News

Mexican directors Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez’s Sujo won the Grand Prix at this year’s Sofia International Film Festival (March 13-24).

The Mexican-French-us co-production about a boy who must fight against the temptation of local gangs premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize, and is being handled internationally by Alpha Violet.

The festival’s top prize has gone to a film from Mexico for the second year running after Carlos Eichelmann Kaiser’s Red Shoes won last year.

The international jury, presided over by Hungarian actor-writer-director Szabolcs Hadju and including outgoing EFM director Dennis Ruh,...

Gregoris Rentis’s documentary tells the stories of three private guards waiting for an attack that never comes, but the socio-political reasons for their existence is never fully explored

Divided into three chapters, Gregoris Rentis’s documentary follows Yorgos, Costa and Victor, three private maritime guards at different stages of their seafaring journey. All hailing from Greece, the men are hired as part of counter-piracy security measures for shipping companies, whose boats traverse so-called High Risk Areas. The film, however, is not interested in macho heroism but rather, observed in a state of perpetual waiting, the men come off as passive figures, not agents of control.

Just recruited, Yorgos is adapting to his new unmoored reality, in which daytime drills give way to nightclub outings in the evening. Meanwhile Costa, who is at the peak of his career, seems more at ease with the transient nature of his life. Still...

The Romanian film festival runs June 9-18.

Transilvania International Film Festival has announced the line-up for its 22nd edition which takes place in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

The official competition is made up of 12 features while the documentary strand, entitled What’s Up Doc?, will screen 10 titles. All of the films are from first and second-time directors.

Among the competition selection is Ion Bors’ Carbon which premiered in San Sebastian’s New Directors strand last year, having won the festival’s Wip Europa Industry and Wip Europa awards the previous year. The dark comedy, surrounding the Transnistrian conflict of the 1990s, is...

Doc previously had world premiere at Berlinale.

Under The Sky Of Damascus by Talal Derki, Heba Khaled and Ali Wajeeh won the Golden Alexander prize in the international competition of the 25th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, which closed on March 12.

The Denmark-Germany-us-Syrian co-production centres on a group of young Syrian women producing a play that lays bare the culture of misogyny and sexual abuse that has blighted their lives. The documentary had its world premiere in the Panorama section of this year Berlinale.

The Golden Alexander comes with a €12,000 and secures the place in the pre-selection shortlist for the Best Documentary Academy Award.

Institutions dedicate extensive effort towards preparing for the future, often implementing protocols that help arrange for the inevitable, but what happens when that preparation grows obsolete? That is the question Gregoris Rentis asks in Dogwatch, which focuses on international governments’ employment of private mercenaries as response to Somali pirates hijacking ships in the Indian Ocean High Risk Area. Over the last decade, though, there have been far fewer incidents of piracy, raising the question of whether or not these precautions are still necessary in the present day.

The film highlights three soldiers in an observational triptych formula. Each symbolizes a distinct chronological phase of life, particularly within a militaristic context. We first witness the fledgling Yorgos exercising and performing combat routines during his deployment in Sri Lanka. The established Costas proves his worth to his comrades after being debriefed about the current methods Somali pirates exploit. And a timeworn Victor...

Other winners include Ivan Marinovic, Amikam Kovner and Assaf Snir.

Ethiopian-born, Israeli filmmaker Alamork Marsha’s Fig Tree, based on her experiences as a child in war-torn Addis Ababa in 1991, has won the $50,000 top prize at the pitching event of Sam Spiegel school’s Jerusalem International Film Lab.

It was an apt choice as fighting escalated between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, some 70 kilometres down the road, where more than 160 inhabitants have died in Israeli air strikes over the past six days, launched in response to a barrage of rocket attacks on Israel. (In fact air sirens were heard in Jerusalem just 15 minutes before the awards were announced.)

In her pitch, Marsha revealed how Fig Tree was inspired by her childhood, living with her grandmother on the outskirts of the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa during the civil war and her Jewish family’s decision to move to Israel. She said one...