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Built from old-fashioned sensibilities that serve as both assets and deficits, Oualid Mouaness’ empathetic “1982” feels as though it could have been made during the titular year in which it’s set.

Mouaness’ time-honored approach is to contrast the sweetness of a first crush with the ageless shock of lost innocence. His hero is 11-year-old Wissam (Mohamad Dalli), a student at a Quaker school in the Lebanese mountains above Beirut. As the day begins, Wissam is determined to express his long-hidden feelings for classmate Joanna (Gia Madi). But he still has several obstacles to overcome, including his own shyness, the disapproval of adults around him, and the fact that Joanna’s best friend Abir (Lelya Harkous) is the class tattletale.

There’s also the fact that his imminent announcement has coincided with the start of the 1982 Israel-Lebanon War. For most of the day, the kids don’t even notice the ominous rumblings outside and overhead.

Filmmaking is incredibly hard work, said everybody who's ever made one for our enjoyment. It’s especially a trial by fire for inexperienced movie magicians, hoping that the wand will strike at least once or twice and that they just survive. With his reputation as a BTS guru with Blue Underground and Dark Sky Films in full swing, Severin Films’ David Gregory set out to make his feature debut, Plague Town (2008)—a tense homage to classic British and foreign horror infused with a fresh feel for the present. And now, a Blu from Severin that houses not only a surprisingly effective chiller, but also behind-the-scenes features that painstakingly showcase a vision dragged kicking and screaming all the way to the screening room.

It is odd for me to be discussing a film this recent. However, it makes perfect sense in context to the creators; Gregory and his co-writer John Cregan...

Director Oualid Mouaness’ enriching use of images and sensitivity to narrative balance outweigh his unexceptional dialogue in “1982.” Even with such a caveat, his debut feature succeeds in accessing emotional truths that leave a lingering bittersweet melancholy. Based on his schoolboy memories of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the film is set on the last day of classes in an elementary school, integrating unremarkable childhood behavior with the ever-growing apprehensions of teachers and administrators as the rumble of war planes makes it impossible to protect the kids from the worsening situation.

accruing since its Toronto Film Festival premiere. If promoted properly, pushing its bona fides as Lebanon’s Oscar entry while underlining Nadine Labaki’s presence as star, “1982” could see boutique-size international distribution.

Despite the deteriorating situation in southern Lebanon, the staff of an Anglophone school on the Beirut outskirts do their best to get the pupils through their final day of exams.

It's impossible to quantify what it takes to be a quality director – but damn, you know it when you see it. And you'll see it clear and strong in Paint It Black, a staggeringly impressive feature directing debut for actress Amber Tamblyn.

Adapting Janet Fitch's 2006 novel with her co-screenwriter Ed Dougherty, Tamblyn chooses a hot-button topic for her first behind-the-camera endeavor: suicide. It's a subject that, even when handled daringly – as in the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why or in the Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen – lays itself open to charges of trivialization or,...

In Amber Tamblyn’s impressive debut feature Paint It Black, a suicide sets up a tug of war between two unlikely interconnected foes: Josie (Alia Shawkat), a student who gets by modeling for a drawing class, and Meredith (Janet McTeer), a wealthy pianist, the mother of Josie’s ex-lover Michael (Rhys Wakefield). Opening in an ambitious daze, Josie awakes without Michael and heads to a punk club in her low rent L.A. neighborhood for an all-night bender. She then wakes up to a phone call from the police that Michael has taken his own life in a motel down in Twentynine Palms, California.

Arriving at the funeral, Josie is unexpectedly attacked in church by Meredith before she’s invited for out for a drink with Meredith’s ex-husband Cal (Alfred Molina), who offers his support to Josie. What follows is an ambitious character study morphing from a straightforward drama...

Los Angeles Film Festival hosted so many films directed by women, packing them all into one article would just be excessive. I already talked about Maria Goven’s tepid Play the Devil, but these next four films were real standouts. While too many independent films are plagued by a need to fit in, to conform, to act as a demo reel for some up-and-coming filmmakers just dying to get hired for a studio gig, these four purposefully and forcefully resist the marketplace, acting as pure vessels for the artists behind them. They find varying degrees of inspiration, but each is more than noteworthy.

I’m not very familiar with Amber Tamblyn, actress, but if she’s anything like Amber Tamblyn, filmmaker, I need to go consume her entire filmography right now please. Her debut feature, Paint it Black, somehow both assured and experimental, is rich with tonal variety and a...

Now that Kodak is out of bankruptcy, it wants to reassure filmmakers that they are still in the business of making movies. "We will be making film for the forseeable future," Bob Mastronardi, sales and technical manager, Kodak, said yesterday during "Want the Film Look? Shoot Film," a Kodak-sponsored panel during Ifp Film Week. "I want to reinforce the fact that film is still here and we are still here." Despite the prevalence (and affordability) of digital, there are still films being shot on film, including some of the best indies of recent years, such as "Beasts of the Southern Wild, "Fruitvale Station," and "Blue Jasmine." "In this day of everything digital, it seems like film is never even considered," said Mastronardi. "If you are interested in doing your project on film, you should consider film." The panelists included cinematographer Brian Rigney Hubbard ("Circumstance"), producer Nekisa Cooper ("Pariah"), cinematographer Brett Jutkiewicz ("Daddy Longlegs") and director.

May in the Summer

Directed by Cherien Dabis

Screenplay by Cherien Dabis

2013, USA

May in the Summer is a strong second feature from writer/director Cherien Dabis, whose Amreeka debuted at Sundance in 2009. After an uneasy and clunky start, the second half effectively blends the desperation of decision with a spectacular visual sense of discovery.

May (Dabis) is a successful writer with one book under her belt who journeys from New York to her family home in Amman, Jordan for her imminent wedding. Her long divorced parents (Hiam Abbass, Bill Pullman) and her two sisters (Nadine Malouf and Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat) must come together to support her. May’s mother is still wounded 8 years after being abandoned by her husband and has retreated into Christianity for respite. So it comes as no surprise to May that she is vehemently opposed to her marrying a man of Muslim descent.

“Tracking Shot” is a monthly featurette here on Ioncinema.com that looks at a dozen or so projects that are moments away from lensing and with June being a major production month we’ve got a slew of projects that we feel are worth signaling out. Music appears to be a common narrative theme surrounding several items – we find it infused in Once‘s John Carney’s U.S. production debut – a 10 million dollar production about a dejected music business executive forms a bond with a young singer-songwriter new to Manhattan. Scarlett Johansson was formerly attached to Can a Song Save Your Life?, now Knightley appears to be on board. Rock documentary filmmaker Stephen Kijak (Stones in Exile) is looking to make his second fictional feature based on the true story of a The Smiths fans who lost his bearings when the group announced its break-up. Shoplifters of the World...

Chicago – Set during the precarious moment following Obama’s election and prior to the Green Wave, Maryam Keshavarz’s Iran-set feature debut is one of the most provocative cinematic treasures of 2011. It’s an elegantly lensed tale of star-crossed lovers that delivers a real erotic charge, while providing an excellent showcase for beguiling newcomers Nikohl Boosheri and Sarah Kazemy.

Since any public expression of passion is forbidden between Keshavarz’s two teenage protagonists, it brings a whole other level of tension and dread to their shared attraction. Atafeh (Boosheri) has the resources and security provided by her wealthy family that allows her to live a double life with her friend and eventual lover, Shireen (Kazemy). In order to fully explore their feelings, the young women escape into their fantasies of living in a more enlightened land. For them, Dubai is tantamount to Oz.

DVD Rating: 4.5/5.0

There’s a fleeting but unforgettable moment when Atafeh,...

Even as it has become a cliché of the new horror wave for filmmakers to say that their projects aim for the spirit of ’70s chillers, movies that genuinely evoke that veneer are few and far between. There’s a certain vibe about the decade’s drive-in fare that’s hard to define and harder to capture, no matter how much gritty photography, explicit gore and cannibal-dinner-table setpieces one incorporates. One new production that gets it, and gets it right, is Plague Town (coming May 12 on DVD from Dark Sky Films), the feature writing/directing debut of David Gregory—perhaps not surprising, since he has previously made his name as a producer of documentaries and DVD extras celebrating films of the era, most notably Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Shocking Truth.

It’s also thus not surprising that Plague Town adopts the Texas Chainsaw template of a squabbling fivesome who travel...

A pensioner has been told to stop cutting a patch of grass outside his Hereford home as he is making his street look too tidy. Brian Hubbard told The Telegraph that he received a letter from Herefordshire Council accusing him of "encroaching" on local authority land. Hubbard, who is in his 70s, said he has regularly tended the small lawn since he moved to the Belmont area four years ago. The letter, which accuses Hubbard of "undertaking maintenance", said he must stop tending the grass and "return the area to its original state within 28 days" or the work would be carried out at his expense. "I (more)...