films were viewed...

The EnergaCamerimage international cinematography film festival announced a trio of films that will join this year’s main competition lineup: El Conde, Filip and Ferrari.

Michael Mann’s Ferrari was lensed by Oscar-winning Dp Erik Messerschmidt (Mank); Pablo Larraín’s El Condo was photographed by Academy-Award nominated cinematographer Edward Lachman, who won the Camerimage Golden Frog in 2015 for Carol; and Michal Kwiecinski’s Filip was lensed by Dp Michal Sobocinski (The Art of Loving: Story of Michalina Wislocka).

As previously announced, the main competition also includes Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, Dp’d by Robbie Ryan, which will be the opening night film; Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, lensed by Rodrigo Prieto; Black Flies, directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire and lensed by David Ungaro; and All of Us Strangers, helmed by Andrew Haigh and photographed by Jamie Ramsay.

The festival also announced this week that Krzysztof Zanussi (The Constant Factor,...

Camerimage, the cinematography-oriented film festival, will bestow its Lifetime Achievement Award on auteur director Krzysztof Zanussi.

Born in Warsaw in 1939, Zanussi studied at the National Film School in Lodz, Poland, but even before enrolling he was making amateur films, winning awards at various festivals.

His directorial debut, “The Death of a Provincial” (1966), with cinematography by Jan Hesse, foreshadowed the central themes of his work – the juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane, youth and old age, life and death.

After making several medium-length and documentary films, Zanussi directed his first feature, “The Structure of Crystal” (1969), with Stefan Matyjaszkiewicz as Dp. The picture is considered part of the so-called third wave in Polish cinema, which combines asceticism, lack of a traditional plot and a profound sense of realism, reflected in the cinematography – all defining characteristics of the director’s early work.

In the 1970s, Zanussi created a series of films that...

L.A.-based Janek Ambros, founder of production and film financing company Assembly Line Entertainment, will receive the Auteur Filmmaker Award at Spain’s Roots of Europe (Raíces de Europa) festival, landing him in the company of such noteworthy cinematic auteurs as Polish director Krzysztof Zanussi alongside Spain’s Aitor López de Aberásturi and Juanma Bajo Ulloa, among others.

The festival, which runs May 2 – 12, will also be showcasing a number of Ambros’ films during the event, in recognition for his work in experimental, narrative, and documentary films primarily shot in Europe. It was just three years ago when Ambros presented Zanussi with the coveted award where he conveyed a written message from Scorsese.

“It was really nice to be a part of Zanussi being honored for his life in film and get to deliver a message from Scorsese, someone who really admires his work. So, to come back a few...

The European Film Academy is changing the date of its annual award ceremony, the European Film Awards, so that it will be positioned within the awards season at the start of the year.

After the 37th edition in December 2024, the 38th edition will take place mid-January 2026 and will celebrate the best European films from the previous year. The date change is a next step in the repositioning and rebranding process of the event and the work of the European Film Academy.

With the European Film Awards moving a month later to the beginning of the calendar year, European nominees and winners will be featured much more visibly within the awards season, culminating with the Oscars.

As the nominations for the European Film Awards will continue to be announced by mid-November each year, the date change will create a larger window for nominated films to be promoted. Academy members eligible to...

Tom Luddy wasn’t famous exactly. But he had a huge impact on film culture via Uc Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive in the ’60s and the Telluride Film Festival in the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, and up to his death in February at age 79. And while he was based in the Bay Area, a theater full of Luddy-philes from both coasts turned up for his tribute at New York’s packed Paris Theater on April 15. They represented the cross-cultural network that Luddy created over decades of introducing people, sharing his favorite film gems, and luring folks to Telluride by inviting their films or bringing them in as guest directors (like Stephen Sondheim or Salman Rushdie) or tributees (like Athol Fugard or Michael Powell). Once they came, they usually came back.

Five of the stalwarts in the Luddy family, who have supported the festival on the Telluride board of directors and in other ways,...

Early last year, Stefan Kitanov, director of the Sofia International Film Festival, thought that after two years of lockdowns and online events, things were finally getting back to normal.

“For two years I was out of all festival events and travels, I avoided all public events and spent time in our family house outside the city,” says Kitanov, who started Bulgaria’s biggest film event 27 years ago. “[Then], just as we thought the pandemic is finally over, the war in Ukraine broke out, just a month before our 2022 edition.”

The festival lineup was already locked down, but Kitanov quickly adjusted to the new reality. And made Sofia’s allegiance clear.

“We decided to withdraw Russian films and call off Russian talents and guests,” recalls Kitanov, who has many friends among both Ukrainian and Russian filmmakers and fellow festival colleagues. “[Ukrainian director] Oleg Sentsov was selected to serve on the main jury, but he...

IFFKAs part of the International Film Festival of Kerala, films from across the world will be screened simultaneously on fourteen screens in Thiruvananthapuram from December 9 to 16.Don PalatharaA still from the Lav Diaz film 'When The Waves are Gone'The International Film Festival of Kerala (Iffk) is a mammoth event, not only in terms of the number of attendees, but also the number of films screened there each year. Films from across the world will be screened simultaneously on fourteen screens in Kerala’s capital city of Thiruvananthapuram for six days, excluding the opening and closing days. The 27th edition of the festival, scheduled to be held from December 9 to 16, is special to me for several reasons. Even though I am attending the festival with a professional obligation, many of the films being screened this time are from filmmakers whose works I admire and look up to. By now, I have...

The 53rd edition of International Film Festival of India (Iffi) concluded on Monday with Spanish film ‘I have electric dreams’ directed by Valentina Maurel winning the ‘Golden Peacock award’.

The closing ceremony of Iffi was held at the Shyama Prasad Mukherjee indoor stadium in Taleigao on Monday.

The 53rd edition of Iffi witnessed participation of filmmakers and cinema lovers from across the globe.

Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur, MoS I&b L. Murugan, MoS Tourism Shripad Naik, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant and other dignitaries were present on the occasion.

“My commitment is to give strong emphasis to provide a platform to regional cinema. Because, regional is no longer regional… it has gone national and international. Cinema has played a vital role to reach Hindi language across the globe,” Thakur said on the occasion.

Megastar Chiranjeevi was conferred the Indian Film Personality of the Year award on concluding...

The 53rd edition of International Film Festival of India (Iffi) kicked off on Sunday with the participation of filmmakers and cinema lovers from across the globe. Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur, MoS I&b L. Murugan, MoS Tourism Shripad Naik, Goa Governor P.S. Sreedharan Pillai, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant and other dignitaries were present on the occasion.

Actors Ajay Devgn, Suniel Shetty, Manoj Bajpayee, Paresh Rawal and ‘Rrr’ writer V. Vijayendra Prasad were felicitated on the occasion for their contributions to the film industry.

The opening ceremony was held at the Syama Prasad Mukherjee indoor stadium in Taleigao.

The Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award was bestowed upon veteran director Carlos Saura, who along with Luis Bunuel and Pedro Almodovar is considered to be one of Spain’s most renowned filmmakers. The award was received by his daughter Anna Saura Ramon, while Carlos Saura thanked the Iffi organisers virtually.

The International Film Festival Of India (Iffi) has announced the 15 films that will screen in competition at this year’s edition of the annual event, including recent festival favourites such as Maha Haj’s Mediterranean Fever and Lav Diaz’ When The Waves Are Gone, and three Indian films, including recent Busan premiere The Storyteller.

The selection of 12 international titles also includes Syrian filmmaker Soudade Kaadan’s Nezouh; Next Sohee, from South Korea’s Jung Ju-ri; Red Shoes, from Japan’s Toshiro Saiga; Cold As Marble, from Azerbaijan’s Asif Rustamov; Seven Dogs, from Argentina’s Rodrigo Guerrero; Ursula Meier’s The Line (La Ligne); Valentina Maurel’s I Have Electric Dreams, and two Iranian films – Dariush Mehrjui’s A Minor and Nader Saeivar’s No End.

South Asia is also represented by Maarya: The Ocean Angel, about a group of fishermen disturbed by a sex doll they find in the sea,...

Click here to read the full article.

The EnergaCamerimage international cinematography film festival has unveiled its main competition lineup, including Elvis, White Noise, Top Gun: Maverick and Empire of Light, which is set to open the 30th edition.

Camerimage, held annually in Poland, has also booked into its main competition the cinematographic work for All Quiet on the West Front, War Sailor, Tár, The Perfect Number and The Angel in the Wall. The international festival has become a bellwether for what’s to come in the cinematography Oscar race.

Camerimage earlier announced that Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light, which was lensed by Roger Deakins, will open the 2022 edition set to be held Nov. 12-19 in Toruń, Poland. Mendes will also receive the Special Krzysztof Kieslowski Award for Director during the festival.

Also previously announced, Oscar-nominated cinematographer Stephen Burum (Hoffa) will accept the Camerimage Lifetime Achievement Award during this year’s festival.

Above: French grande for Love in the Afternoon (aka Chloé in the Afternoon) which was the opening night film of the 10th New York Film Festival. Designer tbd.In the catalogue for the 10th New York Film Festival in 1972, festival director Richard Roud looked back on the first decade of the NYFF, musing on the changes in cinema of the previous 10 years: “a greater freedom of subject matter,” “an accompanying new freedom of form,” the obsolescence of “the tightly plotted film,” the rise of personal filmmaking and the inroads of political cinema and documentary techniques into narrative film. He also muses on international movements: the snuffing out of the Czech Renaissance (there were no Czech films in the 1972 festival), the rise of New Hollywood and American independent cinema, and the ebbing of the movement that had in many ways defined the festival to that point, the French New Wave:Some of...

The 14th Tashkent International Film Festival (Uzbekistan) took place from September 14 to 18, 2022. More than two hundred films made up the selection. Forty national delegations were present. Martine and Jean-Marc Thérouanne, director and general delegate of the Vesoul International Asian Cinema Festival, were part of the French delegation.

Martine Thérouanne was a member of the International Jury, chaired by the Polish director Krzysztof Zanussi who won an award at Cannes, Venice, etc. The competition was made up of eighteen films by young directors from film schools in Canada, Israel, Pakistan, from India, Italy, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey, Iran, Romania, Poland, Georgia, China, Belarus, Moldova, Uzbekistan, … All had the hope of winning one of the three prizes awarded at the closing ceremony.

Jean-Marc Thérouanne was a member of the jury for the Pitch session organized by the Institut Français, the French Embassy and the Cnc. Twelve film projects by Tajik, Kazakh, Russian, Uzbek...

The late Govindan Aravindan’s 1978 masterpiece “Thamp̄” (“The Circus Tent”) is one of two Indian films at this year’s Cannes Classics selection, alongside Satyajit Ray’s “Pratidwandi” (“The Adversary”) from 1970.

“Thamp̄” was painstakingly restored by India’s Film Heritage Foundation (Fhf), an organization founded by filmmaker Shivendra Singh Dungarpur in 2014. Dungarpur facilitated the restoration of Uday Shankar’s landmark film “Kalpana” (1948) by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation, the restored version of which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012. He also collaborated with the World Cinema Foundation again for the restoration of the 1972 Sinhalese film “Nidhanaya” directed by eminent Sri Lankan filmmaker Lester James Peries. The restoration premiered at Venice in 2013.

The restoration of “Thamp̄” was a process that took eight months to achieve. Fhf, as a member of the International Federation of Film Archives, also put out a call to all the 171 member institutions around the world...

One of many good things to be said about “Eo,” surely the wackiest movie in competition at Cannes this year, is that you would have no idea it was made by an 84-year-old filmmaker in only his fourth movie since the fall of the Soviet Union. A master of the aesthetically liberated New Polish Cinema — fellow alum include Krzysztof Kieślowski, Agnieszka Holland, and Krzysztof Zanussi — Jerzy Skolimowski last won plaudits on the Croisette in the late ’70s and early ’80s for a string of British-made dramas starring the likes of John Hurt and Jeremy Irons. Horror film “The Shout,” with Alan Bates, took the Grand Prix jury prize in 1978. “Moonlighting,” in 1982, won best screenplay here. New York Times critic Vincent Canby called it “one of the best films ever made about exile.”

“Eo” is not like any of those, even if it does have something to say about exile.

Told...

Above: Poster by Frank Stella for the 9th New York Film Festival.Compared to the 32 films in the main slate of this year’s New York Film Festival, not to mention the seemingly hundreds of others playing in sidebars, the 1971 edition of the NYFF, half a century ago, was a lean affair. With only 18 films, down from 78 just four years earlier, the ninth edition of the NYFF was, according to its director Richard Roud, a “belt-tightening festival, a year of consolidation.” In fact, the financially strapped festival almost didn’t take place that year. A New York Times article published midway through the event mentions that “outside the 984-seat Vivian Beaumont Theater, there is only one poster announcing the festival [one assumes it was the beautiful Frank Stella poster above] that is quietly and modestly taking place inside.” A far cry from the glorious phalanx of digital billboards currently beaming outside Alice Tully Hall and the Elinor Bunin Center.The...

Matthijs Wouter Knol took over as director of the European Film Academy at the start of the year, having served as director of the European Film Market since 2014. He speaks to Variety about how the academy seeks to protect and promote European cinema as the film industry continues to morph.

Among the priorities of the academy – under the leadership of its president Agnieszka Holland and its chairman Mike Downey – is the need for unity within the European industry, and one area where this is relevant is how it responds to the continued expansion and growing influence of the streaming giants.

The pandemic has accelerated the consumption of films on streaming platforms, and the consequences for European cinema of this shift in consumption – with linear TV, which was once a significant backer of European films, and exhibition both facing financial challenges – are still being worked out.

One issue for the academy...

Ready to unspool its 36th edition, the Polish festival is set to open with a screening of Carlo S Hintermann's The Book of Vision. Opening with Carlo S Hintermann’s The Book of Vision, fresh off its Venice debut, the Warsaw Film Festival has opted for a physical edition, now set to run from 9-18 October. “Opening the Warsaw Film Festival is a huge honour for me,” the director told Cineuropa via email. “I am absolutely in love with Polish cinema: I grew up with the movies of Skolimowski, Żuławski, Wajda, Kieślowskiand Polański, and with cult actors such as Bogusław Linda, Jerzy Stuhr and Jerzy Radziwiłowicz," he added, recounting his first experience on a professional set with Krzysztof Zanussi, who allowed him to take part in the shooting of the TV series Weekend Stories. "It’s a kind of circle: starting off as a student on a set in Warsaw and now.

Polish film and television director and screenwriter Agnieszka Holland is a journeywoman. Beginning her career as an assistant to directors Krzysztof Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda, at 71, the underrated filmmaker has really done it all. In the early aughts, her no-nonsense style of directing and visual storytelling got her TV jobs on “The Wire” and that lead to a lot of consistent and constant work on American TV shows—”The Killing,” “Treme,” “House Of Cards,” “The Affair” and dozens of other shows.

Continue reading ‘Mr. Jones’ Trailer: Vanessa Kirby, Peter Sarsgaard Star In A WWII Thriller For Director Agnieszka Holland at The Playlist.

Hidden Treasure: Jonynas Stages Greek Tragedy against Backdrop of Eastern Europe

A student of Krzysztof Zanussi, Lithuanian director Ignas Jonynas infuses his third feature film with a tragedy of high style, filling it with frenzied passion, a cold-blooded premeditation and unsolvable philosophical questions. Invisible ­is a drama with a love triangle at its centre, and builds to a payoff that will surprise even the most sophisticated of viewers.

Jonas (Dainius Kazlauskas) is a middle-aged man living with his blind taxidermist uncle in an remote village. As a dancer, he dreams of being noticed and appreciated but faces countless refusals , until he realizes that a physical disability could give him the edge in the eyes of TV producers and viewers.…...

Another eight documentaries and 25 short films will screen in the competition sections, and the festival has scheduled master classes by Paul Schrader and Krzysztof Zanussi. The Batumi International Arthouse Film Festival (Biaff) is set to take place for the 14th time from 16-23 September. Biaff is again organising a carefully curated programme consisting of fiction-feature, documentary and short competitions, plus sidebar sections including Georgian Panorama, Masters and Special Screenings. In the Feature Competition, there are ten films: Mark Jenkin's Bait (UK), Veit Helmer's The Bra (Germany/Azerbaijan), Reza Mirkarimi's Castle of Dreams (Iran), Elmar Imanov's End of Season (Germany/Azerbaijan/Georgia), György Pálfi's His Master’s Voice (Canada/Hungary/France/Sweden/USA), Kıvanç Sezer's La Belle Indifference (Turkey), Marko Škop's Let There Be Light (Slovakia/Czech Republic), Jacek Borcuch's Dolce Fine Giornata (Poland), Emin Alper's A Tale of Three Sisters (Turkey/Germany/Netherlands...

Mubi's Krzysztof Kieslowski Retrospective runs August 10 – October 28, 2019 in most countries around the world.Camera Buff“It comes from a deep-rooted conviction that if there is anything worthwhile doing for the sake of culture, then it is touching on subject matters and situations which link people, and not those that divide people. There are too many things in the world that divide people, such as religion, politics, history, and nationalism. If culture is capable of anything, then it is finding that which unites us all. And there are so many things that unite people. It doesn't matter who you are or who I am, if your tooth aches or mine; it's still the same pain. Feelings are what link people together, because the word 'love' has the same meaning for everybody. Or 'fear', or 'suffering'. We all fear the same way and the same things. And we all love in the same way.

EtherAs he approaches his 80th birthday, distinguished Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi shows little sign of letting up. Although his reputation in wider cinephile culture has diminished somewhat since a remarkably febrile period in the 1970s and 80s (several films from which were seen in last year’s retrospective on Mubi), Zanussi remains an ambassador for his nation’s cinema internationally, in an esteemed triumvirate alongside dearly departed colleagues Krzysztof Kieslowśki and Andrzej Wajda.Zanussi’s latest film, pre-First World War drama Ether, premiered at the Rome Film Festival in October and continues the director’s recent interest in examining the structures of power and our relationship to religion. In something of a warping of the stereotypical “Zanussoid” protagonists for which he originally became famous—young, scientifically-inclined men searching for meaning, often in a hostile world—Ether follows a doctor using morally questionable means to pursue his studies into the oppressive potential of the eponymous chemical.

Variety has been given exclusive access to first-look footage from Academy Award nominee Agnieszka Holland’s “Mr. Jones,” which world premieres in Official Competition at the Berlin Film Festival. The film stars James Norton, Vanessa Kirby and Peter Sarsgaard.

“Mr. Jones” tells the little-known story of Gareth Jones, an ambitious young Welsh journalist who travelled to the Soviet Union in 1933, and discovered the appalling reality behind the myth of a communist “utopia.” What started out as a regular news investigation, soon turned into a life-or-death quest to uncover the truth about a government-induced famine in Ukraine. His efforts are frustrated not just by Soviet censors but other Western journalists who enjoy the patronage of Stalin’s regime, most notably Walter Duranty, the Moscow bureau chief of the New York Times. Jones’ story helped inspire George Orwell’s allegorical dystopian novel “Animal Farm.”

In a statement, Holland said: “We wanted to...

Polish director delivers lecture to Iffr attendees.

Speaking at her masterclass at International Film Festival Rotterdam this weekend, Agnieszka Holland has expressed her dismay at what she calls the lack of “cultural identity” in contemporary mainstream cinema.

“Cinema became as boring as life,” Holland said of films being made in what she referred to as an era of “consumption and new technologies”, when the majority of filmmakers don’t have “a significant human or historical experience to discuss.”

The prolific Holland (whose latest feature Mr Jones premieres in competition at the Berlinale next month and who is also preparing an...

The Santa Barbara International Film Festival has announced the lineup for its 34th edition, which takes place from Jan. 30 to Feb. 9. Sixty-three world premieres will debut at the California fest, which is also hosting 59 U.S. premieres from 48 countries. “Diving Deep: The Life and Times of Mike deGruy” will open the festival, with “Spoons: A Santa Barbara Story” closing it.

Sbiff also serves as an awards-season stop, and this year’s honorees include Viggo Mortensen, Glenn Close, Melissa McCarthy, Yalitza Aparicio, Sam Elliott, Elsie Fisher, Claire Foy, Richard E. Grant, Thomasin McKenzie, John David Washington, Steven Yeun, and Michael B. Jordan.

Here’s the lineup:

Babysplitters, USA – World Premiere

Directed by Sam Friedlander

Better Together, USA – World Premiere

Directed by Isaac Hernández

The Bird Catcher, Norway, UK – World Premiere

Directed by Ross Clarke

Cemetery Park, USA – World Premiere

Directed by Brandon Alvis

Diving Deep: The Life and Times of Mike deGruy,...

Witold Sobocinski, a Polish cinematographer who worked with countrymen including Roman Polanski, Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Zanussi and also was a celebrated jazz musician and a teacher at Lodz Film School, has died. He was 89. Lodz announced the news but did not give details.

Sobocinski was one of the first graduates of Lodz’s cinematography department and had taught there since the 1980s. His son, Piotr Sobocinski, also was a celebrated Dp, having scored an Oscar nod for Three Colors: Red and worked on such films as Hearts in Atlantis, Marvin’s Room and Ransom. He died in 2001.

Among the directors he worked with and their films are Polański, Wajda, Zanussi (Życie rodzinne), Jerzy Skolimowski (Ręce do góry), Wojciech Jerzy Has (The Hourglass Sanatorium), Piotr Szulkin and Andrzej Żuławski (The Third Part of the Night).

Among his many career honors,...

Karel Žalud’s ’Enclosed World’ took best Czech documentary.

The Czech Republic’s Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival has awarded prizes for its 22nd edition (October 25-30), with Karel Žalud’s Enclosed World taking the best Czech documentary award.

The four-hour documentary charts life on both sides of the bars in prison, taking in staff as well as individuals at different stages of their incarceration. The jury commented that “the film urgently calls for reflection on how justice is understood and implemented in contemporary society”.

The award was given as part of the ‘Czech Joy’ strand; other prizes in...

Although some serious points were made, the mood was light and even jovial at the closing night of the 22nd Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival. Packed into Kino Dko II, a crowd of filmmakers and producers saw the awards handed out in the presence of a live 15-piece band that blasted out the opening bars of Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke” as the winners took to the stage. Handing out the award for Opus Bonum – a prize given, unusually, by a single juror – Poland’s Krzysztof Zanussi, in town for a masterclass, joked that being the lone arbiter “was a special experience – all night I was fighting with myself.”

Many winners – like “Vacancy” director Alexandra Kandy Longuet, who accepted via video – kept their speeches short and thanked the festival, their subject and their colleagues, while Jean-Luc Godard, winner of the Contribution to World Cinema Award, sent over a few...

Launching its 22nd edition with an ambitious, expanded program, the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival opened Thursday in the Czech Republic, embracing the theme of memory as it marks the centennial of the founding of Czechoslovakia.

The nation, formed at the close of Wwi, lasted through 1993, when it was broken up into Slovakia and the Czech Republic, two nations that these days each contribute strongly to documentary presence at the fest and beyond. The breakup turned millions into migrants overnight, providing the seed for the Ji.hlava fest’s main focus this year: migration.

Fest founder Marek Hovorka, speaking in the city’s communist-era community center known as Dko, presented to an international audience the fest’s three sections covering work on migration: Foreigner Looking for an Apartment, about émigrés settling into life abroad; a focus on the region of Carpathia, “sort of a mythological part of the country...

There aren’t many directors left who can impudently inject high culture into the soul of their films the way Krzysztof Zanussi can, and still deliver a gripping historical drama. In Ether (Eter), the topic is the abuse of science to gain control over individuals and subjugate the masses, depriving people of their free will and the option of choosing between good and evil. One can debate whether it was really necessary to superimpose a Faustian twist on a story that is already loaded with references, and not everyone will cotton to the story’s metaphysical ending. But the questions ...

There aren’t many directors left who can impudently inject high culture into the soul of their films the way Krzysztof Zanussi can, and still deliver a gripping historical drama. In Ether (Eter), the topic is the abuse of science to gain control over individuals and subjugate the masses, depriving people of their free will and the option of choosing between good and evil. One can debate whether it was really necessary to superimpose a Faustian twist on a story that is already loaded with references, and not everyone will cotton to the story’s metaphysical ending. But the questions ...

Other titles include Bad Times At El Royale and Park Chan-Wook series The Little Drummer Girl;

The 13th Rome Film Fest (18-28 October) has unveiled its line-up. It will feature in its non-competitive official selection 38 films, including the world premieres of Fede Alvarez’s The Girl In The Spider’s Web with Claire Foy and Gilles De Maistre’s Mia Et Le Lion Blanc, featuring Melanie Laurent.

Scroll down for the full line-up

Opening with Drew Goddard’s Bad Times At El Royale, Antonio Monda’s fourth edition confirms itself as a “fest” and not a “festival” as the director specifies.

Mubi's retrospective The Films of Krzysztof Zanussi is showing from January 18 - March 23 in most countries in the world.Krzysztof Zanussi"[T]he test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up "Many know much, but do not know themselves." —Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, The Meditations Despite not being an immediately recognizable name to many modern filmgoers, Krzysztof Zanussi is one of the most important Polish filmmakers. He gave a speech with Andrzej Wajda at the Filmmakers Forum in Gdańsk in 1975 that paved the way for the famous ‘cinema of moral anxiety.’ Although he is often overlooked by modern cinephiles—particularly in comparison to contemporaries like Kieślowski or Wajda—he is a fascinating director whose vast cinematic output followed a degree in philosophy and a PhD in physics.

Ether

Polish auteur Krzysztof Zanussi is well into his sixth decade of narrative filmmaking with an ambitious new period piece, Ether.

Continue reading...

Following the Persian New Year of Nowruz * arrive the eight days of the festival where the last works of great filmmakers such as Andrzej Wajda, Cristian Mongiu, Dardenne brothers, Denis Tanovic, Francois Ozon, Sion Sono, Agnieszka Holland, Aki Kaurismaki, Terrence Malick, Ken Loach and three Iranian Masters of Cinema will screen along with several special sidebars.

For the first time in Fajr International Film Festival, Shadow of Horror Midnight Screenings will host six horror films screening, every night at 11:30 pm in a program designed to entice an unaccustomed Iranian audience’s attention to this genre. Five of the features are from South Korea, Japan, Russia, Poland and Mexico. The sixth, an Iranian feature will have its International Premiere.

At least 68 students from 32 countries as well as 52 students from Iran are to take part in the inspiring, educational film making workshops of the 2017 Fajr. The program is called “Darol Fonoun...

Speaking at the European Film Awards, UK director calls for “collective voice” among European industry.

Veteran UK filmmaker Ken Loach delivered an impassioned keynote on the subject of European solidarity and Brexit after the European Film Academy’s general assembly on Saturday morning (10 Dec) in Wroclaw.

Voicing similar sentiments to those expressed during a speech given before the European Parliament’s Committee on Culture and Education in October, Loach asked: ¨Is it true that the European Union doesn’t stand for the interests of the people, but for the interests of big corporations, that it has been a central contributing factor to the British leaving and to the problems we see around us…or is [the EU] a benign organisation which will work for the benefit of the people - or is it working against the interests of the people?¨

The two-time Palme d’Or winner argued that it was “not enough” for European filmmakers to make ¨humane, thoughtful...

Projects from directors Bodo Kox and Adrian Panek are also being introduced.

Projects by Agnieszka Holland [pictured], Bodo Kox and Adrian Panek are among the films being presented at this week’s Polish Days during the T Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival in Wroclaw (July 21-31).

Holland’s dark comedy-thriller Game Count, which she bills as “No Country For Old Women¨, is one of nine titles in the Works in Progress showcase.

The $3.9m (€3.5m) co-production between Krzysztof Zanussi’s Tor Film Studio and Germany’s Heimatfilm will be distributed internationally by Beta Cinema.

Polish Days’ international audience of sales agents, distributors and festival programmers were also treated to the first footage from Kasia Adamik’s thriller Amok and Dorota Kobiela’s animated drama Loving Vincent as well as from two films which will be featured in Locarno’s First Look works in progress sidebar next week: Maciej Pieprzyca’s psychological thriller I’m A Killer (which...

“There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.”—The Republic, Book IX 572bWhat’s the best way to describe the mania of an Andrzej Żuławski film? William Grimes, eulogizing Żuławski for The New York Times chose “emotionally savage.” J. Hoberman used “hyperkinetic,” “frenzied,” and “‘awful’ in its root sense of inspiring dread. Daniel Bird, writing about the most recent Lincoln Center screenings in New York, chose “deeply disturbing.” These descriptors make perfect sense after experiencing a Żuławski film, but I’ve never been able to sell his films to a newcomer this way. How could I? They’re much too primal for adjectives in our delicate English language, crafted to communicate Enlightenment-era ideas in a pleasing series of vibrations. The intensity of this director’s films could only be described in some sort of ancient Lovecraftian squelching,...

Game Count

Director: Agnieszka Holland

Writers: Agnieszka Holland, Olga Tokarczuk

Polish auteur Agnieszka Holland, once the protégé of Krzysztof Zanussi, is still best remembered for early 90s titles such as Europa Europa (1990) and her Arthur Rimbaud biopic starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Total Eclipse (1993). Her last feature was 2011’s In Darkness, nominated for Best Foreign Language film that year, and she’s been steadily working in television, from the superb mini-series “Burning Bush,” to English language items such as episodes of “House of Cards,” and the t.v. treatment of “Rosemary’s Baby.” She’s been attempting to adapt famed Polish novelist Olga Tokarzuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead for several years, and phases of filmmaking have commenced on her adaptation, known as Game Count and co-written by Tokarzuk. Filming is supposed to wrap in late 2015/early 2016 on what’s described as a crime thriller with comedic...