News

The Berlin Film Festival has revealed the 28 titles selected for its Forum strand and the 26 projects at the Forum Expanded platform.

In the Forum strand, documentaries stand alongside personal essay films, while the films and installations that make up the Forum Expanded program revolve around political and personal legacies.

The festival takes place Feb. 16-26.

Forum Titles

“Allensworth”

by James Benning

U.S.

“Anqa”

by Helin Çelik

Austria/Spain

“About Thirty”

by Martin Shanly | with Martin Shanly, Camila Dougall, Paul Dougall, Esmeralds Escalante, Maria Soldi

Argentina

“Being in a Place – A Portrait of Margaret Tait”

by Luke Fowler | with Margaret Tait

U.K.

“The Bride”

by Myriam U. Birara | with Sandra Umulisa, Aline Amike, Daniel Gaga, Fabiola Mukasekuru, Beatrice Mukandayishimiye

Rwanda

“Cidade Rabat”

by Susana Nobre | with Raquel Castro, Paula Bárcia, Paula Só, Sara de Castro, Laura Afonso

Portugal/France

“De Facto”

by Selma Doborac | with Christoph Bach, Cornelius Obonya...

The Museum of Modern Art has unveiled the festival lineup for Doc Fortnight 2021, the 20th edition of its annual showcase of nonfiction films from around the globe. Over 18 documentary features and four short films will be screened as part of the festival.

In a concession to the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s films will be offered exclusively on MoMA’s Virtual Cinema from March 18 to April 5, 2021. The festival boasts two world premieres and numerous North American debuts. Doc Fortnight 2021 will kick off with the New York premiere of Nanfu Wang’s “In the Same Breath,” a look at the origins and spread of Covid-19, charting its early days in Wuhan, China to its deadly rampage through the United States. The festival is truly global in scope including filmmakers from Lebanon, Cameroon, Brazil and Morocco, among many other countries.

The closing night film is “Les sorcières de l’Orient (Oriental Witches...

Votes were cast by 141 Arab and international critics from 57 territories.

Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman’s It Must Be Heaven has scooped best film and director in the fourth edition of the Critics Awards for Arab Films.

The comedy originally premiered in Cannes Competition in 2019, garnering a special mention, and was Palestine’s submission for the 2020 Academy Awards.

In other awards, Egyptian-Tunisian actress Hend Sabry was feted with best actress for her performance in Tunisian director Hinde Boujemaa’s Noura’s Dream as a woman trying to escape the clutches of a violent husband.

French-Tunisian actor Sami Bouajila was named best actor...

Fourth edition is based on votes of 142 Arab and international critics hailing from 57 countries.

Elia Suleiman’s It Must Be Heaven and Maryam Touzani’s Adam received four nominations each in the first round of voting in this year’s Critics Awards for Arab Films.

A total of 142 Arab and international film critics from 57 countries are participating in the fourth edition of the awards, organised by the Arab Cinema Centre (Acc).

Suleiman’s comedy-drama It Must Be Heaven, which premiered in Cannes Competition in 2019, has been nominated for best film, director, actor (Suleiman) and screenplay.

Moroccan filmmaker Touzani’s feature directorial debut Adam,...

Second edition of project platform will showcase 28 feature projects.

Upcoming feature films by Egyptian director Tamer el Said and Moroccan Bafta nominee Ismaël Ferroukhi are among the 28 projects to be showcased at the second edition of the Marrakech International Film Festival’s Atlas Workshops, running December 3 to 6.

“We got off to a good start in the first edition,” says Remi Bonhomme, who has spearheaded the meeting.

He notes the winner of the last year’s main post-production prize– Hassen Ferhani’s documentary 143 Sahara Street – went on to enjoy a successful festival career, clinching the best emerging director prize in...

Both titles premiered at Cannes 2018.

Egyptian director A. B. Shawky’s road movie Yomeddine, about a leper who travels across Egypt in a bid to reconnect with his long-lost family, has scooped best film at the Arab cinema Critics Awards.

The film won the François Chalais Award and went onto tour a slew of festivals, winning the top prize in Tunisia’s Carthage Film Festival, following its premiere in Competition in Cannes last year.

Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki won best director for her 2018 Cannes jury prize winner Capernaum, about the plight of a young refugee boy living in the slums of Beirut.

Nadine Labaki and A.B. Shawky’s films gained three nods each.

Two 2018 Cannes Palme d’Or contenders top the third edition of the Annual Critics Awards organised by the Arab Cinema Centre (Acc).

Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum and Egyptian director A. B. Shawky’s Yomeddine have both clinched three nominations.

Following with two nominations each are Palestinian filmmaker Muayad Alayan’s drama The Reports On Sarah And Saleem, about the ill-fated affair between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man, and Moroccan director Meryem Benm’Barek’s Sofia, revolving around a woman in Casablanca who illegally gives birth out of wedlock.

A film-maker returns to the place of his boyhood on a quest for love and creative fulfilment in this melancholy cine-journal

In the Last Days of the City is a densely textured, contemplative, beautifully shot film in a self-reflexive, docu-realist style about Cairo in the era just before the Tahrir Square uprising of 2011: the director Tamer El Said uses footage he has amassed over years of filming in Cairo.

In a way, it imports the complications and disappointments that followed Egypt’s Arab spring back to that time; there is no euphoria here. It is a very New Wave movie, recording images of the city as a film-maker in a previous time might have shot in Paris in 1968.

Continue reading...

Exclusive: 12 Polish premieres include Menashe and Makala.

This year’s New Horizons International Film Festival (August 3 – 13) competition in Wroclaw, Poland, will see 12 Polish premieres vying for the Grand Prix award.

The premieres include three Polish films: A Heart of Love, by director Łukasz Ronduda, a biopic about Polish art scene couple Wojtek Bąkowski and Zuza Bartoszek who are played by Jacek Poniedziałek and Justyna Wasilewska; Norman Leto’s Photon; and Karlovy Vary winner The Birds Are Singing in Kigali by Joanna Kos-Krauze and Krzysztof Krauze.

From Mexico will be director Michel Lipkes dark story Strange But True and Natalia Almada’s Everything Else, which stars Babel and Amores Perros actor Adrian Barraza in the lead role.

Mexican director Sergio Flores Thorija, a former student of Bela Tarr, will bring his Bosnia-set movie 3 Women about three women living in Sarajevo who wish to change their lives.

Menashe by Joshua Z. Weinstein is the first film since the second...

Two new film festivals in the Arab world — and not in the Gulf States region where Kuwait had its first festival last month — have announced their first editions. Jordan and Egypt, along with the first ever Arab Critics Awards casts a new light onto just what Arab cinema is.

What began several years ago in the recently oil-rich Gulf nations of Dubai, Abu-Dhabi and Qatar who first brought the notion of Arab cinema to the western world with expensive receptions (including a camel one year at the Toronto Film Festival) and ultra fancy festivals (Abu Dhabi has since bowed out of its Tribeca Ff partnership and pulled back on all but its film fund) has now come to a more balanced sharing of Arabic cinema as a multi-culturally wealthy medium.

With the growth of Cairo-based Mad Solutions which started as a public relations agency for Arab-content cinema and expanded into...

Cannes Ends with…Awards — 3rd of 3

The heightened security with machine gun armed soldiers and policemen constantly patrolling was intensified after the Manchester Massacre. With a pall over the festival, one minute of silence was observed for the 22 murdered and flags hung at half-mast. In addition to that, the sudden death at 57 of the Busan Film Festival deputy director Kim Ji-seok and that of the James Bond star Roger Moore brought the film world into a new perspective as we join the larger world to face the random indications of human mortality. High security vs. cinema as a sanctuary of freedom is highlighted this year like no other time that I can recall in my 31 years here.President of the jury, Pedro Almodovar

But life does go on, the jury judges, the stars get press attention on the red carpet and the rest of us continue to wait patiently in...

Exclusive: Egyptian revolution dramas loom large in first edition of awards.

Egyptian director Mohamed Diab has won best director and best screenplay for his revolution drama Clash [pictured], which opened Un Certain Regard last year, in the first edition of the Arab Critics’ Awards.

The film-maker, who is back in Cannes this year as a member of the Un Certain Regard jury, will receive the award at a special ceremony at Cannes Film Festival today (May 21).

The prize for best film went to Tamer El Said’s In the Last Days Of The City, which captures Cairo in the lead-up to the revolution through a film-maker receiving footage from friends based in Beirut, Baghdad and Berlin.

Best actor went to Tunisia’s Majd Mastoura for his performance in Tunisian revolution allegory Hedi and best actress went to Heba Ali for Withered Green.

Overseen by the Arab Cinema Center (Acc), the Arab Critics’ Awards involves 24 jury members from 15 countries...

Exclusive: Egyptian revolution dramas loom large in first edition of awards.

Egyptian director Mohamed Diab has won best director and best screenplay for his revolution drama Clash [pictured], which opened Un Certain Regard last year, in the first edition of the Arab Critics’ Awards.

The film-maker, who is back in Cannes this year as a member of the Un Certain Regard jury, will receive the award at a special ceremony at Cannes Film Festival today (May 21).

The prize for best film went to Tamer El Said’s In the Last Days Of The City, which captures Cairo in the lead-up to the revolution through a film-maker receiving footage from friends based in Beirut, Baghdad and Berlin.

Best actor went to Tunisia’s Majd Mastoura for his performance in Tunisian revolution allegory Hedi and best actress went to Heba Ali for Withered Green.

Overseen by the Arab Cinema Center (Acc), the Arab Critics’ Awards involves 24 jury members from 15 countries...

The Arab Cinema Center is launching the Critics Awards to promote and support Arab cinema internationally. The winners will be for Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actress and Best Actor.

The 26 member jury includes prominent Arab and foreign critics from 15 countries from around the world. Egyptian film critic Ahmed Shawky is serving as manager of the Critics Awards.

Film analyst Alaa Karkouti, CEO of Mad Solutions, the company in charge of organizing the Arab Cinema Center’s events and also the first Pan Arab independent distributor and PR company of Arabic content to and from the Arab world, said: “The Critics Awards marks a first-time initiative that encompasses film critics from all over the world dedicated to Arab films within the strategy of Arab Cinema Center to add initiatives and events to every large-scale international film festival around the world.”

He added: “This is the first new addition...

Exclusive: French sales and production company fills out slate with upcoming films by the Alayan brothers and new Egyptian title.

Paris-based sales and production company Still Moving has boarded two upcoming Arabic-language pictures, Palestinian film-makers Muayad and Rami Alayan’s The Reports On Sarah And Saleem and Egyptian director Omar El Zohairy’s Feathers Of A Father.

The Reports On Sarah And Saleem is the second feature by the Alayan brothers, former Berlinale Talents who premiered their first film Love, Theft And Other Entanglements at the festival in 2015.

It revolves around a dangerous love affair between a Palestinian man and an Israeli woman.

Feathers Of A Father is the debut feature of El Zohairy, following a series of award-winning shorts – includingThe Aftermath Of The Inauguration Of The Public Toilet At Kilometer 375.

The director also worked as an assistant director to Ahmad Abdalla on Rags & Tatters and Tamer El Said on In The Last Days Of The City...

Zawya Distribution is ramping up its 2017 slate of Egyptian independent features with titles including Tamer El Said’s In The Last Days Of The City and Mohamed Rashad’s Diff competition title Little Eagles.

The Cairo-based distributor has also picked up Mahmoud Lotfy’s Experimental Summer, about the search to find a copy of Egypt’s first independent film, and Anna Roussillon’s award-winning documentary I Am The People for release next year.

Backed by Egypt’s Misr International, Zawya operates an arthouse theatre, Zawya Cinema, in Cairo, and is working with other exhibitors to expand the circuit for independent films. The company’s larger upcoming titles will be released in Alexandria, Ismailia and Port Said, in addition to Cairo.

“Although funding is difficult, Egypt’s independent scene remains vibrant – you can see that from the line-up here at Diff,” said Zawya head of acquisitions and sales Ahmed Sobky.

Little Eagles, which Zawya picked...

Exclusive: Copenhagen’s festival, in new autumn dates, will show a record 226 features kicking off with Doctor Strange.

Copenhagen’s Cph Pix festival, now in its new autumn dates, has revealed a record 226 feature films in its lineup.

The 14-day festival (Oct 27 - Nov 9), which now also includes kids and family festival Buster, will show 46 features for young people in its daytime programmes and 180 films for teenagers and adults in the evenings.

As previously reported, the eighth edition of festival will open with a gala premiere of Marvel’s Doctor Strange (Mads Mikkelsen will attend).

There will be four main awards at Pix: the New Talent Grand Pix for a debut feature (with $11,200 (€10,000)); the Politiken Audience Award that comes with Danish distribution support, and the Nordisk Film Fond prizes for best children’s feature and best children’s short.

Terence Davies [pictured] will be given a full retrospective as well as showing his latest film A Quiet Passion and participating...

This year we are seeing many films from Mena, that is an acronym for the Middle East and North Africa. More commonly called “Arab” cinema, (though the term is inaccurate because several countries in the region are not actually “Arab”) the films of this region are winning many awards and garnering much interest worldwide.

More than 10 Arab films participated in the Berlinale’s Forum and Forum Expanded programs this year, in addition to the ones which participated in the Official Competition (“Inhebek Hedi”/ “Hedi” from Tunisia and “A Dragon Arrives!” by Mani Haghighi from Iran). This makes an especially remarkable year for Arab cinema’s presence in Berlin.

The Forum focus on Arab cinema, represented with films from Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia highlights mostly young directors whose works explore both the past and present of their homelands.

The films included: “A Magical Substance Flows into Me” by artist Jumana Manna (Palestine), “Akher ayam el madina”/ “In the Last Days of the City” (Egypt) by Tamer El Said (international sales by Still Moving), documentary “Makhdoumin”/ “A Maid for Each” (Lebanon) by Maher Abi Samra (Isa: Docs & Film), “Barakah yoqabil Barakah”/ “Barakah Meets Barakah” (Saudi Arabia) by Mahmoud Sabbagh and Manazil (Isa: Mpm), “Bela abwab”/ “Houses without Doors” by Syrian-Armenian director Avo Kaprealian. Of course the 46th Berlinale Forum also screens films from European, Latin American and Asian directors.

The Tunisian film in Competition “Inhebek Hedi”/ “Hedi” by Mohamed Ben Attia, won the Best First Feature Award and its leading man, Majd Mastoura, received the prestigious Silver Bear for Best Actor for his role as Hedi. Attia’s debut feature film is a thoughtful love story about identity and independence in Tunisian society. It is being sold internationally by Luxbox.

Palestinian director Mahdi Fleifel won the Silver Bear Jury Prize for Short Film for “ A Man Returned”, a 30-minute portrayal of a young refugee struggling to make a life for himself in Lebanon’s Ain El-Helweh camp, being sold internationally by 3.14 Collectif. He previously made an award-winning documentary about his own experience as a refugee. The short film was also selected as the Berlin Short Film Nominee for the European Film Awards.

The Ecumenical Jury awarded the Forum Prize to Saudi filmmaker Mahmoud Sabbagh for his well-received romantic comedy “Barakah Yoqabil Barakah”/ “Barakah Meets Barakah”, a social commentary on the lives of young people in Saudi Arabia. It shared the prize with Danish production “Les Sauteurs”/ “Those Who Jump” – a film that also highlights the plight of Europe-bound refugees.

Egyptian filmmaker Tamer El-Said’s feature film “Akher Ayam El-Madina”/ “In the Last Days of the City” won the Caligari Film Prize. The film looks at a young filmmaker’s struggle to complete a film about Cairo. It was the only Egyptian film to participate in the 2016 Berlinale Forum.

Lebanese filmmaker Maher Abi Samra’s documentary “Makhdoumin”/ “A Maid for Each”, a look at the legal system that controls the lives of Lebanon’s foreign domestic workers, won the Peace Film Prize.

“Zinzana”/ “Rattle the Cage” director, Majid al Ansari, from the Arab Emirates, was honored with Variety’s Mid-East Filmmaker of the Year Award at the Berlinale. The film is the first genre movie of its kind produced in the UAE. It was financed and produced by Abu Dhabi’s ImageNation. It is repped for Us by Cinetic and international sales are by Im Global.

Projects “Mawlana”, based on Ibrahim Issa’s best-selling novel and shortlisted for the Arabic Booker Prize and director’s Mohamed Yassein’s “Wedding Song” based on Naguib Mahfouz’s novel, the Nobel Prize Winner for Literature were being promoted at the Arab Cinema Center at the Market. Reflecting a decadent Egypt from the 1970s, “Wedding Song” is one of the largest TV productions in the Arab World in 2016.

“Theeb”, a Jordanian Epic about Bedouins, is the Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. It played in Venice. International sales agent Fortissimo has licensed it to Film Movement for U.S., ABC for Benelux, New Wave for U.K., As Fidalgo for Norway, Jiff for Australia, trigon-film for Switzerland. Mad Solutions is handling the Middle East. “Ave Maria” a 14-minute Palestine satirical short is the Academy Award nomination for Best Short Fiction and is being sold internationally by Ouat Media. “ The Idol” (Palestine) played Tiff 2015 and other top fests and has sold widely throughout the world through Canada-based international sales agent Seville. Not since Elia Suleiman won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival for “Divine Intervention” has a Palestinian film director made as much of an impact as “The Idol” director Hany Abu-Assad whose “Paradise Now” and “Omar” both went to the Academy Awards.

Kudos for much of the success of Arab cinema go to Mad Solutions, the Cairo, Abu Dhabi and New York based marketing and distribution company for its marketing and social media strategies as well as its release of “Theeb”, “Zinzana” and “Ave Maria”. It also helped create the Arab Cinema Center which was launched last year at the Berlinale and Efm.

In all, 20 Mena films played in the Festival and Market this year.

And what of that other small country in the region called Israel (and/ or Palestine) which is not included in the term Mena? While Israeli films that showed in Berlin received international praise, they will never show in any of the Arab countries and are sometimes boycotted by international film festivals who succumb to censorship tactics.

Most of the larger Israeli features go to Cannes, Venice and Toronto; “Afterthought” went to Cannes, “Mountain” to Venice, “Barash” to San Sebastian”, “Wedding Doll” to London and “A.K.A. Nadia” to Talinn Black Nights Film Festival. In Berlin many are screened as German Premieres.

What Israeli films have won acclaim lately? Is it possible that our hero, Katriel Schory, head of the Israel Film Fund, whose stand for true art has earned him Israeli government censure at home (A prophet is never honored in his own land) and fame abroad with new countries striving to create national cinema, is being eclipsed by the growth of “Arab” cinema?

“Sandstorm” directed by Elite Zexer (international sales by Beta) made its way to Panorama from its world premiere in Sundance where it won the Best Actress Award for Palestinian actress Lamis Ammar’s portrayal of a young Bedouin woman forced to choose between modern freedom or traditional societal strictures within an arranged marriage.

Panorama also screened “Junction 48” (international sales by The Match Factory) which received international praise and audience acclaim. The Israeli-Palestinian hip-hop movie by Israeli-American filmmaker, Udi Aloni, was supported by the Israel-based Rabinovich Foundation. The story is about Kareem who lives in a mixed Jewish-Arab crime-ridden ghetto outside Tel Aviv. He deals drugs and lives dangerously until he discovers hip-hop and decides to express his life as a Palestinian youth along with young singer Manar. Palestinian and Israeli musicians drive this music movie and for Aloni, just seeing the film made, and then shown at the Berlin Film Festival proves its success.

“Suddenly a group of people just choose to make a film and the film is extremely professional. It’s very important that this bi-national energy can create high quality stuff, the high quality is almost the symbol of the resistance. We should not even have to tell the story about the issue. The fact that we could create it is amazing,” Aloni told Euronews.

Thirty-seven-year-old Arab-Israeli rapper Tamer Nafar plays the lead role, and has known the 56-year-old Aloni for some time. “We have been on the same demonstrations, in the parties since 2000, so we live in each other’s world. He has been to my concerts many times, he directed a video clip, I was in his movies as a producer a few times. It’s not about an old generation and new generation, it’s just about creating the right generation,” he said. “He has that gift of being a good story teller and director but he gives us the stage, no, he doesn’t give us a stage, we are building a stage together… he has his own perspective but we are all on the same level,” said actress Samar Qupty. The struggle for equal rights for Palestinians or Arab Israelis inside Israel is at its crux.

Panorama Documents screened “Who’s Gonna Love Me Now?” directed by Tomer Haymann and Barak Heymann co-directed by Alexander Bodin Saphir and being sold by Austria’s Autlook. Forum showed “ Inertia” by Idan Haguel being sold by Oration Films’ Timothy O’Brian of the U.S., and “Between Fences” by Avi Mograbi, being sold by Docs & Film’s Daniela Elstner of France. Culinary Cinema showed “Café Nagler” by Mor Kaplansky and Yariv Barel is being sold internationally by Go2Films.

Teddy 30 (the retrospective of Teddy Award winners over the past 30 years) honored Dan Wolman’s 1979 film “Hide and Seek”/ “Machboim”. Berlinale Shorts screened Rotem Murat’s “Winds Junction” from Sapir College which also holds international rights; Generation 14 Plus screened “Mushkie” by Aleeza Chanowitz from the Jerusalem San Spiegel Film School, being sold by Cinephil. Seven other films were sold in the market by various sales agents.

One of the very special events I attended at the Berlinale this year was the Shabbat Dinner, held the first Friday in the Festival and hosted by Nicola Galliner, Founder and Force of the Berlin Jewish Film Festival. There was a table full of Jews: the new Director of the Jerusalem Film Festival, Noa Regev, PhD; Jay Rosenblatt, Program Director of San Francisco’sJewish Film Institute and its former Director, Peter Stein, now the Senior Programmer of Frameline, San Francisco’s Lgbtq Film Festival; Judy Ironside, the Founder and President of UK Jewish Film and of the sixth edition of the Geneva and Zurich Jewish Film Festivals, the new young director of the Boston Jewish Film Festival, Ariana Cohen-Halberstam who recently moved from the New York Jcc to Boston, the prolific Israeli director, filmmaker Dan Wolman whose new film will soon be out and whose 1979 film “Hide and Seek”/ “Machboim” was part of the Teddy 30th Anniversary Retrospective held by the Berlinale Panorama.

Talk was about films, about politics including gender politics, about our concerns, (we Jews are better worriers than warriors) and just plain gossip.

Now if my readers will excuse my interjecting myself into this article:

It is my opinion that the region of the world called the Middle East, and the three major monotheistic religions of the world whose origin is there had better learn to do more than merely co-exist peacefully if we are to see peaceful and fruitful consequences which will set the world back upon its proper axis.

Art breaks down borders; it is subversive rather than observant of the exigencies of ever changing governments. It creates new perspectives and breaks down old ways of seeing. What I call “Cinema” is Art. Other movies may simply entertain and not aspire to more or they may propagate dogmas, but Art serves no master; it is not tethered; it is freedom of expression which should be honored with freedom to travel.

Exclusive: Still Moving picks up ‘The Black Frost’ and ‘In The Last Days Of City’.

French sales and co-production company Still Moving has acquired world sales rights to Maximiliano Schonfeld’s The Black Frost [pictured] and Tamer El Said’s In The Last Days Of The City ahead of their premieres at the Berlinale (Feb 11-21).

The two titles are the first world sales acquisitions for the Paris-based company launched by industry veterans Pierre Menahem and Juliette Lepoutre at the last Berlinale with an initial focus on international co-productions

“We spent the first year focussing on co-productions and now we’re expanding into world sales which was always the way we planned it,” said Menahem.

The Black Frost, set to premiere in Panorama, is Argentine film-maker Schonfeld’s second film after his 2012 feature debut Germania in which a family is forced to leave their poultry farm after its birds are infected with a deadly plague-like disease.

His new film...

Programme includes 34 world premieres.

The line-up for the 46th Berlinale Forum has been announced and will feature a total of 44 films in its main programme, of which 34 are world premieres and nine international premieres.

One focus of this year’s programme is the Arab region, with films shot by mainly young directors from an area that stretches between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, exploring both the past and present of their homelands.

In A Magical Substance Flows into Me, artist Jumana Manna sets out in search of the musical diversity of the Palestinian region.

Tamer El Said’s feature In the Last Days of the City (Akher ayam el madina) sends his alter-ego Khalid through the director’s home city of Cairo, which is in a state of uproar.

Maher Abi Samra’s documentary A Maid for Each (Makhdoumin) grapples with the employment of maids from the Global South in middle-class Lebanese households, a practice...

The 46th Berlinale Forum will be screening 44 films from February 11 through 21. Among the highlights will be Eugène Green's Le Fils de Joseph with Mathieu Amalric, a new documentaries from Wang Bing and Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Ted Fendt's Short Stay, the only film screening on 35mm, Robert Greene’s Kate Plays Christine with Kate Lyn Sheil, plus new work by Avi Mograbi, Bence Fliegauf, Jumana Manna, Tamer El Said, Philip Scheffner, Daichi Sugimoto, Rachel Lang, Mahmoud Sabbagh, Volker Koepp, Ahu Öztürk, Andrea Bussmann and Nicolás Pereda. » - David Hudson...

The 46th Berlinale Forum will be screening 44 films from February 11 through 21. Among the highlights will be Eugène Green's Le Fils de Joseph with Mathieu Amalric, a new documentaries from Wang Bing and Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Ted Fendt's Short Stay, the only film screening on 35mm, Robert Greene’s Kate Plays Christine with Kate Lyn Sheil, plus new work by Avi Mograbi, Bence Fliegauf, Jumana Manna, Tamer El Said, Philip Scheffner, Daichi Sugimoto, Rachel Lang, Mahmoud Sabbagh, Volker Koepp, Ahu Öztürk, Andrea Bussmann and Nicolás Pereda. » - David Hudson...

TorinoFilmLab awards more than $460,000 to several upcoming projects.

Laszlo Nemes’ Sunset was among several titles to win funding at this week’s 8th TorinoFilmLab Meeting Event (Nov 25-27).

The coming-of-age thriller, centred on a young woman in Budapest before the First World War, was awarded a grant of €50,000 ($53,000).

The film marks the second feature from Nemes, whose debut Son Of Saul won the Grand Jury Prize and Fipresci Prize when it premiered at Cannes in May and is tipped for Oscar success.

Sunset will be produced by Gabor Sipos of Hungary’s Laokoon Cinema, the production company behind Son Of Saul.

Speaking to ScreenDaily in June, Nemes said Sunset will be set in Budapest in 1910, when the city was cosmopolitan, tolerant and full of inhabitants from different cultural and religious backgrounds.

“[The Nazis] killed all of that. The 20th century transformed Hungary into an ethnically pure country in a way,” said Nemes.

“It’s a coming-of-age...

Exclusive: British Egyptian actor Khalid Abdalla talks new film venue in Egypt.

British Egyptian actor Khalid Abdalla (The Kite Runner, United 93), in Toronto with the premiere screenings of Danis Tanovic’s Tigers and Tala Hadid’s The Narrow Frame of Midnight, is one of the driving forces behind a new cinematheque in Cairo.

‘Cimateque’ [Cima being the Egyptian slang for cinema], currently under construction, will include an 80- seater cinema, 8 and 16mm labs, library, digital archive, DVD library and cafeteria. The hub will host screenings, workshops and events throughout the year.

“Filmmaking courses and scriptwriting programmes have already taken place,” Abdalla explained to Screen. “This will be a base from which to host activities in Cairo and beyond”.

“There’s a lot of film that’s very difficult to access in Egypt,” he continued. “The country has an extraordinary film history but there are few channels for alternative filmmaking, especially for the new wave of films emerging in the region.”

Abdalla and fellow...

The Berlinale World Cinema Fund has awarded production and distribution funding of €165,000 ($223,000) to eight films.

The jury made their selection from 121 submissions from 43 countries and chose the following features:

Production funding

Los Hongos

Dir: Óscar Ruiz Navia (Colombia). Production: Burning Blue & Contravia Films, Colombia. Feature film.

Funding: €30,000.

Benjamín o el Planetario

Dir: Carlos Machado Quintela (Cuba). Production: Rizoma, Argentina. German partner: M-Appeal. Feature film.

Funding: €35,000.

Ejercicios de la Memoria

Dir: Paz Encina (Paraguay). Production: Autentika Film, Germany. Documentary.

Funding: €35,000.

Te Prometo Anarquía

Dir: Julio Hernández Cordón (Guatemala). Production: Interior 13, Mexico. Feature film.

Funding: €30,000.

In the Last Days of the City

Dir: Tamer El Said (Egypt). Production: Zero Production (Egypt). Documentary.

Funding: €20,000.

Distribution funding

Coming Forth by Day

Dir: Hala Lofty (Egypt). German distributor: Arsenal für Film und Videokunst e.V. Release in Germany: Nov 14, 2013.

Funding: €4,357.50.

Carne de Perro

Dir: Fernando Guzzoni (Chile). German distributor: déjà-vu film Ug. Release in Germany: Jan 23, 2014.

Funding: €5,000.

Workers

Dir: José Luís Valle...

Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo's Jessica Oreck, Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)'s Jason Kohn and The Order of Myths/Be Here to Love Me's Margaret Brown are among the filmmakers of thirteen projects in all to receive some serious coin from the Cinereach folks -- indie and doc filmmaker staples such as Matt Wolf, Liza Johnson, Dee Rees, Ramin Bahrani, Alistair Banks Griffin and Maryam Keshavarz have all benefitted from this organization's help. Here are the Winter 2011 grant recipients include two fiction, ten nonfiction and one hybrid works-in-progress of which we'll be keeping a close eye out for at this year's Tiff, Doc Fests and next year's Sundance: The Angola ProjectDir. Jeremy Xido | Angola | Nonfiction | In Research & DevelopmentA post-colonial western-meets-road film about the fevered reconstruction of the Benguela Transcontinental Railway and the African and Chinese lives that are intertwined because of it. Diamond, Silver & GoldDir. Jason Kohn | USA | Nonfiction...