News

The end will not come with a bang, they say, but with a TikTok post featuring a fake incel bragging about his prolific sex life. We’re paraphrasing slightly, but somehow, we don’t think the folks behind Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World will mind — this is a movie that gleefully blends highbrow references and dick jokes while bending reality to its breaking point. The latest satire from Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude, this provocation takes aim at a host of subjects: social media, the mainstream media,...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Exclusive: Big World Pictures has acquired U.S. and Canadian rights from Paris-based sales firm Charades to Giacomo Abbruzzese’s debut feature, Disco Boy.

Winner of the Berlinale’s Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution earlier this year, the largely French-language film stars rising German actor Franz Rogowski as a Belarusian immigrant haunted by his actions as a mercenary in the French Foreign Legion. Above is an English-language trailer for the movie.

An early 2024 theatrical release is being lined up following fall festival play. France’s Films Grand Huit produces.

Rogowski is best known for Ira Sachs’ Passages, Christian Petzold’s Transit and Sebastian Meise’s Great Freedom. Upcoming he will star in Andrea Arnold’s Bird and David Michôd and A24’s Wizards!.

In Disco Boy, Rogowski plays Aleksei, who reaches Paris following a difficult and undocumented journey across Europe. In Paris he enlists in the French Foreign Legion,...

Of the handful of directors who make up the Romanian New Wave, which kicked off two decades ago and is still going strong, Radu Jude is perhaps the most radical and exuberant — something like the movement’s Jacques Rivette or Jacques Rozier. He’s made everything from a coming-of-age comedy (The Happiest Girl in the World) to an historic western (Aferim!) to a bleak period drama (Scarred Hearts) to a contemporary sex satire (Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, which won Berlin’s Golden Bear in 2021).

His latest work, the nearly three-hour Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, may actually be his most experimental yet, with two parallel narratives — one set in in the present, the other consisting of found footage from the 1981 movie, Angela Moves On (Angela merge mai departe) — tackling similar stories of women eking out a living on the dog-eat-dog streets of Bucharest.

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.

The Alex van Warmerdam Collection

If you only know the work of Alex van Warmerdam as it pertains to his breakout psychological thriller Borgman, one know has a chance to dive into five other films from the Dutch director. Abel, The Northerners, The Last Days of Emma Blank, Schneider vs. Bax, and his new re-edit of Grimm are now on Film Movement Plus. We said in our review of Schneider vs. Bax, “Hitman films tend to be action-packed and heavy with tropes familiar to that particular sub-genre of thrillers. Yet Dutch filmmaker Alex van Warmerdam hopes to subvert those expectations by crafting an almost absurdist, Beckett-style drama between two contract killers hired to take out the other.”

Where to Stream: Film Movement...

Rarely one finds a friend on the Criterion Channel—discounting the parasitic relationship we form with filmmakers, I mean—but it’s great seeing their March lineup give light to Sophy Romvari, the <bias>exceptionally talented</bias> filmmaker and curator whose work has perhaps earned comparisons to Agnès Varda and Chantal Akerman but charts its own path of history and reflection. It’s a good way to lead into an exceptionally strong month, featuring as it does numerous films by Pier Paolo Pasolini, the great Japanese documentarian Kazuo Hara, newfound cult classic Arrebato, and a number of Criterion editions.

On the last front we have The Age of Innocence, Bull Durham, A Raisin in the Sun, The Celebration, Merrily We Go to Hell, and Design for Living. There’s always something lingering on the watchlist, but it might have to wait a second longer—March is an opened floodgate.

See the full...

Romanian “I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians” and “Aferim!” director Radu Jude is back with another shocking and brilliant satire, “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn.” This pandemic-era take on society’s awful state won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival this year, and just recently played the New York Film Festival. Next up, it’s set to open in theaters from Magnolia Pictures on November 19. Exclusive to IndieWire, watch the trailer for the film below.

Here’s the synopsis courtesy of Magnolia Pictures: “Emi (Katia Pascariu), a schoolteacher, finds her reputation under threat after a personal sex tape is uploaded onto the internet. Forced to meet the parents demanding her dismissal, Emi refuses to surrender. ‘Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn’ is a film in three loosely connected parts: a walk in the city of Bucharest, then a playful essay on obscenities,...

Big World Pictures has picked up Romanian auteur Radu Jude’s “Uppercase Print,” which premiered last year in the Berlinale’s Forum section. The sale was handled by Brussels-based Best Friend Forever. The director’s “Bad Luck Banging” won the 2021 Golden Bear at the Berlinale.

An adaptation of a 2013 play, “Tipografic majuscul” by Romanian playwright Gianina Carbunariu, the film tells the true story of high school student Mugur Călinescu who was arrested in the early 1980s by Romania’s secret police agency for graffiti criticizing the regime of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

Jude intercuts contemporaneous footage of advertisements, music videos and propaganda films asserting both the basic wholesomeness and banality of the culture with excerpts from the play showing the repressive mechanisms of the state at work. The effect is both disorienting and devastating.

The film marks the fourth collaboration between Jude and Big World, following “Aferim!” (2015), “Scarred Hearts” (2017) and...

Radu Jude’s “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn,” which won the Golden Bear for best film at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, has sold to major territories for Heretic Outreach, Variety has learned exclusively.

The Romanian writer-director’s latest feature is an irreverent satire about a schoolteacher, Emi (Katia Pascariu), who finds her reputation under threat after a personal sex tape is uploaded on the internet. Forced to meet the parents demanding her dismissal, she refuses to surrender. “Bad Luck Banging” is a film in three loosely connected parts: a walk in the city of Bucharest, then a playful essay on obscenities, all culminating in an incendiary sitcom.

Heretic Outreach has closed deals for France (Météore Films), Italy (Lucky Red), Portugal (Films4you), Lithuania (Kino Pavasaris), Estonia (Must Käsi), Israel (Lev Cinemas), Brazil (Imovision), and Hong Kong (Edko Films Limited). Previous sales from the Athens-based sales outfit include Germany...

The online edition of the two-part Berlin International Film Festival has now concluded, and the jury has announced their winners. Leading the pack taking home the Golden Bear was Romanian director Radu Jude’s new film Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, while Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy took home the Silver Bear for Grand Jury Prize.

Rory O’Connor said in our review of Jude’s film, “As his old compatriots dabble in as far flung places as comic noirs (The Whistlers) and über-dense period symposiums (Malmkrog), it’s interesting that Radu Jude has lately emerged as the most contemporary minded of Romania’s great generation of filmmakers. Even when dabbling in the past his films are intrinsically linked to the here and now. In attempting to address the current moment, his latest, titled Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, is amongst the first of what can...

Updated Writethru: The Berlin Film Festival revealed its 2021 awards in a virtual presentation this afternoon with Radu Jude’s Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn scooping the top prize Golden Bear. Also among winners are debut filmmaker Dénes Nagy who took the Silver Bear for Best Director with Natural Light. Maria Schrader’s I’m Your Man brought star Maren Eggert the Best Leading Performance honor while Maria Speth’s documentary Mr Bachmann And His Class was crowned with the Silver Bear Jury Prize, and the Grand Jury Prize went to Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Wheel Of Fortune And Fantasy (see the full list below).

The winners were unveiled following five days of a virtual industry event that included the European Film Market and the competition films being made available only to delegates and the main jury from March 1-5. Berlin intends to run an audience-focused festival in June, when films will...

As his old compatriots dabble in as far flung places as comic noirs (The Whistlers) and über-dense period symposiums (Malmkrog), it’s interesting that Radu Jude has lately emerged as the most contemporary minded of Romania’s great generation of filmmakers. Even when dabbling in the past his films are intrinsically linked to the here and now. In attempting to address the current moment, his latest, titled Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, is amongst the first of what can only be a limited amount of significant films to be made both in and of the pandemic.

It premiered at the online Berlin Film Festival and it’s pleasing to think of couch-bound film critics across the globe scrambling for their television remotes as Jude’s film opens on an amateur hardcore porn video. Alas, had it been in a cinema it would have brought the house down.

The smartphone...

Heretic Outreach has acquired world sales rights to “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn” from acclaimed Romanian writer-director Radu Jude, which world premieres in competition at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, Variety can reveal.

Jude’s latest film is the story of a schoolteacher, Emi (Katia Pascariu), whose life is turned upside down after a sex video shot with her husband is leaked on the internet. Forced to meet the parents demanding her dismissal, she refuses to give in, instead confronting the hypocrisy and prejudice behind Romanian society’s attitudes toward sex.

“Bad Luck Banging” is produced by Ada Solomon of Romania’s microFILM, in co-production with Paul Thiltges Distributions (Luxembourg), endorfilm (Czech Republic) and Kinorama (Croatia). Photography is by veteran cinematographer and long-time Jude collaborator Marius Panduru.

In his ninth feature, Jude leverages the hysteria and moral panic around the leaked video to examine “what is obscene and how do we define it.

FilmLA reports that monthly film permit applications saw a 23.7% surge in October to 880 permits over September’s 711 permits.

Since film and TV productions commenced during the pandemic in June on-location, FilmLA has received roughly 2,565 film permit applications spanning 1,967 unique projects over the last 20 weeks.

FilmLA’s daily intake now averages around 40 new applications per business day. “Overall, activity levels have stabilized at just under 47 percent of what analysts would expect under normal filming conditions,” reads the org’s recent release, with “the average rate of business growth slowing somewhat.”

Across weeks 17-20 new application intake grew 4.8%; in weeks 13-16 it grew 10%.

The org reports that the advertising sector of still photography and commercials remains the most notable with a 44% share of local permit requests. TV production is next at 25%. “The expected October pick-up in scripted television production did occur; local Reality TV production (6 percent of requests) was eclipsed by TV...

History is a fanged presence in Romanian director Radu Jude’s recent films. Since 2015’s “Aferim!,” in both fiction and nonfiction formats, culminating in the heady tangle of the two approaches that was 2018’s remarkable “I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians,” Jude has interrogated various incidents and epochs in his country’s past, with particularly withering reference to the fog of selective national forgetfulness in which a complicit society can shroud its collective sins.

Berlin title “Uppercase Print” certainly continues this course, projecting those concerns onto the oppressive nature of life in the Ceausescu-blighted early 1980s. But while the film feels closest in kinship to “Barbarians” and dances with similar ideas involving theatricality, re-creation and everyday propaganda (here represented by a fascinating array of clips from contemporary television shows and advertisements culled from Jude’s impressively exhaustive ongoing trawl through the National Television Archives...

Feature tells true story of student arrested by Communist Romania’s secret services after challenging regime of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

Brussels-based sales company Best Friend Forever (Bff) has boarded world sales on Romanian director Radu Jude’s new political drama Uppercase Print ahead of its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Forum section.

An adaptation of 2013 play Typographic Capital Letters by Romanian playwright Gianina Carbunariu, it tells the true story of high school student Mugur Călinescu who was arrested in the early 1980s by Romania’s secret police agency, or Securitate, for graffiti criticising the regime of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

The strand’s 50th anniversary to open with a previously unfinished film by late Chilean director Raúl Ruiz.

The Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 20-March 1) has revealed the 35 films in this year’s Forum line-up, including 28 world premieres.

Scroll down for full list of titles

The strand aims to highlight challenging and thought-provoking filmmaking that brings together film with visual art, theatre and literature.

This year’s Forum will open with The Tango Of The Widower And Its Distorting Mirror from late Chilean director Raúl Ruiz and his widow Valeria Sarmiento.

Ruiz – a four-time Palme d’Or nominee who won...

The upcoming 70th Berlin International Film Festival has revealed the line-up of 36 features that will comprise its co-production market. Run as part of the festival’s European Film Market, its respected industry strand, the event looks to place international projects with co-producers, film funds, and sales reps. Filmmakers with projects in the line-up this year include Adina Pintilie, who won Berlin’s Golden Bear in 2018 with her feature Touch Me Not, Milko Lazarov, whose Aga premiered in Berlin in 2018, and Radu Jude, who screened his feature Aferim! In Berlin in 2015. Across the selection there are 15 projects with female directors, equating to 42%. More than 1,500 organized meetings will take place during the co-pro market this year between February 22 and 26.

Also today, Berlin has unveiled a compact program of eight films for its Perspektive Deutsches Kino strand, which highlights new works from Germany. Screening will be four features – including Michael Venus’s Sleep...

New films from Pepa San Martín and Golden Bear winner Adina Pintilie among the line up.

The films selected for the Berlinale Co-Production Market (February 22-26) have been revealed and top 50% by female directors in the official project selection for the first time.

Scroll down for full list of titles

A total of 36 features from 34 countries will be showcased by producers seeking co-production partners through one-to-one meetings with distributors, financiers and sales agents.

For the official project selection, 21 projects with budgets ranging from €750,000 to €5m were selected from more than 300 submissions. With 11 projects by female directors, the proportion here has exceeded 50% for the first time.

Selection includes the upcoming drama from Berlinale award-winner Radu Jude.

CineMart, the co-production market of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (Iffr), has revealed the 17 feature projects to be showcased at next year’s edition.

Scroll down for full list

Held January 26-29 during the festival (which runs January 22 – February 2), CineMart invites filmmakers to pitch their projects to a host of international film professionals in tailored one-to-one meetings, as well as presentations that are open to all CineMart guests.

Notable directors in the selection include Romania’s Radu Jude, who won a Berlinale Silver Bear in 2015 with Aferim! and picked up...

Radu Jude’s “I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians,” which has its world premiere Monday in Karlovy Vary Film Festival’s main competition, has ruffled as many feathers in his native Romania as the film’s central character does in the town where she is staging a historical reenactment of a chapter from the Holocaust.

In a country where many still refuse to discuss its role as a Nazi ally – in common with several others in Europe – the subject is still raw, says the writer/director. Jude, who won the best director award at the Berlin Film Festival for “Aferim!,” focusing on 19th-century life in Jewish settlements, made “Barbarians” as a co-production with France, Bulgaria, Germany and the Czech Republic. Beta Cinema is handling world sales rights.

Did you face political pressure not to explore this subject as your director character does? How did you handle that?...