News

The Divine Order takes three awards; Cahier Africain wins two.

My My Life As A Courgette won best fiction film at the Swiss Film Awards, announced on Friday (24 March).

Claude Barras’ stop-motion animation also won best film score, for Sophie Hunter’s soundtrack, and a special Academy award for the casting and directing.

The film won the César for best animation this year, and was also nominated in the same category at the Oscars and Golden Globes.

The other big winner at the event was The Divine Order with three awards.

Petra Volpe’s film, which centres on the fight for equal rights for women in 1970s Switzerland, won best screenplay (Petra Volpe), best actress (Marie Leuenberger) and best performance in a supporting role (Rachel Braunschweig).

The film will receive its international premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 21, with Trust Nordisk handling world sales.

Heidi Specogna’s documentary Cahier Africain received two awards, for best documentary...

“NY84” will have a gala opening and theatrical release this October 14 at the Arena Theater in Hollywood.

A unique venue for a unique film written and directed by Cyril Morin and starring Sam Quartin, Chris Schellenger and Davy J. Marr, “NY84” follows the adventures of three young artists in the downtown New York art scene in the early 1980s. Young and carefree, Kate, Anton, and Keith party, photograph, paint, sing, and play their way through the clubs and lofts of Alphabet City.

The party ends in 1984 when Anton and Keith contract a mysterious illness known as the “gay cancer.” We gain an intimate glimpse into their creative and emotional lives as the three lose their youth and innocence.

Cyril Morin

This is a lyrical poetic paen to those times some of us were lucky enough to have lived through. The sexual revolution and its sexual freedom in effect then for the newly liberated homosexual community, also opened the way for Kate to express herself. And it opened a door for transexuals, women and the whole diversity of humanity to assert itself today.

Similar to the Golden Globes because it is a foreign group of film journalists who conduct the voting (though I'm sure they have no mandate to prefer films loaded in stars), this year's the 15th Lumiere Awards has a pair of films in the top tier that recently that duked it out for the Louis Delluc award. Philippe Lioret's Welcome (which just got picked up by Film Movement this week) and Jacques Audiard's A Prophet (a Spc release next February) received five and four noms respectively. - Similar to the Golden Globes because it is a foreign group of film journalists who conduct the voting (though I'm sure they have no mandate to prefer films loaded in stars), this year's the 15th Lumière Awards has a pair of films in the top tier that recently that duked it out for the Louis Delluc award. Philippe Lioret...

MONTREAL -- "Ben X", Belgian director Nic Balthazar's portrait of a mildly autistic boy bullied at school, took top honors at the 31st annual Montreal World Film Festival, which wrapped Monday.

Balthazar's directorial debut earned the audience award and shared the juried Grand Prix of Americas prize as the top festival film with French director Claude Miller's "A Secret", the tale of Jewish family during and after World War II.

"Ben X", which had Canadian and U.S. distributors swirling with buying interest Monday, also grabbed the festival's Ecumenical Prize for combining artistic merit with the exploration of ethical, social and spiritual values, according to jury members.

Other winners at the competitive Montreal festival included the jury's Special Grand Prize to Isreali director Ayelet Menahemi's "Noodle", a film about a lonely Tel Aviv flight attendant, while Swiss director Jacob Berger was awarded the best director prize for "1 Day", a film capturing a day in the life of a family.

Spanish director Ray Loriga's "Teresa" received the jury's award for best artistic contribution.

Locarno International Film Festival

LOCARNO, Switzerland -- In one sense it's not a long day that errant husband Serge spends in Jacob Berger's cautionary tale 1 journee, but in another it could last a lifetime.

Having departed his marital bed, he stops at another, and leaving afterward in his car, he hits something on the road, something human. The implications of the man's behavior reverberate not only between the women in his life but also toward his young son. Berger's film takes a sophisticated look at the complications of adultery, and he shows a deft hand with the ironies that invariably accompany it. With well-drawn characters and appealing players, the wry drama could travel well in urban markets.

Serge (Bruno Todeschini) is catnip to women who love "that little animal begging to be saved," as one of them says. Torn between two lovers and distraught by the belief that he has hit someone with his car, he reports to the police, where skeptical Inspector Haddid (Zinedine Soualem) begins an investigation.

Serge's wife Pietra (Natacha Regnier) suspects he is cheating, and his mistress, Mathilde (Noemie Kocher), is ready to end their affair. Meanwhile, Serge and Pietra's precocious son Vlad (Louis Dussol) and Mathilde's daughter Manon (Amelia Jacob) have become friends in school.

Berger, who wrote the screenplay with Kocher, shifts back and forth in time so that events only gradually become clear. Charming and intelligent, young Vlad appears to be the most grown up of the lot of them. The story takes unpredictable paths, and scenes are invested with smart, often droll dialogue, which the cast delivers with flair. Vlad's encounters with his father's mistress are quite provocative as the boy clearly takes after his old man to the delight of the woman.

Attractively filmed in Geneva, the film also boasts a wonderfully varied and evocative score by French composer Cyril Morin, drawing on strings, wind instruments and piano to infuse the proceedings with added wit and poignancy.

ONE JOURNEY

Vega Film, Why Not Prods., Avventura Films

Credits:

Director: Jacob Berger

Screenwriters: Jacob Berger, Noemie Kocher

Producer: Ruth Waldburger

Director of photography: Jean-Marc Fabre

Production designers: Denis Mercier, Roger Martin

Music: Cyril Morin

Co-producer: Josef Steinberger

Costume designers: Nathalie Raoul, Francoise Nicolet

Editor: Catherine Quesemand

Cast:

Serge: Bruno Todeschini

Pietra: Natacha Regnier

Mathilde: Noemie Kocher

Inspector Haddid: Zinedine Soualem

Vlad: Louis Dussol

Manon: Amelia Jacob

Japanese Man: Hiro Uchiyama

Running time -- 95 minutes

No MPAA rating...

• The jury composed of Walter Carvalho, Saverio Costanzo, Irène Jacob, Jia Zhang-ke, Romuald Karmakar and Bruno Todeschini gave out a bunch of leopards on the weekend. Masahiro Kobayashi (see pic above) won the Golden Leopard for his film Ai no yokan (The Rebirth). Best Director was awarded to Capitaine Achab by Philippe Ramos (France) and the Special Jury Prize went to Memories (Jeonju Digital Project 2007) by Pedro Costa, Harun Farocki and Eugène Green. Spanish actress Carmen Maura and the French actor Michel Piccoli both received an Excellence Award (Michel Piccoli also received the prize for best actor in Sous les toits de Paris, joint winner was Michele Venitucci in Fuori dalle corde). And finally (and not surprisingly), Death at a Funeral (the Brit comedy by Frank Oz) won the audience award – this making it the 5th or 6th time that it has walked away from an international festival with such honors.

...

LOCARNO, Switzerland -- With Locarno's picturesque Piazza Grande rained out for the second consecutive night, the European premiere of Adrienne Shelly's romantic comedy "Waitress" screened to an enthusiastic response in a makeshift cinema at the Fevi sports center.

Late-in-the-day thunderstorms cast a shadow over the 60th edition of the Locarno festival Tuesday and Wednesday, but big crowds still turned out for the films that were screening each night.

Tuesday's main feature, "Une Journee", a French-Swiss psychological drama from Jacob Berger, and the Wednesday screening of "Waitress" both filled the 3,500-seat Fevi.

"Waitress" is the story of a small-town waitress who gets pregnant while in a loveless relationship and subsequently falls in love with her gynecologist. The film was interrupted several times by laughter by the standing-room-only crowd.

Shelly, the film's writer-director, was murdered in New York in November, just after the film was completed. Freshman producer Michael Roiff said the film's selection for Locarno was something that wouldn't have surprised Shelly.

TORONTO -- Two U.S. films will be among the 20 titles contending for top honors at the Montreal World Film Festival, organizers said Tuesday.

Mark Brokaw's "Spinning Into Butter", produced by and starring Sarah Jessica Parker, will join Christopher Cain's "September Dawn" in competing for the Grand Prize of the Americas. "Butter" revolves around a New England college dean caught up in an investigation into a racially motivated crime, while "Dawn", which stars Jon Voight, examines the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857.

Also making the cut is Abel Ferrara's "Go Go Tales", an Italian-French co-production starring Willem Dafoe, Bob Hoskins, Matthew Modine, Asia Argento and Lou Doillon.

Canada will be represented by Francois Delisle's "Toi" and Emile Gaudreault's "Surviving My Mother".

The lone German entry is Volker Einrauch's family drama "Der Andere Junge", while Italy will be represented by Stefano Incerti's "L'uomo di vetro" and Nic Balthazar will bring his Belgian-Dutch co-production "Ben X" to Montreal.

French offerings include Claude Miller's "A Secret" and several co-productions, among them, Jacob Berger's Swiss-French co-production "1 Day" and Ivan Solovov's French-Russian co-production "Otets".

Latin entries include Ray Loriga's "Teresa", starring Paz Vega and Geraldine Chaplin; Luis Felipe Rocha's "A Outra Margem", a Brazilian-Portuguese co-production; and the Mexican offering "Used Parts" by Aaron Fernandez Lesur.

Rounding out the competition lineup are Menahemi Ayelet's "Noodle", (Israel), Abdallah Oguz's "Bliss" (Turkey-Greece), Latif Lahlou's "Les jardins de Samira" (Morocco), Issa Serge Coelo's "DP75-Tartina City" (Chad-France) and two Japanese films: "Black Belt" from Shunichi Nagasaki and Toru Hayashi's "Women of the Interior Palace".

For the third year running, Montreal will host a First Films World Competition. Among the 23 titles in the sidebar are U.S. entries "The Fall of Night", Derrick Warfel's portrait of a struggling rock musician, and Scott Flynn's "The Gray Man".

Screening out of competition in the Hors Concours sidebar are a host of movies that bowed elsewhere, including Pascale Ferran's "Lady Chatterley" and Claude Lelouch's "Roman de gare", both from France, and Czech director Jiri Menzel's "I Served the King of England".

Documentaries unspooling in Montreal include Dan Cox's "Running With Arnold" and Sut Jhally's "War Made Easy", both from the U.S.