News

Directors Chanya Button, Adrian Sitaru, Xavier Seron scoop prizes; festival reveals works in progress winners.

UK filmmaker Chanya Button’s debut feature as director and producer, Burn Burn Burn, was voted by the audience at the Odessa International Film Festival (Oiff) as the winner of this year’s Grand Prix.

Producer Daniel-Konrad Cooper accepted the Golden Duke statuette on behalf of the production team from Oiff’s festival president Victoria Tigipko during the gala closing ceremony in the Black Sea city’s historic National Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet.

Button’s melancholic comedy had premiered at last year’s London Film Festival and is being handled internationally by Urban Distribution International.

International Competition

Meanwhile, the International Competition jury - headed by the UK writer Christopher Hampton and also including Oiff 2015 winner Eva Neymann, Us writer-director-actor Alex Ross Perry, producer Rebecca O’Brien and producer-director Uberto Pasolini - gave the Golden Duke statuette for Best Film to...

Full marks to Ukrainian director Lubomir Levitski. He has clearly paid his dues watching American college-set horror films and mastered this particular sub-set of the horror world, both in terms of embracing the goofier conventions of the genre and building in some scares that while genuinely scary are every bit as much fun. Levitski is the man behind the camera for upcoming feature Unforgotten Shadows, a horror comedy due for release across the Cis later this month. We ran the first trailer for the film back in January and that has now been followed by a second effort that captures even more of the tongue in cheek tone of the film - it revolves around college kids trying to cage a demon awoken when one...

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Director Lubomir Levitski is poised to have a very busy year. Early today we posted the trailer for his upcoming horror comedy Unforgotten Shadows, which is due for a June release in the Cis. And Levitski will have a second picture hitting screens in September, in the form of stylish crime comedy Pawn Shop.The story follows two young men who learn they have gained an inheritance but with one catch. It's being held in a pawn shop and the shop refuses to give up what is theirs. With the blend of grit and style Pawn Shop seems to nod back to Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels era Guy Ritchie, which isn't a bad thing at all. Check the trailer below....

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