News

Films from parts of the world plagued by war and other hardships dominate the Venice Film Festival’s independently run Giornate Degli Autori that will open with Ukrainian-born director Vladlena Sandu’s autobiographical film “Memory” that revisits her traumatic childhood memories in war-torn Chechnya.

The competition of the Giornate – which is also known as Venice Days – comprises 10 world premieres, none of which are english-language titles. They hail from countries including Iran, Lebanon Kenya, Lithuania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mexico, Spain, Greece and Italy.

The selection features another filmmaker, Germany-based Russian filmmaker Nastia Korkia, re-elaborating the Chechnyan conflict in “A Short Summer,” the story of eight-year-old Katya, who goes on vacation with her grandparents just as the war in Chechnya breaks out.

“In many of the selected titles the goal is life, building lives, relationships. One tries to process grief in order to overcome it and try hard to see the world...

Venice parallel section Giornate degli Autori has unveiled the line-up for its 22nd edition.

The main competition, showcasing 10 features, will open with Ukrainian artist and filmmaker Vladlena Sandu’s Memory, a deeply personal work piecing together childhood memories of life in Chechnya’s capital of Grozny amid the violence of the First Chechen War.

The Chechen Wars also loom large in exiled Germany-based Russian director Nastia Korkia’s Short Summer about an eight -year-old girl vacationing with her grandparents as their marriage crumbles and the conflict in the North Caucasus spills into everyday Russian life.

Further contenders include Spanish director Gabriel Azorín Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes, following two men who return from the front and seek out an ancient thermal bath, the mysterious waters of which giving them the courage to say things they have never before told anyone.

Kenyan filmmaker Damien Hauser, who made waves...

Politically-charged dramas and documentaries from Ukraine to Iran, and from Mexico to Kenya will share the spotlight at the Venice film festival’s Venice Days sidebar, which announced its 2025 lineup today.

The diverse program ranges from the section’s opening night film, the autobiographical drama Memory Ukrainian artist and filmmaker Vladlena Sandu, a survivor of the war in Chechnya, who studies her traumatic memories in order to transcend and transform them via the art of cinema; to Spanish director Gabriel Azorín’s Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes about two young men returning from the front who spend a day of confession and revelation in an ancient Roman thermal bath; to Memory of Princess Mumbi, from Kenyan filmmaker Damien Hauser that combines elements of sci-fi, mockumentary and animation to tell a dystopian fable set in an imaginary Africa in the year 2093 after an A.I.-precipitated disaster.

‘Memory...

Damien Hauser’s Memory Of Princess Mumbi is among 10 features in competition at Giornate degli Autori, the independent sidebar of Venice Film Festival.

The latest feature from Swiss-Kenyan director Hauser is a dystopian fable set in an imaginary Africa in 2093, in which a young filmmaker attempts to make a documentary about a global conflict from 20 years earlier.

Scroll down for the full list of features

Hauser produced the film with Shandra Apondi and former Red Sea Film Festival director of international programming Kaleem Aftab. It is Hauser’s fourth feature; his previous film After The Long Rains played at BFI London Film Festival last year.

Exclusive: France’s Totem Films has boarded Anna Roller’s adaptation of best-selling novel Allegro Pastell and will launch global sales in Cannes.

Now in post-production, the German-language film is about a novelist and web designer who have a seemingly perfect long-distance relationship. They balance sleepless nights in Berlin with peaceful retreat until their delicate balance of space and intimacy is shaken up when one begins to question the future.

Sylvaine Falingrant, Jannis Niewohner and Haley Louise Jones star.

Allegro Pastell is produced by Tobias Walker and Phillip Worm of German outfit Walker + Worm, who are fresh off What Marielle Knows...

Two very different films produced by Hamburg-based Tamtam Film are playing at Filmfest Hamburg this year. Kerstin Polte’s Highly Explosive (Blindgänger) explores the impact of an unexploded World War II bomb on Hamburg residents, while Danish filmmaker Charlotte Sieling’s Way Home is about a father travelling to war-torn Syria to find his Isis fighter son.

The premieres cap a busy period for the Tamtam co-founders Andrea Schütte and Dirk Decker, who are in the midst of shooting Kai Stänicke’s debut feature Der Heimatlose and have a number of projects in postproduction.

Schütte and Decker, who established Tamtam...

Paris-based international sales and production company Totem Films has revealed its production slate, with projects by Nastia Korkia, Vytautas Katkus, Ernst de Geer and Anna Roller.

Totem Atelier, the development and production arm of the company, has revealed that it has boarded Korkia’s “A Short Summer.”

Korkia’s short documentary “Dreams About Putin” premiered at IDFA last year. Her first documentary feature “Ges-2” premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2021.

“A Short Summer” is produced by Germany’s TamTam (“Pacifiction” by Albert Serra) together with independent producer Natalia Drozd (“Compartment N°6” by Juho Kuosmanen) and Serbia’s Art&Popcorn.

The film centers on eight-year-old Katya, who is going on vacation with her grandparents. In the summer heat, the war in Chechnya takes shape, while her grandparents’ relationship falls apart. Despite her youth, Katya wants to look at the world straight in the eyes.

“A Short Summer” has received support from Creative Europe Media,...

The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam has revealed its lineups for the competitions for short documentary and youth documentary, as well as the rosters for its Best of Fests section and its newly minted Signed section. In total, 100 films have been included in the IDFA program to date.

In addition, IDFA Forum, the festival’s co-production and co-financing market, has expanded to a total of 64 projects, including seven by Ukrainian filmmakers.

The 36th edition of IDFA runs from Nov. 8 to 19 in Amsterdam.

The competition for short documentary showcases a healthy boom for the short film form. A mosaic of styles and themes defines this selection of 15 films, exploring everything a short documentary can be. An international jury of three jurors will award the best film.

Pegah Ahangarani returns to IDFA with a personal telling of family history and their experience of the Iranian revolution in “My Father,” and Nastia Korkia...

The sun shines while the snow melts. There is a small feeling of hopeful anticipation in the crisply-shot city. But the domesticated and dark interiors tell a far different story — the simple life of Tamara, a primary school teacher. In stark, long, observational shots that betray Director Nastia Korkia’s background in documentary filmmaking, she attends school, teaches class, then is assigned the specific job of overseeing the votes at the Presidential Election. Moving at a slow and methodical pace, Almost Spring (Pochti Vesna) presents the corruption of Vladimir Putin and the United Russia party as a brutal foregone conclusion. The effect is notably chilling, displaying how normalised cheating has sadly become in everyday Russian life. As part of the film’s online premiere here on Dn, we asked Korkia to tell us all about shooting on film, recreating the feel of a traditional Russian school and what filmmakers from...

Exclusive: The Europe-based Pop Up Film Residency mentorship program has unveiled the filmmakers and mentors who will participate in its summer 2022 edition.

The program, which is among a number of feature development initiatives spearheaded by former TorinoFilmLab artistic director Matthieu Darras, consists of three-week residences focused on one project only in different locations across Europe.

Mentors for the upcoming edition include French director Lucile Hadžihalilović, who won San Sebastian’s Special Jury Prize last year for gothic psychological horror Earwig; Paraguayan filmmaker Marcelo Martinessi, whose debut film The Heiresses broke out with a Berlinale Silver Bear victory in 2018, and Marie Amachoukeli, a Caméra d’Or winner in 2014 for first film Party Girl, who is currently completing her first solo feature.

Confirmed feature directors joining the programme include Brazil’s Caru Alves de Souza, whose joint work with Raffaella Costa, My Name Is Baghdad won best film in the Berlinale...

True/False, the preeminent non-fiction festival, returned as an in-person event Thursday, drawing documentary notables and fans of their work to a Missouri college town for the first lineup under the artistic direction of Chloe Trayner.

There were 31 features and 19 short non-fiction films at the fest, which had more of an international tilt than usual and concludes March 6. Eight features, including “Fire of Love,” “I Didn’t See You There” and “The Territory,” had previously debuted virtually at Sundance in January, but screened for the first time for public audiences at True/False.

Their respective directors — Sara Dosa (“Fire of Love”), Reid Davenport (“I Didn’t See You There”) Alex Pritz (“The Territory”) – were among the filmmakers making the trek to Columbia for the 19th edition of True/False. Fellow Sundance 2022 doc directors including Isabel Castro (“Mija”) and Joe Hunting (“We Met in Virtual Reality”) also attended.

“Sundance was amazing, but True...

Filmed over the course of one year, “Where Are We Headed?” – recently picked up by Taskovski Films – took director-cinematographer Ruslan Fedotow down into the Moscow Metro, where he found joy and sorrow commuting alongside each other every day. World premiering at IDFA, where it also got the support of the Bertha Fund, it played in EnergaCamerimage Film Festival’s Documentary Features Competition.

“I was thinking about this idea for a long time,” Fedotow tells Variety. “When I used to live in Belarus, taking the metro wasn’t just about getting from one point to another. I liked to observe people there. It’s a public space, like a library, a whole different life happening underground.”

Admitting that the pandemic has influenced his plans, he still spent two and a half years developing the film. Showing the metro as a place where people escape the cold, read, meet up and celebrate.

Taskovski Films has acquired two further documentaries: Ruslan Fedotov’s “Where Are We Headed,” which plays in International Competition at IDFA, and Pilar Moreno and Ana Endara Mislov’s “For Your Peace of Mind, Make Your Own Museum,” which plays in the festival’s Envision Competition. The sales agency recently picked up “Turn Your Body to the Sun,” which world premieres in the International Competition section of IDFA.

“Where Are We Headed” is a year-long study of Russia’s capital conducted in the Moscow Metro, and captures the day-to-day life of ordinary city dwellers as well as momentous national occasions. “It is a study with elements of absurdist tragicomedy, with no central characters; instead, it is a wide-angle portrait of society with all the joys and challenges that it entails,” Taskovski commented.

The producers are Fedotov, Nastia Korkia, Matvey Fiks and Simon Zakruzhnyy for Pinery.

Fedotov’s first movie “Salamanca...

Locarno 2021 Golden Leopard Winner

The 74th edition of the Locarno Film Festival came to a close over the weekend, with Indonesian film director Edwin scooping the Golden Leopard in the International Competition with Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash. Elsewhere in the International Competition, the Golden Leopard for Best Direction went to Abel Ferrara for Zeroes And Ones, while Qiu Jiongjiong’s A New Old Play won the Special Jury Prize. Best Actress went to Anastasiya Krasovskaya for Gerda, while Best Actor was shared by Mohamed Mellali and Valero Escolar from The Odd-Job Men. Special mentions went to Soul Of A Beast and Espiritu Sagrado.

Venice Completes Line-Up

Venice Film Festival finalized its line-up today with the addition of three titles. They are: Graziano Conversano’s 52-minute documentary Ricostruire insieme – Biennale Architettura, which looks at the themes, works and figures of the 2021 Biennale architecture festival; Nastia Korkia’s docGes – 2, a visual reflection upon the project by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop to renovate a former power plant in the centre of Moscow; and finally, Antonello Sarno’s Pietro Il Grande, a tribute to photojournalist Pietro Coccia, who died in 2018.