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China’s box office continued to be dominated by “Ne Zha 2,” which grossed RMB471.9 million ($65.5 million) over the Feb. 28–March 2 weekend, bringing its cumulative total to $1.98 billion, according to Artisan Gateway. The Cococartoon release is closing in on the $2 billion milestone with sustained audience interest.

“Ne Zha 2” also continued to set new benchmarks in Imax. The animated phenomenon added $7.6 million in Imax earnings over the weekend, bringing its cumulative total in the format to $144 million. The film has now surpassed 15 million Imax admissions in China alone, making it one of the top four most attended Imax movies of all time globally. Since the start of the Lunar New Year period, Imax titles have collectively reached a cumulative total of $160 million, with “Ne Zha 2” accounting for the lion’s share of that figure.

In second place, As One Production’s “Detective Chinatown 1900” added $6.9 million to its total,...

Asian Pop-Up Cinema has announced the full program for its 19th edition, running March 20 – April 13, 2025. The Festival is dedicated to showing works from regions throughout Asia, with films screened at the AMC Newcity 14 (1500 N. Clybourn Ave.), and select presentations at the Chinese American Museum of Chicago and the Shultz Auditorium at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Opening the 19th edition of the film festival on March 20 is Taiwan’s Dead Talents Society, a supernatural comedy with director John Hsu appearing in person alongside star Chen Bo-Lin, who is set to receive the Festival’s Bright Star Award.

The Festival’s Centerpiece presentation is the U.S. premiere of director’s cut of Hong Kong drama The Last Dance on April 4, featuring a career-defining performance from star Michelle Wai, who will receive the Festival’s Extraordinary Actors Award.

The Closing Night on April 13 presents the first, and last, film by Keizo Murase,...

On February 10, 2025 Asian Pop-Up Cinema announced key highlights of its 19th edition, running March 20 – April 13, 2025. The Festival is dedicated to showing works from regions throughout Asia, with films screened in person weekends at AMC Newcity 14 (1500 N. Clybourn Ave.) This year’s program is the first to include a juried competition. The full program for the 19th Asian Pop-Up Cinema film festival will be announced on February 24, 2025; tickets for Opening, Closing, and Centerpiece presentations are on sale now on the official website Here, with full program tickets going on sale February 24.

Opening the 19th season of the groundbreaking film festival on March 20 is Taiwan’s Dead Talents Society, John Hsu‘s supernatural comedy follow-up to his horror blockbuster Detention. A raucous mash-up of Monsters, Inc. and All About Eve, the hilarious satire of influencer culture and horror tropes and moving ode to underachievers won the Audience Award at Fantastic Fest and...

“Dead Talents Society,” directed by John Hsu and co-written with Kun-Lin Tsai, is a refreshing and playful take on the horror-comedy genre that expertly blends elements of East Asian folklore with contemporary societal concerns. The film introduces us to The Rookie, a humble teenage ghost who is portrayed by Gingle Wang and who grapples with the existential prospect of being forgotten by her family age.

In a world where ghosts fight for visibility and importance, she must perfect the art of scaring the living to ensure her afterlife—a haunting license, if you will. This narrative concept sets the setting for a series of humorous misadventures and reflects our modern fixation with fame and social media.

As Hsu walks us through this strange afterlife, the film skillfully portrays modern youth’s pressures. It captures a generation grappling with the demands of visibility and the fear of obscurity, much like the...

Lou Ye’s Wuhan-set Covid drama An Unfinished Film took top honours at the 61st Golden Horse Awards, winning both best film and best director, while fellow mainland Chinese director Geng Jun’s LGBTQ+ black comedy Bel Ami won a hat-trick of prizes including best actor.

John Hsu’s Taiwanese supernatural comedy Dead Talents Society snatched the most prizes, walking away with five awards mostly in the technical categories.

Scroll down for full list of winners

The best narrative feature award for An Unfinished Film was presented by Golden Horse Awards chairman, renowned DoP Mark Lee Ping-bing and Hong Kong New Wave director Patrick Tam.

Exclusive: Sugar23 has named Alec Stern Vice President of Production for Film & TV, promoting Jacob Snyder to Literary Manager.

In his new role, Stern will advance Sugar23’s focus on developing impactful content. He brings with him a breadth of experience from previous roles at Paramount Television Studios, Anonymous Content, FX, and WME. Most recently, he served as Director of Original Content at Paramount+, following his position as Director of Development at Paramount Television Studios. At Paramount, he played a key role in developing and producing standout series including The Offer, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Fatal Attraction, and Rabbit Hole.

Snyder began his career at UTA before joining Sugar23 and quickly establishing himself as a rising talent. Going forward, he’ll continue to guide a dynamic roster of clients across the literary and talent departments, including working on the teams of Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla), Diane Lane (The Perfect Storm...

Exclusive: Rosa Salazar, the actress, director and producer best known for roles in Alita: Battle Angel and Prime Video’s Undone, has signed with Sugar23 for management ahead of a busy 2025.

On February 14, Salazar enters the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a role alongside Anthony Mackie and Harrison Ford in Captain America: Brave New World.

Upcoming, she’ll also be seen starring alongside Mark Wahlberg and Lakeith Stanfield in Amazon MGM’s thriller Play Dirty, based on the Parker crime novels written by Donald E. Westlake under the pen name Richard Stark. Shane Black wrote and directed that film, billed as The Italian Job meets Heat, which has not yet been dated for release.

Capturing the industry’s attention with her lead role in Robert Rodriguez’s 2019 cyberpunk actioner Alita: Battle Angel, Salazar is also known for producing and starring in Amazon’s acclaimed rotoscoped series Undone, from the BoJack Horseman...

The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival has unveiled its audience and jury award honorees for its 2024 edition, which ran from Oct. 17-24 at Nitehawk Cinema’s Williamsburg and Prospect Park locations.

Taking home the best film and best ensemble awards from the Dark Matter Jury was “Dead Talents Society” from writer-director John Hsu. The comedy horror, starring Bo-lin Chen, Sandrine Pinna and Gingle Wang, follows a ghost who joins a supernatural talent agency in hopes of becoming an urban legend.

Emma Benestan won best director from the Head Trip Jury, which honors films that deviate from the typical horror formula. Her film, “Animale,” follows a young bullfighter who begins noticing disturbing changes after a violent incident in the ring. Cast members include Oulaya Amamra, Damien Rebattel and Vivien Rodriguez.

For the Shorts Jury, Grace Rex’s script for “The Shadow Wrangler” took home best screenplay. Following an audiobook narrator tortured by...

Exclusive: In the midst of the successful festival run of his sophomore feature, the supernatural horror comedy Dead Talents Society, Taiwanese writer-director John Hsu has signed with Sugar23 for management.

Premiering to critical acclaim in the Midnight Madness section of this year’s Toronto Film Festival, where it was the runner-up for the Midnight Madness Award, Dead Talents Society takes place in an afterlife where ghosts gain recognition by scaring the living, with the ultimate goal of becoming urban legends. The film won both the Audience and Best Director Awards at Fantastic Fest, as well as the People’s Choice Award at Sitges, and was recently nominated for eleven of Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards, the most of any film this year.

Hsu’s feature directorial debut, the psychological horror Detention, is set during Taiwan’s White Terror era of the 1960s. The story follows follows two students, Fang Ray-shin and Wei Chong-ting,...

How do you reinvent movies about ghosts? This is how. One of my favorite discoveries from the 2024 Sitges Film Festival is this delightfully kooky, hilarious, charming, clever film from Taiwan called Dead Talents Society. It can be labeled as a horror comedy, but it's so much more than just that. This first premiered at the 2024 Taipei Film Festival in Taiwan earlier this year, then screened at TIFF and Fantastic Fest before sliding into Sitges. It's another one of these indie gems films that I'm glad I took the time to watch, because amidst so many mediocre and forgettable horror films in 2024 (sorry but too many of them are awful), this one really stands out. Directed by John Hsu, Dead Talents Society is a bit of a Beetlejuice remix - it's not the only new Beetlejuice movie this year! Ghosts are the main characters – people who have died in horrible ways...

The London East Asia Film Festival (Leaff), the capital’s premier celebration of East Asian cinema and culture, proudly returns for its 9th edition, launching on 23rd October 2024 at the iconic Odeon Luxe Leicester Square with the UK premiere of Escape, a gripping drama by acclaimed director Lee Jong-Pil. The festival will run until 3rd November 2024, culminating in the highly anticipated world premiere of the Hong Kong feature, Little Red Sweet.

This year’s programme promises an extraordinary showcase of cinematic gems from Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam and Philippines, all woven around the powerful theme of survival, resilience, and aspiration. Through the visionary lens of East Asia’s most talented filmmakers, Leaff invites audiences to experience profound and thought-provoking stories that offer unique insight into the region’s rich cultural tapestry.

With over 20 UK and world premieres, Leaff will captivate audiences at Odeon Luxe Leicester Square and the Cinema at Selfridges,...

Having played TIFF and Fantastic Fest, Dead Talents Society is the latest from director John Hsu, and I’ve just seen his rad Taiwanese ghost horror comedy at Hawaii International Film Festival. Hsu’s last feature was the great 2019 period horror film, Detention. Dead Talents Society is out from Sony, so you shouldn’t have an issue seeing it after its festival run, especially since the film is a lot of fun. You could look at the film, in part, as sort of a modern, All About Eve in the world of haunting. But I’m getting ahead of myself. In the afterlife, ghosts compete with each other on who can scare humans the most. However, the bigger prize is who can also be captured scaring people on...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Life after death proves to be equally competitive as the earthly one in John Hsu‘s barmy comedy “Dead Talents Society” in which ghosts fight each other for their right to exist. Their world is controlled by pretty much the same rules as those we live by – one has to be seen and acknowledged to gain respect, and the influencers dictate the trends. Even in the afterlife, there is too much work for anyone’s liking but possessing talent is everything. If you don’t have it, tough luck – you’ll be gone faster than you can say “second chance”.

Dead Talents Society is screening at Hawai’i International Film Festival

Hsu returns to the world of ghosts after his big cinema success “Detention” (2019), this time in a much different manner. He departs from being completely sinister to mock the entertainment industry and our addiction to it by referencing several...

The nominations for the 61st Golden Horse Awards were announced last week. Considered the “Chinese-language Oscars,” the awards showcase films made in Mandarin, Cantonese, or other Chinese dialects. This year’s nominations included a diverse range of movies from Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, and Singapore.

John Hsu’s supernatural comedy “Dead Talents Society” topped the nominations with eleven total nods. The film tells the story of ghosts competing to haunt humans in an imagined afterlife. It received nominations for Best Feature Film, Best Director for John Hsu, and Best Original Screenplay. “Dead Talents Society” has already won audience awards at festivals like Toronto International Film Festival, where it was the runner-up in the Midnight Madness category.

Two other films, Tom Lin’s “Yen And Ai-Lee” and Geng Jun’s “Bel Ami,” followed closely behind with eight nominations each. These movies, along with Ray Yeung’s “All Shall Be Well...

John Hsu’s Taiwanese supernatural comedy Dead Talents Society has scored 11 nominations for the 61st Golden Horse Awards, followed by Tom Lin’s Yen And Ai-Lee and Geng Jun’s Bel Ami, with eight nods each.

Dead Talents Society and Bel Ami are among the five films competing in the best film category, along with Ray Yeung’s All Shall Be Well, Yeo Siew Hua’s Stranger Eyes and Lou Ye’s An Unfinished Film. The same five films are also running in the best director category.

They reflect the overall representation at this year’s Golden Horse Awards, with the participation of Hong Kong,...

John Hsu’s horror comedy Dead Talents Society heads the race for this year’s Golden Horse Awards with 11 nominations, including Best Narrative Feature, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress for Sandrine Pinna.

The film, set in a fictional underworld where ghosts can linger in the mortal realm by competing to haunt humans, is produced by Taiwan’s Activator Co, Sony Pictures International Productions and several other local companies.

It was followed in the awards race by Tom Lin’s Yen And Ai-Lee and Geng Jun’s Bel Ami, which both received eight nominations.

Dead Talents Society and Bel Ami are both nominated for Best Narrative Feature, along with Ray Yeung’s All Shall Be Well, Yeo Siew-hua’s Stranger Eyes and Lou Ye’s An Unfinished Film. All five of these films are also nominated for Best Director.

Best Leading Actor nominations include King Jieh-wen (A...

Comedy-horror “Dead Talents Society” picked up 11 nominations for the Golden Horse Film Awards, making it the most acclaimed title among the 169 films in contention for the prestigious Chinese-language prizes.

“Yen and Ai-Lee” and “Bel Ami” both received eight nominations, putting them in a tie for second place. Recent Venice competition film “Stranger Eyes,” from Singapore’s Yeo Siew Hua received six.

Five films compete for the best narrative features award: John Hsu’s “Dead Talents Society,” Ray Yeung’s “All Shall Be Well,” Lou Ye’s “An Unfinished Film,” Geng Jun’s “Bel Ami” and “Stranger Eyes.” The same five also contest the best director award.

Nominees for best leading actor are: King Jieh-wen (“A Journey in Spring”), Chang Chen (“The Embers”), Yau Hawk-sau (“The Way We Talk”), Wanlop Rungkumjad (“Mongrel”) and Zhang Zhiyong (“Bel Ami”). Chang is a previous winner in the category.

Nominees for best actress are: Patra Au Ga-man...

Held at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin, TX, Fantastic Fest is known as the largest genre film festival in the United States. From horror to action, wacky comedy, and everything in between, Fantastic Fest offers something for every genre film fanatic. At this year’s Fantastic Fest, we at FandomWire saw 34 feature films, and we have decided what we think are the five best films we saw — from restorations to new releases.

After we share our top five films of Fantastic Fest with you, we will also share our thoughts on some of the other films we saw at the festival, so be sure to keep reading!

Related Terrifier 3 Fantastic Fest Review — Bloody Threequel Attempts to Overexplain Its Mythos FandomWire’s Top 5 Films of Fantastic Fest 2024 5. The Guest Dan Stevens stars in the action thriller The Guest, opening in September.

Okay, this might be cheating because we knew...

John Hsu's Dead Talents Society is a cutesy and buoyant Taiwanese horror-comedy guaranteed to put a smile on your face. It's far funnier than frightening, with shades of Monsters, Inc., Beetlejuice, and The Influencer. John Hsu and Kun-Lin Tsai write the afterlife as a corporatized competition for virality, where your soul's worth is tied to its profit-grossing scare tactics. J-Horror influences inspire scare sequences, but the film is more interested in finding humor behind the scenes as "professionals" carefully architect each haunt's logistics. Imagine Sadako vs. Kayako but as a Christopher Guest sports comedy. Hsu values lighthearted entertainment over frights in a soulful way, which might not work for everyone, but ends with a climactic showdown event that brings everything together.

Gingle Wang stars as Cho Hsiao-lei, a novice spirit who is afraid of “glitching” into oblivion. If your living relatives forget your existence, you disappear like a bad...

Ghosts usually come with a fair bit of baggage in the movies: A tragic romance leading to an even more tragic suicide, maybe, or a howl for justice from a murder victim from beyond the grave. The protagonist of “Dead Talents Society” has no such tale attached to her untimely (and embarrassing) death, and this is where her problems begin. John Hsu’s frightfully entertaining Taiwanese horror-comedy imagines a world where the dead are just as beholden to the pressures of fame as the living, and an industry has grown around ambitious apparitions building their personal brands. Urban legends live forever, and forgotten ghosts literally disappear — so get out there and scare ‘em good, kid!

There’s obvious potential for media satire baked into the concept, and co-writer and director Hsu includes scenes of talk shows, ceremonies, and gala events where the undead stars come out to celebrate the afterlife awards season.

Barry Keoghan and Christopher Abbott in ‘Bring Them Down’ (Photo Courtesy of Fantastic Fest)

Bring Them Down starring Christopher Abbott, Barry Keoghan, Colm Meaney, and Nora-Jane Noone was named Best Picture at the 2024 Fantastic Fest held September 19-26 in Austin, TX. The annual festival spotlights the best in horror, fantasy, sci-fi, and action. Screenings at the popular festival have included the world or US premieres of critically acclaimed films including Smile, Frankenweenie, Parasite, Jojo Rabbit, John Wick, and There Will Be Blood.

“Our jurors faced the formidable challenge of selecting winners from a remarkable array of stories, each representing different cultures and perspectives. Their task was not easy, but it truly reflects what Fantastic Fest is all about: embracing the richness of global cinema and the shared human experiences that unite us all,” stated Annick Mahnert, Director of Programming for Fantastic Fest.

“Main Competition” Features

Best Picture: Bring Them Down,...

With a couple more days left in the madness that is Fantastic Fest this year's award winners were announced by the festival. Christopher Andrews' drama thriller Bring Them Down, starring Barry Keoghegan and Christopher Abbott was awarded Best Picture by the jury. James Ashcroft was awarded Best Director for their work on The Rule of Jenny Pen and one of their leads, Geoffrey Rush, was awarded Best Actor. Among the Next Wave program Karan Kandhari's Sister Midnight won Best Picture, Emma Benestan won Best Director for Animale, and Mārcis Lācis received an honorable mention for their film, Touched by Eternity. In the Horror Features program Estonian horror comedy Chainsaw Were Singing, directed by Sander Maran, won Best Picture. John Hsu won the...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

“Bring Them Down,” a dark Irish drama in the vein of “The Banshees of Inisherin” (which played the festival in 2021), has won Best Picture in the main competition at Fantastic Fest 2024, TheWrap can exclusively reveal.

The film, which stars Christopher Abbott and Barry Keoghan, is described in the official program as “beautifully crafted and assured character piece.” Best Director and Best Actor in the same category went to “The Rule of Jenny Pen’s” James Ashcroft and Geoffrey Rush. The film is described in the program as “a truly demented, shifty thriller that pits venerable character actors Rush and John Lithgow against one another with the gloves off.”

Other awards at arguably the country’s greatest genre film festival, held at the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar in Austin, Texas, went to Karan Kandhari’s debut feature “Sister Midnight” (in the “Next Wave” category) and “Chainsaws Were Singing” (in the...

This year, Toronto International Film Festival was back. TIFF typically kicks off the North American fall festival season alongside Telluride, but it has had a rocky past couple of years. The pandemic in 2020 put a temporary pause on in-person festivities, and 2021-2022 featured a tentative rollout of hybrid festivities. Though 2023 committed to total in-person attendance, the SAG-AFTRA strikes of 2023 limited the amount of American celebrity presence on the red carpet; festival buzz too had been similarly muted. This year’s edition, however, witnessed the famed festival in full swing. With 278 films in this year’s programming, the 2024 edition of TIFF was jam-packed with Berlin/Cannes favorites, Awards season’s to-be-darlings, and of course, a good chunk of independent cinema.

Among the Asian cinema contenders, Korean and Taiwanese cinema have held an especially strong presence this year. There were nine Korean and Korean-adjacent entries – almost 100% more than in 2022, when there were...

This year’s Toronto International Film Festival comes to a close, with Zhao Tao (who starred in Jia Zhang-ke’s “Caught by the Tides”) and Malala-produced haenyo documentary “The Last of the Sea Women” recognized. Notably, Taiwanese cinema also fared very well this year. The two Taiwanese films at the fest have been strong runner-ups for awards — including John Hsu’s supernatural comedy “Dead Talents Society” for the People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award and Sylvia Chang for “Daughter’s Daughter.”

But without further ado, here are the rest of the awards:

“Dead Talents Society” by John Hsu

People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award presented by Rogers is: The Substance, dir. Coralie Fargeat | United Kingdom/USA/France

The first runner-up is: Dead Talents Society, dir. John Hsu | Taiwan

The second runner-up is: Friendship, dir. Andrew DeYoung | USA

People’s Choice Documentary Award presented by Rogers is: The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal,...

Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck starring Tom Hiddleston is this year’s surprise winner of Toronto International Film Festival’s 2024 TIFF People’s Choice Award, a historically reliable bellwether of an Oscar nomination.

Over a sample pool of the last 15 years, all but one People’s Choice winner has gone on to garner a best picture Oscar nomination, and several – like 12 Years A Slave, Green Book and The King’s Speech – have won the top prize at the Academy Awards.

Yet The Life Of Chuck presents an anomaly – it currently lacks a US distributor. Buyers had been circling...

Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck starring Tom Hiddleston is this year’s surprise winner of Toronto International Film Festival’s 2024 TIFF People’s Choice Award, a historically reliable bellwether of an Oscar nomination.

Over a sample pool of the last 15 years, all but one People’s Choice winner has gone on to garner a best picture Oscar nomination, and several – like 12 Years A Slave, Green Book and The King’s Speech – have won the top prize at the Academy Awards.

Yet The Life Of Chuck presents an anomaly – it currently lacks a US distributor. Buyers had been circling...

Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck picked up the top People’s Choice honor Sunday at the Toronto Film Festival as its 2024 edition wrapped with renewed celebrity heat but still in the shadow of Venice and Cannes.

The Stephen King novella adaptation stars Tom Hiddleston, Mark Hamill, Karen Gillan and Chiwetel Ejiofor in a genre-tripping film about embracing hope in the face of tragedy and had a world premiere in Toronto. Flanagan in a statement thanked TIFF for the top audience award prize: “I’m absolutely overwhelmed. We’re so grateful that The Life of Chuck connected with audiences in such a powerful way, but never expected this.”

The second runner up for the People’s Choice Award was Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez, a queer crime musical headed to Netflix that earned the jury prize in Cannes for the director, while the titular lead Karla Sofía Gascón became...

“The Life of Chuck,” director Mike Flanagan’s Stephen King adaptation starring Tom Hiddleston, has won the People’s Choice Award at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, TIFF organizers announced at an awards ceremony on Sunday.

In TheWrap’s review of the film, Chase Hutchinson called it “less of a horror film than it is an existential grappling with the end — while also being a jubilant celebration of the moments that make life worth living along the way. It’s Flanagan’s vibrant equivalent of Charlie Kaufman’s ‘Synecdoche, New York’ that finds hope and meaning in his own way just as it is one of the best modern Stephen King adaptations one could hope for.”

Unlike festivals like Cannes, Berlin, Sundance and Venice, Toronto does not give out a jury award to the festival’s top film. Instead, viewers at all public screenings are invited to vote for their...

The People’s Choice Award from the just-wrapped 2024 Toronto Film Festival has gone to The Life of Chuck, first runner-up is Emilia Pérez, and second runner-up is Anora. The Documentary Award goes to The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal, and the Midnight Madness winner is The Substance.

Both runners-up Emilia Pérez and Anora were big winners at Cannes in May (the latter taking the Palme d’Or), but Mike Flanagan’s Stephen King adaptation The Life of Chuck was a TIFF world premiere and a surprise winner of this award.

Tom Hiddleston stars in the film based on King’s novella about three chapters in the life of an ordinary man named Charles Krantz. It is an unusual winner here for this award as it currently is looking for distribution and has no set release date, which means it could be the first People’s Choice winner in recent memory...

In the cold open for Dead Talents Society, the new film by director John Hsu (2019’s Detention), a young woman enters hotel room 414. Bizarre events quickly add up, including a whole wall that is suddenly plastered with glamour pictures of a woman. Then the closet door creeps open and the woman from the picture emerges. She slowly begins walking backwards down the hall before going into a bone-cracking back bend, scurrying on all fours towards her terrified victim.

Before the scare can even sink in, the action pauses, revealing that this is footage being played on a supernatural talk show. The scary woman is revealed to be Catherine (Sandrine Pinna), arguably the most famous ghost in the world thanks to her incredibly effective urban legend. The talk show is made for and run by dead people, who compose a whole other world: a “scare the living” world of entertainment with its own rules and hierarchy.

The 44th running of the Hawaii International Film Festival presented by Halekulani will open with “Tinā,” an uplifting drama film that marks the feature directorial debut of Miki Magasiva, and close with Sori Fumihiko’s “Hakkenden: Fiction and Reality.”

In between, the festival will pack in 92 features and 114 short films, major awards for guests including Jimmy O Yang, Hong Kong’s Sandra Ng and documentary filmmaking star Stanley Nelson.

“This year, we have the largest selection of Hawai`i films in competition in the festival’s history, are presenting multiple films that explore Indigenous perspectives, narrative sovereignty, and the nurturing of cultural identity, and additionally, we are launching a new spotlight showcasing the best in television,” said Beckie Stochetti, Hiff executive director.

Hailing from New Zealand, with dialog in English and Samoan, “Tinā” sees Anapela Polata’ivao (“Our Flag Means Death”) portray a well-respected and gifted vocal coach endure family tragedy...

Have you ever wanted to be so wrapped up in your partner, it’s as if you could just melt into them? Well, filmmaker Thibault Emin is taking that sentiment to the extreme — with a horrifying twist.

Emin makes his directorial debut with “Else,” a body horror romance feature about a strange epidemic that causes the infected to melt into their surroundings. Emin is a French director and screenwriter, who is expanding his 2007 short film “Else” into a feature that has been more than 15 years in the making. He co-wrote the script with Alice Butaud and Emma Sandona.

“Else” will have its world premiere at TIFF as part of the Midnight Madness program. The film is a sales title and hails from France and Belgium.

The official synopsis reads: “Introverted and uncomfortable in his own skin, Anx (Matthieu Sampeur) does not consider himself an obvious partner for Cass (Édith Proust...

The 2024 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival is set to run from Thursday, September 5th through Sunday, September 15th in Toronto, Ontario, Canada – and with the start of the festivities just a month and a half away, TIFF has announced this year’s Midnight Madness lineup! The Midnight Madness program is considered to be “the wild side” of the film festival, as it involves “screenings of the best in action, horror, shock and fantasy cinema.” As reported by Deadline, the 2024 Midnight Madness lineup consists of ten films and “features five world premieres, all of which will screen at Toronto’s historic — and allegedly haunted — Royal Alexandra Theatre.”

Midnight Madness will open with the North American premiere of Revenge director Coralie Fargeat’s body horror film The Substance, starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley. Revenge was also part of a TIFF Midnight Madness lineup, so this is a bit of a homecoming for Fargeat.

The Toronto International Film Festival announced today the TIFF 2024 selections for the highly regarded Midnight Madness program, which will open with the North American Premiere of Coralie Fargeat’s anticipated horror thriller The Substance, starring Demi Moore.

From the press release: “One of the most beloved programmes of the Festival, this year’s Midnight Madness highlights the wild and the eerie, from body horror to time travel, supernatural comedy to martial arts action, eccentric thrillers to provocative satire, and found footage to horror-themed punk rock. Surrounded by like-minded fans late at night, Midnight Madness filmgoers face the unknown in the company of strangers. A number of TIFF and Midnight Madness alumni are returning this year, including Joseph Kahn (TIFF 2017 People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award winner), Timo Tjahjanto (who last attended in 2016), and Fargeat (whose debut feature premiered at TIFF in 2017).”

Here’s the TIFF 2024 Midnight Madness lineup:

Dead Mail

Joe DeBoer,...

Brace yourself, Canada, “The Substance” is coming.

The explosive body horror film starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, directed by French heatseeker Coralie Fargeat, has been set to open the Midnight Madness section at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

“Substance” follows Elizabeth Sparkle (Moore), an Oscar winner who commits the high crime of aging in Hollywood. Relegated to a morning fitness show, Sparkle’s world closes in on her when opportunities dry up — until a mysterious stranger offers her the titular substance, a chance at a more perfect version of herself. Sparing any spoilers, Qualley comes into play as the idealized version of Moore. The pair learns that coexisting ain’t easy in Fargeat’s violent fantasia.

Also on the lineup, veteran music video and film director Joseph Kahn will show “Ick,” a tribute to ‘80s creature features starring former TV Superman Brandon Routh and “American Beauty” actor Mena Suvari.

The North American premiere of Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance starring Demi Moore will open Toronto International Film Festival’s (TIFF) Midnight Madness section.

Fargeat’s debut feature Revenge premiered at TIFF in 2017 and she returns with her body horror that became one of the most talked-about films in Cannes.

World premieres include Andrew DeYoung’s comedy Friendship from Fifth Season and BoulderLight Pictures starring Kata Mara and Paul Rudd; and sci-fi Ick with Mena Suvari and Brandon Routh directed by Joseph Kahn, whose battle rap drama Bodied won TIFF Midnight Madness People’s Choice Award in 2017.

The roster includes Kenichi Ugana’s The Gesuidouz,...

“The Substance,” Coralie Fargeat’s body horror film starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, will be the opening night film in the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness section, TIFF organizers announced Thursday.

The Mubi film will make its North American premiere at TIFF after having its world premiere in the main competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The extremely graphic and gory film, in which Moore’s character undergoes a treatment that creates a younger and “more perfect” version of herself, won the Best Screenplay prize from the Cannes jury and stirred up awards talk for Moore’s unhinged performance.

“The Substance” is one of 10 films in the Midnight Madness section, which in the past has showcased films including “Pearl,” “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” “Titane,” “Assassination Nation” and the 2017 reboot of “Halloween.”

Other films in the section include two past Midnight Madness directors, Joseph Kahn...

The Toronto Film Festival’s cult sidebar will screen 10 features as part of this year’s schedule and open with the North American premiere of French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat’s buzzy Cannes breakout The Substance, starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley.

The Midnight Madness programme features five world premieres all of which will screen at Toronto’s historic — and allegedly haunted — Royal Alexandra Theatre. Fargeat is a TIFF Midnight Madness alumnus. Her first feature Revenge debuted at the festival in 2017. Also returning to the festival this year is Joseph Kahn with Ick. Written by Sam Laskey, Dan Koontz, and Kahn, the film’s synopsis reads: Science teacher Hank’s life changes when he reconnects with his first love and suspects a new student is his daughter, all while facing an alien threat in their town. Kahn won TIFF’s People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award in 2017 with Bodied.

Indonesian filmmaker...

The Substance, a feminist horror pic where Demi Moore plays an aging Hollywood star who embraces a secret cloning procedure to save her career will open the Midnight Madness sidebar at the Toronto Film Festival with a North American premiere, organizers said Thursday.

The Cannes award winner from director Coralie Fargeat also stars Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid, and will hit theaters on Sept. 20.

The Midnight Madness section, which launched the career of Eli Roth with Cabin Fever and saw Sacha Baron Cohen arrive in a cart pulled by donkeys to screen Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, booked in all 10 genre movies with chills and thrills for this year’s 2024 lineup.

The program that has film buyers and Hollywood execs staying up after midnight plans world premieres for Thibault Emin’s fantasy pic Else, which stars Matthieu Sampeur and Edith Proust and imagines...

After taking over Cannes 2024, Coralie Fargeat is returning to TIFF seven years after her directorial debut “Revenge” premiered at the 2017 festival.

Fargeat’s buzzy feminist sci-fi drama “The Substance” will make its North-American debut at TIFF 2024, opening the Midnight Madness section of the festival. “The Substance,” which IndieWire’s David Ehrlich deemed an “instant classic,” stars Demi Moore as a former A-list actress past her prime who undergoes a new drug therapy to be temporarily transformed into a younger version of herself, played by Margaret Qualley.

Fargeat writes and directs the film, which was acquired by Mubi and won the Cannes prize of Best Screenplay. Moore later told IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio that the film “felt risky” to join.

“It was one [where] you don’t know if it’s going to all come together or work,” Moore said. “It’s what you hope. […] If we step back from it being about an actor,...

The Golden Horse Film Festival, which operates the premier awards in the Chinese-language film industry, has teamed up with Cannes’ Marché du Film to showcase a handful of new films and projects under the banner Golden Horse Goes to Cannes.

To be presented May 16, the five films comprise new works from directors Chen Yu-hsun, Yang Ya-che, Huang Xi, Giddens Ko and John Hsu, with such high-profile producers as Lee Lieh, Sylvia Chang, Aileen Li, Jeffrey Chan and Hou Hsiao-hsien.

Yang Ya-che, known for Golden Horse-winning “The Bold, the Corrupt and the Beautiful,” and for shaping the careers of several actors, returns behind the camera with “The Chronicles of Libidoists.”

It was a standout at the Golden Horse project market, while at the production stage, the scandalous nature of its erotic take on “The Little Mermaid” tale meant that the names of the cast had to be kept secret.

They are...

“Golden Horse Goes to Cannes” is looking to make a splash on the Croisette, marking a collaboration with the festival’s Marché du Film that aims to showcase the “diversity, vigor and bold competence of Taiwan cinema, ranging from epic, romance, comedy, fantasy and gender awareness.”

The reality of that promise, for those on the ground in France, will be the presentation on May 16 of five projects featuring the leading lights of contemporary Taiwanese cinema. They’ve been selected by the Golden Horse organization, the people behind Taiwan’s famed annual festival and awards night, to showcase the strength in depth boasted by a market that has always punched above its weight in terms of talent.

New works from directors Chen Yu-hsun, Yang Ya-che, Huang Xi, Giddens Ko, and John Hsu will be on show, and they feature some of the island’s biggest stars, among them Sylvia Chang, who...

Taiwan’s major awards body Golden Horse will have a consolidated presence at Cannes’ Marché du Film for the first time, under the umbrella ‘Golden Horse Goes to Cannes’.

With support from Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture under the ‘1plus4’ Taiwanese content plan, Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival Executive Committee and the Bureau of Audiovisual and Music Industry Development have collaborated to organize “Golden Horse Goes to Cannes” at the premier festival’s film market.

On May 16, the collaboration will present five upcoming projects, helmed by directors Chen Yu-hsun, Yang Ya-che, Huang Xi, Giddens Ko and John Hsu.

Paranormal comedy Dead Talents Society by John Hsu has already secured major investment from Sony Pictures International Productions alongside Taiwan’s Activator, with the former also acquiring worldwide distribution rights and global remake rights.

Hsu’s debut feature Detention topped the domestic box office with over $8 million and also won the Best...

The Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival is to showcase five upcoming Taiwanese projects at Cannes including features from Chen Yu-hsun, Yang Ya-che, Huang Xi, Giddens Ko and John Hsu with stars such as Wu Kang-ren, Gingle Wang, Kai Ko, Caitlin Fang and Karena Lam.

The new programme, titled Golden Horse Goes To Cannes, comprises works-in-progress projects and will be presented to industry professionals on May 16 at Palais K during the Cannes Film Festival. It marks Golden Horse’s first collaboration with the Marche du Film.

See below for full project list

The collaboration was initiated by Taipei Golden Horse Film...

Patriot Games

The Hong Kong government has licensed the broadcast rights to the Summer Olympic Games in Paris. It intends to relicense the rights to four TV broadcasters in the city – Tvb, ViuTV, Hoy TV and government-owned Rthk. While in most territories, broadcasters negotiate directly with the International Olympic Committee or its agents, the Hong Kong government previously intervened in bidding for rights to the Tokyo Olympics, held in 2021. It also organized large public screenings in shopping malls.

“By procuring the broadcasting rights for these two games in Hong Kong, members of the public will be able to enjoy the Paris Og and PG [Paralympic Games] on television free of charge, and to cheer for Mainland and Hong Kong athletes,” said Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism, Kevin Yeung.

While the cost of the rights was not disclosed, Yeung said that the fee was lower than the rights for Tokyo. If correct,...

John Hsu’s long-awaited Dead Talents Society is set for a summer release, with an official opening date scheduled for August 7 in Taiwan.

Starring Chen Bo-lin, Sandrine Pinna and Gingle Wang, the supernatural comedy is backed by Sony Pictures International, which also handles worldwide distribution, and Taiwan’s Activator. Taiwan is the first territory to be dated and will be released through Sony Pictures Releasing Taiwan.

The story follows how veteran ghosts need to train a newcomer to become the next superstar among the dead. “Every ghost is trying to be the best of the best in an over-populated and competitive society,...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Babylon (Damien Chazelle)

Those seeking an insightful exploration of cinema history in Hollywood’s Golden Age or a nuanced, affecting character study on the lives within this early era will mostly like be disappointed by Damien Chazelle’s latest. Babylon is a brash, bombastic, unwieldy comic opera conveyed with enough bad taste and directorial panache that it—refreshingly—registers as a refutation of the well-mannered prestige drama to which these kinds of nostalgic odes often conform. And while there’s a touch of wistfulness in regards to the communal power of big-screen cinema, the film is more defined by an acidic unsentimentality, both when it comes to its characters and the precarious world they inhabit. Capturing the mad, violent clash of high...

The Little Mermaid may have bombed in some key movie markets in Asia, but in the Philippines, it has been a splashy success.

Disney’s live-action remake of its 1989 animated classic is currently the biggest blockbuster of the year in the Southeast Asian country, having earned $5.8 million and surpassed Hollywood’s two biggest global hits of the year: Universal’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($2.2 million) and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ($4.7 million).

“The Philippines, obviously, is a standout market for us,” says John Hsu, Disney’s senior vp studio business in Asia Pacific. “It’s rare, but it’s the biggest territory for The Little Mermaid in Southeast Asia by far, our third-highest-grossing market in Asia-Pacific behind Australia and Japan, and our 11th-highest-grossing territory globally,” he says.

Elsewhere in Asia, the picture hasn’t been so bright. In the vastly larger markets of China and South Korea,...

Law is an award winning director based in Brooklyn. His narrative, documentary, and commercial films have earned 19 Cannes Lions, as well as multiple Webby Awards, Vimeo Staff Picks. His first feature ‘Starring Jerry as Himself' premiered at Slamdance, winning the Grand Jury, Audience, and Best Actor Awards, and tells a deeply personal story about an immigrant's pursuit of the American Dream.

On the occasion of “Starring Jerry as Himself' screening at Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, we speak with him about the amazing story presented in the movie, Jerry and his ex-wife Cathy, about truth being stranger than fiction, and other topics.

Usually I don't not like dramatization in documentaries, but you really made it work and it seems organic. Why did you choose to make it like that? And how did you manage to make it so organic?

Thank you so much. “Starring Jerry as Himself” is a kind...