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Iran has selected In the Arms of the Tree as its candidate for the Best International Feature Film category at the 97th Academy Awards.

Iran’s Farabi Cinema Foundation made the announcement this morning. Irna, the country’s English-language news service, said the pick was made after “a 10-day review process.”

Irna said a “nine-member selection committee” picked the film from a final selection process that included two other finalists. Those films Isatis, directed by Alireza Dehghan, and The Silent City, directed by Ahmad Bahrami.

Directed by Babak Lotfi Khajepasha, In the Arms of the Tree screened at the Shanghai International TV Festival and the Fajr Film Festival. The film’s official synopsis reads: In the Arms of the Tree follows the complex life crisis of Kimia and Farid, who have been married for twelve years and destroy the beautiful world of their children, children who know nothing but simplicity and kindness in life.

The 26th Shanghai International Film Festival came to a glitzy conclusion Saturday as Kazakh film The Divorce, directed by Daniyar Salamat, took home the top Golden Goblet award for best feature at a star-studded closing ceremony in the Chinese commercial capital.

A period drama set in the 1920s during the establishment of Soviet authority on the Kazakh steppe, the film explores the convergence of marriage, religion and women’s rights through the story of a typical couple wrestling with the prospect of divorce.

Salamat was presented onstage with his trophy by the Oscar-nominated Vietnamese-French director Tran Anh Hung (Scent of Green Papaya, The Taste of Things), who served as Shanghai’s competition jury president this year. Hung and his fellow jurors praised the “sophisticated form” of The Divorce‘s story, “which mixes comedy, farce and tragedy,” and they hailed Salamat’s “ability to create the feeling of innocence, which radiates...

The Shanghai International Film Festival has unveiled a selection that is weighted heavily to world premieres and Chinese, local titles.

That gives the festival showcase screenings for the newest works by established Chinese directors Gu Changwei, Wei Shujun and Guan Hu (“Old Fish”).

Guan was rewarded in Cannes only last week for his Un Certain Regard-winning picture “Black Dog,” but will unveil his next effort “The Hedgehog in Shanghai’s main competition.

All but two of the 14 competition section films are world premiere screenings – only “Un Homme en Fuite” recently released in France, and “Le Seconda Vita,” recently released in Italy are international premieres – and all 11 films selected in the Asian New Talent Competition are debut screenings.

That makes the Shanghai lineup have little in common with other international festivals being held at this time of year. Most of those, typically, find house room for a sprinkling of standout titles from Sundance,...

The latest films by acclaimed Chinese directors Guan Hu, Wei Shujun, Gu Changwei and Zhang Dalei are among 14 features selected for the main competition at the upcoming 26th Shanghai International Film Festival.

The festival has announced a total of 50 films in contention for the Golden Goblet Awards, which further include 11 titles for the Asian New Talent competition, five each for the animated feature and documentary feature competition, and 15 for the short film competition. Between them are 38 world premieres – a new record for Siff – as well as six international premieres and six Asian premieres.

The main competition section carries four Chinese titles,...

The Shanghai International Film Festival unveiled the competition selection for its upcoming 26th edition Wednesday, featuring a lineup characteristically heavy on Chinese titles. As in recent years, the lineup also includes a bevy of European, Japanese and Central Asian movies, but not a single film from the U.S. or South Korea.

The most anticipated film from the festival’s 14-title main competition in 2024 is undoubtedly Chinese director Guan Hu’s drama A Man and a Woman, featuring a pair of lead performances from the big local stars Huang Bo and Ni Ni. Guan wowed critics at the Cannes Film Festival just a week ago with his darkly comic thriller Black Dog, which took home the French festival’s prestigious Un Certain Regard prize. Guan also is no stranger to the Shanghai festival. His WWII tentpole The Eight Hundred was scheduled to open the 2019 edition of the event, but it...

Baran Kosari with Behzad Dorani, left, and Babak Karimi in The Wastetown. Ahmad Bahrami: 'The personal reason that I've worked on these types of topics is that I want to show this brutal situation so that others see what is happening and how to avoid it in the future' Photo: Courtesy of Poff Iranian director Ahmad Bahrami’s continues bleak consideration of his homeland with The Wastetown[film] - the second part of an intended trilogy after his Venice Horizons-winning [film]The Wasteland. Set against the backdrop of a car breakers yard, it sees Bemani (Baran Kosari), who has been temporarily released from jail after 10 years, attempting to find out the whereabouts of the son she was forced to give up in prison.

The film co-stars Ali Bagheri as Bemani’s brother-in-law, who previously also starred in The Wasteland, Babak Karimi and Behzad Dorani. A tense drama that, like many of the films of Bela Tarr,...

Ahmad Bahrami’s follow-up to his Venice Horizon’s winning The Wasteland, marks the second of an intended trilogy (to be completed by a film title Waste Man), and it’s every bit as oppressive and handsomely shot in monochrome as the first. Also, despite its bleak subject matter, it has been distributed in Iran, although the censor made cuts to some of the implied violence.

There’s shades of Shakespeare’s blasted heath as we see Bemani (Baran Kowsari) pick her way towards a car breakers yard as the wind whistles through the wires that enclose it. The notion of death hangs heavily over the yard, which is full of the stacked carcasses of dead cars that creak and squeak as they shift in the wind. Each is waiting to be systematically crushed by the sort of hulking and groaning machine that wouldn’t be out of place in...

If there is something we could call a trend judging from the selection of Asian films at PÖFF, it is stories about strong women told by men who are listening to female’s voices and observe what is going on around them. In the light of current events in Iran, Ahmad Bahrami’s monochrome drama “The Wastetown” is devastatingly mind-boggling. The script draws directly from the wellspring of everyday life in Iran, focusing on one woman’s fight for personal justice. With dialogues crafted with straightforward simplicity of conversation that happen off screen, but pregnant with meaning, Bahrami returns to a solitary hero with an impossible mission. Entirely shot on a scrapeyard battered by the wind and surrounded by snowy mountains, the film profits from the claustophobic setting that makes its protagonists feel the full weight of psychological entrapment.

The only time we see someone outside this gated graveyard is...

There are such a fine myriad of film festivals around the world, with all major cities spotlighting domestic talent, and showcasing the latest films from around the world to local audiences and visiting guests. While a small collective, namely Berlin, Cannes & Venice stand out on the European festival calendar, there’s another contender on the block; a simply brilliant celebration of cinema, with a mighty fine programme, and it takes place in the capital city of Estonia.

The Tallinn Black Nights Festival just closed its doors on the 26th edition of this annual, winter event, and we here at HeyUGuys were fortunate enough to have been invited along. Named ‘Black Nights’, we presume, because it gets dark every day around mid-afternoon, it’s a bitterly cold fortnight, where naturally you find yourselves gravitating towards the warm, cosiness of a cinema complex – and when doing so, there sure was a lot to indulge in.

Ahmad Bahrami’s sinister drama “The Wastetown” about one woman’s quest to find her child, brought him deservingly the Best Director Award at this year’s edition of Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. In this second part of his trilogy whose every chapter is dedicated to one individual fighting to end their plights, Bahrami leans on one part of his first tale told in “The Wasteland”, his tripple Venice winner in 2020 where it bagged Best Film in the Horizons Competition, the Fipresci- and Lavoro Ambiente Award, before it went to conquer other international festivals and win some more. It is a clever, small thing that bridges both films without making them dependent on each other. This is why one of the key characters from “The Wasteland” resurrects in “The Wastetown”, not quite as the same person, but equally troubled and outcasted. More details about it are in the interview that follows…...

Swiss-Kosovar feature ‘The Land Within’ takes best first feature film.

Hilmar Oddsson’s Icelandic dark comedy Driving Mum won the Grand Prix for best film in Competition at the award ceremony of the 26th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF), held on Saturday, November 26.

The Official Selection jury, headed by Hungarian director Ildiko Enyedi, said Driving Mum “charmed us all with its transparent, simple but bold film language, with its graceful sense of humour, with its unpretentious way of speaking about burning questions of personal life. A film which tells us that it is never too late.”

Scroll down for...

Tallinn Black Nights film festival kicked off on November 11th, but the screenings of films from all five competition segments – Official Selection, First Feature Competition, Baltic Film Competition, Rebels With a Cause and Critics’ Picks- have just begun.

Five titles from Asia compete in the Official Selection. Vietnamese director Dung Luon Dinh is in Tallinn with his martial arts rich thriller “Magnum 578”, Israeli director Shahar Rozen competes with “Ducks – An Urban Legend”, a comedy thriller that involves yellow rubber ducks, and a year after his sophomore film “Make the Devil Laugh” had its world premiere here in Tallinn, the Japanese director Ryuchi Mino is back in town with a period comedy “Ginji The Speculator”. Indian director Sudhansu Saria, whose debut feature film “Loev” competed at PÖFF in 2015, is back with “Sanaa”, a drama starring Pooja Bhatt and Sohum Shah. Iranian title “The Wastetown” directed by Ahmad Bahrami is also...

The line-up features 19 world premieres, including J.-P. Valkeapää’s ‘Hit Big’ and three Ukranian productions.

Estonia’s Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival has unveiled the full line-up for its official selection, featuring 19 world premieres, with the festival set to run from November 11-27.

World premieres include Finnish director J.-P. Valkeapää’s Hit Big, a Finland-Estonia-Spain co-production. Valkeapää’s credits include Dogs Wear Pants and They Have Escaped. The new film is about a Finnish former beauty pageant star, who left Finland for Spain’s Costa del Sol, finds her family’s murky criminal past starts to unravel. Charades is handling sales.

Features include Albania’s entry to the Oscars.

Estonia’s Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (November 11-27) has announced the first seven films in its main competition strand, including Albania’s entry for the Oscars.

Gentian Koçi’s A Cup of Coffee and New Shoes On was announced as Albania’s submission for the best international feature Oscar last week and will receive its world premiere at the festival.

Inspired by a true story, it follows identical deaf-mute twin brothers in their 40s who must contend with progressively losing their sense of sight. It marks Koçi’s second feature after Daybreak,...

Though Iran is in the throes of a deep economic crisis, battered by hard-line politics and a mismanaged pandemic, it’a shaping up to be a great year for Iranian cinema.

Paradoxically, Iran’s cinematic landscape is bursting with powerful, fresh films likely to make an international splash just as talks between Tehran and world powers continue to be deadlocked on reviving the nuclear deal that could lift the country’s crippling sanctions that block exports.

This filmmaking fervor is reflected in the fact that Iranian pics have scored two Cannes competition berths, plus one in the Cannes Critics’ Week, which marks Iran’s first presence in this section dedicated to first and second works in almost two decades.

“What everybody is so pleased about is that Cannes, fortunately, is now representing the young generation of Iranian filmmakers,” said international distributor Mohammad Attebai, who heads Tehran-based company Iranian Independents.

Finally,...

The Academy (Afaa) revealed the nominees for the 15th Asian Film Awards today. Thirty-six films from eight Asian regions will compete for 16 awards. China’s One Second, South Korea’s The Book of Fish, India’s The Disciple, and two Japanese films, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy and Wife of a Spy, compete for this year’s “Best Film Award.”

Three Hong Kong films were nominated for this year’s Afa, including Drifting, directed by Jun Li, nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Actress. Limbo, directed by Cheang Pou-soi, was nominated for Best Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design and Best sound; Adam Wong’s The Way We Keep Dancing was nominated for Best Original Music.

The Afaa is honoured that legendary South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong will be this year’s Jury President. Lee was the lifetime award recipient at the 13th Asian Film Awards.He won the “Best...

The 45th Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF45) today announced 14 Firebird Award and Fipresci Prize winners, including The Day is Over, The Wasteland, Mr. Bachmann and His Class and Motorcyclist’s Happiness Won’t Fit Into His Suit.

In naming Qi Rui’s The Day is Over Best Film of this year’s Young Cinema Competition (Chinese Language), the jury praised it for “aptly portraying contemporary society’s lack of care for the young generation and the subsequent impact on the development of their personal values”. In the same section, Summer Blur garnered two awards – Best Director for Han Shuai for his “impressive ability in portraying the characters’ psyche” and Best Actress for Huang Tian for “intelligently guiding the audience into the tender inner world of a young girl”. The Best Actor Award went to Wuhai’s Huang Xuan, who “brilliantly exhibits the anguish and torment experienced by a man...

Mainland China youth drama “The Day is Over” was named the best Chinese-language film in the Firebird Young Cinema competition at the Hong Kong International Film Festival. The already celebrated Iranian film “The Wasteland,” directed by Ahmad Bahrami won the equivalent award in the overseas section.

The 45th edition of the festival kicked off on April 1 and will complete its run on Monday.

“The Day is Over,” directed by Qi Rui, tells a tale of mounting tragedies for a young girl who is humiliated by her classmates and ultimately hides out in a pond. The jury praised it for “aptly portraying contemporary society’s lack of care for the young generation and the subsequent impact on the development of their personal values”.

In the same section, “Summer Blur” garnered two awards: best director for Han Shuai for his “impressive ability in portraying the characters’ psyche” and best actress for Huang Tian.

Fittingly, for a film that uses a brick factory as a microcosm of Iranian society, Ahmad Bahrami's beautifully shot feature is an exercise of careful construction, its initial looping structure and smooth, repetitive camera movements, building a hypnotic rhythm that draws us in.

Lotfollah (Ali Bagheri) has worked at this brick factory in the middle of nowhere as man and boy. The plant's isolated setting means that the workers also live there in a tight community. The story is driven by an announcement by the factory boss (Farrokh Nemati) that economic pressures are forcing him to close, with Bahrami returning again and again to his speech, which expands further each time, in between break-out snapshots examining the back stories of workforce faces in the crowd.

Lotfollah is the factory fixer, acting as a go-between for the others, each of whom has their own agenda - from the couple desperate...

Since, for the past few years we have intensified our coverage of films that do not belong in the S/Se Asia or the Asean countries, we decided, for the first time, to have a list that deals with movies from outside these regions, essentially including movies from all Asian countries that do not belong in the aforementioned three. The list is probably the most diverse, as it includes films from Israel, Kazakhstan, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey, Palaistine and Kurdistan, although, expectedly, being one of the largest film industries in Asia, Iran has the lion’s share.

Without further ado, here are the best West Asian films of 2020, in reverse order. Some films may have premiered in 2019, but since they mostly circulated in 2020, we decided to include them.

*By clicking on the title, you can read the full review of the film

20. The Death of Cinema and my Father

“The Death...

2020 will go down in history for many things. The pandemic. The US elections. Rat-filled sinkholes. But 2020 will also go down in history as the year of Asian cinema: when Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” (2019) became the first non-English language film to win the coveted Academy Award for Best Picture; when Ann Hui was recognized with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement Award at Venice Film Festival; when Mohammad Rasoulof’s Iranian drama “There Is No Evil” (2020) won Berlinale’s Golden Bear. And this is not even to mention the stellar achievements we’ve had at Asian Movie Pulse as well – including a new partnership with Mubi, a curated arthouse streaming service, and 1000 followers on Instagram. Now, we just want to take a step back to reflect on this year.

Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah — arguably the first major event to kick off the film festival circuit — gave us a...

29 of the contributors of Asian Movie Pulse from America, Europe and Asia have voted the 25 Best Films of 2020, resulting in what we consider a great selection, despite the difficulties the current year presented to both the shooting and the availability of new movies. In that regard, the list includes films from Malaysia, Japan, Iran. S. Korea, Kazakhstan, Singapore, China, and Taiwan while crime thrillers, animations, shorts, LGBT, comedies, horror, black-and-white and even “quarantine movies” have found a place.

Without further ado, here are the best Asian films of 2020, in reverse order. Some films may have premiered in 2019, but since they mostly circulated in 2020, we decided to include them, after an intense fight that lasted for 150 nights (give or take) and ended up with even more victims

*By clicking on the title, you can read the full review of the film

25. Roh

Graced with a stellar story, plenty of chilling aspects...

Straying somewhat from the norms or recent Iranian productions, Ahmad Bahrami presents a rather interesting mix of documentary-like and dystopian movie, which won the Orizzonti Award Best Film in Venice and the Wild Dreamer as Subversive Film Festival

“The Wasteland” screened at Subversive Film Festival

The story takes place in a remote brick manufacture factory that produces bricks in the traditional way, with the workers being mostly families of different ethnicities. Ebrahim, an Azeri, wants to marry Gohar, an Iranian, in spite of her father Mashebad’s plans for her. Mashebad wants to take his family back to their hometown and marry Gohar off to an Iranian. There is Shahu, a Kurd, who draws the ire of Ebrahim by working around the factory’s women with just his tank top on. Shahu’s dad is on death row, and his family needs money to pay off the accusers. There is Sarvar,...

The Singapore International Film Festival will open with the screening of local film “Tiong Bahru Social Club” at the Shaw Lido theater. But, for social distancing reasons, the occasion will not be marked with a red carpet pageant.

Throughout its 11-day stretch (Nov. 26-Dec. 6), the festival will run as a hybrid event, mixing in-person and online activities. And although the festival is targeted primarily at a local audience in a country which has successfully wrangled the coronavirus back to manageable levels, it will also be scaled down.

Organizers this week unveiled 70 films, down from a more usual 90-plus. About half of the reduced total are contemporary feature movies.

Some will be presented only in theaters, while others will also be available online, but geo-blocked for Singapore audiences only. In order to reach audiences at a time when physical distancing regulations still persist in Singapore cinemas, there will be two in-person screenings per film.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) is honored to invite you to another program of film screenings as well as a Q&a as part of the 2nd Annual HFPA Foreign Language Film Series. This edition presents 4 new films from Bangladesh, Ivory Coast, Japan and Iran. Please register by clicking here now! Registration ends tomorrow, 10/15/20.

Asian Films:

True Mothers by Naomi Kawase

Made in Bangladesh by Rubaiyat Hossain

The Wasteland by Ahmad Bahrami

The films will stream October 20th through October 31st. We recommend you to join the HFPA for a live audience Q&a with the filmmakers on October 24th at 10:30am Pt.

Above: NomadlandIn CompetitionGolden Lion – Nomadland (Chloé Zhao) | Read our reviewSilver Lion (Grand Jury Prize) – New Order (Michel Franco) | Read our reviewSilver Lion (Best Director) – Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Wife of a Spy) | Read our interviewCoppa Volpi for Best Actress – Vanessa Kirby (Pieces of a Woman) | Read our reviewCoppa Volpi for Best Actor – Pierfrancesco Favino (Padrenostro)Best Screenplay – Chaitanya Tamhane (The Disciple) | Read our reviewSpecial Jury Prize – Dear Comrades! (Andrei Konchalovsky) | Read our reviewMarcello Mastroianni Award for Best Young Actor or Actress – Rouhollah Zamani (Sun Children) | Read our reviewOrizzontiOrizzonti Award for Best Film – The Wasteland (Ahmad Bahrami) | Read our reviewOrizzonti Award for Best Director – Lav Diaz (Genus Pan) | Read our reviewSpecial Orizzonti Jury Prize – Listen (Ana Rocha de Sousa)Orizzonti Award for Best Actress – Khansa Batma (Zanka Contact)Orizzonti Award for Best Actor — Yahya Mahayni (The Man Who Sold His Skin)Orizzonti Award for Best Screenplay – Pietro Castellitto (I Predatori)Orizzonti Award for...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Bong Joon-ho's Memories of Murder. This year's Venice Film Festival has come to an end, and you can find the full list of award winners here. Following the success of Parasite, Neon will be bringing Bong Joon-ho's 2003 Memories of Murder to the big screen in the fall! Recommended VIEWINGThe official trailer for the 4K restoration of Wong Kar-wai's classic In the Mood For Love, which turns 20 this year. Ahmad Bahrani's The Wasteland, which won this year's Orizzonti Award for Best Film, follows a dozen workers in a brick factory amid its impending closing. Read Leonardo Goi's review of the film here. Another trailer from Venice: Lav Diaz's Genus Pan, which won the Orrizonti Award for Best Director. Read Michael Guarneri's review of the film here. A first look at Abel Ferrara's new documentary,...

The first major award of 2020, and in particular, the 2020 fall film festival season, has now been given out. The Venice Film Festival announced their prize winners, with the top prize, known as the Golden Lion, going to Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland. This cements the movie as an early player, though it’s obviously still early. However, taking the Golden Lion is an excellent feather in its cap, as well as something to build on in the months to come. In all likelihood, this is only the first bit of feting for the flick. Read on to see all of the award winners out of Venice… In addition to Nomadland’s big win, the most notable prize, in terms of the Academy Awards and award season in general, was Vanessa Kirby taking the Volpi Cup (which is their Best Actress category) for her powerful turn in Pieces Of a Woman. In fact,...

Vanessa Kirby wins best actress Coppa Volpi for Pieces Of A Woman.

Chloé Zhao’s US drama Nomadland starring Frances McDormand has won the Golden Lion for best film at the 2020 Venice Film Festival, which held its awards in a socially-distanced ceremony on Saturday evening (September 12).

The Silver Lion – Grand Jury prize went to Michel Franco’s Mexican-French feature New Order, about a high society wedding which is interrupted by protesters. Franco was present in Venice to accept the award, which was presented in front of a half-full Sala Grande, as part of the measures in place to combat the...

“Nomadland” has received the Golden Lion Award as the best film of the 2020 Venice International Film Festival, a jury headed by Cate Blanchett announced on Saturday.

The Searchlight drama, a simultaneous premiere by the Venice, Telluride and Toronto festivals, was directed by Chloe Zhao and stars Frances McDormand as a woman who travels through the American West in a van after losing her job and her home. Apart from McDormand and David Strathairn, almost all of the actors in the film are actual “nomads” that Zhao cast on her own travels through the area.

“Nuevo Orden” (“New Order”) by Mexican director Michel Franco won the Silver Lion, the festival’s second-place award, while acting prizes went to Vanessa Kirby for “Pieces of a Woman” and Pierfrancesco Favino for “Padrenostro.”

Kiyoshi Kurosawa was named the festival’s best director for “Wife of a Spy.”

Ahmad Bahrami’s “The Wasteland” won the...

The Venice Film Festival, which reinvigorated the fall festival season with a physical event that began on September 2 in Italy, concluded on Saturday with its annual awards ceremony. See the full list of winners and watch the live stream below.

Led by president Cate Blanchett, the jurors for the main competition included Austrian director Veronika Franz, British filmmaker Joanna Hogg (“The Souvenir”), Italian writer and novelist Nicola Lagioia, German filmmaker Christian Petzold, actor Matt Dillon (“Crash”), and French actress Ludivine Sagnier.

Together, they awarded the festival’s top prizes, including the Golden Lion, which last year went to “Joker” under jury president Lucrecia Martel. This year’s Golden Lion went to “Nomadland,” which received a rapturous reception out of the Toronto International Film Festival as well this week, and looks to be headed straight for Oscar contention.

Meanwhile, in the Orizzonti, or Horizons, section running parallel to the main competition,...

Update, writethru: Following a successful two weeks that marked the first major international industry event in the pandemic era, the Venice Film Festival drew to a close tonight as Cate Blanchett’s jury handed out its awards. Despite a lack of major Hollywood fare, there was no shortage of well-received movies — one film from a studio, Searchlight’s Nomadland, energized the proceedings just yesterday, garnering strong notices for Chloe Zhao’s direction and Frances McDormand’s lead performance — and ultimately took the Golden Lion for Best Picture.

There were more female filmmakers in competition this year, and the Golden Lion going to Zhao’s Nomadland is a first since Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere in 2010.

Among the rest of the competition, there was a lot of praise for Mona Fastvold’s The World To Come. Vanessa Kirby co-stars in that frontier drama and did double duty with Kornel Mundruczo’s Pieces Of A Woman,...

Venice 2020: The winners have been decided on independently by associations of film critics, clubs and cultural associations, as well as cinema professionals. The 77th edition of the Venice Film Festival (2-12 September) has announced the recipients of this year's parallel awards. Traditionally, the winners are decided on independently by associations of film critics, clubs and cultural associations, as well as cinema professionals. Among this year's victors were Chaitanya Tamhane's The Disciple (Fipresci Award for Best Film in the Main Competition), Ahmad Bahrami's The Wasteland (Fipresci Award for Best Film from Orizzonti and the Parallel Sections) and Susanna Nicchiarelli's Miss Marx (Fedic Award for Best Film). Here is a list of the main parallel award winners: Arca Young Cinema Award Best Film at Venice 77Pieces of a Woman - Kornél Mundruczó (Canada/Hungary) Best Italian Film at VeniceNotturno - Gianfranco Rosi (Italy/Germany/France) Fedic (Federazione Italiana...

The 77th Venice International Film Festival is one of the first “big” Festivals that will open its physical doors after the Covid-19 pandemic. The Festival is organised by La Biennale di Venezia and directed by Alberto Barbera; it will take place at Venice Lido from 2 – 12 September 2020.

Here are all the Asian Titles on the Programme:

Competition/Venezia 77

“In Between Dying” by Hilal Baydarov

“Laila In Haifa” by Amos Gitai

“Wife of a Spy” by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Japan)

“Sun Children” by Majid Majidi (Iran)

“The Disciple” by Chaitanya Tamhane (India)

“Nomadland” by Chloe Zhao (USA)

Out of Competition (Fiction)

“Love After Love” by Ann Hui (China)

“Night in Paradise” by Park Hoon-Jung (South Korea)

Horizons

“Milestone” by Ivan Ayr (India)

“The Wasteland” by Ahmad Bahrami (Iran)

“Genus Pan” by Lav Diaz (Philippines)

“Careless Crime” by Shahram Mokri (Iran)

“Gaza Mon Amour” by Tarzan Nasser and Arab Nasser (Palestine/Qatar)

“The Best Is Yet to Come...

‘The Furnace.’

Writer-director Roderick MacKay’s debut feature The Furnace, an 1890s drama set during the gold rush in Western Australia, will have its world premiere in the Horizons section of the 77th Venice Film Festival.

Produced by Timothy White (I Am Mother) and Tenille Kennedy (H is for Happiness), the film follows Egyptian actor Ahmed Malek as a young Afghan cameleer who partners with Mal, a mysterious bushman (David Wenham) on the run with two Crown-marked gold bars.

Together the unlikely pair must outwit a zealous police sergeant and his troopers in a race to reach a secret furnace – the one place where they can safely reset the bars to remove the mark of the Crown.

The cast includes Jay Ryan, Erik Thomson (The Luminaries), Baykali Ganambarr (The Nightingale), Trevor Jamieson (Storm Boy), Mahesh Jadu (The Witcher) and Samson Coulter (Breath).

“I’m thrilled at this opportunity for the...

Hot on the heels of the 2020 New York Film Festival releasing its first selection in Nomadland (taking the Centerpiece slot at the fest), Venice is chiming in as well. Not only are they also going to be showing Chloe Zhao’s movie, but the festival has in fact unveiled its entire lineup for this year. It’s a crop of titles that’s low on flashy name recognition, at least for now, but it’s an international group that should hopefully be cause for some celebration in the cinematic world. These days, that’s hard to come by, to say the least. Read on for the entire list… If there’s something else of note besides Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland at Venice right now, it’s either The Duke from Roger Michell, starring Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren, or The World to Come. The former is a crime comedy, while...

This year’s pandemic-altered Venice Film Festival will include a record number of competition films directed by women, festival organizers announced on Tuesday. And two of those are also the only Hollywood studio films to make the competition lineup — Mona Fastvold’s “The World to Come” and Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland.”

In all, eight of the 18 competition features have a female director — an improvement from last year, when just two made the cut.

“Nomadland,” a drama starring Frances McDormand released by Searchlight Pictures, will simultaneously premiere through the Toronto Film Festival as well as through the New York Film Festival and the now-canceled Telluride fest (at a special drive-in screening in Southern California). Sony’s “The World to Come” stars Casey Affleck, Vanessa Kirby and Katherine Waterston.

Also Read: Frances McDormand's 'Nomadland' to Get Joint World Premiere From Venice and Toronto Film Festivals

Other top titles screening out...

While the coronavirus pandemic has canceled major festivals such as Cannes and Telluride, the 2020 Venice Film Festival is moving ahead as planned and will be the world’s first major film festival since Sundance and Berlin at the start of the year. Venice 2020’s main selection will be split into three sections: Venezia 77 (aka the main competition), Out of Competition, and Horizons. The titles selected for the main competition will compete for the Golden Lion, which was awarded last year to Todd Phillips’ “Joker.”

As previously announced, Daniele Luchetti’s drama “Lacci” will open the 77th Venice Film Festival on September 2. The movie is the first Italian title to open Venice in 11 years. The last Italian opener was Giuseppe Tornatore’s “Baarìa” at the 2009 festival. “Lacci” is included in this year’s Out of Competition section. Chloe Zhao’s “The Rider” follow-up “Nomadland” was also confirmed for a world premiere...

The Venice Film Festival is unveiling the lineup of its 77th edition, which, barring complications, will be the first major international film event to hold a physical edition following the coronavirus crisis.

Previously announced titles include Chloé Zhao’s road drama “Nomadland,” starring Frances McDormand, which will screen at Venice and Toronto simultaneously on Sept. 11, in both cases preceded by virtual introductions.

The out-of-competition opener will be Italian director Daniele Luchetti’s anatomy of a marriage drama “Lacci” (“The Ties”) (pictured) starring Alba Rohrwacher (“Happy as Lazzaro”) and Luigi Lo Cascio (“The Traitor”) as the couple at the film’s center.

The virtual press conference is scheduled to begin at 11am Cet. This post will be updated live as films are revealed.

Venice Film Festival Lineup

In Competition

“In Between Dying,” Hilal Baydarov

“Le Sorelle Macaluso,” Emma Dante (Italy)

“The World to Come,” Mona Fastvold (U.S.)

“Nuevo Orden,” Michel Franco

“Lovers,...

Competition line-up includes films by Chloe Zhao, Susanna Nicchiarelli, Kornel Mandruczo and Andrei Konchalovsky.

The line-up of the 77th Venice Film Festival (September 2-12) has been announced.

Scroll down for the full line-up

The big talking points from this year’s selection include an improved gender split, with eight women selected for the competition section (compared to two last year), and a lack of major US projects. Venice will be one of the first major film festivals to take place as a physical event following the Covid-19 outbreak.

Among the big-name auteurs selected are Chloe Zhao (Nomadland), Michel Franco (Nuevo...