News

By Jean-Marc THÉROUANNE

Danaff is supported by the city of Da Nang, the Association for the Development of Vietnamese Cinema, the Vietnamese Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and numerous partners including Netpac (Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema).

The 106 films in the program were divided into several sections:

1. Asian Film Competition (14 films)

2. Vietnamese Film Competition (12 films)

3. Vietnamese Cinema Today (19 films)

4. Panorama of Asian Cinema (25 films)

5. Half a Century of Vietnamese War Cinema Since National Reunification (22 films)

6. Korean Cinema and Its Historical Footprints (14 films)

Asian Film Competition Jury : Minh Châu, Jang Joon Hwan, président, Martine Thérouanne, Shozo Ichiyama, Lorna Tee (crédit photo J-m Thérouanne)

Films In The Asian Competition

Stranger Eyes by Yeo Siew Hua (Singapore):

After their daughter disappears, a couple begins receiving videos of their private life, realizing their every moment is being recorded. This Singaporean film explores the omnipresence of surveillance in both public...

Ikusmira Berriak, the San Sebastian-based development program behind Cannes Directors’ Fortnight hits “The Water” and “Creatura” and Sundance standout “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt,” has announced six projects for its 2025 residency program, as the initiative soars in popularity, applications sky-rocketing 34% to 487 for this current year.

Reasons for that cut several ways. As markets contract for movies, Ikusmira Berriak, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, has supported 50 film projects since 2015. 23 of those have premiered at international festivals which are proving must-have platforms for films to cut through the slew of features made every year in Europe and beyond. Of other Ikusmira Berriak alums, Jaione Camborda won San Sebastian’s top Golden Shell with “The Rye Horne,” developed at Ikusmira Berriak. Nele Wohlatz’s “Sleep With Their Eyes Open,” at the facility in 2018, won last year the Fipresci Prize at Berlin’s Encounters.

Drawn from the world over, though with...

Cinema Tropical, the premier presenter of Latin American cinema in the United States, has announced its annual list of the Best Latin American and U.S. Latinx Films of 2024. This year’s prestigious selection showcases 32 exceptional films—26 from across Latin America and six from U.S. Latinx filmmakers—representing a vibrant spectrum of contemporary storytelling. These films will compete for the 15th Annual Cinema Tropical Awards, with winners to be revealed on January 14, 2025, at a ceremony at Film at Lincoln Center in New York City.

The selected films span diverse genres, themes, and countries, highlighting the creative and cultural richness of Latin American cinema. Festival favorites such as La Cocina by Alonso Ruizpalacios, The Delinquents by Rodrigo Moreno, Pepe by Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias, and Sujo by Fernanda Valadez and Astrid Rondero are among the contenders for top honors. The winners will be recognized in categories including Best Film,...

Specialty sales and finance firm Rediance has picked up international sales rights to “Bound in Heaven,” the directorial debut feature of experienced Chinese screenwriter Huo Xin.

The tragic love story will have its world premiere this week in the Centerpiece section of the Toronto International Film Festival. It will subsequently travel to San Sebastian for its European debut.

Adapted from the novel of the same title by Li Xiuwen, the drama centers around a successful young woman who lives in the city with her abusive fiance and a lonely terminally ill man running a noodle shop in Wuhan. A chance encounter sparks an immediate attraction and their connection provides light and lightness in their emotional and dark journeys.

The film stars Ni Ni, who appeared in Zhang Yimou’s “The Flowers of War” and 2022 smash hit “Lost in the Stars.” Zhou You, who also appeared in Jia Zhangke’s Cannes...

Sundance prize winner Sujo and the latest films by José Luis Torres Leiva and Celina Murga have joined San Sebastian’s Horizontes Latinos strand, which spotlights Latin American films that have not yet screened in Spain.

Mexican directors and producers Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez won the grand jury prize in the world cinema dramatic competition at Sundance for Sujo, the story of a boy’s survival after the murder of his father, a hired killer.

It’s joined by Chilean filmmaker Torres Leiva’s When Clouds Hide The Shadow, which premiered at Jeonju Festival, and will open the strand.

Now in its seventh year at the beachy southern edge of Queens, the Rockaway Film Festival has revealed its 2024 lineup, which IndieWire shares exclusively. The festival runs August 17-25, 2024 and features outdoor screenings and conversations at the Rff’s regular yearlong venue, the Arverne Cinema.

This year’s highlights include Jamil McGinnis and Pat Heywood’s looping, multi-screen installation “Waking Up (For the First Time),” a tribute to experimental animator Faith Hubley, with live music performances and DJ sets featuring members of indie bands Animal Collective and Mgmt.

Special events include bio-art and stop-motion animated workshops, children’s cinema, the U.S. premiere of “The Future Perfect” director Nele Wohlatz’s comedy of misunderstandings “Sleep with Your Eyes Open,” the New York premiere of Juan Palacios and Sofie Husum Johannesen’s “As the Tide Comes In,” plus the world premieres of Corey Hughes’ “Your Final Meditation” and Sam Fleischner’s “Jetty.

In this episode, we discuss the need to escape from realism, a convention in today's cinema. Nele Wohlatz is a German director and screenwriter who lived in Argentina for twelve years. There she made some short films and her first film in co-direction with Gerardo Naumann, Ricardo Bär, presented at Bafici and later at FIDMarseille. In Buenos Aires she also shot her first solo fiction, El futuro perfecto, which won the Best First Feature Award at the Locarno Festival in 2017. Using documentary and fiction elements, Wohlatz has questioned in her filmography the limitations of language, the foreign perspective, and the construction of migrant characters’ identities. Her second feature film, Dormir con los ojos abiertos, shot in Brazil, premiered in the Encounters Competition at the Berlinale, where it won the Fipresci Critics' Prize.On the other hand, Rodrigo Moreno is an Argentine director and screenwriter with thirty years of experience. He...

The Jeonju International Film Festival, South Korea’s second most important generalist film festival, on Tuesday announced “The Major Tones” and “Time to Be Strong” as the Grand Prix winners of its two competition sections. The festival continues until Friday.

Directed by Argentina’s Ingrid Pokropek, “The Major Tones” is a mystery film about a youngster with a metal plate in her arm which begins to receive peculiar messages in Morse Code. It premiered at the Mar del Plata festival and also played in Berlin’s Generation KPlus section. In Jeonju it won the international section.

The Korean section was dominated by “Time to Be Strong,” the sophomore effort of director Namkoong Sun. In addition to the Korean competition’s Grand Prix, it also shared the best actor award and picked up the Watch award from a local streamer.

The film follows three former K-pop idol singers whose careers have...

The independent juries of the 74th Berlin International Film Festival early Saturday unveiled their picks of the best movies at the 2024 Berlinale.

Matthias Glasner’s German family epic Sterben (Dying), and the Iranian feature My Favourite Cake from directors Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha, both of which are considered frontrunners for the top prize at the official festival ceremony on Saturday night, received multiple awards for the indie juries, as did Dag Johan Haugerud’s Norwegian drama Sex, a critical favorite from this year’s Panorama sidebar.

Sterben, which follows a classical conductor (played by Lars Eidinger) and his very dysfunctional family, won the best film honor from the guild of German arthouse cinemas and the top prize awarded by the jury of Berliner Morgenpost readers representing the Berlin newspaper.

My Favourite Cake, a quiet drama about a 70-year-old widow who takes a chance on new love, won the Fipresci...

German filmmaker Nele Wohlatz’s “Sleep With Your Eyes Open,” which had its world premiere on Saturday in the Encounters section of the Berlin Film Festival, tells a story about the search for a sense of belonging in a foreign country.

It starts with Kai, a young Taiwanese woman with a broken heart, arriving at a Brazilian beach resort for a holiday. Here, her life crosses paths with a group of Chinese migrants living in a luxury tower block, and in particular a young woman called Xiaoxin, who accepts her fate, and Fu Ang, who is working in an umbrella store when we meet him but harbors ambitions to become wealthy.

Xiaoxin writes about her life on a series of postcards, which are never sent and are eventually discarded. Kai finds them and reads them, provided a connection between the two women. At one point, we stop following Kai and...

There are so many questions surrounding the search for identity and one's own place under the sun that I can relate to in Nele Wohlatz' dreamy drama “Sleep With Your Open Eyes” that I don't even know where to start. As an immigrant who changed houses so many times that every move involved more costs, logistic planning and emotional investment than it was healthy, I felt an instant connection with the film's protagonists who dream big, while struggling to make ends meet pressured by the big question of where they really belong to. I also understood that Wohlatz, who herself has lived for 12 years far away from her native Germany, to study and work in Argentina, knew how to tell the story of a double-sided cultural alienation and solidarity among those ‘lost in translation', right from the film's opening scene which didn't even reveal much about what was going to happen.

Two Taiwan-based production companies with features in this week’s Berlin Film Festival have joined forces to launch new venture, Long Hu Bao × An Attitude.

Taiwan’s Yi Tiao Long Hu Bao International Entertainment, is one of eight co-producers on main competition film “Shambhala,” from Nepal’s Min Bahadur Bham.

Yi Tiao Long Hu Bao is also one of three co-producers on Brazilian title “Sleep With Your Eyes Open” (aka “Dormir de olhos abertos”) directed by Nele Wohlatz, which debuts in Berlin’s Encounters section.

While the two companies will remain legally separate, the collaboration also brings together Lee Lieh, Roger Huang, and Justine O., three of Taiwan’s most experienced producers. They aim to continue their expansion into international co-productions and span both film and TV.

“We see it as three generations of producers becoming a strong alliance that joins together the resources of Asia – Edward Yang’s Taiwanese new wave,...

Tucked deep into Don DeLillo’s Underworld is an exchange between the novel’s protagonist, Nick Shay, and one of his teachers, a Jesuit priest. It concerns language. The priest, to make a point about the boy’s abysmally poor vocabulary, taunts him to name the parts that make up his shoe. Aglet, grommet, vamp, quarter; Nick has never heard of them, but instead of shrugging it off, he turns the lecture into a wake-up call. He runs back to his dorm wanting to look up words, memorize them, spell them, learn them––for this, DeLillo quips in one of his most fulminating sentences, “is the only way in the world you can escape the things that made you.” Time and again during Nele Wohlatz’s Sleep with Your Eyes Open, I found myself going back to that line. Language serves in Wohlatz’s cinema the same function it plays...

Cine Argentino Unido, the new coalition group representing Argentinian film organisations, has called for a show of solidarity in Berlin amid an arts funding crisis in the South American country.

On Thursday the group issued a statement in which it hailed Argentina’s artistic presence in the Berlinale this year.

“What should be a source of pride for our entire industry, however, comes in a context of alarm and emergency for the cinema and culture of our country,” the statement said, in reference to firebrand president Javier Milei’s efforts to course-correct a stricken economy buckling under hyperinflation, huge debt,...

Nele Wohlatz’s “Sleep With Your Eyes Open,” which has its world premiere in the Encounters section of the Berlin Film Festival, has debuted its trailer (below). Rediance has taken world sales rights.

Wohlatz’s fiction debut “El futuro perfecto” won Locarno’s Golden Leopard for the best first feature in 2016, and was invited to more than 70 international film festivals.

“Sleep With Your Eyes Open,” which is described as “a quiet comedy of misunderstandings,” is set in a coastal city in Brazil. Kai arrives from Taiwan for a holiday with a broken heart. She meets Fu Ang, who could become a friend, but then disappears.

While looking for him, Kai discovers the story of Xiaoxin and a group of Chinese workers living in a skyscraper. Kai finds her own experience strangely mirrors that of Xiaoxin’s story. Over the course of a hot, slow summer, delicate bonds grow between them.

After a bumper 40th anniversary edition of IFFR Pro last year, there’s a sense that Rotterdam’s industry strand has fined tuned things rather than introduced major changes for 2024.

IFFR Pro centres around key initiatives including co-production market CineMart, talent development programme Rotterdam Lab, works in progress section Dark Room and financial support for filmmakers through the festival’s Hubert Bals Fund.

Head of IFFR Pro a.i. Alessia Acone, who is overseeing the industry strand while IFFR Pro head Inke Van Loocke is on maternity leave, says one of the main differences about CineMart this year is that...

A Different Man.The Berlinale have begun to announce the first few titles selected for the 74th edition of their festival, set to take place from February 15 through 21, 2024. This page will be updated as further sections are announced.COMPETITIONAnother End (Piero Messina)Architecton (Victor Kossakovsky)Black Tea (Abderrahmane Sissako)La Cocina (Alonso Ruiz Palacios) Dahomey (Mati Diop)A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)The Empire (Bruno Dumont)Gloria! (Margherita Vicario)Suspended Time (Olivier Assayas)From Hilde, With Love (Andreas Dresen)My Favourite CakeLangue Etrangère (Claire Berger)Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants)Who Do I Belong To (Meryam Joobeur)Pepe (Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias)Shambhala (Min Bahadur Bham)Sterben (Matthias Glasner)Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants)A Traveler’s Needs (Hong Sang-soo)Sleep With Your Eyes Open. ENCOUNTERSArcadia (Yorgos Zois)Cidade; Campo (Juliana Rojas)Demba (Mamadou Dia)Direct ActionSleep With Your Eyes Open (Nele Wohlatz)The Fable (Raam Reddy...

More than 100 Taiwanese filmmakers have issued a joint statement, expressing their concerns about recent proposed changes to an international funding scheme by the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (Taicca).

Headlined ‘Worried about Taicca tarnishing the international image of Taiwan’, local film and TV professionals who have signed the statement include actor Lee Kang-Sheng, producer-editor Liao Ching-Sung, producer Patrick Mao Huang, sound designer Tu Duu-Chih and music composer Lim Giong.

Earlier this month, it was announced that the Taiwan International Co-funding Program (Ticp), which has backed award-winning titles such as Tiger Stripes, would shift its focus to more mainstream projects as part...

Berlinale co-directors Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek are going out with a bang in their final year, with a lineup unveiled today featuring the latest works by Olivier Assayas, Bruno Dumont, Mati Diop, Hong Sang-soo, Abderrahmane Sissako, Jane Schoenbrun, Alonso Ruizpalacios, Matias Pineiro, Travis Wilkerson, Kazik Radwanski, Annie Baker, and more.

When the co-directors were asked by Screen Daily about their departure, Chatrian said, “It’s quite simple. Mariette and I had a mandate of five years. It is true that at the beginning I said that I was willing to go on because there was a shared will with the [German] Ministry [of Culture] to go on. But then the people who have the responsibility to see the future of the Berlinale thought this structure of two leaders was not the right one and I don’t consider myself able to run the festival alone. And that was the decision of the Ministry.

China-based sales agent Rediance has boarded Nele Wohlatz’s Sleep With Your Eyes Open and Huang Shuli’s short Goodbye First Love, ahead of their premieres at the Berlinale next month.

Sleep With Your Eyes Open will play in the festival’s competitive Encounters section, which was announced today. The comedy is set in a coastal city in Brazil over one hot summer, during which bonds grow between a heartbroken traveller from Taiwan, a man who runs an umbrella store and a woman who used to live in the city.

The cast combines newcomers with professional actors, including Wang Shin-Hong...

The 74th Berlin International Film Festival has revealed the 20 titles selected for its official Competition as well as its competitive Encounters strand.

Scroll down for full list

New films from Claire Burger, Olivier Assayas, Hong Sangsoo, Bruno Dumont, Abderrahmane Sissako and Mati Diop are among those selected for the Competition lineup, with stars including Rooney Mara, Gael Garcia Bernal, Sebastian Stan and Cillian Murphy, who leads the festival’s opening film Small Things Like These.

Festival heads Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek unveiled the selections at the House of World Cultures in Berlin today (January 22).

The 2024 Berlinale will run February...

The Competition line-up for the 74th Berlin International Film Festival will be announced today at a press conference at 11am Cet (10am GMT).

Scroll down for line-up

Co-directors Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek will reveal the titles for the Competition and Encounters sections at the House of World Cultures in Berlin.

The announcement will also be live-streamed on the festival’s homepage and social channels. Watch it live above.

Screen will update this page with the Competition titles as they are announced. Refresh the page for latest updates.

As previously announced, the festival will open with the world premiere of...

Hong Kong’s Haf adds 15 Wip projects ahead of first in-person edition since 2019.

The Hong Kong International Film Festival Society has announced 15 work-in-progress projects, completing the full line-up of the 21st Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF21).

A total of 43 projects will be presented at Haf, including 28 in-development projects announced last month, which is set to run from March 13-15 alongside the 27th Hong Kong Film & TV Market (Filmart). It will mark the first in-person edition for both events since pre-Covid 2019.

Scroll down for full list of projects

Emerging and established actors who lead the cast of the 15 Wip projects include Fish Liew,...

Stienette Bosklopper of the Netherlands’ Circe Films and Meike Martens of Germany’s Blinker Filmproduktion have boarded “Do Fish Sleep With Their Eyes Open?,” the latest film from director Nele Wohlatz, whose 2016 documentary hybrid “The Future Perfect” won best feature in Locarno.

The co-production partnerships add European support and financing muscle to an Argentine project produced by Buenos Aires’ Ruda Cine, which has already attracted a Brazilian partner, CinemaScópio.

In “Do Fish Sleep With Their Eyes Open?” German filmmaker Wohlatz continues her examination of the immigrant experience via a feature film set in the bustling Brazilian city of Recife.

The project, which is taking part in the International Film Festival Rotterdam’s CineMart co-production market, follows three young Chinese travelers, two immigrant workers and a tourist, and explores themes of belonging and constant movement.

The film’s protagonists don’t event “try to make Recife a home, since tomorrow they might go somewhere else,...

Selection includes upcoming features from Berlinale award-winner Carla Simon and San Sebastian award-winner Johannes Nyholm.

CineMart, the co-production market of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), has revealed the 17 feature projects to be showcased at the upcoming edition, which will take place entirely online.

The market will run February 1-5, during the 50th IFFR, and will invite filmmakers to pitch their projects virtually to a host of international film professionals in tailored one-to-one meetings, as well as online presentations that are open to all CineMart guests.

Eleven of the filmmakers are returning to IFFR after previously screening films at earlier editions,...

The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has unveiled the 17 in-development projects selected for its 2021 co-production market CineMart.

The typically cosmopolitan and eclectic slate of in-development projects that will be pitching for financiers and co-producers at CineMart 2021 include features from Brazil to Iran, and from Ethiopia to Ecuador.

The German director Nele Wohlatz, whose The Future Perfect won the best first feature honor at the 2016 Locarno film festival, will bring her latest, ¿Duermen los peces con los ojos abiertos?, already backed by the IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund, to Rotterdam. The project is an Argentine, Brazilian, Dutch, German co-production ...

The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has unveiled the 17 in-development projects selected for its 2021 co-production market CineMart.

The typically cosmopolitan and eclectic slate of in-development projects that will be pitching for financiers and co-producers at CineMart 2021 include features from Brazil to Iran, and from Ethiopia to Ecuador.

The German director Nele Wohlatz, whose The Future Perfect won the best first feature honor at the 2016 Locarno film festival, will bring her latest, ¿Duermen los peces con los ojos abiertos?, already backed by the IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund, to Rotterdam. The project is an Argentine, Brazilian, Dutch, German co-production ...

Peliculas Nobles, a filmmaker-led VOD platform for Argentine films, is launching Nov. 16. Argentina’s Gema Juarez Allen of Gema Films and Diego Dubcovsky of Bd Cine and Varsovia Cine have kicked off the new initiative in response to the dearth of platforms for homegrown titles.

The idea first arose from observing that a great number of Argentine catalog films couldn’t find spaces or platforms, said Juarez Allen. Classics like the 2003 gem by Albertina Carri, “Los Rubios,” were left in limbo.

“Many filmmakers whose films are not programmed or acquired by platforms — or whose contracts were discontinued — were forced to hire Vimeo on Demand individually or just open their links for free,” she explained.

“We decided to start organizing this platform and offer a very generous deal that would allow them to receive the same amount per transaction as if they, for instance, hired Vimeo on Demand themselves,” she said.

Three of Argentina’s foremost auteurs – “Rojo’s” Benjamin Naishtat, “The Third Side of the River’s” Celina Murga, and “Two Shots Fired’s” Martin Rejtman – will present new movie projects at a 9th Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum, the industry centerpiece at this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival.

They will be joined by up-and-coming directors such as “The Heiresses’” Marcelo Martinessi, “The Sharks’” Lucia Garibaldi and “The Future Perfect’s” Nele Wohlatz in a lineup that is long on strong and fairly established Argentine talent, has a clutch of new Colombian directors, and presses the urgent social-issue concerns that have come to characterize Latin American cinema.

Catapulted to fame when Martin Scorsese executive produced “The Third Side of the River,” Murga will present “The Smell of Freshly Cut Grass,” a high-concept gender drama starring “Paulina’s” Dolores Fonzi and co-written with partner and fellow film director Juan Villegas (“Las...

Guadalajara, Mexico — The 15th Guadalajara Festival co-production Meeting for feature film projects are taking place this week in the Jalisco capital, running March 8-14.

The 2019 Meeting sees the biggest presence in terms of gender diversity in the competition’s history. Among directors and producers participating this year, more than 45% are women.

“That wasn’t an intentional decision in filling out the slate,” according to Encuentro representative Samantha Burciaga. However, it is a noteworthy feature of this year’s edition.”

Burciaga also described another trend among the selected projects: “It’s amazing how the filmmakers convey the pain of their people, and the concerns of their communities. The recurring themes of this selection show us nomadic families, the search for the truth in a journey and the breaking of the taboos and comfort zones.”

To qualify for participation, fiction and documentary projects in development from Ibero-American territories must have a minimum...

Nele Wohlatz's The Future Perfect (2016), which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing from September 29 - October 29, 2017 as a Special Discovery.Language determines our thinking. So what happens when, for whatever reason, we move to another country, lose the use of our mother tongue and start to live in a new language? The language books teach us phrases like, “The dog is grey. The cat is white,” or “Mary talks to her clients over the phone and sells plane tickets. She is a travel agent.” We didn’t write these phrases, nor do they necessarily help us in what we actually want to say to express ourselves. They are texts for a role still unknown and therefore uncomfortable to us. It takes weeks or month until an actor assumes ownership of a new character, and even more until an immigrant is able to assume ownership...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Nele Wohlatz's The Future Perfect (2016), which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing from September 29 - October 29, 2017 as a Special Discovery.Aquí el incierto ayer y el hoy distintoMe han deparado los comunes casosDe toda suerte humana; aquí mis pasosTejen su incalculable laberinto.— Jorge Luis Borges, "Buenos Aires", El otro, el mismo (1964)Nele Wohlatz’s The Future Perfect opens with a wide shot of the Río de La Plata. In a far away, indistinguishable point, a ship sails. Later on in the film, we see a clear blue sky with a plane crossing it, leaving its ephemeral vapoury mark. The river and the sky appear as places to which we are all foreign but through which most of us, often inevitably, transit. Xiaobin (Xiaobin Zhang) is one of them, a Chinese teenager who has...

El Futuro Perfecto (The Future Perfect) Director: Nele Wohlatz Written by: Pio Longo, Nehle Wahlatz Cast: Zhang Xiaobin, Saroj Malik, Jiang Mian, Wang Dong Xi, Nahuel Pérez Biscayart Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 8/27/17 Opens: September 15, 2017 If you wonder why your Korean-American dry cleaner does not always understand your requests, or even less […]

The post El Futuro Perfecto Movie Review: Not About The Politics of North Korea appeared first on Shockya.com.

It's April already! We're too impatient to wait for the "halfway" mark for year in review listicles. So why not do it each quarter to encourage more moviegoing? Unlike many critics orgs and the Oscars, The Film Experience believes that moviegoing is a 12 month long activity and each month can hold worthy efforts.  Here are 3 (or 4 if we're torn) highlights of what we've seen thus far this year per Oscar category in alpha order. How will they measure up to what's still to come? (We'll hit favorite performances on Sunday or Monday)

Key films I missed in the first quarter that I might try and catch up with later: Cure for Wellness, The Great Wall, Staying Vertical, T2 Trainspotting, United Kingdom, and Wilson

Picture / Director / Screenplay

Frantz (François Ozon, written by Philippe Piazzo & François Ozon)

Future Perfect (Nele Wohlatz, written by Pío Longo & Nele Wohlatz)

Get Out (Jordan Peele)

Personal Shopper...

Now in its 46th iteration, Film Society Of Lincoln Center and The Museum Of Modern Art’s annual New Directors/New Films series has routinely introduced the film world to some of the most interesting and singular young voices within cinema. Be it their first lineup in 1972 which included Wim Wenders’ The Goalie’s Anxiety At The Penalty Kick or last year’s selection that included this writer’s favorite film of 2016, Neon Bull, Nd/Nf has become one of the great film series on any year’s calendar.

And 2017 is no different.

Three films lead the way for this year’s slate, all of which are Sundance-approved entries into the greater American Independent Cinema canon. Opening the festival is Geremy Jasper’s Patti Cake$, with Eliza Hittman’s latest Beach Rats and Dustin Guy Defa’s New York-set Person to Person, all of which garnered solid notices out of Park City this January,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveriesNEWSThe Summer Is GoneCineuropa reports on an open letter of protest by "500 Portuguese and international personalities from the film industry" over "a new amendment to the [Portuguese] film law, which relieves national film body the Ica of the responsibility of choosing the juries for the institution’s financial support schemes." The proposed shift in approval power is a significant one, and the protest has drawn signatures from such figures as Leos Garax, Pedro Almodóvar, Aki Kaurismäki.The lineup for New Directors/New Films, New York's annual collaboration between the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, is announced and looks great, including Notebook favorites Person to Person (Dustin Guy Defa), Arábia (João Dumans & Affonso Uchoa), The Dreamed Path (Angela Schenelac), The Future Perfect (Nele Wohlatz), and The Summer Is Gone (Dalei Zhang). Recommended VIEWINGThe trailer for It Comes At Night,...

One of the best festivals during the first half of the year is The Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s New Directors/New Films, which kicks off its 46th year this March, running from the 15th to the 26th. With last year’s line-up including some of the year’s best films, including Cameraperson, The Fits, Kaili Blues, Neon Bull, Weiner, and more, we can expect many more discoveries this year.

Opening with Patti Cake$ and closing with Person to Person, in between will be one of our favorite films from Sundance as the centerpiece, Beach Rats. Also among the line-up is a handful of other festival favorites, including The Dreamed Path, The Giant, Menashe, and Lady Macbeth.

“Authenticity is an elusive thing these days, and without it we risk ruin. This is particularly true in cinema,” says Rajendra Roy, the Celeste Bartos Chief...

The Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center has today announces their complete lineup for the 46th annual New Directors/New Films (Nd/Nf), running March 15 – 26. Dedicated to the discovery of new works by emerging and dynamic filmmaking talent, this year’s festival will screen 29 features and nine short films. This year’s lineup boasts nine North American premieres, seven U.S. premieres, and two world premieres, with features and shorts from 32 countries across five continents.

The opening, centerpiece, and closing night selections showcase three exciting new voices in American independent cinema that all recently debuted at Sundance: Geremy Jasper’s “Patti Cake$” is the opening night pick, while Eliza Hittman’s “Beach Rats” is the centerpiece selection and Dustin Guy Defa will close the festival with “Person to Person.” Other standouts include “Menashe,” “My Happy Family,” “Quest” and “The Wound.”

Read More: The Sundance Rebel:...

Films and projects travel from Sundance to Rotterdam and Rotterdam’s love affair with Latin America becomes apparent.

Making their way from Sundance to Rotterdam, “Lemon” was Opening Night in the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Sloan Prize Winner “Marjorie Prime” played in Voices while director Michael Almereyda was on the Jury of the Hivos Tiger Competition. His documentary, “Escapes” also played in the Regained section of the festival.

“Marjorie Prime”: Director Michael Almereyda, Lois Smith and Jon Hamm

“Chile’s “Family Life” by Alicia Scherson and Cristian Jimenez, Singapore’s “Pop Aye”, “Lady Macbeth” and “Sami Blood” all screened here after premiering in Sundance as well.

Pop Aye director Kirsten Tan won the Big Screen Competition and in addition to the cash prize may also count on a guaranteed release in Dutch cinemas and on TV.

“The Wound” by John Trengove has even longer legs, reaching from Sundance World...

Exclusive: Iffr reveals lineup and jury for programme focused on emerging filmmakers.

International Film Festival Rotterdam (Iffr) (25 Jan – 5 Feb) has announced the full line-up of its Bright Future programme, including the titles that will compete for the Bright Future Award.

Scroll down for the full lineup

The competition for the Bright Future Award 2017 consists of sixteen debut films, including Chinese documentary Children Are Not Afraid of Death, Children Are Afraid of Ghosts by Rong Guang Rong and Caroline Leone’s melancholy Brazilian road movie Pela Janela. Also competing are Belgian title Inside the Distance and German feature Self-Criticism Of A Bourgeois Dog.

The jury for the award will be made up of Italian film producer Marta Donzelli (Le Quattro Volte); Marleen Slot, Netherlands producer for Viking Film (Neon Bull) and chair of Film Producers Netherlands (Fpn); and Jean-Pierre Rehm, director of the French film festival Fid Marseille.

Outside of this competition, Bright Future also presents...

The Costa Rica International Film Festival has announced the full list of winners from its fifth edition. An initiative of the Ministry of Culture and Youth’s Film Center, this year’s festival included 72 films from around the world and ran from December 8 to December 17 in San Jose.

Read More: Costa Rica’s Big Movie Dreams: How a Country With 150 Theaters Plans to Improve the Central America Film Industry

The jurors of the 2016 fest announced the competition and audience award winners in each of the festival’s three categories at the closing ceremony Saturday at the Magaly Theater.

“After 10 intense days, the 2016 edition of the Costa Rica International Film Festival comes to an end, having firmly established that it is committed not just to national and Central American cinema, but to strengthening its ties with audiences, whose numbers swelled this year compared to the 2015 edition,” Crfic Artistic Director Marcelo Quesada said in a statement.

Ten Screen critics select their hidden film gems of the year.Fionnuala Halligan, chief film critic

A Date For Mad Mary

Dir Darren Thornton

This big-hearted Irish romcom, which shared the top prize at Galway this summer, has all the smarts to hit with younger audiences should it get the chance. Just released from prison, surly, boozy Mary pines for her bridezilla Bff who has moved on. Now she needs a date for the wedding and rarely has someone looked for love with less interest. Thornton directs a scuzzily radiant Seana Kerslake as the miserably mad Mary, wildly unpredictable and widely misunderstood, in a film that feels like the love child of Weekend and Once.

Contact Mongrel International international@mongrelmedia.com

Tim Grierson, Senior Us critic

The Student

Dir Kirill Serebrennikov

The dangers of religious fervor overwhelming reason is the cauldron into which The Student drops its audience, taking us to a Russian high school where a Bible-quoting...

The Costa Rica International Film Festival (Crfic) has announced its complete lineup for its fifth edition. This year, 72 films have been chosen to represent the world’s best in independent cinema, with four world premieres and three Latin American premieres taking place, and over 60 features to be presented for the first time in the region.

“At Crfic we are interested in approaching the idea of artistic diversity; covering a broad spectrum of styles and proposals found in contemporary national and international cinema,” said Marcelo Quesada, Artistic Director for the Festival. “Our identity and our program is built around a free, coherent and risky cinema that moves away from the usual places and bring us closer to different voices and world visions from over 30 countries.”

Read More: Costa Rica Selects Esteban Ramirez’ ‘Presos’ as Oscar Submission

Taking place at the capital city of San José, the festival will run from December...

Festival director Jacqueline Lyanga opened this morning’s AFI Fest Awards brunch citing the record number of filmmakers who attended the festival this year, and many of those were gathered in the Cinema Lounge at the Roosevelt Hotel to recognize the achievements that made up the 30th iteration of the annual fest.

With an acting prize and two audience awards, Houda Benyamina’s “Divines” was the festival’s most-recognized film. (Judging by the reaction in the lounge, it was also a favorite among the filmmakers and patrons gathered.) When introducing the film’s New Auteurs Audience Award prize, AFI Fest Director of Programming Lane Kneedler explained how “Divines” became a festival favorite even after coming in late in the programming process.

Read More: AFI Fest 2016: 14 Movies We Can’t Wait to See at the Festival

Martin Zandvliet’s “Land of Mine” took the World Cinema Audience Award. “The movie is a hard sell,...

Mueller said his unexpected resignation was due to “divergent opinion” with the festival organisers.

The inaugural International Film Festival and Awards Macao (Iffam) today unveiled its lineup of 49 feature films, one day after the abrupt departure of festival director Marco Mueller.

The six-day festival will open on Dec 8 with the Asian premiere of Valérie Müller and Angelin Preljocaj’s Polina, which recently premiered at Venice Days.

The 11-strong international competition section consists of three world premieres (Macao-born Tracy Choi’s debut feature Sisterhood, Shinobu Yaguchi’s Survival Family and Shanker Raman’s debut feature Gurgaon) and two international premieres (Elon Doesn’t Believe In Death by Ricardo Alves Jr and Hide And Seek by Liu Jie).

The rest of the competition is filled by six Asian premieres, including 150 Milligrams by Emmanuelle Bercot, Free Fire by Ben Wheatley [pictured], Queen Of Spades by Pavel Lungin, Saint George by Marco Martins, The Winter by Emiliano Torres and Trespass Against Us by [link...

Mueller said his unexpected resignation was due to “divergent opinion” with the festival organisers.

The inaugural International Film Festival and Awards Macao (Iffam) today unveiled its lineup of 49 feature films, one day after the abrupt departure of festival director Marco Mueller.

The six-day festival will open on Dec 8 with the Asian premiere of Valérie Müller and Angelin Preljocaj’s Polina, which recently premiered at Venice Days.

The 11-strong international competition section consists of three world premieres (Macao-born Tracy Choi’s debut feature Sisterhood, Shinobu Yaguchi’s Survival Family and Shanker Raman’s debut feature Gurgaon) and two international premieres (Elon Doesn’t Believe In Death by Ricardo Alves Jr and Hide And Seek by Liu Jie).

The rest of the competition is filled by six Asian premieres, including 150 Milligrams by Emmanuelle Bercot, Free Fire by Ben Wheatley [pictured], Queen Of Spades by Pavel Lungin, Saint George by Marco Martins, The Winter by Emiliano Torres and Trespass Against Us by [link...

AFI Fest has announced the selections for its New Auteurs, American Independents, Midnights and Shorts sections. Already announced as part of the weeklong festival, which runs in Hollywood from November 10 – 17, are “Elle,” “20th Century Women” and the world premieres of both “The Comedian” and “Rules Don’t Apply.” Read the full announcement here, and see the New Auteurs, American Independents and Midnight selections below.

Read More: Warren Beatty’s ‘Rules Don’t Apply’ Will Open AFI Fest 2016

New Auteurs

“Always Shine” (dir. Sophia Takal)

“Buster’s Mal Heart” (dir. Sarah Adina Smith)

“Divines” (dir. Houda Benyamina)

“The Future Perfect” (dir. Nele Wohlatz)

“Godless” (dir. Ralitza Petrova)

“Kati Kati” (dir. Mbithi Masya)

“Kill Me Please” (dir. Anita Rocha da Silveira)

“One Week and a Day” (dir. Asaph Polonsky)

“Oscuro Animal” (dir. Felipe Guerrero)

“Still Life” (dir. Maud Alpi)

Read More: Watch: Lola Kirke Takes Us Inside the Mind of an Epileptic...

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...

Nele Wohlatz. Photo by Maria Guillermima Lopez.Born and raised in Germany, Nele Wohlatz has been working in Argentina for many years and has already stablished herself as a fresh voice in Latin American cinema today. After co-creating Ricardo Bär, the filmmaker wrote and directed her solo feature debut. I interviewed the filmmaker about El Futuro Perfecto, which will have its world premiere as part of the Filmmakers of the Present competition at the 69th Locarno Film Festival.In El Futuro Perfecto, a Chinese immigrant girl struggles to both learn a new language and adapt to a new culture. Xiaobin can only express herself with the Spanish she learns at her language class and so her life in Buenos Aires becomes shaped by the limited vocabulary she can understand and use. The film takes an unexpected turn when Xiaobin renames herself as Beatriz. The act creates a new space within...