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The 15th edition of the Beijing International Film Festival will feature 15 films in its Forward Future section, which highlights first and second features from new directors. Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr will serve as jury president for the section. The festival runs April 18 to 26 in Beijing.

Established in 2014, Forward Future is dedicated to directors early in their careers. This year’s program includes titles from China, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Two Chinese titles, The Botanist by Jing Yi and Floating Clouds Obscure the Sun by Tao Shen, are part of the lineup. The Botanist made its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival.

Also screening in the section are Peacock by Austrian writer-director Bernhard Wenger, The Lonely Musketeer by Nicolai Schumann, and The Poet by Felix Umarov. Other selections include Nobody Wants to Shoot a Woman by Kerry Ann Enright, My Eternal Summer by Sylvia Le Fanu, and At the Bench by Yoshiyuki Okuyama.

The Beijing International Film Festival has unveiled the 15 titles that will screen in the Forward Future section of its 15th edition later this month.

The Forward Future section, launched in 2014, is dedicated to discovering and promoting new filmmakers, focusing on directors’ first or second features. Hungarian director, screenwriter, and producer Béla Tarr (Damnation, Satan’s Tango, The Man From London) will serve as the president of the jury for the Forward Future program. Rounding out his jury will be Chinese actress Jin Chen, also known as Gina Jin, Chinese actor Song Yang, Japanese director, screenwriter and actor Sabu, and Swiss director and screenwriter Cyril Schäublin.

Beijing organizers promise “innovative” spirit, “unique styles,” and “cutting-edge” filmmaking in the Forward Future section, along with insight into the thinking and concerns of young filmmakers from all over the world.

Featured in the program are movies from first-time Chinese directors, namely Jing Yi’s The Botanist,...

Prominent Icelandic auteur Rúnar Rúnarsson who was Oscar-nominated in 2006 for his short film “The Last Farm,” was handed out the Göteborg Film Festival’s hefty SEK400,000 Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film for his fourth feature “When the Light Breaks” at tonight’s closing gala of the festival’s 48th edition.

Shot in 16mm, the subtle coming-of-age drama starring Elín Hall world premiered last May as the opening film of the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section.

The story turns on Una, a young art student who encounters love, friendship, sorrow and beauty during on a long summer day in Iceland. The jury for Best Nordic Film including filmmakers Ella Lemhagen, Philippe Lesage, Athina Rachel Tsangari, cinematographer Jp Passi and actor Frida Gustavsson, said the film was awarded the festival’s top prize “for its masterfully calibrated mise en scène, its sensitivity and delicate lightness, its director’s unexpectedly uplifting treatment of grief,...

Runar Runarsson’s Icelandic feature When The Light Breaksled the winners at the 48th Goteborg Film Festival, taking the Dragon Award for best Nordic film.

Runarsson’s film, which opened the Cannes Un Certain Regard sidebar in May last year, received the 400,000 Sek Goteborg prize.

Scroll down for the full list of winners

The jury awarded the film “for its masterfully calibrated mise-en-scene, its sensitivity and delicate lightness, its director’s unexpectedly uplifting treatment of grief, acutely portrayed by a perfect young ensemble”.

A special mention went to Sylvia Le Fanu’s My Eternal Summer.

Eirik Svensson’sSafe House, which...

Goteborg Film Festival has unveiled the programme for its 48th edition, with 22 feature world premieres and four feature competition sections.

World premiere titles include Asier Urbieta’s Spanish thriller Pheasant Island in the international competition section. The debut feature from Spanish filmmaker Urbieta sees a young Basque couple’s relationship put to the test when a dead body is found on the mysterious titular island.

Scroll down for the feature competition sections

It is one of 18 films in the international competition, alongside 2024 festival favourites Santosh, To A Land Unknown and All We Imagine As Light.

The nine-strong Nordic competition includes three world premieres.

Scandinavia’s biggest film-tv event, the Göteborg Film Festival, has unveiled the complete lineup for its 48th edition, due to unspool Jan. 24-Feb. 2 in Sweden’s second largest city.

For her first gig as artistic director, Pia Lundberg and her team will be treating the festival’s usual 270,000-plus film fans in theaters and online to a rich program of 270 films from 83 countries, including 25 world premieres.

Setting the tone for this year’s overarching theme of “Disobedience” and civil resistance will be the opening film “Safe House” by Norwegian helmer Eirik Svensson starring “Sick of Myself”’s Kristine Kujath Thorp and “Gladiator 2”’s Alexander Karim. Based on the real-life story of Doctors Without Borders’ Director General in Norway Lindin Hurum, the story is set in a refugee camp during the 2013 civil war in the Central African Republic. Norwegian aid worker Linn is under severe pressure as she strives to...

In My Eternal Summer, filmmaker Sylvia Le Fanu immerses us in the painful world of Fanny, a 15-year-old girl dealing with the approaching death of her mother, Karin. Set against the tranquil backdrop of a coastal Danish summer, the film unfolds like a delicate tapestry stitched with threads of familial love and existential dread.

Fanny’s sun-soaked days are marred by the reality of her mother’s fatal illness, a spectre that hangs over every seemingly blissful moment. As Fanny navigates the dangerous waters of adolescence, she is forced to confront the profound pain that comes with the fragility of life—a stark contrast to the joyous abandon often associated with summer.

The film’s emotional terrain is rich and complex, diving deeply into the intricacies of grief and the unwavering love that binds this family. Le Fanu avoids melodrama in favour of a nuanced, almost clinical portrayal of the...

My Eternal Summer. Sylvia Le Fanu on the writing process: 'The way we write, we work a lot from memories and that's where we start' Photo: Courtesy of San Sebastian Film Festival Denmark-based British director Sylvia Le Fanu’s debut My Eternal Summer (Min Evige Sommer) draws on her own experience of losing her mum at a young age to paint a vivid and poignant picture of a family spending a last summer together, with all its emotional ups and downs. Fanny (Kaya Toft Loholt) is a typical teenager and those emotions don’t stop even though her mum Karin (Maria Rossing), is terminally ill. Le Fanu and her co-writer Mads Lind Knudsen unsentimentally chart the last weeks of Karin’s life as she, Fanny and Fanny’s dad Johan (Anders Mossling) navigate them as best they can. We caught up with Le Fanu after the film’s premiere in...

Told through the eyes of 15-year-old Fanny (Kaya Toft Loholt), the intimate, deeply moving My Eternal Summer (Min Evige Sommer) observes an eventful vacation spent waiting for Fanny’s terminally ill mother, Karin (Maria Rossing), to die. In delicately balanced scenes filled with poignant detail, Denmark-based director Sylvia Le Fanu (making her feature debut) and her co-writer Mads Lind Knudsen unfurl a very Scandinavian portrait of a highly cultured bourgeois family facing a terrible trauma with stoicism, humor and quite a bit of drinking, often in tastefully decorated rooms.

After premiering in the New Directors strand at San Sebastian, the drama takes a short break to play in the BFI London Film Festival in another competitive strand. Its accessible depth of feeling could help it win distribution beyond the Nordic realms.

Although Fanny appears in practically every scene in the film, the camera does occasionally break away to spend moments...

Sylvia Le Fanu, a Danish filmmaker, will premiere her first feature film “My Eternal Summer” at the San Sebastian International Film Festival in Spain. The festival is known for showcasing new talent in movies from around the world. “My Eternal Summer” tells the story of a family spending one last summer together at their beach home. Le Fanu co-wrote the screenplay with Mads Lind Knudsen.

The film focuses on 15-year-old Fanny and her parents as they go about familiar routines like reading, swimming, and walks along the shore. However, beneath the surface is an unspoken sadness—the mother has a terminal illness and this will be her final summer with her family. “As they seek to treasure the time they have left together, the family navigates balancing cherishing the present and facing the future,” the synopsis says.

In a teaser trailer, Fanny asks her mother to describe herself in three words for a personality test.

Sylvia Le Fanu‘s feature debut My Eternal Summer, which is set to have its world premiere in the New Directors lineup of the San Sebastian International Film Festival, now has a teaser trailer.

“Fifteen-year-old Fanny and her parents retreat to their summer house, embracing familiar routines: reading, swimming, and walking,” a synopsis of the movie from the Copenhagen-based writer and director with British roots explains. “Beneath the quiet simplicity, an unspoken grief lingers — they know it will be her mother’s last summer. As they try to seize the days they have left together, the family navigates the delicate balance between cherishing the present and facing what’s to come.”

In the trailer, Fanny is shown asking her mother, for a personality test, which three words describe her best. After the mother proposes some options, Fanny’s father chimes in with an unwelcome contribution.

Le Fanu wrote the screenplay...

The 68th BFI London Film Festival has unveiled its star-studded 2024 lineup, featuring Angelina Jolie, Elton John, Daniel Craig, Florence Pugh, Andrew Garfield, Saoirse Ronan, and more in a program boasting 39 world premieres and 12 international premieres among its 253 feature, short, series and immersive works.

The festival’s headline gala screenings will showcase a range of high-profile films. The world premiere of Steve McQueen’s “Blitz” starring Ronan opens the festival, while Morgan Neville’s “Piece by Piece” closes it.

Other gala screenings include R.J. Cutler and David Furnish’s “Elton John: Never Too Late,” Sean Baker’s “Anora,” Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice” starring Sebastian Stan, Andrea Arnold’s “Bird,” Edward Berger’s “Conclave” with Ralph Fiennes, Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez,” Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths,” Ben Taylor’s “Joy,” Pablo Larraín’s “Maria” featuring Jolie, Marielle Heller’s “Nightbitch” starring Amy Adams, Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door...

The BFI London Film Festival (Lff) 2024 will screen documentaries about “witches,” and zoos and animal rescue centers in Argentina, first features from directors of varied backgrounds, and Ali Abbas’ Donald Trump film The Apprentice in its gala lineup organizers said on Wednesday as they unveiled the full program for this year’s event.

Overall, Lff will screen 253 titles, including features films, shorts, series, and immersive works, that hail from 79 countries and feature 64 languages. Of the total, 112 works are made by female and non-binary filmmakers, or 44 percent of the program, the fest said.

The London doc lineup includes the likes of Elizabeth Sankey’s 90-minute goth-y Witches, which posits a connection between historical witchery and post-partum psychological suffering and debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Meanwhile, the first feature program at Lff includes Denise Fernandes’ Hanami, which recently world-premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, and Neo Sora’s Happyend, which debuted...

TrustNordisk has boarded international sales on Sylvia Le Fanu’s My Eternal Summer ahead of its world premiere at San Sebastian Film Festival this month.

The film will debut in the New Directors strand at San Sebastian. It is the debut feature for UK director Le Fanu, who has previously made shorts including Adnan’s Father and Amourteur.

My Eternal Summer follows a 15-year-old at the family summer house with her parents, for what will be the mother’s final time.

The film is written by Le Fanu and Mads Lind Knudsen, produced by Jeppe Wowk for Denmark’s Adomeit Film...

Johnny Depp‘s second directorial feature Modi – Three Days on the Wing of Madness will premiere out of competition at the 72nd San Sebastian Film Festival.

The film fest released the updates to its program Tuesday. Depp’s movie is a biopic on Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani.

The actor, widely considered a controversial figure in Hollywood following the legal frenzy around his split from actress Amber Heard, first made his debut behind the camera with The Brave in 1997.

He received the prestigious Donostia Award at the 2021 San Sebastian Film Festival for his lifetime achievement.

Modi – Three Days on the Wing of Madness stars Riccardo Scamarcio as the Bohemian artist Modigliani, in a film which also features Al Pacino, Stephen Graham and Antonia Desplat. “The film, a tale of art, love, and rejection, follows a 72-hour whirlwind of chaotic events through the streets and bars of a Paris torn apart during World War I,...

The San Sebastian film festival (September 20-28) has added four titles to its official selection, including Modi - Three Days On The Wing Of Madness, directed by Johnny Depp.

The film will premiere out of competition, and sees Riccardo Scamarcio play Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani. It also stars Stephen Graham, Al Pacino and Antonia Desplat. Depp was given a lifetime achievement award by the festival in 2021.

It marks Depp’s second feature as director after The Brave, which premiered in Competition at Cannes in 1997.

In special screenings, Cannes general delegate Thierry Frémaux will present Lumiere! The Adventure Continues, a sequel to Lumière!

The San Sebastian film festival (September 20-28) has added four titles to its official selection, including Modi - Three Days On The Wing Of Madness, directed by Johnny Depp.

The film will premiere out of competition, and sees Riccardo Scamarcio play artist Amedeo Modigliani. It also stars Stephen Graham, Al Pacino and Antonia Desplat. Depp was given a lifetime achievement award by the festival in 2021.

In special screenings, Cannes general delegate Thierry Frémaux will present Lumiere! The Adventure Continues, a sequel to Lumière! The Adventure Begins, which reveals another hundred restored Lumière films.

Two new titles have also joined the New Directors strand.