News

Berlin-based Pluto Film has acquired Anna Koch and Julia Lemke’s documentary Circusboy (Zirkuskind) which will have its world premiere in the Generation Kplus line-up at next month’s Berlinale.

Circusboy follows the story of an 11-year-old boy growing up in a circus environment who loves to spend time with his 80-year-old great-grandfather.

The production, which is the directors’ second collaboration with Berlin-based Flare Film after their 2020 debut Glitter & Dust, is the first documentary to be made as part of “The Special Children’s Film” initiative supported by German public broadcasters, film funders and trade associations.

Pluto Film has put...

Exclusive: German Films, the agency that promotes German cinema globally, has revealed the seven participants for its annual Face to Face campaign, which include talents who have worked on projects such as Unorthodox, We Children From Bahnhof Zoo and Tides.

This year, which marks the 10th anniversary of the Face to Face initiative, will see German Films introduce seven burgeoning talents from the German film and TV industry to the international film community at the Berlin Film Festival next month. The initiative has long been considered a significant platform for showcasing German talents to the wider film and television spheres.

This year’s selection includes actors Aaron Altaras, Lea Drinda and Thea Ehre, writer-directors Leonie Krippendorff and Mariko Minoguchi, as well as director Mala Reinhardt and Director of Photography Tim Kuhn.

They are following in the footsteps of filmmakers and stars Sandra Hüller, Christian Friedel, Burhan Qurbani, Saskia Rosendahl, Alexander Fehling,...

The European Film Awards is taking place in the Swiss city of Lucerne tonight (December 7) and Screen is revealing the winners live from the ceremony, which kicked off at 20.00 Cet.

Scroll down for winners

To read the winners as they are announced, you can refresh the page and scroll down to the full list below.

The ceremony is also being live-streamed below.

Emilia Pérez and The Room Next Door are the front-runners for this year’s awards with four nominations apiece.

Fifteen features compete for the best European film prize, up from five last year. This follows a recent rule...

Emilia Pérez and The Room Next Door have emerged as the front-runners for the European Film Awards 2024, with four nominations apiece.

The nominations for the main categories of this year’s awards, which take place on December 7 in Lucerne, were announced this morning by the European Film Academy.

Scroll down for full list of nominations

Fifteen features compete for the best European film prize, up from five last year. This follows a recent rule change which means that films shortlisted for the best documentary and animation categories can also compete in the section.

Emilia Pérez is nominated in the best European film category,...

Matthias Glasner’s epic dysfunctional family drama Dying has won the top prize for best film at the 2024 German Film Awards, the Lolas.

Dying was one of the critical favorites at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, where Glasner won the Silver Bear for best screenplay. The film stars Lars Eidinger as a classical conductor with an extremely dysfunctional family.

In addition to the top prize, Corinna Harfoch won the best actress Lola for her role in Dying, where she plays Eidinger’s sharp-tonged and cold-hearted mother. Her Dying co-star Hans-Uwe Bauer took best supporting actor, and the film also took the Lola for best film music for composer Lorenz Dangel.

Ayşe Polat took best director and best screenplay for In the Blind Spot, her twisty documentary-style conspiracy thriller set in modern-day Turkey. The film, which premiered in Berlin’s Encounters section last year, won the top prize at the Oldenburg Film Festival,...

The German Film Academy has announced the movies in competition this year for the German Film Awards, the local equivalent of the Oscars.

Matthias Glasner’s epic family drama Dying, Timm Kröger’s experimental sci-fi feature The Universal Theory, and In the Blind Spot, Ayşe Polat’s documentary-style conspiracy thriller set in modern-day Turkey, are among the favorites for this year’s awards, called the Lolas.

Dying, which stars Lars Eidinger as a classical conductor with an extremely dysfunctional family, picked up nominations in every major category, including best film, best director and best screenplay nominations for Glasner, a best actor nom for Eidinger and a best actress nomination for Corinna Harfoch, who plays Eidinger’s mother. In total, the film is up for nine Lolas.

The Universal Theory, a black-and-white drama about the multiverse, is also in the running for the best film Lola, and Kröger is up for best director.

Wim Wenders’ German film production company Road Movies and Berlin-based distributor-producer Dcm have launched a partnership sees Dcm take a stake in Road Movies and co-founder and partner Marc Schmidheiny become managing director of Road Movies.

Dcm released Wenders’ two most recent films Anselm - The Rush of Time and the Oscar-nonimated Perfect Days in German-speaking cinemas.

The first joint project will be the documentary The Secret Of Places (working title), Wenders’ long-term observation of the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor.

Dcm was founded in 2010 by Dario Suter, Christoph Daniel and Marc Schmidheiny, later joined by Joel Brandeis. It has established...

Berlin-based producer/distributor Dcm has taken a sake in Wim Wenders’ production company Road Movies, creating an “equal, strong partnership” between the two firms, Wenders and Dcm said Friday.

Dcm, which has released several of Wenders’ films in Germany, including the Oscar-nominated Perfect Days, will buy into Road Movies in the first quarter of this year. Dcm partners Dario Suter, Christoph Daniel, Marc Schmidheiny and Joel Brandeis described the move as a strategic expansion of the company’s film production business. Schmidheiny will be named Road Movies’ managing director.

Schmidheiny described the partnership as “a dream come true,” saying Dcm would handle the financial and day-to-day management of Road Movies to “to create the space for Wim to bring his seemingly inexhaustible creative power to the screen.”

“It has been on the agenda for years that we would work together with a strong partner,” said Wenders. “As Road Movies, we...

Exclusive: German Films, the agency that promotes German cinema globally, has unveiled the seven participants for the ninth edition of its annual Face to Face campaign, which include talents who have worked on projects ranging from television series such as Deutschland ‘89 and Kafka to feature film Turning Tables.

This year’s edition, which is dubbed Face to Face with German Films – The Filmmakers, will showcase seven filmmakers who have made a lasting impact on the German film industry with their creative and artistic work. The initiative is considered a prominent platform for showcasing German talent to the international film and television worlds.

The participants this year are: actor Jan Bülow; writer and director Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay; actor Banafshe Hourmazdi; writer-director Moritz Müller-Preißer; production designer Mona Cathleen Otterbach; writer-director Eva Trobisch; and writer-director Soleen Yusef.

They are following in the footsteps of such respected filmmakers as internationally renowned stars Sandra Hüller,...

The Berlinale has completed the lineup for its Panorama, Generation, Forum and Forum expanded sections, with new films from Levan Akin and Andre Techine, plus the debut feature of US playwright Annie Baker.

Swedish filmmaker Akin, who scored an international hit in 2019 with And Then We Danced, will open the Panorama strand with Crossing, about two people travelling from Georgia to Istanbul in search of a young transgender woman.

Scroll down for the full list of Panorama, Generation and Forum features

Also among the 31 films in Panorama are My New Friends from French filmmaker Techine, starring Isabelle Hupert, Hafsia Herzi...

The festival has revealed titles set to play in Berlinale Special, Generation and Forum Expanded.

Johan Renck’s Spaceman starring Adam Sandler and Tilman Singer’s Cuckoo starring Hunter Schafer are to receive their world premieres at the upcoming Berlin International Film Festival (February 15-25).

The festival has revealed a raft of titles set to premiere in its Berlinale Special strand as well as in its Generation competition and Forum Expanded sections.

The seven newly announced titles in Berlinale Special also includes Jula von Heinz’s Treasure, starring Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry; David and Nathan Zellner’s Sasquatch Sunset...

Exclusive: Jörg Winger and his Sam – A Saxon co-creator Tyron Ricketts believe the time is now right to tell the story of East Germany’s first Black policeman after a near-20-year period of shopping the project.

Disney+’s Sam – A Saxon, which was the streamer’s first German greenlight, spotlights Samuel Meffire, a former bricklayer who became the first elite East German policeman of African descent in the 1980s, where he went from diversity poster boy to being on the wrong side of the law. Scroll down for a trailer of the series that launches April 26.

Ricketts first met Meffire in 2002 and began shopping the project – initially as a feature – with Deutschland 83 co-creator Winger in 2006, but the pair believe German audiences have only become ready for the story in the past couple of years.

“The answer from buyers when we pitched it back then was always ‘I find it...

Sales

Chris O’Dowd (“Puffin Rock”), Amy Huberman (“Derry Girls”), Beth McCafferty and Eva Whittaker (“Wolfwalkers”) lead the voice cast of “Puffin Rock and the New Friends,” the film based on the TV series “Puffin Rock.”

Following their collaboration on Oscar nominees “Song of the Sea” and “The Breadwinner,” WestEnd Films is teaming again with Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon and Northern Ireland’s Dog Ears on the film and is launching sales at Berlin’s European Film Market (EFM), where first footage will be shown to buyers.

“Puffin Rock and the New Friends” sees Oona, Baba, May and Mossy joined by a new characters Isabelle, Phoenix and Marvin. When the last Little Egg of the season disappears under mysterious circumstances, Oona and her new friends race against time to bring the Little Egg home before a big storm hits Puffin Rock and puts the entire island in danger.

The film...

Netflix’s VP for Original Series, Kelly Luegenbiehl, has unveiled five new German originals which will launch on the streaming service in 2019. Speaking at the Medientage München conference this morning, she said the titles will be available in all of the markets where Netflix is present. The projects include Skylines, a contemporary drama produced by Maren Ade who directed, wrote and produced Oscar nominee Toni Erdmann.

The five projects are a variety of genres and formats, including historical and futuristic works, crime drama, a quirky coming-of-age story and a family saga. They add to Netflix’s current slate of three local originals including Dark, Dogs Of Berlin and The Wave which are in various stages of development and production. Dogs Of Berlin is led by showrunner Christian Alvart and launches on December 7.

This represents a significant investment in the German market and Luegenbiehl said, “We want to tell local stories with global appeal.

Following on the success of supernatural drama “Dark,” Netflix is set to produce five new German originals, including an ambitious historical series that chronicles a bloody and decisive battle between Germanic tribes and the Roman Empire.

Kelly Luegenbiehl, Netflix’s vice president of original series for Europe, announced the development and production of the five new projects on Thursday at the Medientage München media conference in Munich. The slate will launch online beginning in 2019.

“At Netflix, we want to tell local stories with global appeal. We are excited to have found this in these five projects, which – each in their unique way – are both undeniably German and at the same time tell stories that are relevant to viewers all over the world,” Luegenbiehl said.

The famous battle of the Teutoburg Forest, in which Germanic warriors halted the northward advance of the Roman Empire in Ad 9, is the focus of “The Barbarians.

The thirteenth edition of Santiago International Film Festival, Sanfic (August 20–27, 2017), the largest film festival in Chile, will present more than 100 international and Chilean films, including productions shown and awarded in festivals such as Cannes, Berlin and Venice. Among the feature films will be 7 world and 14 Latin American premieres.

Sanfic (Santiago International Film Festival) is opening the festival to international press this year with Variety Dailies and important international guests for their Sanfic Industry section. Guest attending include Kim Yutani (Sundance programmer), Javier Martin (Berlinale delegate), Molly O ́Keefe (Tribeca Film Institute — fiction features) and Estrella Araiza (Industry director of Guadalajara Iff), to name a few. Matt Dillon is its special guest along with the renowned director of photography Rainer Klausmann.

The Summit starring Ricardo Darín, Dolores Fonzi and Erica Rivas, with an appearance of Christian Slater and renowned Chilean actors Paulina Garcia and Alfredo Castro

The opening film of the...

The event will host 19 world premieres in its New German Cinema strand.

This year’s Filmfest München (June 23 - July 2) will open with Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann, the Cannes Competition title that topped Screen’s Jury Grid last month.

The event will also stage a retrospective of films by German director Christian Petzold.

Titles by Dani Levy, Sven Taddicken, Ana-Felicia Scutelnicu and Oliver Rihs are among 19 world premieres being presented in the festival’s New German Cinema sidebar.

Swiss-born director Levy will be coming to Munich with Wunderlich’s World, starring Katharina Schüttler, Hannelore Elsner and Toni Erdmann’s Peter Simonischek, while Taddicken’s adaptation of A.L. Kennedy’s novel Original Bliss will be shown in the Bavarian capital before having its international premiere in Karlovy Vary’s official competition a week later.

This year’s line-up also includes a number of co-productions such as Moldovan filmmaker Ana-Felicia Scutelnicu’s Anishoara, a second...

The event will host 19 world premieres in its New German Cinema strand.

This year’s Filmfest München (June 23 - July 2) will open with Maren Ade’s Cannes competition title Toni Erdmann.

The event will also stage a retrospective of films by German director Christian Petzold.

Titles by Dani Levy, Sven Taddicken, Ana-Felicia Scutelnicu and Oliver Rihs are among 19 world premieres being presented in the festival’s New German Cinema sidebar.

Swiss-born director Levy will be coming to Munich with Wunderlich’s World, starring Katharina Schüttler, Hannelore Elsner and Toni Erdmann’s Peter Simonischek, while Taddicken’s adaptation of A.L. Kennedy’s novel Original Bliss will be shown in the Bavarian capital before having its international premiere in Karlovy Vary’s official competition a week later.

This year’s line-up also includes a number of co-productions such as Moldovan filmmaker Ana-Felicia Scutelnicu’s Anishoara, a second collaboration with Germany’s Wiedemann Bros., Romanian-born [link=nm...

Screen previews the Sarajevo Film Festival’s industry events, which includes a UK focus, the annual Regional Forum and highlights of the Work in Progress and CineLink projects.

Over the last ten years, Southeast Europe’s most important film event Sarajevo Film Festival has also become its main industry hub.

What started in 2003 with CineLink, a co-production market initially modeled after Rotterdam’s CineMart, has developed into an increasingly wide array of industry events, simultaneously expanding from the region towards Caucasus countries, and in recent years aiming to spread its activities and networking overseas, in partnerships with the Doha Film Institute, the Arab Fund for Arts & Culture, and from this year, Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía (Imcine).

While the Industry Days peak in the final part of the festival, from August 20-23, its activities started on Sunday [17], with the presentation of the newly established Sarajevo City of Film Fund.

In addition to CineLink, the heart of...

Seven projects will take part in WiP, and three more titles have been added to CineLink line-up

The Sarajevo Film Festival has announced seven projects from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Israel, Kazakhstan, Romania, Slovenia and Serbia that have been picked to take part in his year’s CineLink Work in Progress sessions.

CineLink’s Work in Progress sessions (Aug 20-21) present promising films currently in post-production to specially invited decision-makers from the European film industry, interested in engaging in their completion or distribution.

The line-up consists of six fiction projects, including new films by Romania’s Tudor Giurgiu (Of Snails And Men), Kazakhstan’s Emir Baigazin (Harmony Lessons), Slovenia’s Vlado Škafar (Dad), and the new documentary by Serbia’s Mila Turajlić (Cinema Komunisto), selected from the festival’s documentary workshop Docu Rough Cut Boutique.

The Work in Progress jury, consisting of Nelleke Driessen, Managing Director, Fortissimo Films; Meinolf Zurhorst, Commissioning Editor...

The Doha Film Institute has selected 20 projects for its first global film grants programme, including post-production support for Benjamin Naishtat’s debut feature History of Fear, which premieres in Berlin in Competition.

The grants go to projects (mostly first or second features) from Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East-North Africa (Mena) region; the 20 are selected from 396 applications.

This is the first global round of the grants, which were previously only available to Mena projects.

The funding is used for development, production and post-production. The next round of applications are open April 1-21.

The Narrative features backed are:

Men in the Sun directed by Mahdi Fleifel (Palestine/United Kingdom/Greece/Denmark/Qatar);

The Returning directed by Ehab Tarabieh (Syria/Qatar);

Burning Birds directed by Sanjeewa Pushpakumara (Sri Lanka/France/Qatar);

By The Time It Gets Dark directed by Anocha Suwichakornpong (Thailand/Qatar);

Hedi directed by Mohamed Ben Attia (Tunisia/Qatar);

House Without Roof directed by [link...

Pacha, a Bolivian film by Héctor Ferreiro will open the first edition of the Kochi International Film Festival today. The festival that will run from December 16-23 will be inaugurated by Kerala Chief Minister Oomen Chandy.

The festival will screen films from Latin America, Europe, Asia and USA, apart from films on the 100 Years of Indian Cinema and Centenary of Masters.

A total of 50 international films and 24 Indian films will be screened. Five films from Thailand, eight from Poland six films from Iran will be a part of the international section. While 18 Malayalam, one Tulu film and three Hindi films are in the line-up.

Line up of films:

100 Years of Indian Cinema

Malayalam Golden 10:

Elippathayam (The Rat Trap) by Adoor Gopalakrishnan

Chidambaram by G. Aravindan

Danny by T. V. Chandran

Amma Ariyan by John Abraham

Oppol by K. S. Sethumadhavan

Nirmalyam by M. T. Vasudevan Nair

Uppu by Pavithran

Olavum Theeravum by P.

From Aleksandr Andriyevsky's Gibel Sensatsii (Lost Sensation, 1935)

The Deutsche Kinemathek - Museum für Film und Fernsehen, which has organized the Berlinale's Retrospective program since 1977, and New York's Museum of Modern Art have worked together on this or that series in the past, but today the festival has announced that the cooperation is going long-term. Starting with this year's Retrospective program, The Red Dream Factory. Mezhrabpom-Film and Prometheus 1921-1936, the Berlinale, Kinemathek and MoMA will be working closely to select and curate future Retrospectives. The Red Dream Factory, screening in Berlin from February 9 through 19, will be presented at MoMA from April 11 through 30, and here's the gist from the Berlinale's announcement in October:

Moisei Aleinikov, a Russian film expert and producer from tsarist times who had a great instinct for the right topics, and Willi Münzenberg, a German communist and "red media entrepreneur," joined forces in 1922 to combine clever business ideas,...