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Amy Adams has been tapped to star in At the Sea, a new drama from Kornel Mundruczó and Kata Wéber — the director and writer of such acclaimed films as Pieces of a Woman and White God — as well as Hammerstone Studios, Ryder Picture Company and Ar Content.

Set to enter production in Boston in June, the film follows the life of Laura (Adams) after a long rehabilitation, as she returns to her family at their beach holiday home where she has to readjust to the complicated life she left behind. Now she is forced to face the following next chapter of her life without the career that gave her fame, fortune and, most importantly, identity.

Pic will be produced by Alexander Rodnyansky of Ar Content, Stuart Manashil, Aaron Ryder and Andrew Swett for Ryder Picture Company, Hammerstone Studios’ Alex Lebovici and Jon Oakes, and Viktória Petrányi and Mundruczó. Exec producers are Paul J. Diaz, Maria Breese of 3:33 Creative, Lee Broda of Lb Entertainment, Jeff Rice of Jeff Rice Films, and Michael Kupisk. Zsofi Oblath and Rachel Rubin will co-produce.

Ar Content, Paul J. Diaz, and Hammerstone Studios will finance the film, with WME Independent to rep domestic rights, Capstone Pictures handling international, and Sacker Law to oversee production legal.

A six-time Academy Award nominee, Adams most recently wrapped production on 3000 Pictures’ Klara and the Sun, the next film from Oscar winner Taika Waititi, which adapts the dystopian sci-fi story from Kazuo Ishiguro. Up next, she’ll be seen starring in Searchlight Pictures’ Nightbitch from filmmaker Marielle Heller, a dark comedy she also produced through her production company Bond Group Entertainment that hits theaters December 6.

A married director-writer pair out of Hungary, Mundruczó and Wéber are perhaps best known for their 2020 pregnancy drama Pieces of a Woman, which premiered in Venice and brought star Vanessa Kirby her first Oscar nomination following its release on Netflix. Prior to that, the duo collaborated on White God, which won the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes in 2014; Jupiter’s Moon, which was nominated for the Palme d’Or; and Evolution, which also played the French festival. Separately, Mundruczó directed the pilot of the Apple TV+ limited series, The Crowded Room, starring Tom Holland and Amanda Seyfried.

Most recently, Hammerstone produced the action thriller Boy Kills World starring Bill Skarsgård, which will release wide on April 26, and the horror-thriller Don’t Move, starring Kelsey Asbille and Finn Wittrock, for Netflix.

Ryder Picture Company has produced acclaimed titles like Dumb Money and Bruiser.

Ar Content is known for Cannes prize winners like 2019’s Beanpole, from filmmaker Kantemir Balagov, and 2021’s Unclenching the Fists from Kira Kovalenko.

Adams is represented by WME, Linden Entertainment, and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern. Mundruczó and Wéber are repped by United Agents and Novo.

So Daddy, I’m Finally Through: Kovalenko Explores Familial Dysfunction in Rural Melodrama

The suppression of women by the heteropatriarchy is tale as ancient as civilization, depicted endlessly across ages and cultures. For her sophomore film Unclenching the Fists, director Kira Kovalenko brings us the isolated region of North Ossetia in the Caucasus for one such tale, in which a young woman is literally locked down so she will never leave her needy father. Of course, the imprisonment is more than just physical, but this straightforward portrait of one particular family’s dysfunction reveals secrets and alliances upon a surprise reunion when a prodigal son returns.…...

Unclenching the Fists, the sophomore feature from Russian director Kira Kovalenko, is set in Mizur, a small mining town in North Ossetia, one of seven autonomous republics in the perpetually unsettled constellation that is the North Caucasus. The liminal setting—at once vertiginous and cramped, as though a town sprouted up from the bottom of an avalanche—is key to the film’s moods, swinging from yearning to resignation and back. We root for the film’s young central character, Ada, played by Milana Aguzarova in a remarkable debut, to free herself from these shadows upon shadows—her brute father, her lapdog brother, a pile-up […]

The post “Giving Birth to Ourselves”: Kira Kovalenko on Unclenching the Fists first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Unclenching the Fists, the sophomore feature from Russian director Kira Kovalenko, is set in Mizur, a small mining town in North Ossetia, one of seven autonomous republics in the perpetually unsettled constellation that is the North Caucasus. The liminal setting—at once vertiginous and cramped, as though a town sprouted up from the bottom of an avalanche—is key to the film’s moods, swinging from yearning to resignation and back. We root for the film’s young central character, Ada, played by Milana Aguzarova in a remarkable debut, to free herself from these shadows upon shadows—her brute father, her lapdog brother, a pile-up […]

The post “Giving Birth to Ourselves”: Kira Kovalenko on Unclenching the Fists first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Kira Kovalenko's Unclenching the Fists is showing exclusively on Mubi starting May 23, 2023, in many countries in the series Viewfinder.Unclenching the Fists.Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it has been almost impossible for members of the global film industry to ignore cinema’s soft power potential as a propagandistic tool of imperialism. Scrutiny over the ethics of supporting films funded by the Russian Ministry of Culture or tied in other ways to state oppression has ignited debate over what Russian culture constitutes—and exposed the fallacy of a monolithic identity within the lands the Kremlin claims as its own. Director Kira Kovalenko’s sophomore feature Unclenching the Fists (2021) counts Russia as its country of production (and was its official Oscar submission). But it was shot in the Ossetian language, in North Ossetia, an official...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Broker (Hirokazu Kor-eda)

The title of writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s new film is also the job title of two of its three leads: Broker. They’re like most other brokers: they sell goods on behalf of an invested owner. It’s just that instead of money-grubbing elite, they sell on behalf of anonymous new mothers. And instead of, let’s say, real estate, they sell babies. It sounds downright evil, but it’s quite the opposite. They traffic children in a good way. – Luke H. (full review)

Where to Stream: Hulu

The Innocent (Louis Garrel)

Eternally the rebellious loverboy of the Sarkozy era, Louis Garrel, now at 40, is seemingly easing into an elder statesman role. No longer too brooding a presence, and...

We’ve said it quite a bit over the past few years, but the Mubi streaming service is one of the most underrated subscription services for film fans. Up there with The Criterion Channel, Mubi is a showcase of some of the best films from around the world, featuring selections that you likely wouldn’t be able to see anywhere else. One such film is the forthcoming drama, “Unclenching the Fists.”

Read More: ‘Unclenching the Fists:’ A Bleak, Unflinching Russian Coming-of-Age Tale [TIFF Review]

And in honor of “Unclenching the Fists” making its debut on Mubi this week, we’re thrilled to give our readers an exclusive look at the trailer for the film.

Continue reading ‘Unclenching The Fists’ Exclusive Trailer: Kira Kovalenko’s Award-Winning Drama Arrives On Mubi This Week at The Playlist.

A quietly phenomenal performance by Milana Aguzarova as a young woman trying to break free from the unsettling relationships within her stifling family

Like her partner Kantemir Balagov’s 2019 film Beanpole, there’s an uncanny claustrophobic charge to Kira Kovalenko’s family drama, though it finally exhales an equally powerful sigh of self-redemption. Milana Aguzarova stars as Ada, a young woman in a North Ossetian mining town trapped by her ailing and possessive father Zaur (Alik Karaev). He guards the only front door key, letting her and her siblings out when he chooses, and refuses to let her have an operation to correct injuries sustained during a school hostage-taking that mean she has to wear an incontinence nappy.

Ada’s brother Akim (Soslan Khugaev) comes home from the city of Rostov and seems to have the self-possession and moral compass Zaur does not. He promises to get her the treatment...

A Russian court has issued a warrant for the arrest of prominent international film producer Alexander Rodnyansky as well as theater director Ivan Vyrypaev for “spreading false information about the war” in Ukraine.

The court document states that it plans to arrest the two – both of whom live outside of Russia right now – once Russian authorities detain them or are able to get them extradited.

Rodnyansky, who has long been known for working with Russia’s grassroot filmmakers such as Leviathan and Loveless helmer Andrey Zvyaginstev and Kira Kovalenko, who won Un Certain Regard in Cannes in 2021, spoke with Deadline today when he first learned of the news and said he is probably “not the first and definitely not the last” of people who will be targeted for standing up to the Russian regime.

“This is crazy – I’m just laughing about it,” said the Kyiv-born media mogul. “They have arrested me in absentia,...

Mubi has announced its lineup of streaming offerings for next month, including a Béla Tarr double bill, with new 4K restorations of Damnation and Sátántangó, Léa Mysius’ The Five Devils, Radu Jude’s short The Potemkinists, and Kira Kovalenko’s Unclenching the Fists.

They will also present a series on past Cannes Film Festival selections with films by Abderrahmane Sissako, Alice Rohrwacher, Djibril Diop Mambéty, Jeremy Saulnier, and more. Ana Vaz’s The Age of Stone and most recent work It is Night in America will arrive on the service, plus a Merchant Ivory series.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

May 1 – Blind Spot, directed by Claudia von Alemann | What Sets Us Free? German Feminist Cinema

May 2 – Heat and Dust, directed by James Ivory | Gilded Passions: Films by Merchant Ivory

May 3 – Damnation, directed by Béla Tarr | Béla Tarr: A Double Bill

May 4 – The Bostonians, directed by...

When Deadline featured Alexander Rodnyansky for its International Disruptors column back in 2021, the media mogul said he’d “had five lives” when looking back at his prolific media career which spanned documentary filmmaking, founding Ukraine’s first indie TV network 1+1, managing Russian media company Ctc and producing indie films.

But now, one and a half years after that interview, the Kyiv-born super producer has embarked on yet another life, but this time far away from the country in which he built his career. Last year, one week after Russia invaded Ukraine, Rodnyansky fled his Moscow home of two decades with his wife and one suitcase. Having made no secret of his opposition to the war, the producer got wind that he was rousing suspicion within Russia’s top government heads and decided to sever ties with the country.

“We left the house and everything and since that moment I...

First-time writer-director Malika Musaeva is set to make history at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, where her female-centered coming-of-age drama “The Cage is Looking for a Bird” is the first Chechen-language film ever selected by the venerable German fest.

Musaeva’s debut, which world premieres Feb. 22 in the festival’s competitive Encounters section, focuses on a group of Chechen women living in a remote rural village, where they must defend their freedom and the right to live their own lives.

At the film’s heart is a friendship between two teenage girls, played by first-time actors Khadizha Bataeva and Madina Akkieva. On the precipice of adulthood, the duo seeks refuge in each other as they navigate difficult decisions about their futures.

“The Cage is Looking for a Bird” is produced by Hype Studios, the recently launched outfit of producer Ilya Stewart, whose upcoming slate includes new features from...

The exiled Russian producer is in Berlin with Encounters title ’The Cage Is Looking For A Bird’.

Berlin-based Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov’s The Disappearance, set to star August Diehl as Josef Mengele, will shoot in South America this summer, confirmed Ilya Stewart, the film’s exiled Russia producer of Hype Studios, at the European Film Market this weekend.

The director will move straight onto it after the completion of his latest feature, Limonov. A sales agent is likely to be announced in time for Cannes. Diehl will play the Nazi war criminal during the years he hid out in Brazil.

A Bird Looking for a Cage

Russian filmmaker Malika Musaeva won’t be on too many radars, but for those keeping a watchful eye on the Alexander Sokurov factory (that produced the likes of Kantemir Balagov and Kira Kovalenko) will want to keep tabs on this name come next May. So far with three short films under her name, with A Bird Looking for a Cage said to be ready for last year’s Cannes. We imagine production would have taken place around the time of the pandemic in a Chechen village of local non actors.

Gist: Tbd.

Release Date/Prediction: We assume that Cannes did have a first look last year, so this could be headed to a Berlinale or Locarno – where Sokurov premiered his last feature.…...

Russia’s relationship with the world began to deteriorate after it invaded Ukraine in February — and the film industry was no exception.

This week, the country announced that it wouldn’t submit a film to the Best International Feature category for the 95th Oscars ceremony. Russia’s own Oscar committee said the decision was a surprise and resigned, but the decision didn’t come out of nowhere. For months, Russia’s presence at major film events has been a contentious subject.

In early March, festivals ranging from Cannes to Venice banned Russian delegations from their gatherings; on the 94th Oscars broadcast later that month, the Academy brought out Ukrainian-born Mila Kunis to condemn the war. The country wasn’t exactly welcome in Hollywood, at least not on its own terms.

Within its borders, Russia sows confusion more than solidarity and the latest announcement falls in line with that. Pavel Chukhray,...

Alexander Rodnyansky, the producer of Oscar nominated films “Leviathan” and “Loveless,” has boarded the next project from Kazakh director Adilkhan Yerzhanov (pictured), whose film “Goliath” has its world premiere at Venice Film Festival on Thursday in the Horizons Extra section.

The new project, “Nosorog,” tells a contemporary story of Tamara, a distraught woman on a desperate search for her missing son in a small town consumed by violent riots. To help get her son back, she hires a shady detective, Brayuk, with unexpected consequences.

Rodnyansky joins producers Aliya Mendygozhina and Olga Khlasheva on the project, which is a co-production between the State Center of Support of the National Cinema of Kazakhstan and Kazakh film company Golden Man Media.

Rodnyansky said: “My strategy has always been to work with the best directors from any country and I am very excited to be a part of a new film of Adilkhan Yerzhanov,...

The world premieres of Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light,” Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking” and Sebastian Lelio’s “The Wonder” will take place at the 2022 Telluride Film Festival, which announced its lineup on Thursday, one day before the festival begins.

Other notable films in the Telluride lineup include Alejandro G. Inarritu’s “Bardo,” Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All,” Todd Field’s “TÁR” and James Gray’s “Armageddon Time,” which are making their North American debuts after premiering at European festivals.

Among the documentaries heading to Telluride, premieres are Steve James’ “A Compassionate Spy,” Anton Corbijn’s “Squaring the Circle,” Ryan White’s “Good Night Oppy,” Mary McCartney’s “If These Walls Could Sing” and Eva Webber’s “Merkel.”

Also Read:

TIFF 2022 Lineup: Films From Tyler Perry, Peter Farrelly, Sam Mendes and Catherine Hardwicke to Premiere

Documentary director and film historian Mark Cousins will have two films at the festival,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSJean-Louis Trintignant directing A Full Day's Work (1973).The legendary French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant has died aged 91. Trintignant made his screen debut in 1956, starring alongside Brigitte Bardot in Roger Vadim's ...And God Created Woman. Since then, he has become one of the most well-known and well-respected performers in global cinema. The Guardian took a look back on his life in pictures, a filmography spanning more than 140 films and seven decades.Russian filmmakers Kantemir Balagov (Beanpole) and Kira Kovalenko (Unclenching the Fists) will present a series of films at the 49th edition of Telluride Film Festival in September. The pair, who are a couple, spoke recently with IndieWire about the war in Ukraine and their decision to relocate from Russia to the US. Like the rest of the Telluride program, their selections will not be...

Selection of Kantemir Balagov and Kira Kovalenko to be unveiled on September 2 opening day.

Telluride Film Festival will run from September 2-5 this year and has invited dissident Russian filmmakers Kantemir Balagov and Kira Kovalenko to be its guest directors.

Balagov directed Cannes 2017 Un Certain Regard Fipresci winner Closeness and followed that up with Beanpole, which premiered in the same section in 2019 and also won Fipresci, as well as the best director prize and made the shortlist as Russia’s Oscar submission. His next project, TV series The Last Of Us, is set to premiere on HBO in 2023.

Kovalenko’s...

Even as Cannes just wrapped up last month, and Tribeca is still going on this week, all eyes on the Festival circuit are turning towards Fall, and the all-important stops like Venice, Toronto, and Telluride that will be kicking off the fest circuit likely to set the table for awards season. And others are making early moves now as New York Film Festival organizers were in town last week holding a reception for studio and PR reps and press to pump up interest in their Fall festival even before that other aforementioned NY-based fest got rolling with its opening night. Leaders of the Toronto International Film Festival were also in town this Spring holding meetings and lunches to assure the industry it would be returning to business as usual in person this Fall. All the festival heads are busy seeing early previews of films that hope to use the Fall fests to launch Oscar campaigns.

On February 24, when Russia launched an unprompted military invasion of Ukraine, directors Kantemir Balagov and Kira Kovalenko hit the streets to protest.

“We really thought we could change something,” Balagov told IndieWire by phone this month from Los Angeles with Kovalenko on the line. “But later, when we found out real people in our homeland support this, we understood something terrible was happening. This Russian TV propaganda has brainwashed a lot of people. That moment was kind of a breaking point for us and we understood that we needed to get out of Russia.”

Over the past two years, the couple have been among the rising stars of the Russian film community: The 32-year-old Kovalenko’s 2021 drama “Unclenching the Fists” was the country’s official Oscar submission last year, while 30-year-old Balagov’s “Beanpole” was the submission the year prior. Once they realized that opposing the war would put them at risk,...

Predicting winners is always a fool’s errand in the Un Certain Regard section (the second-most prestigious competition of the Cannes Film Festival) and so it proved tonight, as the little-heralded French entry “The Worst Ones” (“Les Pires”), a debut feature from female directing duo Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret, was handed the top prize by jury president Valeria Golino — one of four first films to be recognized at the ceremony.

A playful film-within-a-film about the challenges and perils of street casting — following a film crew seeking out local non-professional actors for a shoot in a working-class French town — “The Worst Ones” surged past a number of buzzier critical favorites and hot distribution prospects to claim the award.

It’s the second consecutive female-directed feature to be named best in show: last year’s Prix Un Certain Regard went to Russian director Kira Kovalenko’s gritty coming-of-age drama “Unclenching the Fists.

As the war in Ukraine approaches a grim, three-month mile marker, and the Russian military continues its relentless onslaught, the harsh crackdown on domestic opposition by the Putin regime has left a beleaguered film industry pondering its next steps. Many Russian filmmakers fear they’ll have no choice but to toe the party line, or to flee a country that is increasingly being shut out of the international community.

Two-time Oscar nominee Alexander Rodnyansky, the Kyiv-born producer who has called Russia home for nearly three decades, left Moscow on March 1 after being tipped off that his opposition to the war had landed him in the government’s crosshairs. “I cut off my business ties with Russia,” the producer tells Variety. “I left behind everything.”

While a full-fledged exodus is not yet underway, many filmmakers are rethinking their futures. “I can’t see how I can be part of a [Russian film] community...

This review contains spoilers.

In light of the recent events in Ukraine, interest in “Klondike” seems to have spiked. The international Turkish-Ukrainian first premiered at Sundance this year, has been acquired by Mubi, and has since been making its rounds to other US film festivals. Most recently, Maryna Er Gorbach’s third feature met packed audiences at Sffilm last week. Little wonder, too – the film meditates upon the long-incoming tensions between Russia and Ukraine at the eastern borderlands in Donetsk.

“Klondike” takes place in July 2014 during the War in Donbas. Here, seven-months-pregnant Irka (Oksana Cherkashyna) lives an isolated life with her husband, Tolik (Serhi Shadrin) in the disputed territory of Donetsk. Their peace is precarious, however. It seems like everyone beyond the farm expects them to take sides while destroying Irka and Tolik’s land. Separatist friends drop by between explosions, expecting Tolik to join the movement. Irka’s nationalist...

Italian actor and director Valeria Golino has been set as jury president for the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival this year.

Golino is known for her work in English-language titles such as Rain Man and Hot Shots! and also directed 2018 Un Certain Regard selection Euphoria. She’ll be joined by U.S. filmmaker Debra Granik, Venezuelan actor Édgar Ramirez, Polish actress Joanna Kulig and French singer-songwriter and actor Benjamin Biolay.

This year’s Un Certain Regard features 20 films, including eight first films and nine from female directors.

“I have been to Cannes so many times, as an actress, as a director, in different selections,” said Golino in a statement. “It is the event of the month of May. It’s a party where you reconnect with friends. But it’s also the occasion to reflect: What path did I take? What have others done? What does...

Valeria Golino

Italian actress and film-maker Valeria Golino will be the President of the Jury of Un Certain Regard at the 75th Festival de Cannes.

The other four members of the jury comprise actress Joanna Kulig from Poland, actor Édgar Ramírez from Venezuela, director Debra Granik from the US and France’s singer-songwriter and actor Benjamin Biolay.

The jury will select the winners of this section of the Festival which celebrates young and upcoming filmmakers.

Un Certain Regard will feature 20 titles this year, including eight first films and nine films by female directors. Last year’s winner of Un Certain Regard was Russian filmmaker Kira Kovalenko’s Unclenching The Fists.

Golino says of her role: " I have been to Cannes so many times, as an actress, as a director, in different selections... It is the event of the month of May. It's a party, where you reconnect with friends. But...

Debra Granik, Joanna Kulig also on majority-female jury.

Italian filmmaker and actor Valeria Golino will head a majority-female jury for the Un Certain Regard section of the 75th Cannes Film Festival (May 17-28).

Alongside Golino on the five-person jury are US filmmaker Debra Granik; Joanna Kulig, the Polish lead of Cold War; Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramirez; and French singer-songwriter and actor Benjamin Biolay.

Having appeared as an actor in English-language films including Rain Man, Golino is recently known for her work as a director including 2018 Un Certain Regard selection Euphoria.

This year’s Un Certain Regard features 20 films, including eight...

Italian director, actor and producer Valeria Golino will serve as the president of the jury for this year’s Un Certain Regard sidebar at the Cannes Film Festival. Golino follows in the footsteps of last year’s jury president Andrea Arnold. The additional jurors for this year’s Un Certain Regard are actor Édgar Ramírez (Venezuela), actor Joanna Kulig (Poland), director Debra Granik (United States), and singer-songwriter and actor Benjamin Biolay (France). The jury will select the winners of this section which “celebrates young, auteur and revelation films.”

“I have been to Cannes so many times, as an actress, as a director, in different selections,” Golino said in a statement. “It is the event of the month of May. It’s a party, where you reconnect with friends. But it’s also the occasion to reflect: What path did I take? What have others done? What does the cinema say that is universal,...

Hovering around the eighteen to twenty film selection range, the Un Certain Regard section wasn’t necessarily overhauled but there was an unofficial memo that was passed around was for the sidebar to focus on the next generation of filmmakers and if we take a look at the section winners of the past three editions we can see the new guard is being offered more room to shine. Here are 20 predictions for the upcoming edition which will be unveiled in April.

Black Box –...

Alexander Rodnyansky’s Ar Content is developing a slate of new series as the two-time Oscar-nominated producer continues his push into high-end episodic content.

Rodnyansky revealed details of two new projects to Variety during the Berlinale Series Market, just days after Fox Entertainment acquired U.S. rights to Ar Content’s upcoming epic action show “Khan: The Series,” as Variety previously reported.

“The Doghead” is a series loosely based on the book of the same name by best-selling author Alexey Ivanov, whose previous works adapted for the big screen include Cannes Un Certain Regard prize winner “Tsar.”

The series follows Kirill, a homebody historian who prefers stability to change or adventure, but who travels to a remote village to look for his lost girlfriend. Her disappearance is just the first in a chain of mysterious events that started in the 17th century around an enigmatic fresco of an ancient spirit known as the Doghead.

Women From Georgia, Blind Dates, and Brighton 4th director Levan Koguashvili on chaos being cinematic: “I remember reading a book about one of my favourite directors, Robert Altman. It talked about why he likes making these group movies with separate stories.” Photo: Ed Bahlman

On December 21, 2021 the 94th Academy Awards Oscar Best International Feature Film shortlist was revealed with some notable omissions. Nora Martirosyan’s Should The Wind Drop (Si Le Vent Tombe) from Armenia; Julia Ducournau’s Titane from France; Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria from Colombia; Zhang Yimou’s Cliff Walkers from China; Kira Kovalenko’s Unclenching The Fists from Russia, and Levan Koguashvili's Brighton 4th from Georgia were among those.

Levan Koguashvili with Anne-Katrin Titze: “The main concern is the cinematic quality of the story.”

The Tribeca Film Festival International Narrative Competition jury comprised of Alexander Payne, Melissa Leo, Delroy Lindo, Peter Scarlet, and Lesli Klainberg awarded Best...

Russian director Alexander Zolotukhin has sky-high ambitions for “Brother in Every Inch,” which has its world premiere Feb. 13 in the Berlin Film Festival’s competitive Encounters section.

Zolotukhin’s sophomore feature is the story of twin brothers whose inseparable bond complicates their efforts to fulfill their shared dream of becoming air force pilots. The film is produced by Andrey Sigle and Mary Nazari for Proline Film. Paris-based Loco Films is repping the pic internationally.

The son of an air force pilot, Zolotukhin was granted rare access to a Russian military base to shoot “Brother in Every Inch,” filming real-life fighter planes and casting pilots and cadets as extras to bring a documentary-style verité to his film.

Pic was lensed by veteran Russian cinematographer Andrey Naydenov, who worked as Dp on Andrei Konchalovsky’s Venice prize-winner “Dear Comrades!” Naydenov collaborated with military engineers to construct special camera cases that would allow...

Loco Films has taken world sales rights on Alexander Zolotukhin’s “Brother in Every Inch” ahead of its world premiere in the Berlin Film Festival’s competitive Encounters section. The Paris-based sales agent has also acquired “The Land of Sasha,” the feature debut of Julia Trofimova, which plays in the festival’s Generation 14plus strand.

Zolotukhin’s sophomore feature is the story of twin brothers whose inseparable bond complicates their efforts to fulfill their shared dream of becoming military pilots. The film is produced by Andrey Sigle and Mary Nazari for Proline Film.

The son of a pilot, Zolotukhin was granted rare access to a working military base to shoot “Brother in Every Inch.” Acclaimed cinematographer Andrey Naydenov (“Dear Comrades!”) worked with military engineers to construct special camera cases that would allow him to capture high-octane flight scenes.

“I wanted to show the process of being a pilot as realistically as possible,...

Edgar (Hayk Bakhryan), the magic water boy with Armen (Vartan Petrossian) in Armenia’s Oscar submission, Nora Martirosyan’s Should The Wind Drop (Si Le Vent Tombe)

Last week the 94th Academy Awards Oscar Best International Feature Film shortlist was revealed with some notable omissions. Levan Koguashvili's Brighton 4th from Georgia; Julia Ducournau’s Titane from France; Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria from Colombia; Zhang Yimou’s Cliff Walkers from China; Kira Kovalenko’s Unclenching The Fists from Russia, and Nora Martirosyan’s Should The Wind Drop (Si Le Vent Tombe) from Armenia were among those.

Grégoire Colin as Alain Delage, an international auditor sent to inspect the remote airport of an independent republic in the Caucasus mountains.

In the second instalment with the director on her debut feature, screenplay with Emmanuelle Pagano (co-writers Guillaume André and Olivier Torres), and produced by Annabella Nezri, Julie Paratian, and Ani Vorskanyan, we...

Exclusive: Emmy-Award-winning director and cinematographer Andrij Parekh is set to direct Red Rainbow, a dramedy series produced by Alexander Rodnyansky via his Ar Content banner.

Based on true story, Red Rainbow is set in 1977 and follows a high-ranking Soviet politician who travels to West Berlin to address a socialist rally. There, he meets three young activists who impress him with their commitment to communism. On the spur of the moment, he invites them to visit Moscow to experience socialist utopia first hand and inspire young Soviets to come back home. However, what he didn’t realize was that instead of communists, he had actually invited a group of West German gay activists to the Soviet capital, where homosexuality was punishable by a lengthy prison sentence.

The series, which won the Best Project Award at the Series Mania Forum earlier this year, is a dramedy of bureaucratic blunders and...

A small movement of young filmmakers in Russia’s remote, politically fraught North Caucasus Mountains is starting to make a big noise, first at the Cannes Film Festival and now in the Oscar’s best international feature race.

Remarkably, filmmakers Kantemir Balagov (with 2019’s Beanpole) and Kira Kovalenko (with her new drama, Unclenching the Fists) — both of whom studied with the great Russian director Alexander Sokurov in a North Caucasus filmmaking workshop — have won Cannes’ Un Certain Regard grand prize in consecutive editions. Now, Kovalenko’s movie is Russia’s official Oscar submission, the country’s striking acknowledgment of an artist who may be ...

A small movement of young filmmakers in Russia’s remote, politically fraught North Caucasus Mountains is starting to make a big noise, first at the Cannes film festival and now in the Oscar’s Best International Film race. Remarkably, filmmakers Kantemir Balagov (with 2019’s Beanpole) and Kira Kovalenko (with her new drama, Unclenching the Fists)—both of whom studied with the great Russian director Alexandr Sokurov in a North Caucasus filmmaking workshop—have won Cannes’ Un Certain Regard grand prize in consecutive editions. Now, Kovalenko’s movie is Russia’s official Oscar submission, the country’s striking acknowledgment of an artist who may be working on the geographic ...

Every year since its creation in 1956, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) invites the film industries of various countries to submit their best film for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. The award is presented annually by the Academy to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United States that contains primarily non-English dialogue and that was released theatrically in their respective countries between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2021. The shortlist of fifteen finalists is scheduled to be announced on 21 December 2021. The final five nominees are scheduled to be announced on 8 February 2022.

Here are the Asian Submissions for Best International Feature Film. There are some excellent movies in this bunch and we have seen and reviewed already some of them.

Armenia

“Should the Wind Drop” by Nora Martirosyan

Azerbaijan

“The Island Within” by Ru Hasanov

Bangladesh

“Rehana” by Abdullah Mohammad Saad

Bhutan

“Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom...

Kira Kovalenko’s feature Unclenching the Fists was initially inspired by a line in William Faulkner’s novel Intruder in the Dust. Speaking at Deadline’s Contenders Film: International awards-season event, the Russian director said she thought a lot about Faulkner’s line, “While some people can endure slavery, nobody can stand freedom,” when she began co-writing her sophomore film, which is now Russia’s submission into this year’s International Feature Oscar race.

“While I was thinking about this line, I realized that I needed to find the place that I could tell this story about, and this place was a small mining town close to the place I was living,” Kovalenko said via her producer Alexander Rodnyansky, who was interpreting for on the panel.

Veteran producer Rodnyansky, who has long been a champion of unique and new voices hailing from Russia and the Ukraine, said he was compelled...

Deadline’s Contenders Film: International kicks off this morning, offering up the opportunity to hear from filmmakers who have been making waves around the world in 2021. The second annual event spotlighting international feature films begins at 9 a.m. Pt and will showcase the cream of the crop from this year’s festival awards winners, box office hits and International Feature Oscar hopefuls as the teams behind them discuss their work and inspirations.

Click here to register and watch the livestream.

For Contenders Film: International, we’ve again pivoted to a virtual event, which will boast a robust lineup. In total, talent will appear to discuss 26 titles that will represent their home countries as the official submissions for the International Feature Film category at the 94th Academy Awards. A total of 19 studios, streamers and distributors be on hand with presentations including clips and Q&As moderated by Deadline’s crack crew...

The old adage “write what you know” has rarely paid off with such bleak, persuasive power as it does in Unclenching The Fists, which won the Grand Prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard sidebar this year, is Russia’s submission to the International Feature race at the Oscars and is screening at AFI Fest. Mubi has U.S. rights and is planning a theatrical release ahead of digital in 2022.

Kira Kovalenko’s confident debut feature is largely based on events of her own youth. Like her fictional heroine Ada (Milana Aguzarova), Kovalenko grew up in a dreary mining town in the Caucasus. She captures, with unsentimental precision, the way life spent with the same few people, year after year, can be both suffocating in its intensity and numbingly dull.

Ada’s home is in North Ossetia, a thinly populated but strategically important wedge of Russia on the border of Georgia and next to Chechnya.

Film festivals have been the primary hatching-ground for Oscar contenders ever since the Academy’s tastes shifted predominantly from studio to independent cinema earlier this century — though in the international feature category, this has been the case for far longer. Rare is the non-English-language nominee that captures voters’ imaginations without a profile boost from one of the major fests — you have to go back to 2008’s Japanese sleeper “Departures” to find a film that won without an assist from Cannes, Venice, Berlin or Toronto.

This year, with the festival circuit largely back to business as usual after the disruptions of the pandemic, a vast number of submissions in the category are hot with festival buzz, with Cannes — making up for lost time after last year’s canceled edition — leading the way.

The French festival has long been a kingmaker in this category, with such recent Oscar winners as “Parasite,” “Son of Saul,...

Russian producer Alexander Rodnyansky brings a basket brimming with projects to this year’s AFM as he looks forward to easier international conditions as the Covid pandemic begins to recede.

Deals with two of Russia’s biggest platforms — Kinopoisk HD on local search engine giant Yandex, and Okko, part of leading bank Sber (which has a client base that numbers 90 million) — as well as a strategic partnership and first-look deal with Apple to produce Russian-language and multilingual international shows for Apple Plus TV allows the two-time Oscar nominee a breadth of material with which to work.

Top projects include “Red Rainbow,” the winner of this year’s co-production pitching competition at Series Mania. “Rainbow” is based on a true story set in 1979 about three young gay activists from West Berlin who are invited to Moscow on an official visit, not realizing that homosexuality is a crime in the Soviet Union.

Unclenching the Fists, the drama directed by Kira Kovalenko that won the grand prize this year in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard sidebar, has been selected to represent Russia in the Best International Feature Film category at the 94th Oscars. The news was announced Monday by the Russian Oscar Committee.

Produced by Ukranian-Russian super-producer Alexander Rodnyansky with Sergey Melkumov, the pic (titled Razzhimaya Kulaki in Russian) is set in a former mining town in the industrial section of North Ossetia and follows a young woman named Ada (Milana Aguzarova) who struggles to escape the stifling hold of the family she loves as much as she rejects.

Mubi has North American, UK and Ireland, Latin America and India rights to the the film, which will make its Los Angeles premiere next month at AFI Fest.

This year’s Un Certain Regard sidebar has spawned at least four submissions...

Russia has picked Unclenching the Fists, a drama about a young woman trying to escape the stifling confines of her family, as its entry for the 2022 Oscars in the best international feature category.

Directed by Kira Kovalenko (Sofichka), Unclenching the Fists premiered in Cannes, where it won the top prize for best film in the festival’s Un Certain Regard sidebar.

Newcomer Milana Aguzarova stars as Ada, a woman stuck in a dead-end industrial town in the North Ossetia section of Russia. Caught between the demands of her older brother and ailing but still domineering father, she struggles to break free. Unclenching the ...

Russia has picked Unclenching the Fists, a drama about a young woman trying to escape the stifling confines of her family, as its entry for the 2022 Oscars in the best international feature category.

Directed by Kira Kovalenko (Sofichka), Unclenching the Fists premiered in Cannes, where it won the top prize for best film in the festival’s Un Certain Regard sidebar.

Newcomer Milana Aguzarova stars as Ada, a woman stuck in a dead-end industrial town in the North Ossetia section of Russia. Caught between the demands of her older brother and ailing but still domineering father, she struggles to break free. Unclenching the ...

Exclusive: Arthouse streamer and distributor Mubi is launching a U.S. in-theater offering this month letting members see one film a week that it selects at participating cinemas starting in New York City. It said Mubi Go will roll out nationwide in selected markets with LA next in early 2022.

Mubi Go (available in the U.K. and India) will launch Oct. 29 with Netflix’s Passing, directed by Rebecca Hall, that premiered at Sundance and screened at the New York Film Festival. Subscribers can get a free ticket during the film’s theatrical engagement at the Paris Theater and IFC Center ahead of its Nov. 10 streaming release on Netflix.

Adapted from the 1929 novel by Nella Larsen, Passing is the story of two Black women, Irene Redfield (Tessa Thompson) and Clare Kendry (Ruth Negga), who can pass as white but choose to live on opposite sides of the color line during the height of the Harlem Renaissance.

After opening the Venice Film Festival and continuing on to the New York Film Festival, Oscar winner Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers from Sony Pictures Classics will have a red-carpet premiere at this year’s AFI Fest at the Tcl Chinese Theatre on Saturday, Nov. 13.

In the movie, two women, Janis and Ana, played respectively by Penelope Cruz and Milena Smit, coincide in a hospital room where they are going to give birth. Both are single and became pregnant by accident. Janis, middle-aged, doesn’t regret it and she is exultant. The other, Ana, an adolescent, is scared, repentant and traumatized. Janis tries to encourage her while they move like sleepwalkers along the hospital corridors. The few words they exchange in these hours will create a very close link between the two, which by chance develops and complicates, and changes their lives in a decisive way. Cruz won the Volpi...

There are clenched fists aplenty in Unclenching the Fists. Stuck in a former mining town high in the mountains of North Ossetia, its characters are as weighed down with misfortune as they are with strained mitts. There are the protagonist Ada’s, racked with frustration; her brother Akim’s, all white-knuckled and ready for swinging; but most obviously there are their father Zaur’s, strict as iron and with a rigor-mortis grip. The film is the second feature from Kira Kovalenko, a filmmaker from Nalchik, in the foothills of the Caucuses—a locale just next Ada’s, and that sense of place is apparent. The film, a bleak and provocative work with few (if any) soft edges, premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regarde sidebar earlier this summer, where it was awarded the Grand Prix by a jury led by Andrea Arnold—another filmmaker synonymous with tales of young women and isolated places,...

Above: US release poster for Flee. Illustrations by Mikkel Sommer and Kenneth Ladekjaer; art direction by Martin Hultman.Since 2010, on the last Friday of every September, I have gathered all the posters for the films in the main slate of the New York Film Festival. Last year, six months into the pandemic, I didn’t do it. There was a New York Film Festival, and there was a main slate, but with most of the films only screening online, it just didn’t seem like the real thing and my heart wasn’t in it. This year the NYFF is back and entirely Irl and, although we’re still not out of the pandemic woods, I feel that the wonderful new poster for Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee is emblematic of the moment: people, lots of them,, coming together. Aside from the Flee poster, the highlights of this year would...