News

The Santa Barbara Film Festival on Thursday revealed the lineup for its 37th edition, which is set to run March 2-12 in-person in its customary spot in the heat of Oscar season.

The festival will kick off with The Phantom of the Open, the Sony Pictures Classics comedy directed by Craig Roberts and starring Mark Rylance in the true story of Maurice Fitcroft, who entered the 1976 British Open despite never having played a round of golf before. Sally Hawkins and Rhys Ifans also star in the BBC Films pic.

The documentary Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over is the closing-night film, with Warwick set to be in attendance.

Overall, the festival in the beach city just north of Los Angeles will present 48 world premieres and 95 U.S. premieres from 54 countries, with a lineup that features films from directors Neil Labute, Ramin Bahrani, François Ozon, Eva Husson and more.

Also...

Leading arthouse sales agency The Match Factory has debuted the international trailer (see below) for the gripping, tender-hearted prison drama “Great Freedom,” which won the Jury Prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, and has revealed the latest list of international distributors. Sebastian Meise’s film was selected recently as Austria’s candidate in the Best International Feature Film Oscars race.

“Great Freedom” has sold to the following territories: Ex-Yugo (McF Megacom), Australia/New Zealand (Madman), Benelux (Imagine Film), Denmark (Ost for Paradis), Baltics (A-One), France (Paname), Greece (Ama Films), Israel (Lev Cinemas), U.S./U.K./Eire/Latam/Turkey/India (Mubi), Mexico (Cine Canibal), Sweden (Lucky Dogs), Switzerland (Filmcoopi), Taiwan (Swallow Wings), Spain (Vertigo Films), and Poland (Tongariro).

The film is set in post-war Germany, where Hans is imprisoned again and again for being homosexual. Due to paragraph 175 of the penal code his desire for freedom is systematically destroyed. The...

Cologne-based The Match Factory, one of the world’s leading arthouse sales agencies, is at Mia Market in Rome with two German features and one upcoming Italian project, following a busy summer with 20 premieres between Cannes and Toronto.

Nana Neul, best known for her film “My Friend From Faro,” is back with an entertaining German-Italian-Greek feature “Daughters,” starring Birgit Minichmayr, Alexandra Maria Lara and Josef Bierbichler. Produced by Germany’s Heimatfilm and distributed by Warner Bros Germany, the comedy hit German cinemas last week and has its international market premiere at Mia on Friday. The international festival premiere will follow soon.

Andreas Kleinert’s “Dear Thomas” is an authentic portrait of Thomas Brasch, one of the most talked about German authors of the last 50 years. The film stars the German actor Albrecht Schuch from “System Crasher,” “Berlin Alexanderplatz” and “Fabian: Going to the Dogs.” It celebrated its world premiere in...

The dramatic road movie will star Birgit Minichmayr and Alexandra Maria Lara. German filmmaker Nana Neul, known for To Faro (My Friend from Faro) and Silent Summer, is readying a new film. Based on German author Lucy Fricke’s successful novel of the same name, Töchter (lit. “Daughters”) is currently in production and will centre on Betty and Martha, two women pushing 40, who set off from Germany to accompany their dying father to Switzerland. There, he is to fulfil his last wish: that of committing assisted suicide in a special institute. Their journey leads them through Italy and Greece. Töchter will star Birgit Minichmayr and Alexandra Maria Lara in the lead roles, while Josef Bierbichler, Giorgio Colangeli and Andreas Konstantinou are also among the cast of the upcoming dramatic road movie. Filming took place in Germany earlier this year and continued in...

Ruben Östlund’s feature stars Woody Harrelson, Harris Dickinson, and Charlbi Dean.

Ruben Östlund’s Triangle Of Sadness, starring Woody Harrelson. Harris Dickinson and newcomer Charlbi Dean, starts shooting in Greece on September 19 after it was cancelled twice earlier this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

It will shoot on the island of Euboea (Evia) and on a yacht in the Ionian sea for eight weeks.

Produced by Erik Hemmendorf of Stockholm-based Plattform Produktion, the film is a satire that follows a model couple, played by Screen Star of Tomorrow Dickinson and Dean, who are invited on a luxury cruise.

German sales agents have revealed a raft of market premieres to be presented at the forthcoming American Film Market (Afm) (Nov 6-13).

Ida Martins’ Cologne-based Media Luna will have screenings of five new titles as market premieres:

Stijn Coninx’s romantic feel-good drama Marina, based on the childhood memories of the Italian-Belgian singer Rocco Granata;

Menno Meyjes’ psychological drama-thriller The Dinner, based on Herman Koch’s eponymous international bestseller, which had its world premiere at last month’s Toronto International Film Festival;

Jan Verheyen’s courtroom drama The Verdict, which received the Best Award at the Montreal World Film Festival;

Julia von Heinz’s German-Israeli romantic comedy Hanna’s Journey which celebrates its German premiere on at this week’s Hof Film Days and is nominated for the Millbrook Authors Prize;

Bettina Blümner’s coming of age drama Broken Glass Park which was awarded the Goethe Institut’s Youth and Children’s Film Prize at the Schlingel...

Turkish director Erdem Tepegöz’s social drama The Particle (Zerre) has won the Golden George for Best Film at the 35th Moscow International Film Festival (Miff).

The film’s lead actress, Jale Arikan, also picked up the Best Actress Silver George for her performance as Zeynep, trying to make ends meet in the dusty and dim atmosphere of abandoned apartments evacuated for clearance.

The International Jury under the presidency of Iranian film-maker Mohsen Makhmalbaf awarded the Silver George for Best Director to South Korea’s Jung Young-Heon for Lebanon Emotion (Le-Ba-Non Kam-Jeong).

The Best Actor prize went to Russia’s Alexey Shevchenkov for his title role as Judas in Andrey Bogatyryov’s Judas (Iuda).

The Special Jury award went to The Ravine Of Goodbye (Sayonara Keikoku) by Japan’s Tatsushi Omori.

The Documentary Competition jury - which included Claas Danielsen, director of Dok Leipzig - gave its award to Poland’s Pawel Lozinski for Father And Son (Ojciec...

London -- In a country that loves a movie with political content, Oliver Stone's "W." is sure to ignite healthy debate when today's Italian premiere kicks off the nine-day Turin Film Festival.

The timing certainly couldn't be better, coming little more than two weeks after a U.S. presidential election that still has Europe buzzing.

But Barack Obama's election to the White House was arguably less surprising -- and certainly less controversial -- than this year's lineup, which is completely void of Italian films.

Arguably the country's third most prominent film festival, after Venice and Rome, the Northern Italian film jamboree will come to a close with "The Edge of Love," directed by John Maybury.

Under the watchful eye of filmmaker Nanni Moretti, now in his second year as artistic director, the festival has no Italian films because, according to Moretti, there simply weren't any titles that were up to snuff.

Rome -- The 26th Turin Film Festival on Friday released a lineup completely void of Italian films but heavy on U.S. and European productions.

Second-year artistic director Nanni Moretti -- who revealed the lineup to a packed house at the Nuovo Sacher, the Rome cinema he owns -- did his best to avoid comparisons to the just-completed Rome International Film Festival, but the Italian press is sure to highlight the differences.

The Rome event was criticized for a lineup that in many ways was a photo negative of the program Moretti released Friday, with six Italian films featured and just one from the U.S.

Moretti said that the U.S. writers' strike, which had an impact on the lineups in Venice, Rome and elsewhere, also played a role in shaping Turin's lineup. Though three of the 15 films in the lineup have American DNA, all are low-budget affairs: Azazel Jacobs' "Momma's Man,...