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The Locarno Film Festival (August 6-16) has unveiled the line-up for the 2025 edition, with world premieres including Radu Jude’s Dracula.

Romanian filmmaker and Berlinale Golden Bear winner Jude’s Romania-Austria-Luxembourg co-production, which competes in the international competition, is a comedy drama shot and set in Transylvania that explores the legend of Dracula through multiple lenses. Luxbox represents sales. Jude returns to Locarno after two films played out of competition last year – Eight Postcards From Utopia, co-directed with Christian Ferencz-Flatz, and Sleep #2.

Locarno’s international competition comprises of 17 world premieres, which will vie for the Golden Leopard awards. Among them...

Top arthouse and crossover Spanish distributor Elastica Films – buyer of Cannes winners “Sentimental Value,” “The Secret Agent,” “Sound of Falling,” and competition entries “Romería,” which it also produced, as well as “Nouvelle Vague” – has boarded the Spanish pic “Anekumen” by rising Basque talent Irati Gorostidi.

The historical drama shot in 16 mm will be pitched as a work in progress at next week’s Ecam Forum Co-Production Market in Madrid.

Leading Basque player Leire Appellaniz is producing for her outfits Apellaniz y de Sosa (The Sacred Spirit) and Sr. & Sra (“Samsara”) co-run with Ion de Sosa and Aritz Moreno respectively. “Anekumen is exactly the type of cinema I stand for: meaningful, with a high ethical, artistic standpoint, and a female gaze,” said Apellaniz who’s been following the project’s various stages of gestation for the last seven-eight years.

First came a short film-“Contadores”-selected at Cannes Critics’ Week 2023, which...

Buenos Aires, Argentina — Alongside a tide of pensioner rallies and a workers strike that crippled a day’s transportation, the 26th edition of the Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival (Bafici) managed another explosive set of diverse screenings and industry discussions that wrapped on April 13, after 13 days of cinematic indulgence.

An awards ceremony, held at La Boca’s Usina del Arte Saturday evening, ushered in the final day of the buoyant affair, Laura Casabe’s “The Virgin of the Quarry Lake,” “Under the Flags, the Sun” from Juanjo Pereira, and Tomás Terzano’s latest short “The Banner,” (“El Banner”) taking top plaudits.

The meticulously curated program coaxed throngs of cinephiles to six arthouse and mainstream venues nestled in the heart of the city’s theater district, Teatro San Martin, acting as the event’s industry hub. The Museo del Cine, south-of-center, held special screenings and events in parallel. 298 films from...

Can anyone forget the transfixing mysteries of Lois Patiño’s 2023 film, “Samsara”? The director is back with a new feature, “Ariel,” which recently premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival in the Harbour section. The film is a disarmingly playful, free-wheeling strum on representation and reality. It’s lit by a spirit of surreal mischief, as Agustina Muñoz playing herself travels to an island for a production of “The Tempest,” where everyone is locked in a sort of Shakespeare-mania.

HighOnFilms’ Debanjan Dhar caught up with Patiño to discuss Ariel’s metatextual riffs, collaborations with Matías Piñeiro and Ion De Sosa, and bringing Shakespeare into the fold of everyday in the Azores. Edited excerpts from the conversation:

Debanjan: Could you speak about creating the conceit of the ferry where somewhere midway all passengers except Ariel fall into deep sleep? When did that conceit, as the first entry point into that strange,...

A few years back, directors Lois Patiño and Matías Piñeiro joined forces for what was meant to be a very loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The resulting short, Sycorax, felt like the meeting of two kindred spirits. Piñeiro’s ability to resuscitate the Bard’s texts and graft them onto present-day settings met with Patiño’s keen eye for the otherworldly. The story of a fictional cineaste (Piñeiro regular Agustina Muñoz) who roams the Azores in search of a woman to play the eponymous witch from The Tempest, Sycorax oozed both the playfulness of Piñeiro’s “Shakespeareads” and the sensual, hypnotic aura of Patiño’s Red Moon Tide or Samsara. It was that rare joint project whose two directors worked in perfect symbiosis, each playing to the other’s strengths.

Based on an original idea by Piñeiro and Patiño, through written and directed by the latter only, Ariel...

Right from the opening of Lois Patiño’s endlessly beguiling new film “Ariel,” reality is ruptured. The sky and the sea are mottled with a purple glow. The camera shifts its gaze to a troupe of performers on the shores. It’s a Shakespeare play; there’s a rapt audience watching. Agustina Muñoz plays herself, an actress whom the troupe has tapped to play Ariel from The Tempest.

Set in the Azores, she travels to an island to partake in a production. However, a heightened air of the uncanny sets in on the ferry trip itself. Suddenly, everyone aboard except Agustina slips into sleep, as if hexed. It gets even more confounding when she reaches the island. Each of its inhabitants is a Shakespeare character. Agustina is baffled. She thinks they are all playing some trick on her. But they refuse to shake off their performative air.

It’s everywhere she goes,...

Lights On has secured international sales rights to “Ariel,” the latest feature from acclaimed Galician director Lois Patiño, whose previous work “Samsara” tripped out audiences at the Berlin Film Festival. The film is set to make its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam(IFFR) on Feb. 11, screening in the Harbour section, a platform for bold and innovative contemporary cinema.

“Ariel” tells the story of Agustina Muñoz, an Argentine actress who arrives on the Azores Islands to perform in a production of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” with the Galician theater company Voadora.

However, after a strange incident on the ferry over, she notices peculiar behavior among the island’s inhabitants. Guided by a mysterious girl named Ariel, the actress navigates a surreal landscape where reality and fantasy blur, creating an ambiguous, dreamlike world.

The film is a Spain-Portugal co-production by Filmika Galaika and Bando à Parte, shot on location in the Azores.

Projects from Rwanda, Greece, Malta and Bulgaria were among the prize winners at the seventh edition of European Works in Progress (Ewip) in Cologne this week.

An international jury including Edinburgh International Film Festival director Paul Ridd and distributor Sophia Stejskal of Austria’s Filmladen awarded in-kind prizes worth a total of €60,000.

Greek filmmaker Alexis Alexiou and his producer Elina Psykou received €10,000 from K13 Studios for Dolby Atmos mixing of his €1.1m crime thriller Sea Of Glass, described as a cross between The Postman Always Rings Twice and Thelma And Louise.

Maja Classen’s documentary Truth Of Dare, exploring desire...

Twenty-nine film projects have been selected for the seventh edition of European Work in Progress Cologne (Ewip), the pitching event held from October 14-16.

Among the titles being pitched to an international audience of sales agents, distributors and festival programmers is Bulgarian filmmaker Stephan Komendarev’s seventh feature Made In EU, about a provincial town turning against a seamstress after it appears she is the first local to have contracted Covid.

Other projects include German director Frédéric Halambek’s second feature Marielle, starring child actor Laeni Geiseler as a girl with the telepathic ability to know what her parents are...

The 18th edition of the Motelx – Lisbon International Horror Film Festival is set to return to Cinema São Jorge from 10th to 16th September 2024. With a programme brimming with exclusive premieres, revisits of classics, and innovative horror experiences, this year’s festival promises to be a spectacular celebration of the genre.

Among the highlights is the world premiere of Sasquatch Sunset, directed by David and Nathan Zellner and executive produced by Ari Aster. This unique film offers a bizarre and rigorous portrayal of the daily life of a Bigfoot family. Another major highlight is In a Violent Nature by Canadian director Chris Nash and Oddity, a paranormal nightmare by Irish director Damian Mc Carthy, both premiering in Portugal.

This year’s festival also marks the debut of Edgar Pêra’s Telepathic Letters, an AI-driven documentary-essay that explores the connections between Fernando Pessoa and H. P. Lovecraft. Additionally, the festival will feature Cuckoo,...

A salute to Basque cinema, the 71st edition of the San Sebastian Festival has once again unfurled its Zinemira section, a brainchild conceived in collaboration with the Basque government’s Department of Culture. Serving as more than just a showcase, Zinemira comes wrapped in the financial backing of sponsors Irizar and EiTB, with collaborative support from Urbil, the Basque Film Archive, Epe/Apv, Ibaia, and Zineuskadi. The competition for the coveted Irizar Basque Film Award promises to be as strong as ever, drawing eligible feature films that meet a set criteria— namely, a 20% Basque production involvement, a Basque-language script, or a narrative focus on Basque communities. Not to be eclipsed, the section also lights up with the Kimuak programme, a curated selection of this year’s top Basque short films, giving them a passport to international acclaim. A rundown:

“Sultana’s Dream,” (“El sueño de la Sultana,” Isabel Herguera, Spain,...

The strand is free of style or length constraints.

Films from Jean-Luc Godard, Delphine Girard and Bas Devos will screen in San Sebastian International Film Festival’s Zabaltegi-Tabakalera, a strand of the festival free of style or length constraints.

Godard’s posthumous short film Trailer Of The Film That Will Never Exist: ‘Phony Wars’, which premiered in Cannes, will open the strand alongside Yui Kiyohara’s debut Remerging Every Night which first screened at Berlinale.

Girard’s debut Through The Night is developed from her Oscar-nominated short A Sister (2020) and will premiere at Venice before heading to San Sebastian.

The...

Remembering Every Night Photo: Courtesy of San Sebastian Film Festival Víctor Erice Photo: Courtesy of San Sebastian/Sefa Sungur San Sebastian Film Festival has announced the line-up for its Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section. The 71st edition has also announced it will honour Spirit Of The Beehive director Víctor Erice with its lifetime achievement Donostia Award.

Zabaltegi-Tabakalera will open with Remembering Every Night, directed by Yui Kiyohara. It will also include a screening of a posthumous short film from Jean-Luc Godard Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: ‘Phony Wars'.)

Documentarian Ulises de la Orden's The Trial, which explores the trial against the military juntas of the Argentinian dictatorship in 1985, will close the section.

The section, which offers flexibility in terms of length and style will also feature world premieres by Ion de Sosa, Andrés Di Tella, Ashmita Guha Neogi, Kohei Igarashi and Rati Oneli and include 15 features, eight shorts and two medium length films.

14 Spanish productions selected for this year’s festival, which runs September 22-30.

Isabel Coixet’s romantic drama Un amor, Isabel Herguera’s animation Sultana’s Dream and JaioneCamborda’s drama The Rye Horn are among the 14 Spanish productions selected for the 2023 San Sebastian International Film Festival (Ssiff), running from September 22-30.

Scroll down for full line-up

Coixet will compete for the first time in San Sebastian’s official section with Un Amor, starring Laia Costa and Hovik Keuchkerian. Sold by Film Constellation, Un Amor is based on Sara Mesa’s novel that follows a woman struggling to start afresh in a countryside hamlet.

There’s a moment in “The Sacred Spirit,” Chema García Ibarra’s beguiling feature debut shot on 16mm, when viewers get uncomfortable wondering if the director realizes the playful tone he’s taking makes light of a deeply troubling situation. The concern is unwarranted — Ibarra fully understands what he’s doing — but the fact that the film keeps defying expectation while invariably hitting the right note is a testament to his flair for quirky storytelling combined with a terrific eye. Fascinated by the ways science fiction and the paranormal burrow inside people looking for meaning in an anarchic world, the filmmaker weaves an idiosyncratic story of a group of UFO believers oblivious to a darker element in their midst. A Locarno festival standout, the film should be snapped up by other festivals and showcases.

The tone is set right from the start when little Verónica (Llum Arqués) does an in-class...

Welcome to the Ovni-Levante Ufology Association, please take a seat. It’s the 37th meeting for this band of alien-obsessed misfits from Elche, Spain, and the last to be chaired by president Julio before he’ll pass away and leave the helm to his second in command, “Cosmic Pharaoh” José Manuel (Nacho Fernández). Not exactly the best time for a cabinet reshuffling, considering the six-strong Ovni-Levante has spent the past few months (years?) gearing up for a cosmic event which, the President has promised, will change the world as we know it. The date is looming; there’s no time to lose. Is it an extraterrestrial sighting these drifters are bracing for? An invasion? And how, if at all, is the mystery related with the disappearance of José Manuel’s 10-year-old niece Vanessa, gone missing 25 days ago?

Darkly surreal, perched on the edge of comedy and drama, of social realism and the occult,...

Sales agency Heretic has picked-up worldwide sales rights to “The Sacred Spirit,” Spaniard Chema García Ibarra’s feature debut, which world premieres in the International Competition at the Locarno Film Festival.

Its teaser trailer is launching exclusively in Variety.

García Ibarra’s awaited feature debut, “Sacred Spirit” blends local detail and dystopian surrealism, following José Manuel and the other members of a Spanish Ufology association -UFO-Levante- who meet weekly to exchange information about extra-terrestrial messages and alien abductions.

Julio, their leader, dies unexpectedly, leaving José Manuel as the only person who knows about the cosmic secret that could change the future of humankind. Meanwhile, Spain searches for a girl who disappeared weeks ago.

“We are thrilled to be representing the debut of Chema García Ibarra, a fresh and talented voice, who will undoubtedly stand out in the new wave of films coming from Spain,” said Ioanna Stais, head of sales and acquisitions at Athens-based Heretic.

Mexican virtual lab offers Usd 30,000 in cash prizes.

Spanish multiple Cannes award winner Olivier Laxe and Argentina’s Lisandro Alonso are among participants in the expanded third Mexican project lab Catapulta set to run as an entirely virtual event from March 24-27.

Scroll to bottom to see all lab participants

Laxe, whose Fire Will Come won the Cannes Un Certain Regard jury prize in 2019 and followed a 2016 Critics’ Week grand prize for Mimosas and the 2010 Fipresci award for Directors’ Fortnight selection You Are All Captains, takes part in the new development programme.

His project After (France) follows a man and...

Mexican virtual lab offers Usd 30,000 in cash prizes.

Spanish multiple Cannes award winner Olivier Laxe, US auteur Rick Alverson and Argentina’s Lisandro Alonso are among participants in the expanded third Mexican project lab Catapulta set to run as an entirely virtual event from March 24-27.

Scroll to bottom to see all lab participants

Laxe, whose Fire Will Come won the Cannes Un Certain Regard jury prize in 2019 and followed a 2016 Critics’ Week grand prize for Mimosas and the 2010 Fipresci award for Directors’ Fortnight selection You Are All Captains, takes part in the new development programme.

His project After (France...

Twenty projects by the likes of Pilar Palomero, Gabriel Azorín and Ion de Sosa will benefit from the wisdom and experience of directors including Isabel Coixet, Juan Cavestany and Manuel Martín Cuenca. Following the success of last year’s inaugural edition (read more here), the Spanish Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — led by Mariano Barroso — launched the second edition of its Residences programme on Monday, 5 October. The initiative, coordinated by Inés Enciso, is designed to offer intensive coaching to a talented cohort of creative filmmakers. Due to the current public health situation, this year’s edition will adopt a hybrid format, with some aspects moved online. The programme will continue until July 2021, during which time the selected participants will work on their projects with support and guidance from some of Spain’s most illustrious directors, including Isabel Coixet, Juan Cavestany, Belén Funes, Manuel Martín Cuenca, Víctor García...

‘+90dB’

A Basque rock band travels the globe playing to diehard fans from Japan, the U.S., Germany and France. Marina Lameiro’s second film, produced by Arena Comunicación and Txalap.art.

‘918 Nights’

Arantza Santesteban writes and directs her first feature documentary in which she explores the experience of being incarcerated for what seemed to be 918 nights. Txintxua Films and Hiruki Filmak currently produce.

‘Bromo: Agent Gernika’

Directed by Gerard Escuer the documentary follows the tumultuous life of José Laradogoitia a Basque double spy that worked against the Nazis during the World War Two. Produced by Area Audiovisual the documentary that plays with fictionalized scenes was selected in the Co production Forum of Documentaries Lau Haizetara on the 67th edition of San Sebastian. Is currently in preproduction.

‘Bye, Bye, Mr. Etxebeste’

Asier Altuna and Telmo Esnal’s follow-up to their 2005 social satire “Hello, Mr. Etxebeste,” the first Basque-language feature in years,...

Barcelona — “Sacred Spirit,” “Five Little Wolves” and “Ane” are among five feature projects to be put through development at the Ecam Madrid Film School’s pioneering Incubator development program.

The Incubator forms part of The Screen, Ecam’s umbrella initiative aimed at nurturing on the rise Spain-based talent kinks with Europe’s film and TV industries.

Selected by Variety as a Spanish talent to track, Chema García Ibarra will direct “Spirit,” from Basque production house Apellániz & De Sosa, which has half of Spain searching for a missing girl as a Spanish Ufology association plans a night studying the heavens. The fate of humanity depends on one of its members, the morbidly obese José Manuel, who hides a secret.

García Ibarra’s debut short “Attack From the Robots From Nebula 5,” was selected for Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes and took the 2010 Meliès d’Or Short Film Award. His newest film, co-directed with Ion de Sosa,...

Now playing exclusively on Mubi, Androids Dream is a piece of minimalist sci-fi filmed in an eerily empty, out-of-season Benidorm, on the eastern coast of Spain. Based very loosely on Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the source, of course, for Blade Runner), Ion de Sosa’s short feature conjures up a future world out of contemporary architecture in much the same way as Godard’s Alphaville and Fassbinder’s World on a Wire. The poster for the film was designed by David Uzquiza, a Spanish designer based in London who works primarily in fashion publications. As a friend of De Sosa’s he was asked to design the titles and the key art for the film, and he came up with a number of designs which you can see below. The final poster uses an illustration with an interesting provenance that appears within Androids Dream.

Mubi is exclusively showing two new, brilliant and unconventional films from Spain: Luis López Carrasco's El Futuro (April 11 - May 10) and Ion de Sosa's Androids Dream (April 12 - May 11). We asked the two filmmakers—friends and collaborators—a few questions about their work. For an in-depth exploration of the two films, we recommend Michael Pattison's article, Back to the Future: Androids Dream and El Futuro.Spanish directors Ion de Sosa (front left) and Luis López Carrasco (back right).Notebook: How did you each manage to bring your projects to life?Luis LÓPEZ Carrasco: After living in Berlin for a few months through a scholarship program, I came back to Spain in 2010 fully energized with the aim to set up a production company, finance my own projects and support friends whose work I deeply admire. The international success of Los Hijos Collective led me to believe...

Mubi will be exclusively showing El Futuro April 11 - May 10 and Androids Dream April 12 - May 11, 2016 . From this very moment, I want to appeal to the political forces, the institutions, the autonomous regions, provincial and local councils, unions, business corporations, the media, and to every sector of national daily life so they feel integrated and support this collective mission: to consolidate democracy in Spain and to overcome the economic crisis… No citizen should feel alienated by this beautiful mission of modernization, progress, and solidarity.—Felipe González, Spanish general election victory speech, 1982 Silence. It flashed from the woodwork and the walls; it smote him with an awful, total power, as if generated by a vast mill. It rose from the floor, up out of the tattered gray wall-to-wall carpeting. It unleashed itself from the broken and semi-broken appliances in the kitchen, the dead machines which hadn’t worked in all the time Isidore had lived here.

The War Game is among the films screening in Berwick Berwick-upon-Tweed celebrates the 11th edition of its Film and Media Arts Festival from September 23 to 27. Following on from last year's theme of Border Crossing, the 2015 festival expands even further into nebulous territories by taking the theme of Fact or Fiction to encourage visitors and viewers to navigate, explore and question the overlapping borders between fact and fantasy, journalism and propaganda, and preconceived conceptions of documentary and narrative film.

Alongside the Fact or Fiction titles - which include Peter Watkins's long-censored The War Game (1965) and Vampir-Cuadecuc (Pere Portabella, 1970), one of the strangest behind-the-scenes films ever made (transforming Jess Franco's Count Dracula (1970) with Christopher Lee into something genuinely otherworldly) - the 2015 festival also introduces a new strand: Berwick New Cinema. This section includes films such as Androids Dream (Ion de Sosa, 2014), Abdul & Hamza (Marko Grba Singh, 2015) and A Spell Of Fever.

In other news: Doc Alliance winner revealed; Viennale boss signs to 2018; update to reports of Tunisian filmmakers pulling titles.

UK sales company Film Republic has picked up international sales for Brazilian director José Pedro Goulart’s feature debut Point Zero (Ponto Zero) - one of the films presented in Locarno’s Carte Blanche showcase dedicated to Brazil last year.

The co-production between Porto Alegre-based Minima and Okna Producoes centres on one fateful night when a young boy, faced with many challenges at home and in school, has to learn to grow up very quickly after stealing his violent father’s car to find a call girl whose number he found of the windscreen.

Film Republic’s managing director Xavier Henry-Rashid is in Locarno this week for the international premire at the independent Critics’ Week of Karolina Bielawska’s award-winning Polish documentary Call Me Marianna.

He is also handling two Swiss titles:

Claudia Lorenz’s first feature What’s...

Estonian director’s new film will be part of Serbian festival’s 14-strong competition including My Mother, 45 Years and Heil; festival to fete five Spanish directors.

Roukli, the new film by Estonia’s Veiko Õunpuu, will have its world premiere in the 22nd edition of European Film Festival Palić (July 18-24).

This year’s festival will open with Magnus von Horn’s The Here After, while the main competition consists of 14 films, including recent Karlovy Vary titles The World Is Mine by Nicolae Constantin Tanase and Heil by Dietrich Brüggemann, as well as Cannes entries Rams by Grimur Hakonarson, Nanni Moretti’s My Mother, Panama by Pavle Vučković and Berlin title 45 Years.

The perennial Underground Spirit Award will be bestowed upon five Spanish film-makers: Ion de Sosa, Chema Garcia Ibarra, Luis Lopez Carrasco, Miguel Llanso, and Velasco Broca.

“At the time the world economic crisis struck Spain, leaving behind negative impacts on its cinema, a group of...

Estonian director’s new film will be part of Serbian festival’s 14-strong competition including My Mother, 45 Years and Heil; festival to fete five Spanish directors.

Roukli, the new film by Estonia’s Veiko Õunpuu, will have its world premiere in the 22nd edition of European Film Festival Palić (July 18-24).

This year’s festival will open with Magnus von Horn’s The Here After, while the main competition consists of 14 films, including recent Karlovy Vary titles The World Is Mine by Nicolae Constantin Tanase and Heil by Dietrich Brüggemann, as well as Cannes entries Rams by Grimur Hakonarson and Nanni Moretti’s Panama by Pavle Vučković and Berlin title 45 Years.

The perennial Underground Spirit Award will be bestowed upon five Spanish film-makers: Ion de Sosa, Chema Garcia Ibarra, Luis Lopez Carrasco, Miguel Llanso, and Velasco Broca.

“At the time the world economic crisis struck Spain, leaving behind negative impacts on its cinema, a group of...

Ion de Sosa: "We chose Benidorm because the architecture seemed very good for us" Set in an eerily-empty Benidorm, the experimental sci-fi Androids Dream (Sueñan los Androides) was one of the stand-out films at the 5th edition of D’A Festival and a key part of its (Im)Possible Futures strand. We spoke to director Ion de Sosa and co-writer Chema García Ibarra (a director in his own right) in Barcelona about the elements that fed into their onscreen dystopia, the strangeness of Benidorm, and why so many Spanish films are finding success on the festival circuit.

You said during the Q&A after the screening that one starting point for the film was the idea of implanted memories [an idea sparked by a line in Blade Runner] - and what it might mean for an android to have your memories. Were there other inspirations, or did the project develop from that initial idea?

IdS: Yes, there were other inspirations at the start.