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A jury headed by French Vietnamese director Tranh Anh Hung awarded its Golden Goblet (Jin Jue) prizes for the Shanghai International Film Festival’s main competition.

The top prize for best feature went to “The Divorce,” directed by Kazakhstan’s Daniyar Salamat. The jury praised the film for its sophisticated story-telling which mixes comedy, farce and tragedy, and “which moves fluidly from public sphere to the intimate relationship of a couple in crisis” and its feeling of innocence.

The other jury members were Rolf de Heer (Australia), Matthias Glasner (Germany), Tony Leung Ka Fai (Hong Kong), Santiago Mitre (Argentina), Sonthar Gyal (China) and Zhou Xun (China).

In the separate Asian New Talents section, the best film prize went to “Friday, Funfair,” while double honors were accorded to Abhilash Sharma’s “in the Name of Fire.”

Prizes for the festival’s Siff Project market for co-financing scripts and works in progress...

The 26th Shanghai International Film Festival came to a glitzy conclusion Saturday as Kazakh film The Divorce, directed by Daniyar Salamat, took home the top Golden Goblet award for best feature at a star-studded closing ceremony in the Chinese commercial capital.

A period drama set in the 1920s during the establishment of Soviet authority on the Kazakh steppe, the film explores the convergence of marriage, religion and women’s rights through the story of a typical couple wrestling with the prospect of divorce.

Salamat was presented onstage with his trophy by the Oscar-nominated Vietnamese-French director Tran Anh Hung (Scent of Green Papaya, The Taste of Things), who served as Shanghai’s competition jury president this year. Hung and his fellow jurors praised the “sophisticated form” of The Divorce‘s story, “which mixes comedy, farce and tragedy,” and they hailed Salamat’s “ability to create the feeling of innocence, which radiates...

Multi-award-winning Dutch-Australian director Rolf de Heer’s films expand creative horizons in the ways he deals with character, narrative and dialogue. Heads were turned with the Venice Grand Jury Prize-winner Bad Boy Bubby (1993), the story of a 35-year-old man-child who, after being locked away his entire life by his mother, escapes into a “real” world that appears more bizarre than his previous existence.

De Heer’s Cannes Un Certain Regard-winner Ten Canoes (2006) was a riotously funny morality tale set in pre-colonized Australia — the first shot entirely using Indigenous languages. The Survival of Kindness, winner of Berlin’s 2022 Fipresci award, meanwhile, was a gripping dystopian tale stripped almost entirely of any dialogue — but one that still made its message about the horrors of racism perfectly clear.

In the days ahead, the 73-year-old De Heer will turn film watcher rather than maker as he takes up a place on the main competition...

Along with a red-carpet opening ceremony, a press conference with the members of the main competition jury is a staple event of major film festivals and the 26th edition of the Shanghai International Film Festival kicked off in traditional form on Friday.

Along with Vietnam-French director Tran Anh Hung, previously revealed as jury president, the other members of the decisive committee this year are: Australian director and screenwriter Rolf de Heer; German director Matthias Glasner; Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Ka Fai; Argentinian director Santiago Mitre; Chinese director Sonthar Gyal; and, the jury’s only woman, star actor Zhou Xun.

A packed audience lobbed familiar questions about the criteria they jurors would employ to decide the Golden Goblet prize winners, and what informs those views.

Tran, who is based largely in France, rejected the idea of an East-West clash of sensibilities. “Film is its own language, and I try to...

The Shanghai International Film Festival unveiled the competition selection for its upcoming 26th edition Wednesday, featuring a lineup characteristically heavy on Chinese titles. As in recent years, the lineup also includes a bevy of European, Japanese and Central Asian movies, but not a single film from the U.S. or South Korea.

The most anticipated film from the festival’s 14-title main competition in 2024 is undoubtedly Chinese director Guan Hu’s drama A Man and a Woman, featuring a pair of lead performances from the big local stars Huang Bo and Ni Ni. Guan wowed critics at the Cannes Film Festival just a week ago with his darkly comic thriller Black Dog, which took home the French festival’s prestigious Un Certain Regard prize. Guan also is no stranger to the Shanghai festival. His WWII tentpole The Eight Hundred was scheduled to open the 2019 edition of the event, but it...

Exclusive: Paris-based Nour Films has acquired French rights to Saudi director Tawfik Alzaidi’s first feature Norah ahead of its world premiere in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard.

The film will make history as the first ever Saudi feature to play in Cannes’ Official Selection just six years after Saudi Arabia announced the end of its 35-year cinema ban.

“Norah is an elegant film that combines age-old traditions with a desire for emancipation. This emancipation is achieved through art, learning and a desire greater than oneself. Tawfik Akzaidi has beautifully crafted a film that is both powerful and delicate,” said Nour Films’s co-founding director Patrick Sibourd.

The deal was brokered by Sebastien Chesneau under his Cercamon banner which clinched the international sales mandate for the film last week.

Cercamon and Nour previously collaborated on Vietnamese drama Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell which premiered in Directors’ Fortnight...

Australian and New Zealand indie distributor Umbrella Entertainment will launch Brollie, a free of charge, ad-supported streaming service later this month. It will lean on Umbrella’s library of classic content and claims to be the first free streaming platform specializing in Australian film and TV content.

Brollie will launch on Nov. 23 with over 300 titles including: “Babadook”; “Two Hands” (dir. Gregor Jordan, 1999); cult classics “Sweat”; “Erskineville Kings”; and “Cut” starring Kylie Minogue.

Brollie will also have a section for Indigenous Australia, including a collection of films starring Aboriginal screen legend David Gulpilil. These include “Walkabout”; “Storm Boy”; and “The Last Wave”.

A documentary slate includes “Servant or Slave” and “Ablaze”.

Subscribers will be invited to be part of the Brollie Film Club, where Brollie’s in-house team handpicks the best of the catalogue twice a month. Members can terrify themselves with the ‘Australian Nightmares’ collection exploring the best of Aussie...

All At Sea Together

The inaugural edition of the Cinema at Sea – Okinawa Pan-Pacific International Film Festival will be held next month (Nov. 23-29) on the Japanese island of Okinawa. With a 40-title lineup, a competition and a robust international selection, the festival says its mission is to explore the ocean and Pacific regions [with] film acting as a global lens [that] allows us to bridge the gap between different islands, fostering an inclusive atmosphere in Okinawa, where diverse cultures and nationalities converge.”

The festival will open with “From Okinawa With Love,” by Sunairi Hiroshi, which premiered at the Dmz Documentary Festival in Korea, and tracks the work of a photographer who investigated the African American G.I. scene around the island’s U.S. air bases. It will close with “We Are Still Here,” a portmanteau film by indigenous people from Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific.

The competition section...

The inaugural Cinema at Sea – Okinawa Pan-Pacific International Film Festival is pleased to announce this year’s program line-up, featuring almost 40 films from around the world, screenings from November 23rd to 29th at cinemas across Okinawa.

(Cinema at Sea Press Conference in Tokyo on October 11th 2023)

“The festival, initiated its groundwork in 2018 with the mission of exploring the Ocean and Pacific regions. Film, acting as a global lens, allows us to bridge the gap between different islands, fostering an inclusive atmosphere in Okinawa, where diverse cultures and nationalities converge. This embodies the essence of Cinema at Sea. Rather than defining boundaries on land, we encourage a perspective that looks outward, across the ocean. By doing so, our individual worlds expand. Our goal is to offer the audience a transformative experience, encouraging them to see beyond conventional limits.” said festival director Huang Yin-Yu.

Opening Film “From Okinawa with Love” director- Hiroshi Sunairi...

A growing list of 300 film professionals, including Martin Scorsese, Olivier Assayas, Joanna Hogg, and Radu Jude, have signed an open letter calling for the contract of outgoing Berlinale Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian to be reinstated and extended beyond 2024.

Late last week, Chatrian released a statement via the Berlinale website announcing his intention to step down following next year’s edition of the German festival. In his statement, Chatrian pointed to the German Ministry for Culture and Media’s decision to scrap the Berlinale’s dual management structure as the main catalyst for his departure.

Last month, German Culture Minister Claudia Roth announced that she wants the Berlinale to be placed back under the control of a single director. Roth is reported to have told a meeting on Thursday of the supervisory board of federal cultural events in Berlin (Kbb), which oversees the festival, that her conclusion was the film should be led by one person.

More than 200 international filmmakers have rallied in support of ousted Berlinale artistic director Carlo Chatrian, pledging their names to an open letter imploring the cultural organization to keep the artist director in place. Among the first signatories were Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Joanna Hogg, “Corsage” director Marie Kreutzer, Andrew Ross Perry, and Olivier Assayas. Over the course of the day on Wednesday, another 130 directors joined them, the list swelling to include M. Night Shyamalan, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Tilda Swinton, and Claire Denis. 260 filmmakers have now signed the open letter.

“We, a diverse group of filmmakers from all over the world, who have deep respect for Berlin International Film Festival as a place for great cinema of all kinds, protest the harmful, unprofessional, and immoral behavior of state minister Claudia Roth in forcing the esteemed Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian to step down despite promises to prolong his contract,” says the letter.

Chatrian...

Martin Scorsese, Radu Jude, Joanna Hogg, Claire Denis, Bertrand Bonello, M. Night Shyamalan, Kristen Stewart, Hamaguchi Ryusuke and Margarethe von Trotta are among the international filmmakers and talents who have signed an open letter in support of Carlo Chatrian whose mandate as artistic director of the Berlinale will come to an end next year. The number of signatories has now exceeded 400 names and keeps growing.

As we reported last week, Chatrian had been expected to stay on beyond 2024, and was surprised to learn that the German body which oversees the festival, Kulturveranstaltungen des Bundes in Berlin (Kbb), announced that it would no extend his contract. The org had previously said it would abandon the model of having an executive director and an artistic director and return instead to having a single director, following the next edition. The festival’s executive director Mariëtte Rissenbeek will also be leaving her post after the next edition.

Both Covid and Black Lives Matter inspired the Dutch-Australian director to make The Survival of Kindness – with a lead actor who had never been inside a cinema before

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It has been almost a decade since Rolf de Heer’s last film, but the Dutch-Australian director has returned to the big screen with a renewed sense of urgency. The Survival of Kindness, a dystopian journey through hinterlands and cityscapes disfigured by a catastrophic event (probably plague) shows that the 71-year-old film-maker’s narrative powers are undiminished: the film won the top jury prize at this year’s Berlin international film festival.

Set against the beautiful backdrops of Australian desert and mountain wilderness, foregrounding brutality and compassion in a post-apocalyptic world, there is, as with each of his films, a surprise nestled within The Survival of Kindness: the absence of any intelligible dialogue. It is a risky choice.

Last Man Standing

Martial arts veteran Sammo Hung is to be presented with a lifetime achievement honor at the upcoming Asian Film Awards. The ceremony is back as an in-person event after a two-year absence and shifts back to Hong Kong after previously being held in Hong Kong, Macau and Busan. Hung is expected to accept the award on Sunday March 12 at the Hong Kong Palace Museum.

“I’m so happy and surprised that I can still win awards these days, especially an award that affirms my entire performing career,” said Hung in a forwarded statement. He has a career as actor, action choreographer, director and producer that stretches some 60 years.

His acting credits include action comedies “Dirty Tiger, Crazy Frog” and “Odd Couple” paranormal horror comedies “Encounters of the Spooky Kind” and “The Dead and the Deadly,” comedy film series “Lucky Stars” and gangster action film “Shanghai, Shanghai.”

In...

Jub Clerc's 'Sweet As' took home the Crystal Bear in the Berlin Film Festival Generation Kplus competition over the weekend, while short film 'Marungka tjalatjunu (Dipped in Black)' won the Silver Bear Jury Prize and Rolf de Heer's 'The Survival of Kindness' collected the top critics’ award, the Fipresci Prize.

The post Berlin prizes for ‘Sweet As’, ‘The Survival of Kindness’, ‘Marungka tjalatjunu’ appeared first on If Magazine.

After the misery of the 2022 Berlin Film Festival, held toward the tail-end of the pandemic and with strict social distancing and Covid testing regulations still in place, it was back to normal at this year’s 73rd edition.

Festivalgoers were so pleased to return to a proper, physical event that they were remarkably tolerant toward a competition programme that was very patchy, at least by comparison with those found in rival events like Cannes and Venice.

The Berlinale launched with Rebecca Miller’s quirky new romantic comedy, She Came to Me, starring Peter Dinklage as an opera composer with writer’s block, Anne Hathaway as his neurotic therapist wife, and the scene-stealing Marisa Tomei as a salty, seafaring but very amorous tugboat captain. This was a film with such oddball charm that it was easy to overlook its self-indulgence. Festivals can take themselves far too seriously. She Came to Me...

Rolf de Heer’s The Survival of Kindness, a stark, and dialog-free dystopian fable about racism and the legacy of colonialism, has won over international film critics at this year’s Berlinale, taking the top prize for best film as picked by the Fipresci jury. Produced by Vertigo Productions and Triptych Pictures, The Survival of Kindness is being sold worldwide by Fandango.

Bas Devos’ Here, a quietly romantic drama about a construction worker and a scientist who cross paths and start to help one another, took the Fipresci prize for best film screening in Berlin’s Encounters section. The feature, produced by Belgian firm Quetzalcoatl, is being sold worldwide by China’s Rediance

The Quiet Migration, the narrative feature debut of director Malene Choi (The Return), won the Fipresci best film prize for the Panorama section. Won Riedel-Clausen stars in the film as the 19-year-old Carl, born in South Korea,...

Lady in a Cage: de Heer’s Dystopia Explores the Enduring Echoes of Colonialism

Dutch-born director Rolf de Heer has been a mainstay of Australian cinema since the mid-1980s, though his most well-traveled films dealt specifically with a reclamation of the country’s Indigenous population. Titles like Ten Canoes (2006) and Charlie’s Country (2013) featured Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil. Gulpilil died at the age of sixty-eight in 2021, which seems to have led de Heer to his most distressing film to date with The Survival of Kindness, a more experimental take on racism and colonialism featuring newcomer Mwajemi Hussein.…...

While Rolf de Heer has a prolific career comprising dozens of movies from diverse genres, the filmmaker is mostly known and awarded for his unique exploration of the aboriginal perspective of Australian history. With The Tracker, Ten Canoes, and Charlie's Country, de Heer gave voice to native people in front and behind the cameras, forcing people everywhere to reflect on the scars left behind by colonization. Almost a decade after his last movie, The Survival of Kindness comes to remind us why de Heer is so important for international cinema, as he pushes the boundaries of his filmmaking technique to tackle race conflicts and power.

Questions of authenticity and authorship in cinema – who gets to tell what stories — are thorny ones. With his trilogy of films on the Aboriginal experience, The Tracker, Ten Canoes and Charlie’s Country, Dutch-born white Australian filmmaker Rolf de Heer has managed to avoid charges of cultural appropriation. This is due in large part to de Heer’s obvious respect for Indigenous culture and traditions and to his working method, which involves deep collaboration with the communities involved, as well as the on-screen talent, most famously with the late, great Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil.

For his new film, The Survival of Kindness, De Heer again takes on the ugly legacy of racism and colonialism. The film, which premiered in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival, is the story of a Black woman (identified in the credits only as Black Woman) and her harrowing odyssey out of captivity. Shot entirely without intelligible dialogue,...

It is probably Australia. But it could be anywhere where the sun is hot enough to bake the earth into boundless stretches of cracked crazy-paving. It is probably an alternate recent past. But it could be any period in human history when mankind has divided itself into categories of oppressor and oppressed. The most remarkable aspect of Rolf de Heer’s elegiac, elemental “The Survival of Kindness” is that it is an allegory so direct as to be obvious, told in a style so spartan as to be opaque. Not one syllable of intelligible language is spoken, but the choral anguish of generations subjugated to colonial cruelty rings loud through every wordless frame.

In a forbiddingly desolate desert landscape, shot with Dp Maxx Corkindale’s elegantly unadorned realism, the only evidence of humanity is the very definition of inhumanity: a crude iron cage in which is locked a woman (an...

’Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything’, ’The Survival Of Kindness’ and ’BlackBerry’ land with middling scores.

Emily Atef’s Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything, Rolf de Heer’s The Survival Of Kindness and Matt Johnson’s BlackBerry are the first titles to land on Screen’s Berlin 2023 Competition jury grid.

De Heer’s film leads with an average of 2.4, followed closely by the other two titles on 2.3.

Click top left to expand

Seven critics are taking part in this year’s jury grid and will mark all 19 films playing in competition.

The Survival Of Kindness received four three-star ratings...

The magnetic actor’s shattering performance in Rolf de Heer’s race-hate film is rich with emotion – forged through an unthinkable amount of real-life hardship

Mwajemi Hussein had never set foot inside a cinema before she auditioned for the lead role in a film by one of Australia’s most celebrated directors. Growing up in a village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Drc), there were no cinemas. In her 20s, fleeing war, she lived for eight years in a refugee camp in Tanzania with her husband and children. Later, after the family were granted asylum in Australia, there was simply no time. “I was busy learning English and raising children, going everywhere, volunteering,” she grins.

To describe Hussein, 51, as busy is an understatement. As we speak over Zoom, it’s the end of her working day in Adelaide. After learning English in Australia, she studied for a degree...

A black woman confined to a cage and sinister white figures facing death from some post-apocalyptic illness people writer-director Rolf de Heer’s eerie theatrical film

To watch this dreamlike and floatingly indeterminate movie, with its eerily composed images and murmuringly inaudible near-wordlessness, is to enter a state of bewilderment and discombobulation or perhaps of scepticism indefinitely deferred – starting with that title. Whose kindness? Has it really survived? Because it looks very much as if, in this scary apocalyptic world, what has survived is the opposite of kindness.

We find ourselves in a beautiful, but tough and unforgiving landscape of desert and mountain, for which writer-director Rolf de Heer has used the Flinders mountain ranges of South Australia. Some terrible catastrophe (perhaps chemical or biological) has caused mass infection and death among white people, whose survivors have to wear gas masks, but has not affected people of colour, who are...

In his films The Tracker, Ten Canoes and Charlie’s Country, Rolf de Heer has mixed lyrical allegory with naturalism and genre conventions, ethnographic docudrama with morality tale and Aboriginal storytelling traditions to reclaim the dignity of Indigenous Australians and decry the injustices of white colonization. The collaborative spirit of those projects — notably with the great Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil, who died in 2021 — has enabled the Dutch-born writer-director to avoid charges of cultural appropriation.

His new film, The Survival of Kindness, returns to the theme of racism, this time as a minimalist tone poem entirely without intelligible dialogue, its key characters identified in the credits only as BlackWoman, BrownGirl and BrownBoy. The dystopian vision is set against harshly beautiful landscapes that are recognizably Australian yet distinctly abstract in their depiction of place and time.

The degree to which this lament for humanity connects with any audience will vary wildly. Some will...

The intersection between Black Lives Matter and a Covid-like pandemic plus a standout performance from non-professional actor Mwajemi Hussein is sure to make “The Survival of Kindness” one of Berlin’s most talked-about films.

The film is deliberately obscure – the little dialog that is heard involves each performer speaking in a language of their own invention with the meaning known only to that actor and the film’s director, Australia’s Rolf de Heer.

And it is minimalist. Character names are purely functional. Location filming was done with a crew of just nine people who walked extensively across Tasmania and the deserts of South Australia and cooked for each other between set-ups.

Yet “Kindness” packs in a lot. It opens jarringly with a gas-mask-wearing tea party before cutting to a black woman abandoned in a metal cage in the middle of a sandy desert. After she escapes into a dystopian...

Protests from climate activists, against festival sponsor Uber, and against a German cinema chain took place.

A ten-minute address from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky headlined the opening ceremony of the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival, as multiple protests took place outside the Berlinale Palast venue.

Appearing via a live video link, Zelensky made an analogy between the Berlin Wall that used to divide Potsdamer Platz, and the wall that “Russia wants to build in Ukraine – a wall between us and Europe.”

“It is not only about state borders on the map; the wall divided world views, philosophies, different realms,” said Zelensky.

Kirsten Stewart looked confident, and downright snazzy, as she strode to the platform for her first press conference as jury president of the 2023 Berlin International Festival.

But, stylishly-attired in a tweed Chanel pantsuit with wide trousers and jacket and no shirt underneath, the Twilight and Spencer star confessed that she was nervous of the task ahead.

“Full transparency, I’m kind of shaking,” she said. “I feel, not buckling under [the weight], but I can’t wait who we all ahead at the end of this experience. I’m just ready to be changed by all the films and by all the people around us.”

Stewart said it wasn’t her decision to come to Berlin. “I was shocked they called me,” she said. “[But] it is an enormous opportunity to highlight beautiful things at a time when that is hard to hold.”

Fellow Berlinale juror, actress Golshifteh Farahani, said, so much political upheaval in the world,...

Visionary Dutch-Australian filmmaker Rolf de Heer, known for several landmark films including “Ten Canoes” and “Charlie’s Country,” is in competition at the upcoming Berlin Film Festival with “The Survival of Kindness.”

An allegory for racism, the film follows BlackWoman, who is abandoned in a cage on a trailer in the middle of the desert. She escapes and walks through pestilence and persecution, from desert to canyon to mountain to city, on a quest that leads to a city, recapture and tragedy.

Many of de Heer’s films are born with a single image in his mind. In the case of “The Survival of Kindness” this was an image of Peter Djigirr, the filmmaker’s closest Indigenous friend, who co-directed “Ten Canoes” and co-produced “Charlie’s Country” and acted in both of them, locked in a cage on a trailer abandoned in the desert.

“In the same way that the image of...

Berlin Film Festival artistic director Carlo Chatrian and executive director Mariëtte Rissenbeck unveiled the International Competition and Encounters lineups on Monday for the festival’s 73rd edition, running February 16-26.

“It’s quite an eclectic selection,” Chatrian told the press conference in Berlin this morning. “You will see we tried to include as many genres and cinematic forms as possible.”

Related Story Berlin Film Festival Lineup: Sean Penn, Philippe Garrel, Margarethe Von Trotta & Christian Petzold In Competition — Full List Related Story Sean Penn Documentary On Ukraine And Volodymyr Zelenskyy To Debut At Berlin Film Festival Related Story Berlin Film Festival: Watch Competition Lineup Revealed Live

The International Competition features 18 titles, 15 of them world premieres, involving 19 different territories. Encounters, the Berlinale’s equivalent of Un Certain Regard which was launched in 2020, will showcase 16 films.

Chatrian has stuck with his love of mixing established names, including Philippe Garrel (The Plough), Margarethe von Trotta...

The Berlin Film Festival, held every year in February, the cruelest month of the German winter, has never been able to match the Mediterranean flair of Cannes or Venice, or the laid-back indie cool of Sundance. But when it comes to serious movies, few festivals, big or small, can match the Berlinale.

In place of the big blockbuster movies, Berlin has doubled down on political dramas and documentaries that focus on the real troubles of the world. The war in Ukraine — launched by Russia’s invasion a year ago — will be on screens everywhere this Berlinale. Sean Penn and Aaron Kaufmann’s documentary Superpower, shot just before and after Russia’s invasion, and featuring several interviews with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, will have its world premiere in Berlin’s Special Screening section and there are three more Ukraine documentaries — Roman Liubyi’s Iron Butterflies, Vitaly Mansky and Yevhen Titarenko’s doc Eastern Front,...

2023 truly begins taking shape with next month’s Berlinale, which will run from February 16 to February 26 and feature more than a few of our most-anticipated films this year. Among them are Christian Petzold’s Afire (Roter Himmel), starring new muse Paula Beer; Hong Sangsoo’s In Water, which will appear in the Encounters section; and Philippe Garrel’s The Plough, once known as La lune crevée starring his three children Louis, Esther, and Lena, and (judging from the still) his first color feature since 2011’s A Burning Hot Summer. Meanwhile: Angela Schanelec will return with Music, and––six years after the wonderful Person to Person––it’s nice spotting a new feature from Dustin Guy Defa, The Adults.

Find the lineup below and head back next month for our coverage of the festival headed by Kristen Stewart’s jury.

Competition

20,000 Species of Bees (Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren)

The Shadowless Tower (Zhang...

Ivan Sen's 'Limbo' and Rolf de Heer's 'Survival of Kindness' will be in the mix for the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival next month, the first Australian films to screen in the official competition since 2006's 'Candy'.

The post ‘Limbo’, ‘Survival of Kindness’ in Berlin competition line-up appeared first on If Magazine.

18 titles selected for competition, including films by Christian Petzold, Emily Atef, Margarethe Von Trotta and Philippe Garrel.

The 18-strong Competition line-up for the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival has been announced by festival heads Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek.

Scroll down for full list

New films from Christian Petzold, Margarethe Von Trotte, Emily Atef and Lila Avilés are among those selected. Some 15 of the 18 titles are world premieres, with international premieres for Celine Song’s Past Lives after debuting to strong reviews at Sundance; Makoto Shinkai’s animation Suzume, released in Japan last November; and Australia’s The Survival Of Kindness by Rolf de Heer,...

The Berlin International Film Festival unveiled the competition lineup for its 2023 edition on Monday morning, naming the 18 movies that will compete for the coveted Gold and Silver Bears at the 73rd Berlinale.

Berlinale executive director Mariette Rissenbeek and artistic director Carlo Chatrian presented a very international and arthouse-heavy lineup, with a strong focus on politically-charged cinema.

In a late addition, Superpower, Sean Penn and Aaron Kaufman’s documentary on Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Russian invasion of the country and the ongoing war, will have its world premiere in Berlin’s out-of-competition Berlinale Special section. The doc, made for Vice Studios, Aldamisa Entertainment and Fifth Season, is being sold internationally by Fifth Season.

Berlin 2023, taking place a year after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion, will have a major focus on Ukraine. Even the festival’s official pin will be in the Ukraine colors of blue and yellow.

In competition, German auteur...

Indonesian thriller ‘Autobiography’ and Mexican documentary ‘Sanson And Me’ among line-up.

Australia’s Adelaide Film Festival (Oct 19-30) has unveiled its first line-up since shifting from a biennial to an annual event, including 12 titles in competition.

This year’s event comprises 129 films, of which 22 world premieres, from more than 40 countries.

The competition features include Indonesian thriller Autobiography, which scooped a Fipresci prize at the weekend after playing in the Horizons strand of the Venice Film Festival. The debut feature of film critic-turned-director Makbul Mubarak is about a young man who keeps house for a retired general, finding himself torn between...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSEnys Men (Mark Jenkin).The New York Film Festival announced its Main Slate. Highlights include new films from Park Chan-wook, Claire Denis, and Kelly Reichardt; a fiction feature from Frederick Wiseman; Mark Jenkin's Bait follow-up Enys Men; and much more.Hong Kong action director John Woo will reimagine his 1989 crime classic The Killer in a new remake due out in 2023. French actor Omar Sy (The Intouchables) will play the lead.Lars Von Trier has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, his production company Zoetrope has confirmed. The director is doing well, and is currently being treated for symptoms whilst continuing to work on The Kingdom Exodus.Artist and El Planeta filmmaker Amalia Ulman's visa is expiring, meaning she may have to leave the United States, where she is currently working on her next feature film.

Look into the series Criterion Channel have programmed for August and this lineup is revealed as (in scientific terms) quite something. “Hollywood Chinese” proves an especially deep bench, spanning “cinema’s first hundred years to explore the ways in which the Chinese people have been imagined in American feature films” and bringing with it the likes of Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly, Cimino’s Year of the Dragon, Griffith’s Broken Blossoms, and Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet—among 20-or-so others. A three-film Marguerite Duras series brings one of the greatest films ever (India Song) and two lesser-screened experiments; films featuring Yaphet Kotto include Blue Collar, Across 110th Street, and Midnight Run; and lest we ignore a Myrna Loy retro that goes no later than 1949.

Criterion editions include The Asphalt Jungle, Husbands, Rouge, and Sweet Smell of Success; streaming premieres for Loznitsa’s Donbass, Béla Tarr’s watershed Damnation, and...

Francesca Archibugi’s ’The Hummingbird’ stars Nanni Moretti, Berenice Bejo and Pierfrancesco Favino.

Italy’s Fandango Sales has signed a raft of deals on Francesca Archibugi’s upcoming film The Hummingbird and Paolo Taviani’s Leonora Addio, plus made six additions to its Marché line-up.

The Hummingbird has sold to Spain (Karma Films), Switzerland (Filmcoopi), Benelux (Cineart), Bulgaria (Cinelibri) and Former Yugoslavia (McF Megacom). The film stars Nanni Moretti, Berenice Bejo and Pierfrancesco Favino and was produced by Fandango with Les Films des Tournelles, Orange Studio and Rai Cinema.

Berlinale competition title Leonora Addio has been sold to Portugal (Leopardo...

The American film and television landscape may have exhausted its share of vampire slayer stories, clearing a path for refreshing twists on the subgenre to tread. Enter the new AMC+ series “Firebite,” which shakes up the mythology by setting its yarn in the Outback. It introduces fans of Blade, Buffy, and even Abraham Lincoln, to Tyson (Rob Collins) and Shanika (Shantae Barnes-Cowan), two Indigenous hunters on a quest to eradicate the last outpost of vampires in the middle of their south Australian desert town. The series’ originality stems primarily from its backdrop and the barbarous colonial past that informs it — although “Firebite” isn’t a history lesson as much as a celebration of Aboriginal agency, telling an entertaining story of a human battle against literal bloodsucking parasites, in a biting take on manifest destiny.

Co-creators Warwick Thornton and Brendan Fletcher reimagine the arrival of the “First Fleet” on Australia’s...

The late David Gulpilil will receive Aacta’s highest honour, the Longford Lyell Award, for his outstanding contribution to Australian cinema on Wednesday.

The legendary actor died on Monday, aged 68, four years after a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.

Aacta began work on the tribute and award six months ago, with Gulpilil accepting the honour a few weeks ago from South Australia as he was unable to travel.

First presented in 1968, the award honours Australian film pioneer Raymond Longford and his partner in filmmaking and life, Lottie Lyell. Previous recipients include Cate Blanchett, George Miller, Paul Hogan, Jack Thompson and Jacki Weaver.

Aacta has said this year’s prize acknowledges not just Gulpilil’s incredible body of work, but his role in creating more diverse, inclusive, and truthful Australian stories.

A Mandjalpingu man from Ramingining, Arnhem Land, Gulpilil’s first role was in Nick Roeg’s 1971 film Walkabout as a teenager.

David Dalaithngu, actor, dancer and Australian cultural icon, is credited with helping reinvent Australian film. His role in Walkabout (1971) contributed to the end of blackface being used in Australian cinema. Dalaithngu had a string of successful roles in the 1970s and 80s including in Storm Boy (1976) and Crocodile Dundee (1986). His longest creative collaboration was with director Rolf de Heer, with whom he worked for more than 15 years. Together they crafted The Tracker (2002) for which Dalaithngu won an Aactar award, Ten Canoes (2006) and Charlie’s Country (2014) for which Dalaithngu won best actor in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section.

Walkabout (1971) Max L. Raab Productions & Si Litvinoff Film Production. Storm Boy (1976) Ambience Entertainment production. Crocodile Dundee (1986) Paramount Pictures Studios. Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) Rumbalara Films, Olsen Levy & Showtime Australia. Charlie’s Country (2014) Adelaide Film Festival & Bula'bula Arts Aboriginal. My Name is Gulpilil (2021) Vertigo Productions...

Legendary Indigenous actor David Dalaithngu, known for his roles in Walkabout, Storm Boy, and Ten Canoes, has died aged 68.

His death comes after he attended the premiere of documentary My Name Is Gulpilil at the Adelaide Festival earlier this year, defying a terminal lung cancer prognosis from 2017 that had only given him six months to live.

The news was confirmed on Monday night by South Australian Premier Steven Marshall, who described the trailblazing actor as a “once-in-a-generation artist”.

“It is with deep sadness that I share the passing of an iconic, once-in-a-generation artist who shaped the history of Australian film and Aboriginal representation on screen – David Dalaithngu Am,” he wrote in a statement.

“My thoughts are with his family, and his dear friend and carer Mary Hood.”

A Mandhalpuyngu man from the Arafura Swamp region in Arnhem Land, Dalaithngu was just 16 when he starred in his breakout role in Nicolas Roeg’s 1971 film Walkabout,...

David Gulpilil, an actor who who lit up the screen in his 1971 debut film “Walkabout” and recently starred in a biographical documentary about his remarkable life, has died. Gulpilil was diagnosed with lung cancer four years ago. He was 68.

The Australian actor was a pioneering indigenous performer with talents including acting, singing and painting. His film credits include “The Last Wave,” “Crocodile Dundee,” “The Tracker,” “Rabbit-Proof Fence,” “Ten Canoes,” “Goldstone” and “Charlie’s Country.” TV credits include “Pine Gap” and “The Timeless Land.”

“It is with deep sadness that I share with the people of South Australia the passing of an iconic, once-in-a-generation artist who shaped the history of Australian film and Aboriginal representation on screen – David Gulpilil Ridjimiraril Dalaithngu (Am),” said South Australia’s Premier Steven Marshall in a statement.

“David Gulpilil was from the Mandhalpingu clan of the Yolŋu people, and was raised in the traditional ways in Arnhem Land.

The actor starred in films including ‘Walkabout’, ‘Crocodile Dundee’ and ‘Rabbit-Proof Fence’

David Gulpilil, one of Australia’s most recognisable actors both locally and abroad, has died at the age of 68.

In a statement issued today, the premier of South Australia, Steven Marshall, described him as an “iconic, once-in-a-generation artist who shaped the history of Australian film and Aboriginal representation on screen”.

Gulpilil was first cast in Walkabout (1971), directed by Nicolas Roeg, and has been a feature of Australian cinema for the past 50 years, including roles in two local films that are among the highest-grossing releases ever in Australia: Crocodile Dundee...

David Gulpilil, the revered Indigenous Australian actor and dancer, known for his performances in films such as Rabbit-Proof Fence, Crocodile Dundee, The Tracker and Walkabout, has died aged 68 following a battle with cancer.

Gulpilil’s death was confirmed Monday in a statement by South Australian Premier Steven Marshall. “It is with deep sadness that I share with the people of South Australia the passing of an iconic, once-in-a-generation artist who shaped the history of Australian film and Aboriginal representation on screen – David Gulpilil Ridjimiraril Dalaithngu (Am),” he posted on social media.

Gulpilil received mainstream recognition for his performances in blockbuster comedy Crocodile Dundee (1986) and Phillip Noyce’s drama Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), which garnered the actor his first best actor prize from the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards.

He was also well known for 2002 feature The Tracker, in which he played the title character, and further collaborations with director...

David Gulpilil, the beloved Indigenous Australian actor who introduced the world to his culture in Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout and went on to make his mark in the blockbuster Crocodile Dundee and in the Rolf de Heer dramas The Tracker and Charlie’s Country, has died. He was 68.

Gulpilil was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2017, and his death was announced Monday in a statement by South Australian Premier Steven Marshall. “It is with deep sadness that I share with the people of South Australia the passing of an iconic, once-in-a-generation artist who shaped the history of Australian film and Aboriginal representation on ...

David Gulpilil, the beloved Indigenous Australian actor who introduced the world to his culture in Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout and went on to make his mark in the blockbuster Crocodile Dundee and in the Rolf de Heer dramas The Tracker and Charlie’s Country, has died. He was 68.

Gulpilil was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2017, and his death was announced Monday in a statement by South Australian Premier Steven Marshall. “It is with deep sadness that I share with the people of South Australia the passing of an iconic, once-in-a-generation artist who shaped the history of Australian film and Aboriginal representation on ...

Loneliness and longing are examined with a forensic and unflinching eye in “Shelter,” a bleak Irish-language drama about a reclusive 20-something man-child who must face the world he has been protected from all his life. but its intensity and refusal to indulge in sentimentality makes it sometimes tough to watch. Adapted from the 2013 novel “The Thing About December” by Donal Ryan, “Shelter” marks a promising debut by writer-director Sean Breathnach and has been selected as Ireland’s official submission for the 2022 international feature Oscar.

The basic outline of “Shelter” echoes films such as Werner Herzog’s “The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser” and Rolf de Heer’s “Bad Boy Bubby,” in which young adult males are suddenly thrust into the world after being cruelly locked away from it all their lives. In “Shelter” it is not imprisonment but willing acceptance of overwhelming parental love that has kept John Cunliffe (Donal O...

Veteran Australian director Rolf De Heer (“Ten Canoes”) is shooting a new film titled “The Mountain,” for which Italy’s Fandango Sales is launching sales at the online AFM.

“The Mountain” (pictured above in a first-look image) tells the story of a central character named BlackWoman, who is abandoned in a cage in the middle of the desert. Following her escape from the cage, “she walks through pestilence and persecution, from desert to mountain to city, to find … more captivity,” reads the film’s synopsis.

“BlackWoman walks and walks, past ruins and dunes until she finds boots, and skeletons and skulls, a wrecked world where few survive and your newly gained boots can get stolen at the point of a gun.”

“Those responsible are reluctant to release their privilege, and BlackWoman, escaping once more, must find solace in her beginnings,” it adds. The film stars Mwajemi Hussein, Deepthi Sharma, and Darsan Sharma.