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Docs include The Dread, and My Home, In Libya.

Cannes selections Birds Of Passage and Border will compete with the likes of Transit and Non Fiction for the Gold Hugo at next month’s 54th Chicago International Film Festival.

Artistic director Mimi Plauché announced on Friday (14) the international competition line-ups at the 54th Chicago International Film Festival, which runs from October 10–21.

The longest running competitive film festival in North America will feature two world premieres – Guie’dani’s Navel (Mexico) and the documentary Father The Flame (USA) – and showcase 16 films in the main International Feature Film Competition, 14 films in New Directors Competition,...

Film premieres in the festival’s Israeli Feature Competition on Friday (July 27).

Amikam Kovner and Assaf Snir’s Echo, which premieres in Jerusalem Film Festival’s Israeli Feature Competition on Friday (July 27), has had its international sales rights snapped up by Jerusalem-based Go2Films.

The film depicts a man who suspects that his wife is having an affair. In an attempt to catch her at it, he begins recording her telephone conversations, discovering in the process that she is a very different woman from the one he thinks he knows. Yoram Toledano and Yaël Abecassis star.

Echo is produced by Dori Media Paran...

Wise Hassan, Asia take top prizes.

The winners from the 12th edition of Jerusalem Pitch Point have been unveiled at the Jerusalem Film Festival.

The initiative’s top prize, dubbed the Van Leer Award and worth $5,500 (20,000 Nis), went to Palestinian filmmaker Tawfik Abu Wael’s Wise Hassan.

A Tel Aviv-set thriller, the film marks the director’s third feature after Thirst (Atash), which premiered in Cannes Critics’ Week in 2004, and Last Days In Jerusalem.

It is being produced by Baher Agbariya at Haifa-based Majdal Films, who presented the project alongside Abu Wael at the Jerusalem Pitch Point event on Sunday (July 16).

The Db & Opus Award, which comes with post-production services in the value of $15,000 (55,000 Nis), was presented to Ruthy Pribar’s Asia.

The project was presented by Yoav Roeh and Aurit Zamir of Tel-Aviv based Gum Films. It is currently completing financing ahead of production. The story will follow a 35-year-old mother who must face the death...

Company lines up Eran Kolirin [pictured], Yuval Adler and Itamar Alcalay.

The budding feature film arm of leading Israeli media and entertainment company Dori Media Paran (Dmp) unveils rough cut material from Amikam Kovner and Assaf Snir’s infidelity drama Echoes at the Jerusalem Pitch Point works-in-progress showcase today (July 17), part of this year’s Jerusalem Film Festival.

It is one of the first auteur productions to come out of the Israeli media company’s move into feature film production, which began some four years ago.

Co-starring Yoram Toledano and Yael Abecassis, it revolves around a husband who uncovers another side to his wife and family when he listens in on her conversations with her lover. When she dies in an accident, he becomes obsessed with uncovering the identity of the other man.

Keren Michael, who heads up Dmp’s feature film division, will present the project alongside Dmp CEO Yoni Paran.

Having previously...

Eight shortlisted projects including Christopher Doyle and Jenny Suen’s The White Girl; Nguyen Phuong Anh’s The Third Wife and Zhou Quan’s End Of Summer.

The Hong Kong Asia Film Financing Forum (Haf) is launching a Work-In-Progress (Wip) Lab, which includes projects from Christopher Doyle, Vietnam’s Nguyen Phuong Anh and China’s Zhou Quan.

Scheduled to take place March 13-15 during Haf, the Wip Lab aims to match filmmakers with post-production funds, sales agents and film festival support. Wanda Media and post-production houses G2D and White Light will hand out awards to projects selected for the lab.

Doyle and co-director Jenny Suen are bringing Hong Kong-set noir fairytale The White Girl (pictured), starring Joe Odagiri, Angela Yuen and Michael Ning, to the lab. Produced by Hong Kong’s Pica Pica Media with backing from Malaysia’s Astro Shaw, the film follows three outcasts – an artist, a street kid and a girl who is...

Exclusive: Director of The Band’s Visit to explore dilemma of being a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship.

Eran Kolirin is gearing up to shoot an adaptation of Palestinian writer Sayed Kashua’s 2006 tragi-comic novel Let It Be Morning in early 2017.

The work explores the trademark themes of Kashua, who rose to fame in Israel and internationally for his Hebrew-language newspaper columns, novels and TV dramas about the complexity of being a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship.

Kolirin’s adaptation revolves around Sami, an urbane Palestinian accountant (rather than a journalist as per the novel) with Israeli citizenship who left his Arab home village years ago to take up a post in Jerusalem.

He is forced to re-assess his Palestinian roots and Israeli citizenship after he is trapped in his Arab home village when an Israeli army blockade is unexpectedly set up while he is attending a family wedding with his wife and young son.

Yoni Paran, CEO of...