News

Other winners included Russian drama ‘Conference’ and Egyptian documentary ‘Lift Like A Girl’.

Ben Sharrock’s UK drama Limbo was awarded three top prizes at the Cairo International Film Festival (Ciff) on Thursday, including the Golden Pyramid for best film.

The asylum seeker drama, which received a Cannes 2020 label and world premiered at Toronto, also won the Henry Barakat award for best artistic contribution and the Fipresci critics award. It follows a best film win at the Macao international film festival in China earlier this week.

The 47th edition of the festival, which took place as a physical event in the Egyptian capital,...

British film “Limbo,” a wry refugee drama, directed by Edinburgh-born director Ben Sharrock and produced by Spain’s Irune Gurtubai, won the Golden Pyramid for best film at the Cairo Film Festival on Thursday.

Told in a pleasing deadpan style, “Limbo” recounts the story of a Syrian musician, played by the BIFA nominated rising star Amir El-Masry, who is placed on a Scottish island when awaiting his request for asylum to be processed. The film, which recently picked up the top prize at the Macau Film Festival, also picked up Cairo’s Henry Barakat Award for best artistic contribution. The film, sold by Protagonist Pictures and staged by Caravan Cinema and presented by Film 4, Screen Scotland and BFI, also took home the Fipresci award.

Russian director Alexander Sokurov was president of the seven-person jury, featuring German director Burhan Qurbani, Egyptian producer Gaby Khoury, Mexican actress Naian Gonzalez Norvind, Brazilian director Karim Ainouz,...

Stars: Natalya Pavlenkova, Dmitriy Groshev, Irina Chipizhenko, Aleksandr Nekhoroshikh | Written and Directed by Ivan I. Tverdovskiy

The sophomore directorial feature of Russian youngster Ivan I. Tverdovskiy (he debuted in 2014 with Corrections Class), Zoology is an intriguing and sad slice of magical realism.

Natasha (Natalya Pavlenkova) is an asthenic middle-aged middle-manager, working at a zoo in a Russian coastal town. She’s lonely and shy and she lives with her elderly mother (Irina Chipizhenko). Natasha also has a tail. A real tail: a full, living continuation of the spine. The locals, including Natasha’s own mother, whisper rumours of a woman who’s “sinned with an ape”; a woman with three tails; a woman of the Devil. Local folklore is rife, isolating Natasha further. She finally decides to have her tail looked at by doctors, which brings her into contact with Peter (Dmitriy Groshev), a handsome young radiologist many years her junior.

This eccentric story of a Russian zookeeper who grows a tail is let down by a humdrum ending

You probably need to be Russian to be able to fully unpack the layers of satire and allegory in this defiantly oddball tale of personal growth. But the impact of the sheer weirdness of a story of a middle-aged zoo worker who grows a tail is universal. Natasha (Natalya Pavlenkova) is frumpy and unprepossessing, the butt of cruel jokes from her colleagues and the subject of a lifetime of nagging attrition from her mother. The tail that she grows – unexplained by the film or by the medical professionals she visits – is hairless, pink and obscenely phallic. It offers, however, an escape from the dour grey of Natasha’s life. She enters into a relationship with a younger doctor who seems to be attracted to her just as she is. She sails through...

A zoo-worker’s unexpected new addition triggers an affair in this fable about conformity, reactionary sexual politics and religious fervour

There are strains of Gogol and Kafka in this intriguing if flawed movie from Russian director Ivan I Tverdovskiy, shot in a restless handheld style, the camera roaming and panning across a dreary workaday world. It all makes his sudden money shot all the more striking: the sight of a certain anatomical abnormality.

Our careworn heroine is Natasha (Natalya Pavlenkova), who works in a zoo. Natasha’s only pleasure is wandering there after-hours, feeding the animals herself with strictly forbidden fruit and buns. One afternoon, she faints, apparently as a result of a fusion of midlife crisis and animal-empathy epiphany; when she awakes she is growing a tail, which triggers a new youthful sensuality and a relationship with the handsome young doctor Petya (Dmitriy Groshev) treating her.

Continue reading...

Eichinger’s Hands Of A Mother won three prizes at the German Cinema New Talent Awards.

Florian Eichinger’s third feature Hands Of A Mother (Die Hände meiner Mutter) was the big winner at this year’s German Cinema New Talent Awards held during the 34th edition of Filmfest München (23 June - 2 July) which ended at the weekend with the international premiere of Matt Ross’ Captain Fantastic.

Eichinger received the £33k (€30k) award for Best Direction, while his lead actor Andreas Döhler was named Best Actor for his performance as a man who breaks his self-denial to recall having been sexually abused as a child by his mother.

The co-production by Kinescope Film and Bergfilm with Zdf’s Das kleine Fernsehspiel unit, which is the final part of Eichinger’s trilogy about violence within the family after 2008’s Bergfest and 2013’s Nordstrand, will be released theatrically in German cinemas by Farbfilm Verleih on 1 December. International sales are...