News

Margaret Menegoz, the producer of world-famous auteurs such as Michael Haneke and Wim Wenders, has died at the age of 83.

Menegoz was celebrated for her leadership of Les Films du Losange, an acclaimed production and distribution company which she ran for 46 years with an iron fist, guided by her passion for independent filmmaking and new voices.

Born in Hungary in 1941, during WW2, Menegoz grew up in Germany and ventured into the film industry after meeting her husband, Robert Menegoz, and traveled the world with him to shoot documentaries. She joined Les Films du Losange in 1975 and started as an assistant for revered directors Eric Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder who had co-founded the company in 1962. She quickly rose through the ranks and became manager of the company.

Under her helm, Les Films du Losange won an Oscar, three Palmes d’Or at Cannes. The company built a library of about 100 prestige films,...

On some basic level, Mia Hansen-Løve makes movies because she has a “very, very bad” memory. “It’s a way to hold on to events that I want to remember, to really make sure the things that matter to me will still exist even if I forget them,” says the French filmmaker. She scrunches up the already rumpled tissue in her lap and releases it again. “I’m always worried that I will forget everything.” That fear goes a long way in explaining the many parallels that exist between Hansen-Løve’s real life and the lives explored on screen in her emotionally intense, often award-winning films.

Hansen-Løve was only 23 when she wrote her debut All Is Forgiven; 25 when she directed it. The film, nominated for Best First Feature at the 2008 César Awards (the French equivalent of the Oscars), was loosely inspired by her uncle and cousin. Goodbye First Love (2011) told...

French filmmakers and sales agents will hit Toronto looking for a sale, great buzz and, above all, a lasting foothold into the U.S. market. Because a welcome perch across the pond can make all the difference, especially given the recent crunch on the international scene.

“Today, the market is extremely polarized,” says Alice Lesort, who heads sales for Les Films du Losange. “There are still films that perform extremely well abroad, but the number of films has shrunk; there are still films that take the spotlight, but the spotlight now focuses on fewer of them.”

Bringing the Léa Seydoux-led “One Fine Morning” to Toronto after previous berths in Cannes and Telluride and an upcoming slot in New York, director Mia Hansen-Løve has proven an outlier several times over. For one thing, at only 41-years-old, she’s already made eight features; for another, all but one of those features has seen U.

Tim Leandro's first short film "Tomorrow Calling" from 1993 based on William Gibson's short story "The Gernsback Continuum".

Bill is shooting architectural photographs of "futuristic" buildings of the 30's for a coffee table book commissioned by Dialta. But as he frames up a deco bingo hall, a vast airship looms over him. Is it a dream? H

is friend Mervyn tells him it is a manifestation of the mass unconscious, a "semiotic ghost". Bill next sees people dressed like extras from "Things to Come", the futuristic fantasy. Mervyn advises Bill that there is no future, only a futuristic dream invented in the present, and that the cure is a large dose of pornography. Bill goes straight to the video shop and its top shelf.

Be sure to...

Isabelle Huppert, this year’s recipient of the Berlinale’s Honorary Golden Bear, has pulled out of attending the festival after testing positive for Covid in Paris.

The festival confirmed the French star’s absence on Monday night.

“Unfortunately, today Isabelle Huppert has been tested positive for the coronavirus in Paris and therefore she will not be able to attend the Berlin International Film Festival,” reads a statement from the Berlinale.

“While informing the festival, she emphasized that she feels very dedicated to the Berlinale and wants to participate in any possible way also to support her latest film ‘À Propos de Joan.'”

Berlinale artistic director Carlo Chatrian explained that because Huppert “doesn’t feel sick,” the festival will go ahead with its planned ceremony on Tuesday honoring the “Elle” actor with its lifetime achievement award. Huppert join in via a live link from Paris. The ceremony will be...

Sorry, this is not for a new disc. From 23 years ago, this was the first article that convinced me that there might be a real audience for my review page, then called DVD Savant. It’s about time that the illustrated essay was brought up to date and moved to CineSavant. It probes the ‘primitive sophistication’ and weird appeal of William Cameron Menzies’ most accomplished job of direction: the paranoid nightmare that haunted our childhood dreams. It’s slightly rewritten and has improved images. There’s so much to talk about: Near-experimental visuals! Strange editing choices! The idea for the essay is the same as ever, to inspire somebody to properly remaster the show . . . it’s not like we’re going to live forever.

A two-part examination of a Sci-fi classic that, at least

in Savant’s opinion, should be showing in the Louvre.

Alas and alack! As of 12.16.21, there...

French actress Isabelle Huppert will be the recipient of an honorary Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival.

As announced yesterday, the festival will premiere Huppert’s latest movie, About Joan, as a Berlinale Special Gala this year. The screening will be held in conjunction with the fest’s award ceremony on February 15, 2022, when Huppert will receive her prize.

Huppert has had a long and glittering career in the biz, performing on screen and stage and across multiple languages including French, German and English. The directors she has collaborated with include Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Haneke, Bertrand Tavernier, Claude Chabrol, Olivier Assayas, Catherine Breillat, Paul Verhoeven and many more.

Her films have appeared in Cannes’ Competition on 20 occasions, a record, and she has featured in the Berlinale’s Competition seven times.

Huppert has been nominated for France’s Cesar prize more than any other actress (16) and has won twice.

French actor Isabelle Huppert is set to receive the Berlin Film Festival’s Honorary Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in February. Her films will also be honored as part of a special Homage section.

Huppert will be awarded the prize for lifetime achievement. In conjunction with the awards on Feb. 15 at the Berlinale Palast, the festival will screen her latest movie, Laurent Larivière’s “À propos de Joan” — unveiled on Wednesday in the fest’s first batch of titles — as a special gala premiere.

Huppert has a longstanding relationship with Berlin, and has starred in seven competition films to date. She was first a guest in Berlin with Jacques Doillon’s “La vengeance d’une femme” before appearing in Francois Ozon’s “8 Femmes” as an unprepossessing woman who emerges in the end as a confident beauty. The ensemble cast was awarded a Silver Bear for outstanding artistic accomplishment.

CineSavant reaches back to a U.K. disc released in 2014, because the subject is (what else) a semi-obscure science fiction effort. Favorite John Neville stars as a scientist opposite newcomer Gabriella Licudi, a beauty who may be an invader from outer space. This is the one with the teardrops that burn; not having seen it since 1966 or so, evaluating a ‘new’ Blu was an imperative. The main takeaway is that it’s awfully small-scale and the fantastic content is almost entirely confined to dialogue. But the performances are exemplary and actress Jean Marsh is terrific.

Unearthly Stranger

Region B Blu-ray

Network-bfi

1963 / B&w / 1:66 / 80 min. / Street Date November 3, 2014 / Available from Amazon / 14.99

Starring: John Neville, Philip Stone, Gabriella Licudi, Patrick Newell, Jean Marsh, Warren Mitchell.

Cinematography: Reg Wyer

Art Director: Harry Pottle

Film Editor: Tom Priestley

Original Music: Edward Williams

Written by Rex Carlton based on an idea by Jeffrey Stone...

The New York Film Critics Circle is so determined to be one of the first groups to weigh in with its picks for the best of the year that the date of its decision-making keeps getting advanced. But how much influence does it have on the last group to be heard from — the motion picture academy which will reveal the Oscar winners 114 days from now on March 27, 2022? Let’s take a look back at the last 10 years of the NYFCC picks and see how well (or not), these early kudos previewed the Academy Awards.

Last year, the academy’s top winner, “Nomadland,” had to settle here for just the directing prize for multi-hyphenate Chloe Zhao. The NYFCC Best Picture was one indie film, “First Cow,” while Best Actress went to the star of another, Sidney Flanigan (“Never Rarely Sometimes Always”). “Da 5 Bloods” took two trophies: Delroy Lindo claimed Best Actor,...

It’s a strangely topsy-turvy experience, to come to a director’s first film 14 years, six further features, an Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize (“Father of my Children“), and a Berlin Silver Bear for Best Director (“Things To Come“) after she made it. And perhaps it’s an inevitably compromised – or at least altered – experience too: “All is Forgiven” can’t help but be viewed now through the prism of Mia Hansen-Løve‘s subsequent career, a retrospective perspective made even more unavoidable by the retrospection of her most recent feature “Bergman Island,” which is playing in theaters at the same time that Metrograph is giving her debut a long-overdue US release.

Continue reading ‘All Is Forgiven’ Review: Mia Hansen-Løve’s Delicate Debut Is More Than Just A Taste Of Things To Come at The Playlist.

Charles Gillibert, the thriving French producer behind Leos Carax’s Cannes prizewinning “Annette,” spoke to Variety about his recent acquisition of Les Films du Losange, one of France’s oldest and most revered auteur-driven production and distribution companies.

Gillibert teamed up with French financier Alexis Dantec, former managing director of the film financing group Cofinova, to complete the acquisition deal for Les Films du Losange, which is at Venice with Kavich Neang’s “White Building” playing in the Horizons section.

Les Films du Losange was founded by Barbet Schroeder and Eric Rohmer in 1962 and was under the leadership of Margaret Menegoz since 1975. The award-winning banner, which is also involved in international sales, has been producing cult movies by some of Europe’s best known filmmakers, notably Rohmer, Schroeder, Roger Planchon, Jacques Rivette, Michael Haneke, Jacques Doillon, Mia Hansen-Love.

In total, the company has a library of about 100 prestige films many...

IFC Films has set the U.S. theatrical release date for Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Bergman Island” on Oct. 15. The critically acclaimed movie world premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and will next play at Toronto, among other key fall festivals.

The film stars Mia Wasikowska (“Maps to the Stars”), Tim Roth (“Once Upon a Time in America”), Vicky Krieps (“Phantom Thread”) and Anders Danielsen Lie (“Personal Shopper”).

Charles Gillibert’s CG Cinema (“Annette”) produced “Bergman Island” alongside Rodrigo Texeira at Rt Features, with co-producers Erik Hemmendorff. “Bergman Island” marks CG Cinema’s third collaboration with Hansen-Løve, following “Eden” in 2014 and “Things to Come” which won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2016.

IFC Films has previously collaborated with Hansen-Løve on her critically acclaimed sophomore outing “Father of My Children,” as well as “Goodbye First Love” and “Things to Come.”

“Bergman Island” follows a couple of filmmakers,...

A young Parisian filmmaker whose delicately personal work illuminates the unbearable lightness of being with the soft touch of a late summer breeze, Mia Hansen-Løve may not be the first 21st-century auteur who comes to mind when people consider the portentous legacy of Ingmar Bergman, a man whose cinema stared into the void in the hopes of seeing its own reflection, and shouted down God’s silence with such howling rage that even his comedies are probably still echoing in eternity. From a distance, the idea of Hansen-Løve shooting an homage to Bergman feels like the equivalent of, say, Kacey Musgraves recording a covers album devoted to the Swedish doom metal band Candlemass.

And yet, “Bergman Island” — a triple-layered meta-romance about a filmmaker who flies to Sweden with her partner and pitches him a screenplay about her first love — is such . Set on the remote skerry in the Baltic Sea...

“Bergman Island,” the lyrical and absorbing new drama written and directed by Mia Hansen-Løve, tells the story of two filmmakers who are a couple: Tony (Tim Roth), the more famous of the two, and Chris (Vicky Krieps), who has carved out her own independent niche in world cinema. They have a daughter they’re leaving with relatives, and the movie is about what happens when they journey to the island of Fårö, in the Baltic Sea, and settle into a remotely spacious country cottage with a windmill in the backyard. They’ve rented the place as a summer getaway in which to work on their latest screenplays.

It’s no accident, of course, that they’ve sought out this grassy, becalmed, picturesque island just off the southeast coast of Sweden. It’s the place made famous by Ingmar Bergman, who shot a number of his films there, like “Through a Glass Darkly...

It’s been an intense year for Mia Hansen-Løve. The French director of All Is Forgiven (2007) and Things to Come (2016) had finished her new film — her English-language debut Bergman Island, starring Tim Roth, Vicky Krieps, and Mia Wasikowska — when Covid struck and France, along with much of the world, went into lockdown. Then, last April, her father caught the coronavirus and died of complications.

“This whole year has been awful,” says Hansen-Løve. “My father died and I couldn’t work, I couldn’t write. I have nothing positive to say about 2020.”

Krieps and Roth star in Bergman ...

It’s been an intense year for Mia Hansen-Løve. The French director of All Is Forgiven (2007) and Things to Come (2016) had finished her new film — her English-language debut Bergman Island, starring Tim Roth, Vicky Krieps, and Mia Wasikowska — when Covid struck and France, along with much of the world, went into lockdown. Then, last April, her father caught the coronavirus and died of complications.

“This whole year has been awful,” says Hansen-Løve. “My father died and I couldn’t work, I couldn’t write. I have nothing positive to say about 2020.”

Krieps and Roth star in Bergman ...

IFC Films will be out in force at the Cannes Film Festival with three highly-anticipated films set for the competition: Jacques Audiard’s black-and-white drama “Paris, 13th District,” Mia Hansen-Løve’s English-language melodrama “Bergman Island” and Paul Verhoeven’s subversive period drama “Benedetta.” This comeback Cannes edition will also mark Arianna Bocco’s first year on the ground as IFC president. Ahead of the festival’s start, Bocco spoke to Variety about the company’s titles, dealmaking prospects at the festival and the industry’s evolution post-covid.

You have some of the most exciting films competing this year, did you know they would be playing in competition when you acquired them?

We didn’t and we’re very excited! All three films are very different from one another, so it will be really interesting to see how they play. Audiard’s film will likely surprise audiences because it’s unlike anything he’s done before.

By the time the first red carpet rolls out at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, it will have been more than two years since the usual crowd of festival fans, cinephiles, journalists, filmmakers, stars, and assorted gawkers and hangers-on descended upon the small seaside city for one of the world’s most lauded festivals. The 2020 edition of the festival was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and while the festival still named a number of films as part of its Official Selection, 2021 marks a return to “normal” festival-going that feels both scary and worth celebrating.

A number of films bestowed with those asterisked 2020 laurels will finally make their bow at the 2021 festival, along with a slew of brand-new titles (including a few even made during the pandemic), some returning stars, and some major new names to know. Of the dozens of films set to premiere at Cannes, we’ve honed in...

Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Bergman Island” has been percolating for several years now, which is why many cinephiles were thrilled to hear the drama will have its world premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. “Bergman Island” will compete for the Palme d’Or, making Hansen-Løve one of only four women in competition at Cannes 2021. An international trailer for the film has been released, debuting the first footage of cast members Tim Roth, Vicky Krieps, Mia Wasikowska, and Anders Danielsen Lie.

“Bergman Island” centers around a filmmaking couple (Roth and “Phantom Thread” breakout Krieps) who travel to the island of Fårö, which is where Ingmar Bergman lived and died and shot scenes for iconic films such as “Through a Glass Darkly” (1961), “Persona” (1966), “The Passion of Anna” (1969), and “Scenes from a Marriage” (1972). It’s here where the couple’s relationship is tested as the line between reality and fiction starts to blur.

Hansen-Løve...

"Why her and not me?" French distributor Les Films du Losange has released the first trailer for Bergman Island, the highly anticipated new Mia Hansen-Løve film screening at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. It was announced as one of the Main Competition films in this year's Cannes line-up. This is her latest since making Maya in 2018, and Things to Come in 2016 as well. In Bergman Island, an American filmmaking couple go to the island where Ingmar Bergman was inspired and find that the lines between reality and fiction star to blur. It was filmed back in 2018 on the island Fårö in Sweden. Talented actors Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth star, with Mia Wasikowska, Anders Danielsen Lie, Joel Spira, and Clara Strauch. I've been a fan of Mia Hansen-Løve for years (interviewed her in 2016) and this looks even better than I was expecting, as philosophical as usual for her but with an...

Time to get a little confessional and autobiographical with film, perhaps? The upcoming long-awaited and much-anticipated drama, “Bergman Island,” is about a filmmaking couple go to the island where Ingmar Bergman was inspired and find that the lines between reality and fiction start to blur. And well, it’ll do, blur, that when your life mirrors that idea a little bit, yes? The director of the film is the critically-acclaimed filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve and her ex-partner is the director Olivier Assayas, whom she was in a relationship with for two decades.

Continue reading ‘Bergman Island’ Trailer: Mia Hansen-Løve’s Cannes-Bound Relationship Drama Stars Vicky Krieps, Tim Roth & Mia Wasikowska at The Playlist.

IFC Films has acquired North American rights to “Bergman Island,” the English-language debut of Mia Hansen-Løve (“Things to Come”) which will world premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

The film stars Mia Wasikowska (“Maps to the Stars”), Tim Roth (“Once Upon a Time in America”), Vicky Krieps (“Phantom Thread”) and Anders Danielsen Lie (“Personal Shopper”).

Charles Gillibert’s CG Cinema (“Annette”) is producing “Bergman Island” alongside Rodrigo Texeira at Rt Features, with co-producers Erik Hemmendorff, Genevieve Lemal, Dietmar Güntsche and Julio Chavezmontes. “Bergman Island” marks CG Cinema’s third collaboration with Hansen-Løve, following “Eden” in 2014 and “Things to Come” which won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2016.

IFC Films has previously collaborated with Hansen-Løve on her critically acclaimed sophomore outing “Father of My Children,” as well as “Goodbye First Love” and “Things to Come.”

A melodrama with genre elements, “Bergman Island” follows a couple of American filmmakers,...

IFC Films has acquired U.S. rights to Mia Hansen-Løve’s Bergman Island, ahead of the film’s world premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

The acquisition marks IFC’s fourth collaboration with the writer/director, on the heels of the features Father of My Children, Goodbye First Love and Things to Come.

Bergman Island centers on romantically involved American filmmakers Chris (Vicky Krieps) and Tony (Tim Roth), watching as they retreat to the mythical island of Fårö for the summer. Amidst the wild beauty of the landscape where Ingmar Bergman lived and filmed his most acclaimed works, the pair hope to find inspiration for their upcoming films. As days spent separately from Tony pass by, Chris’s fascination with the island grows, and memories of her first love come to the surface. Lines between reality and fiction then begin to blur, and tear the couple further apart.

Deal marks fourth collaboration between distributor and Mia Hansen-Løve.

IFC Films is reuniting with Mia Hansen-Love for a fourth time and has acquired North American rights to Cannes Competition entry Bergman Island starring Mia Wasikowska, Tim Roth, and Vicky Krieps.

Hansen-Love wrote the drama about an American filmmaker couple, Chris and Tony, who retreat to the mythical Fårö island for the summer, hoping to find inspiration amid the wild landscape where Bergman lived and shot his most celebrated works.

As days spent separately pass by, Chris develops a fascination for the island and souvenirs of her first love resurface. As...

Video Version of this Article Photo/Video: Disney Villains/Hollywood Insider YouTube Channel Let’s put all the princesses, adorable animal sidekicks, and valiant princes to the side. It’s time to turn off the lights, sing songs in a minor key, and fill the room with ominous green smoke that no one knows where it came from. Let’s talk about the bad guys! Disney villains are some of Disney’s most well-thought-out characters. While I doubt you can even name the prince in Sleeping Beauty, everyone knows who Maleficent is. She got her own movie, for crying out loud! As a rule of thumb, Disney villains are always scene-stealers. They usually have one of the most epic songs in their respective movies Unlike some of the side characters in Disney movies or even the prince, Disney villains almost never are one-dimensional. Do you want to disagree with me?...

The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.Since the early 1970s, Isabelle Huppert has amassed a staggering body of work. Relentlessly prolific and uncompromisingly daring, she has embodied an eclectic range of characters, often delving into the enigmatic recesses of individuals who are by turns destructive, tormented, and obsessed, and yet can be audaciously empowered, sexually complex, and passionately reflective. Huppert “surprises and unsettles us,” notes David Parkinson, writing for the British Film Institute, doing so by “relaxing her tightly coiled control and channeling her strength and energy into doing something shockingly impulsive.” But that control and impulsiveness was not instantaneous, nor was it effortless. Huppert’s abilities have been steadily honed over the course of more than 140 appearances in film and television. And if there is a darkness lingering over some of her more disturbing characterizations, there...

If you’re looking to dive into the best of independent and foreign filmmaking, The Criterion Channel has announced their August 2020 lineup. The impressive slate includes retrospectives dedicated to Mia Hansen-Løve, Bill Gunn, Stephen Cone, Terry Gilliam, Wim Wenders, Alain Delon, Bill Plympton, Les Blank, and more.

In terms of new releases, they also have Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’ Bacurau, the fascinating documentary John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection, the Kenyan LGBTQ drama Rafiki, and more. There’s also a series on Australian New Wave with films by Gillian Armstrong, Bruce Beresford, David Gulpilil, and Peter Weir, as well as one on bad vacations with Joanna Hogg’s Unrelated, Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers, and more.

See the lineup below and explore more on their platform. One can also see our weekly streaming picks here.

25 Ways to Quit Smoking, Bill Plympton, 1989

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, Roy Rowland,...

What better way to kick off a new month than a look at the many movies coming to Hulu? Ok, if you don’t have a Hulu subscription you might need an alternative. Maybe this list will convince you to take one out, though (not that I’m there salesperson). But enough patter, let’s crack on with it.

Here’s every new film that arrived on July 1st:

12 and Holding (2006)

2001 Maniacs (2005)

52 Pick-Up (1986)

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

A Complete History of My Sexual Failures (2009)

A Kid Like Jake (2018)

A Mighty Wind (2003)

A Storks Journey (2017)

An Eye for a Eye (1966)

The Axe Murders of Villisca (2017)

The Bellboy (1960)

Beloved (2012)

Best In Show (2000)

Between Us (2017)

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)

Birdwatchers (2010)

Boogie Woogie (2010)

The Bounty (1984)

Brokedown Palace (1998)

Buffy, the Vampire Slayer (1992)

Bug (1975)

Buried (2010)

Cadaver (2009)

California Dreamin’ (2009)

Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974)

Catcher Was A Spy (2018)

The Catechism Cataclysm (2011)

Change of Plans (2010)

Cheech & Chong...

"Wtf Value"

By Raymond Benson

Only serious film history aficionados and perhaps viewers of Turner Classic Movies will be aware that there was once a live-action version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland adapted by Hollywood in the early pre-code years. It was released in 1933 by Paramount and directed by Norman Z. McLeod, the guy who had helmed the Marx Brothers’ comedies Monkey Business (1931) and Horse Feathers (1932). McLeod would go on to make such titles as It’s a Gift (1934), Topper (1937), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), and The Paleface (1948).

The production of Alice in 1933 boasts a screenplay by none other than heavyweights Joseph L. Mankiewicz and William Cameron Menzies, the man behind Things to Come and a production designer whose hands were all over Hollywood and British productions over the next two decades. The script also borrows heavily from the popular and then-current stage production written by Eva La Gallienne and Florida Friebus,...

The anarchic director on good stuff to see for free including a stack of colourised black-and-white film treasures

What I do during lockdown … is pretty much what I would do anyway. Read books, stare at screens, listen to music, play with the dogs, go for walks. My wife Tod and I are very fortunate because we live in a rural area and there’s no prohibition against walking in Oregon! The images of honest British footpath walkers being harassed by police drones are most troubling. What will the cops do with the malefactors? Send ’em to court, and jail?

Anyway, as far as films are concerned we don’t have a good TV signal or a streaming contract so we’re limited to things that we can see for free. Fortunately, there is a considerable amount of good stuff for nothing if you dig for it! We watched Dead of Night...

Curzon will be venturing into people’s homes via their Curzon Home Cinema service, with a specially curated series of films with the support of world-class filmmakers including Ruben Östlund, Celine Sciamma and Andrew Haigh.

The virtual cinema experience of curated films will be shown over the coming weeks, with people around the country encouraged to watch along together to retain the magic of the collective viewing experience. The films will be followed by an exclusive live interview with the director talking from their own personal isolation.

The series will launch on Friday 27th March with the release of System Crasher (courtesy of 606 Distribution), followed by a live Q&a with director Nora Fingscheidt. The live Q&a will begin at 9pm (GMT), and Curzon encourages people at home to watch along together from 6.45pm (GMT). The film will also be available on the service from the morning of Friday 27th March.

Sara Driver's Sleepwalk (1986) and When Pigs Fly (1993) is showing October and November on Mubi in the United States.SleepwalkIn Sara Driver’s too small yet varied filmography, her two fiction features, both poetic fantasies—Sleepwalk (1986) and When Pigs Fly (1993)—are bracketed by two other longer films, the 48-minute You Are Not I and the 78-minute documentary Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat (2017). Sleepwalk stars Suzanne Fletcher, who also played the schizophrenic sister in You Are Not I; Boom For Real portrays both a highly interactive community and an eclectic artist inside it, which might also describe When Pigs Fly, a comedy inspired by Topper about a jazz pianist (Alfred Molina) living in an east coast port town populated by barflies and ghosts. Moreover, the community in Boom is basically Lower East Side Manhattan and more specifically the Bowery, the setting of Sleepwalk, as well as...

Don’t run away because we use the word ‘profound’ to describe this 1967 sci-fi classic — some call it the best of the Hammer Quatermass films, this time fully written by Nigel Kneale and acted by a terrific cast — Andrew Kier, James Donald, Barbara Shelley and Julian Glover. A subway excavation uncovers strange human skulls, and then a huge bluish craft that the Army dismisses as a secret German V-weapon… until it begins to emanate psychic storms and supernatural phenomena. Sci-fi fans wanting ‘more’ will be intrigued by author Kneale’s incredible ‘origin story’ for the human race as an intelligent, aggressive and literally haunted species. The disc is loaded with extras, information, history and great opinions from a half-dozen qualified film experts. Plus we can hear Nigel Kneale discuss it himself.

Quatermass and the Pit

Blu-ray

Scream Factory

1967 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 97 min. / Street Date July 30, 2019 / Available from Shout! Factory / 27.99

Starring: James Donald,...

Don’t run away because we use the word ‘profound’ to describe this 1967 sci-fi classic — some call it the best of the Hammer Quatermass films, this time fully written by Nigel Kneale and acted by a terrific cast — Andrew Kier, James Donald, Barbara Shelley and Julian Glover. A subway excavation uncovers strange human skulls, and then a huge bluish craft that the Army dismisses as a secret German V-weapon… until it begins to emanate psychic storms and supernatural phenomena. Sci-fi fans wanting ‘more’ will be intrigued by author Kneale’s incredible ‘origin story’ for the human race as an intelligent, aggressive and literally haunted species. The disc is loaded with extras, information, history and great opinions from a half-dozen qualified film experts. Plus we can hear Nigel Kneale discuss it himself.

Quatermass and the Pit

Blu-ray

Scream Factory

1967 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 97 min. / Street Date July 30, 2019 / Available from Shout! Factory / 27.99

Starring: James Donald,...

Gee whiz, sci-fi sure was simple in the early ‘50s, wasn’t it? Slap a little Red Scare subtext here, a damsel in distress there, scientists, the military, and of course aliens rounding out the films that beamed from every drive-in on a Saturday night. One of the earliest (and best) of the bunch is Invaders from Mars (1953), which sets itself apart by employing a unique viewpoint and having spectacular and surreal production design. Don’t write this off as a cheap time waster, you whippersnappers.

Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox near the end of April, this independent production received some favorable notices and made a swift return on its $290,000 budget, for good reason – seen through a child’s eyes, it captures that imagination and runs with it for 78 minutes, shoddy getups and all. Invaders from Mars is told with the fervor of an excited youth playing catch up with an exploding imagination.

Olivier Assayas, Penélope Cruz, Édgar Ramírez, and producer Rodrigo Teixeira with Kent Jones at the New York Film Festival Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Wasp Network, another highlight of this year's New York Film Festival, stars Penélope Cruz and Édgar Ramírez with Gael García Bernal, Wagner Moura, Ana de Armas, and Leonardo Sbaraglia. Inspired by Fernando Morais’s book The Last Soldiers Of The Cold War, the director/screenwriter Olivier Assayas announced that the film shot by Yorick Le Saux and Denis Lenoir, had been edited substantially since it was first shown at the Venice Film Festival on September 1. Assayas considered what we watched at the press screening on the afternoon of Friday, October 4 to be the film's new final cut world première.

Penélope Cruz: "I love babies. Once they get to the set they're mine!" Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Wasp Network transports us into the realm of Cubans...

Actress worked with Georges Franju, Luis Buñuel, Andrzej Zulawski, Jacques Rivette, Leo Carax, Olivier Assayas and Mia Hansen-Løve.

Tributes have been paid to French actress Edith Scob, who has died in Paris at the age of 81.

Scob made her big screen breakthrough in Georges Franju’s 1960 cult horror classic Eyes Without A Face and then worked in later years with the likes of Leo Carax and Olivier Assayas.

France’s Minister of Culture Franck Riester said Scob had a “magnetic presence that flooded every one of her films.”

French cinema promotional and export body Unifrance added on Twitter: “81 years...

French-Moroccan actor Kamel Labroudi to star as Tunisian street vendor who took his own life as a protest.

German production outfit DETAiLFILM and Paris-based Cinenovo are teaming with Us companies Beachside Films and Anonymous Content on Before The Spring, a drama based on the life of Mohamed Bouazizi.

Bouazizi was a Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire in protest of his treatment by officials; the act of defiance was one of the catalysts for the Tunisian Revolution and the wider Arab Spring.

Egyptian-British filmmaker Lotfy Nathan is making his narrative feature debut on the project. Nathan’s documentary 12 O’Clock Boys,...

CineSavant obsesses over yet another obscure bit of cinematic sociology: a glossy pre-Code MGM melodrama about mothers and war, which half-debates issues like pacifism, the losses of world war one, military vigilance, cowardice, chemical WMDs and foolish idealism! But don’t worry, the title statement is the ultimate answer to everything. Oh, it’s also political sci-fi: it takes place in the future year of 1940, when New York City comes under aerial attack, with skyscrapers bombed to bits and poison gas dropped in the streets. No, this is not new, it was released in 1933.

Men Must Fight

DVD

The Warner Archive Collection

1933 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 72 min. / Street Date January 15, 2019 / available through the WBshop / 191.99

Starring: Diana Wynyard, Lewis Stone, Phillips Holmes, May Robson, Ruth Selwyn, Robert Young, Robert Greig, Hedda Hopper, Donald Dilloway, Mary Carlisle, Luis Alberni.

Cinematography: George J. Folsey

Film Editor: William S. Gray

Written by C. Gardner Sullivan...

CineSavant obsesses over yet another obscure bit of cinematic sociology: a glossy pre-Code MGM melodrama about mothers and war, which half-debates issues like pacifism, the losses of world war one, military vigilance, cowardice, chemical WMDs and foolish idealism! But don’t worry, the title statement is the ultimate answer to everything. Oh, it’s also political sci-fi: it takes place in the future year of 1940, when New York City comes under aerial attack, with skyscrapers bombed to bits and poison gas dropped in the streets. No, this is not new, but from 1933.

Men Must Fight

DVD

The Warner Archive Collection

1933 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 72 min. / Street Date January 15, 2019 / available through the WBshop / 191.99

Starring: Diana Wynyard, Lewis Stone, Phillips Holmes, May Robson, Ruth Selwyn, Robert Young, Robert Greig, Hedda Hopper, Donald Dilloway, Mary Carlisle, Luis Alberni.

Cinematography: George J. Folsey

Film Editor: William S. Gray

Written by C. Gardner Sullivan...

‘Greta’, ’Dragged Across Concrete’ among new titles.

Holdovers look set to dominate the UK box office this weekend, with Trevor Nunn’s spy drama Red Joan amongst the new openers.

Produced by David Parfitt’s Trademark Films, the Lionsgate-distributed feature is led by Judi Dench and 2014 Screen Star of Tomorrow Sophie Cookson, and based on the novel of the same name by Jennie Rooney. Cookson plays Joan Stanley, a Cambridge physics student in 1938 who falls for a young communist; while Dench takes up the character in 2000 when MI5 come to arrest her.

The film will be aiming to top...

Mia Hansen-Løve’s best films envelop the viewer so persuasively in their currents of feeling that it can take you a moment or two to notice how coolly and methodically constructed they are: the revealing agility of her camera placement, the sharp economy of her editing, the often rich irony of her musical selections, all subtly contributing to character portraits of granular depth. In “Maya,” her sixth and most internationally-minded feature, those virtues hit you straight away, only to reveal more grace and precision in the framing than in the rather hazily conceived characters themselves. A study of a European man’s healing Indian odyssey that gives in all too frequently to hoary colonial romanticism, this is the first stumble in Hansen-Løve’s hitherto impressive filmography — the kind of directorial misstep that at least makes it clear how deft her footwork usually is.

Coming off Hansen-Løve’s best and most...

“Acting is very easy for me,” Isabelle Huppert said, not bragging so much as stating a fact. Sitting in a small Manhattan conference room, she leaned back and shrugged her shoulders. The famously understated French star, whose “Greta” opens this month, is as honest and direct as she appears on screen — if also warmer than you might expect from her many film roles. “Everything I do as an actress is really the story of the scorpion who can’t avoid stinging the frog,” she said. “It’s just my nature, you know?”

That casual admission was alarming to hear. Huppert’s five-decade filmography — a peerless body of work that’s crossed paths with everyone from Otto Preminger and Jean-Luc Godard to Claire Denis and Mia Hansen-Løve — is littered with sociopaths, self-mutilators, and murderers. Huppert only objected to the last type: “What killers have I played before?” she asked. Well, there...

Weltkino boards Berlinale premiere.

As this year’s European Film Market in Berlin gets underway, Weltkino has moved quickly to snap up Generation Kplus opening film Cleo – If I Could Turn Back Time for German-speaking territories.

The distributor struck the deal with Munich-based sales outfit Global Screen, which recently boarded the title to represent world rights.

Directed by Erik Schmitt, the film is a road-trip through Berlin which tells the story of young dreamer Cleo as she searches for a magic clock that can turn back time. Marleen Lohse stars in the lead role, Max Mauff and Andrea Sawatzki round out the cast.

With more than 300 films in its program and 500,000 attendees coming to watch them, the Berlinale is the world’s largest film festival. The 69th edition — the last under the guidance of festival director Dieter Kosslick, who’s overseen the launch of major recent movies like Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Things to Come,” Wes Anderson’s “Isle of Dogs,” and Asghar Farhadi’s “A Separation” — is set to kick off this Thursday with the world premiere of Lone Scherfig’s star-studded “The Kindness of Strangers,” and will continue until the following weekend, when Juliette Binoche’s jury awards the prestigious Golden Bear to the film that emerges victorious from the festival’s Competition section.

While the Berlinale has become one of the most eclectic events of its kind, and an unparalleled opportunity to discover fresh and exciting work from all corners of the globe, this year’s program also includes new work...

For all of the constant talk about “the death of cinema,” 2018 was yet another incredible year at the movies. Some of the most remarkable films could be seen coming a mile away (e.g. “Black Panther”) while others seemingly came out of nowhere (e.g. “Madeline’s Madeline”) to remind us that we’re still scratching at the surface of what this medium has to offer. In that light, it’s hard not to get excited about what 2019 might have in store. We’ve already seen 22 great films that are slated to hit theaters in the next 12 months, and those titles will soon be joined by new efforts from the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Kore-eda Hirokazu, Dee Rees, Mia Hansen-Løve, Greta Gerwig, Jordan Peele, and Josephine Decker, in addition to major franchise releases like “Star Wars: Episode IX” and — of course — “Detective Pikachu.” We can’t wait to start watching.

The New York Film Critics’ Circle is so determined to be one of the first groups to weigh in with its picks for the best of the year that the date of its decision-making keeps getting advanced; it was on Nov. 29 this year. But how much influence does it have on the last group to be heard from — the motion picture academy which will reveal the Oscar winners 88 days from now on Feb. 24, 2019? Let’s take a look back at the last seven years of the Gotham critics picks and see how well (or not), these early kudos previewed the Academy Awards.

See New York Film Critics’ Circle Awards 2019: Full list of winners [Updating Live]

Last year, Greta Gerwig‘s solo directorial debut “Lady Bird” was named Best Picture by the Nyfcc while its star, Saoirse Ronan, took home the Best Actress award. The film fell short at the Oscars, losing...

In a creative spurt that will have given us give her seminal film Things to Come (review) in 2016, the Tiff world preemed Maya (2018) and Bergman Island (2019) in a breakneck pace of a film per 18 months, Mia Hansen-Løve came to Toronto with Roman Kolinka (who has become a three film in a row muse) and first time actress Aarshi Banerjee. This ode to Goa feels like a distant cousin of Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger in terms of how it’s protagonist journalist embraces a change in identity while haphazardly being aided or guided by a young women.…...

Maya Love is Your Love: Hansen-Love Stumbles with Sluggish Romantic Drama

Following on the heels of her most widely acclaimed feature to date, 2016’s Things to Come (review), which nabbed her a Best Director win out of the Berlin International Film Festival (making her one of three women to hold this distinction to date), French auteur Mia Hansen-Love’s sixth feature, Maya, arrives as something of a disappointment. Documenting the slow-burn romance between a traumatized French war-reporter and a younger Indian woman still figuring out what she wants to do with her life, Hansen-Love includes many of her favored themes, which would include utilizing actor Roman Kolinka (who also appeared in Eden and Things to Come).…...