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Netalie Braun’s anti-war drama Oxygen, about a mother who takes extreme action to prevent her 21-year-old son from returning to the front in Lebanon, scooped the Best Israeli Feature Film award at the 42nd Jerusalem Film Festival on Thursday evening.

Opening with Joachim Trier’s Cannes Grand Prize winner Sentimental Value July 17, this edition was the second to take place since the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks on Southern Israel, in which 1,200 people died and another 251 were taken hostage, sparking the Israeli invasion of Gaza, in which more than 57,000 Palestinian people have since been killed.

The festival unfolded amid growing international condemnation of Israel’s management of food aid distribution in Gaza, with World Health Organization head Tedros Ghebreyesus saying this week that the population faced “mass starvation”.

There has also been outcry in Israel about the situation, as well as anger about the fate of 50 hostages, who are still unaccounted for,...

The world premiere of a new animated short film directed by Renée Zellweger, called They, six James Bond movies starring the late Sean Connery screened in a special strand, and “In Conversation” events with the likes of Andrew and Kevin Macdonald, Andrea Arnold, Ben Wheatley and Andy Starke, and Nia DaCosta will all be part of this year’s 78th edition of the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Among the movies in the program this year are the likes of Piotr Winiewicz’s About a Hero with Vicky Krieps, which was written by an AI system trained in Werner Herzog’s works, Eddie Marsan and Sam Claflin-starring “brooding, stylish thriller” All the Devils Are Here from Barnaby Roper, Jan-Ole Gerster’s Islands, “a mysterious and Highsmith-esque existential thriller,” Urška Djukic’s debut feature and coming-of-age film Little Trouble Girls, and Elliot Tuttle’s Blue Film, starring Kieron Moore and Reed Birney.

Danish-Palestinian director Mahdi Fleifel’s second feature To A Land Unknown added to its long list of prizes when it received the €10,000 Transilvania Trophy of this year’s Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF) in Romania at the weekend.

Berlin-based Noaz Deshe won the €3,500 best director prize for his second feature Xoftex, which had its world premiere at last year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

The special jury prize went to Chinese-American filmmaker Julian Castronovo’s first film Debut which investigates the ethics and aesthetics of forgery, while thebest performance award was presented to Ghjuvanna Benedetti for her role in...

The 24th edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival has wrapped up in Romania.

During Saturday Night’s closing gala at the National Theatre in Cluj-Napoca, British director Mahdi Fleifel’s To a Land Unknown took home the Transilvania Trophy, the festival’s 10,000-euro top prize.

The film is described as an intense drama about two Palestinian refugees living in Athens, caught between petty scams and the hope of a better life in Germany. Amid a climate of despair and moral compromise, one spirals deeper into a cycle of manipulation and exploitation of those around him.

“It was more about survival than storytelling. We struggled for nearly ten years to make it,” said Fleifel, adding of the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict: “The problem in Palestine is not the Palestinians, it’s the occupation—and that must end.”

German director Noaz Deshe’s Xoftex won the €3,500 Best Directing Award, sponsored by the Romanian Cultural Institute.

The 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff) will feature key Cannes Film Festival winners in its Horizons section and a selection of action and horror movies, both new and older, for its revamped Midnight Screenings program under the new name “Afterhours.”

In a lineup update unveiled on Friday, Kviff said it will this year screen more than 130 feature films in the picturesque Czech spa town of Karlovy Vary.

The Horizons lineup, which traditionally features highlights from the festival circuit of the past year, includes the likes of Jay Duplass’ The Baltimorons, Tom Shoval’s A Letter to David, Michel Franco’s Dreams, My Father’s Shadow by Akinola Davies Jr., Mary Bronstein‘s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Ira Sachs’ Peter Hujar’s Day, Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors, Jafar Panahi‘s Cannes Palme d’Or winner It Was Just an Accident, and fellow Cannes...

Exclusive: Italy’s TorinoFilmLab (Tfl) has selected 10 projects for the 2025 edition of its FeatureLab training programme, for first or second film projects at an advanced development stage.

The 2025 edition comprises 10 fiction projects, selected from 179 applications. Six of the projects are debut features, with four second works.

Scroll down for full list of projects

Among the 10 projects selected this year are The Dog Trainer by Argentinian director Federico Luis, whose debut Simón de la Montaña won the Grand Prix at Cannes’ Critics Week in 2024, and is now collaborating with Chilean producer Fernando Bascuñán.

Also taking part is The Passion Of Angela...

Urška Djukić’s “Little Trouble Girls,” which opened Berlinale’s Perspectives section and walked away with the Fipresci award, has sold to multiple territories, including Kino Lorber for North America, BFI Distribution for U.K. and Ireland, as well as France, Germany, Benelux and many more. Athens-based Heretic is handling worldwide sales.

Djukić’s debut feature follows introverted 16-year-old Lucia, who joins her Catholic school’s all-girl choir and befriends Ana-Maria, a popular and flirty student. But when the choir travels to a countryside convent for a weekend of intensive rehearsals, Lucia’s interest in a restoration worker tests her friendship with Ana-Maria and the other girls. As she navigates unfamiliar surroundings and her budding sexuality, Lucia begins to question her beliefs and values, disrupting the harmony within the choir.

As well as Kino Lorber, which is planning a theatrical, digital and home video release later this year, and BFI Distribution,...

Fipresci, the international film critics association, has announced its winners for the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival, with Norwegian filmmaker Dag Johan Haugerud’s Drømmer (Dreams (Sex Love)) taking the top honor in the Competition section.

The film, the concluding chapter of Haugerud’s Sex, Love, Dreams trilogy on emotional and physical intimacy, follows 17-year-old Johanne (Ella Øverbye), who becomes infatuated with her new teacher, Johanna (Selome Emnetu). As Johanne navigates her romantic awakening, the lines between memory and fiction blur, culminating in a self-reflective literary account of first love. Infused with Haugerud’s signature droll humor and sensitive observations, the film marks a shift in the trilogy’s focus to queer first love. M-Appeal is handling world sales.

In the newly introduced Perspectives competition, Slovenian director Urška Djukić was honored for her debut feature Kaj ti je deklica (Little Trouble Girls), a coming-of-age drama that follows the reserved Lucia (Jara Sofija Ostan...

As Germany prepares for a general election, Berlin International Film Festival director Tricia Tuttle has raised concerns about the growing influence of the far-right AfD party. Speaking ahead of the vote, she addressed the potential impact on the festival’s direction.

“I don’t know anyone that has an interest in a pluralistic society that values difference, that isn’t worried about what’s happening with the rise of the far-right,” she said. “It’s about closing down and fearing difference. I’m as worried as a lot of other people are here.”

Asked whether a shift in government would affect her role, she explained that it would depend on whether she could continue shaping the event as intended. “I’m here at the Berlinale to build a dynamic, international film festival that shows off German cinema on an international stage and also energizes local audiences,” she said. “But if...

Titled after a Sonic Youth song internationally and after a Slovenian traditional song on the domestic market, the Berlinale Perspectives opener and the debut feature of Urška Djukić – so far best known for her award-grabber animated short documentary Granny’s Sexual Life (2021) – does right by both of them. We hear Little Trouble Girls at the very end of the film as the only song not performed “in character”, just before we get the title printed out for the only time. The other song, Kaj ti je deklica?, however, we hear earlier on, at the culmination of slow-burning tension. And when it comes to sexual awakening in a society divided between the modern liberties and the religious and petit-bourgeois traditions, especially in a restrictive environment of a choir trip to a convent, the trouble for girls can come in a form of...

The Sonic Youth song that lends “Little Trouble Girls” its title plays out over the closing credits, its English-language lyrics neatly encapsulating the fidgety frustrations at play in Urška Djukić’s debut feature: “If you want me to/I will be the one/That is always good/And you’ll love me too/But you’ll never know/What I feel inside/That I’m really bad.” A shade too neatly, perhaps, since everything else in this sly, sensual coming-of-ager is so headily and tantalizingly allusive, as the film sharply evokes that adolescent age where worldly adult knowledge is just within view and just out of reach. Following a shy 16-year-old on a girls’ choir trip that exposes both her sexual naïveté and her deep, inchoate yearnings, this is a striking statement of intent from its Slovenian writer-director — there’s an airy delicacy here that invites comparisons to early Céline Sciamma,...

Circles of Perfection: Djukić Surveys the Compromises of Sexual Awakening

Taking its title from the 1995 Sonic Youth track Little Trouble Girls (Kaj ti je deklica), Slovenian director Urška Djukić’s narrative debut explores the familiar but astute sexual awakening of a young woman while navigating conflicting social reinforcements. As evidenced in her 2021 co-directed short “Granny’s Sexual Life,” based on Slovenian writer Milena Miklavcic’s publication Don’t Play with Fire, Ass and Snakes, which featured collected testimonials of women’s sexual experiences who were all in their eighties, Djukić is profoundly interested in capturing the tormented process of women’s sexual experiences, shaped by the restrictions imposed upon them by society, religion, and each other.…...

Slovenian director Urška Djukić, whose feature directorial debut, “Little Trouble Girls,” makes its world premiere Feb. 14 as the opening film of Berlinale’s Perspectives section, is developing two new projects, she has told Variety.

The projects are being produced by Djukić through her production company, Oink, alongside Luka Peterca.

The first, with the working title “Veronika of Desenice,” is set in the 15th century in a region of the Holy Roman Empire that is now Slovenia. It tells the tragic real-life story of the love between the Count of Celje Frederick II and his wife Veronika. Veronika was accused by her father-in-law of being a witch, but sought sanctuary in a Carthusian monastery, aided by the monk Prior Arnold.

“Today, 600 years after Veronika’s death, this story of the first witch trial in Slovenia remains integral to our cultural identity,” Djukić told Variety. “I remember how, as children in school,...

Cinema took over a snowy German capital on Thursday evening as the 2025 Berlin Film Festival officially kicked off with a breezy opening ceremony at the Berlinale Palast Theater.

The ceremony was much shorter than previous editions, with the bulk of the evening serving as the presentation of this year’s Honorary Bear for career achievement, which was handed to veteran actor Tilda Swinton. German filmmaker Edward Berger presented Swinton the award and she gave an impassioned, political speech to the audience inside the Palast.

“The inhumane is being perpetrated on our watch,” Swinton began her speech. “I’m here to name it without hesitation or doubt in my mind, and to lend my unwavering solidarity to all those who recognize the unacceptable complacency of our greed-addicted governments who make nice with planet wreckers and war criminals, wherever they come from.”

Swinton did not name politicians or specific conflicts but appeared to criticize U.

The Berlin Film Festival on Tuesday unveiled the full list of titles set for its official competition alongside perspective and specials sidebars.

A total of 19 films have been selected for the international competition. It’s a buzzy selection with multiple titles that have been anticipated and boast high-profile names. Highlights include Richard Linklater’s latest feature Blue Moon, starring Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale and Andrew Scott. Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco launches his latest title Dreams in competition. The film stars Jessica Chastain, Isaac Hernández and Rupert Friend. Franco last worked with Chastain on the Venice competition title Memory.

Elsewhere, Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude lands in competition with Kontinental ’25. Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Hot Milk starring Emma Mackey, Fiona Shaw and Vicky Krieps also secures a spot alongside Hong Sangsoo’s latest What Does that Nature Say to You, and Mumblecore veteran Mary Bronstein returns as a director with If I Had Legs I’d Kick You...

Serbian filmmaker Milica Tomović, whose sophomore feature, “Big Women,” was one of the big winners at the Sarajevo Film Festival’s industry awards on Thursday, thinks audiences are afraid of women behaving badly. “People are not that interested to watch movies with bad female characters who do bad things,” the director told Variety.

“Big Women,” which is produced by Dragana Jovović of Non-Aligned Films and Jelena Radenković for Big Time Production, won the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award in Sarajevo. The film is pitched as a road-trip dramedy that follows two wild women who embark on an unexpected trip to the coast of Montenegro. There they’ll settle forgotten bills, rediscover their friendship and uncover long-buried secrets.

Describing the film as “a character-based story,” Tomović said it’s “based on the dynamics of this very strong friendship.” “This is the center of the story, between Mira and Tina,” she said of...

Prizes for ‘Explanation For Everything’, ‘Green Border’.

Slow, the second feature from Lithuanian filmmaker Marija Kavtaradze, has won the Crystal Arrow at the 15th edition of Les Arcs Film Festival in France.

The romantic drama receives a €20,000 digital promotional campaign for its release; Be For Films handles sales on the title, with Tandem distributing the film in France on March 6, 2024.

Scroll down for the full list of winners

A Sundance 2023 premiere, Slow follows a dancer and sign language interpreter who begin a relationship, building their own kind of intimacy.

It is a second feature for Kavtaradze after 2018 Toronto selection Summer...

“Kingdom of the Blind,” “Little Trouble Girls” and “Wind, Talk To Me” were among the projects which won prizes at the milestone 15th edition of Les Arcs Film Festival‘s Industry Village.

The event, held in a popular French Alps resort, was attended by more than 700 professionals, including top sales agents, distributors and festival programmers, on top of high profile talent, such as two-time Palme d’Or winning Ruben Ostlund (“Triangle of Sadness”) who was the festival’s guest of honor.

The growing popularity of Les Arcs’s industry sidebar underscores “the resilience of the independent European film market and the continued interest in original stories along with feature debuts,” said Jeremy Zelnik, an indie producer (“Kubrick by Kubrick”) who heads the Industry Village and co-founded the festival with Pierre-Emmanuel Fleurantin, Guillaume Calop and Fabienne Silvestre.

This year, the Coproduction Village and Work in Progress section received a record 680 projects...

Manhattan judge to pass sentence on February 6, 2024.

Marvel Studios has dropped Jonathan Majors from upcoming projects after the Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania, Loki and Creed III star was found guilty of two counts of assault and harassment and acquitted of two others in the criminal trial involving former girlfriend Grace Jabbari.

A Manhattan jury of six returned its verdict on Monday after the prosecution and defence rested their cases last Thursday.

Majors, 34, was found guilty of one count of reckless assault in the third degree, and one count of harassment. He was acquitted on two counts of intentional assault...

Manhattan judge to pass sentence on February 6, 2024.

In a split verdict, Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania and Creed III star Jonathan Majors has been found guilty of two counts of assault and harassment and acquitted of two others in the case involving former girlfriend Grace Jabbari.

A Manhattan jury of six returned its verdict on Monday after the prosecution and defence rested their cases last Thursday following a rapid two-week trial in which the actor did not testify in his own defence.

Majors, 34, was found guilty of one count of reckless assault in the third degree, and one count of harassment.

Manhattan jusge to pass sentence on February 6, 2024.

In a split verdict, Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania and Creed III star Jonathan Majors has been found guilty of two misdemeanour counts of assault and harassment and acquitted of two others in the case involving former girlfriend Grace Jabbari.

A Manhattan jury of six returned its verdict on Monday after the prosecution and defence rested their cases last Thursday. The trial began two weeks ago.

Majors was acquitted on the counts of intentional assault in the third degree and aggravated harassment in the second degree.

The actor will be sentenced on February...

Mountain thriller Kingdom Of The Blind and ground-breaking Guadeloupe-set feature Zion were among the in-development feature projects and works-in-progress picking up prizes at Les Arcs Film Festival’s 15th Industry Village on Monday.

Around 700 cinema professionals from across Europe are attending the meeting taking place within the framework of the festival, unfolding in the French Alps from December 16 to 23.

The industry meeting, running December 16-19, encompasses the Coproduction Village and the Talent Village, for projects at development stage, as well as a Works-in-Progress showcase and the Music Village.

French director François Robic’s drama Kingdom Of The Blind scooped the €6,000 Coproduction Village ArteKino International Award.

The thriller was among 18 European film projects presented at the Coproduction Village, selected from 269 submitted projects.

Set in an imaginary valley in the French Pyrenees mountains, the picture revolves around a woman with a dark secret from her childhood who attempts to start a new life under another identity.

Slovenia, Italy, Croatia, Serbia and France are all producing the title.

Urska Djukic’s Little Trouble Girls, a co-production between five European countries, is among the winners at the Les Arcs Film Festival Industry Village, which handed out its prizes this evening.

The film took the €10,000 post-production services award in the Work in Progress section. Slovenia’s Spok Film and Nosorogi, Italy’s Staragara I.T., Croatia’s Izazov, Serbia’s Non-Aligned Films and France’s Sister Productions are all producing the film.

Scroll down for the full list of winners

The feature debut of Slovenian director Djukic, Little Trouble Girls...

The Les Arcs Film Festival has unveiled the 13 upcoming features selected for its Work-in Progress showcase.

The selection includes respected French, New York-based artist and filmmaker Marie Losier’s bio-doc Peaches Goes Bananas about Canadian electronic musician Merrill Beth Nisker, aka Peaches.

Danish director Jeppe Rønde, who made waves with mass teen suicide drama Bridgend, is participating with second fiction feature Acts of Love, about a taboo sibling relationship within the confines of a religious community on Denmark’s west coast. (scroll down for full list).

Excerpts from the selected productions will be screened to industry professionals on December 17 as part of the festival’s Industry Village events, which also includes the Coproduction Village.

Both events are taking place within the framework of the festival’s 15th edition running from December 16 to 19 in the French Alps resort of Les Arcs.

The showcase received a record 181 project submissions this year, 38% of which are directed women.

New projects from Cherien Dabis, Anders Thomas Jensen and Ameer Fakher Eldin have also been awarded

Ariane Labed’s feature-directing debut Sisters is among the 33 projects to receive funding from Eurimages second wave of 2023 co-production funding.

The French-Greek actor’s feature directing debut received €350,000 from the €9.7m pot. The Ireland, UK, Germany and Greece co-production is produced by Ireland’s Element Pictures. An English-language adaptation of Daisy Johnson’s gothic novel of the same name it follows two sisters who move to the countryside with their maniac depressive mother. Labed previously directed short film Olla which won three awards at...

11 feature projects are entering production this year

The Slovenian Film Centre (Sfc) is to boost local film production by increasing the amount it invests in films to a record €8.8m.

This compares to €6.7m in 2022 and €4.5m in 2014.

Eleven Slovenian projects are set to shoot this year, the highest number in history. Sfc director Nataša Bučar said the centre was “significantly” increasing local film production in 2023.

The 11-strong slate includes new films from Gregor Božič (Tales Of Fruits And Monsters); Urša Menart (Everything That’s Wrong With You); and Darko Štante (The Last Son).

Four debuts will also shoot in...

Triangle Of Sadness Photo: Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival Ruben Östlund's Triangle Of Sadness was the big winner at the European Film Awards earlier this evening in Reykjavik.

The satire about a group of super-rich people stranded on an island, won the prizes for best European film, director, screenwriter, along with the actor's gong for Zlatko Burić.

It was a good night for satire, as Fernando León de Aranoa's Javier Bardem starrer The Good Boss was named best comedy.

The Fipresci prize for European Discovery went to Small Body, directed by Laura Samani, while Vicky Krieps won the actress award for Corsage.

Mariupolis 2, the posthumous documentary by Mantas Kvedaravicius, which was completed by co-director Hanna Bilobrava after he was killed in Ukraine, was named best documentary. The best animation award went to Alain Ughetto's No Dogs Or Italians Allowed.

Documentary Granny's Sexual Life, directed by Urška Djukic...

Italian auteur Marco Bellocchio will be presented with the European Film Academy’s Award for European Innovative Storytelling for his miniseries “Exterior Night.” The director will be guest of honor at the 35th European Film Awards ceremony on Dec. 10 at Reykjavik.

In “Exterior Night,” Bellocchio returns to the case of the kidnapping and assassination of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades in 1978, a subject that he tackled in his feature film “Good Morning, Night,” for which he received the Fipresci Prize at the 2003 European Film Awards.

The academy has also revealed nominations in several categories for the awards.

European Comedy:

“Cop Secret” (:Leynilögga”), directed by Hannes Þór Halldórsson (Iceland)

“The Good Boss” (“El Buen Patrón”), directed by Fernando León De Aranoa (Spain)

“The Divide” (“La Fracture”), directed by Catherine Corsini (France)

European Animated Feature Film:

“Little Nicholas – Happy As Can Be” (“Le Petit Nicolas – Qu’est-ce...

Strong female coming-of-age stories, two LGBTQ submissions and a smattering of unique, autobiographical features from around the world were among this year’s pitches given by the 12 participants of the Cinéfondation Residence.

And although the Cannes Festival’s international talent-finding initiative pitched to a virtual audience this year, the participants of the Residence’s 39th and 40th cohorts still packed a punch.

Strong submissions included Raven Johnson’s “Ruby: Portrait of a Black Girl Living in the Suburbs” which follows a West African immigrant family living in the predominantly white suburbs in the American Midwest. The loud and colorful Minnesota-set drama shifts between three teen siblings. While it celebrates the experiences and explores the pressures facing Black teens, Johnson claimed that people all over the world would relate to the universality of the characters. With the aim to go into production next summer, the writer/director is currently working on...