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Following Ingmar Bergman, Agnès Varda, Bruce Lee, Federico Fellini, Godzilla, and Wong Kar Wai, the next major box set collection coming from the Criterion Collection has been announced. Arriving this June is Pasolini 101, a 9-Blu-ray set dedicated to the legendary, late Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini.

“Released in celebration of the 101st anniversary of Pasolini’s birth, this collector’s set provides an essential window onto a transformative period for an artist whose legacy remains a wellspring of freedom and revolutionary force,” Criterion notes. “Including nine provocative, lyrical, often scandal-inducing films from the 1960s––Accattone, Mamma Roma, Love Meetings, The Gospel According to Matthew, The Hawks and the Sparrows, Oedipus Rex, Teorema, Porcile, and Medea––the decade in which this celebrated poet, novelist, and intellectual embarked on a feature filmmaking career, Pasolini 101 is a monument to the artist’s daring vision of cinema.”

The release features new 4K digital restorations...

The Italian film industry, which did not pause during the pandemic, is clearly a top priority within the country’s post Covid-19 recovery plan. The plan sees Rome’s Cinecittà Studios set for a €300 million ($358 million) cash injection earmarked by the European Union’s post-pandemic recovery fund for a radical overhaul of the famed facilities.

In June European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Italian premier Mario Draghi jointly visited the Cinecittà lot and held a press conference in its vast Studio 5, known as the late, great Federico Fellini’s second home. Italian culture minister Dario Franceschini announced still undeveloped plans to upgrade and expand the iconic studios “in order to adequately meet the growing international demand” for studio space.

Meanwhile Cinema Italiano will be out in full force at Cannes. Veteran auteur Marco Bellocchio will present his personal doc “Marx Can Wait” out-of-competition and be feted with an...

The 2020 special edition of the Locarno Film Festival, deemed For the Future of Films, gathers audiences in both virtual and physical space. At the center of this year's festival are 20 suspended projects, each halted in some way by the Covid-19 pandemic, that will compete in the The Films After Tomorrow section. From Lisandro Alonso and Miguel Gomes to Lav Diaz and Lucrecia Martel, these 22 filmmakers have also joined together to handpick twenty films from previous editions of the festival. The program, A Journey in the Festival's History, is an anthology of timeless films from Locarno's past (from 1948 to 2019) that reflect the festival's spirit of discovery and celebration of stylistic breakthrough. Mubi is immensely proud to be partnering with the festival to make these selections available for streaming outside Switzerland. Below, the directors have shared some words about their inspired choices. Wang Bing on Horse MoneyPedro Costa’s films explore...

Like most film festivals this year, Locarno Film Festival will not be moving ahead as usual. However, they’ve found inventive ways to both celebrate filmmakers they’ve long admired and present films physically and digitally. After announcing a new initiative to support new films by Lucrecia Martel, Lisandro Alonso, Lav Diaz, Wang Bing, Miguel Gomes, and more, they’ve asked this class of talented directors to select their favorite films in Locarno history.

A Journey in the Festival’s History is devoted to Locarno’s 73-year history of showing the best in international cinema. Made up of twenty films, a selection will screen online for those in Switzerland as well as Mubi internationally. On August 5-15, they will also screen in person at Locarno’s theaters.

Lili Hinstin, Artistic Director of the Locarno Film Festival, said, “It would be an impossible task to present a review of the history...

Cairo International Film Festival, having recently confirmed that this year’s 42nd edition will be held in person in November, has opened the window for submissions to the Cairo Film Connection sidebar, part of Cairo Industry Days.

In its seven years of operation, Cairo Film Connection has helped Arab filmmakers secure funding and partnerships on more than 100 films from across the region. Last year, the event provided more than $200,000 of support between the shortlisted filmmakers.

Eligible projects must be feature length, fiction or non-fiction, from a filmmaker of Arab nationality or origin with at least one finished film on their resume, feature or short. Interested parties have until April 4 to submit via the festival’s website.

Cairo Industry Days is entering its third year in partnership with the Arab Cinema Center, which unites global industry professionals for a series of masterclasses, panels and events designed to promote and provide global networking opportunities to regional talent.

Films by Roberto Rossellini, Chantel Akerman and Marguerite Duras feature in selection.

The Locarno Film Festival has unveiled the selection of 20 classic film titles that will be showcased in its A Journey In The Festival’s History sidebar as part of its special hybrid edition running August 5 to 15.

The line-up is part of the festival’s ’Locarno 2020 – For the Future of Films’ edition which was created after it was forced to cancel its 73rd edition due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The titles have been selected by the directors taking part in its festival’s exceptional The Films After Tomorrow initiative...

High-profile filmmakers including Lucrecia Martel and Lav Diaz have contributed to a retrospective program for the Locarno Film Festival (August 5-15), selecting 20 titles from the event’s 74-year history that will have online and physical screenings next month.

Due to ongoing pandemic disruption Locarno shifted the majority of its festival online this year, though ten of the below list of titles will still have physical screenings in Switzerland. The entire program will be shown online for free in Switzerland by the fest, while it is partnering with streamer Mubi to stream the films outside of the country.

Ranging from 1948 (Locarno’s third edition) to 2018 (its 71st), the titles offer a broad insight into the fest’s history and are directed by filmmakers such as Roberto Rossellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jim Jarmusch, Michael Haneke, and Whit Stillman. The selectees are all participating in Locarno’s ‘The Films After Tomorrow’ initiative this year,...

Over the last century, each generation of technology revolutionized filmmaking. But with the smartphone filmmaking, the barrier to entry drops to something close to zero.  It's an ultra low-cost medium. It's easy to use. It also offers a sense of immediacy -- you can do away with crew or shoot surreptitiously. It turns anyone into an amateur filmmaker -- but as the smartphone is being adopted by professional filmmakers, it's fostering a new aesthetic. Filmmakers first started using the smartphone to film in 2005; the following year Italian directors, Marcello Mencarini and Barbara Seghezzi released a feature-length doc, "New Love Meetings (Comizi d'Amore)," shot in Mpeg-4 with a mobile phone. In 2007, South African director Aryan Kaganof released "SMS Sugar Man," a feature-length narrative shot using the Sony Ericsson W900i. In 2011, directors Hooman Khalili and Pat Gilles released the feature, "Olive," shot on a Nokia N8, and Korean director Chan-Wook Park released.

Italian screenwriter, novelist and poet who formed a successful partnership with the film director Roberto Benigni

Although he was a respected novelist and poet, Vincenzo Cerami, who has died aged 72 after a long illness, was perhaps best known as a screenwriter, thanks to his long partnership with the director Roberto Benigni. The pair co-wrote six films and had their greatest success with La Vita è Bella (Life Is Beautiful, 1997), which starred Benigni as a Jewish internee in a concentration camp, desperately pretending to his young son that it is all a game. The film won three Oscars and had a further four nominations, including for best screenplay. "Knowing Vincenzo was a gift," said Benigni, "because he taught people's hearts to beat."

On their early films together, Cerami was not able to totally sublimate Benigni's excesses as an actor. Nevertheless, Il Piccolo Diavolo (The Little Devil, 1988), Johnny Stecchino (1991) and Il Mostro (The Monster,...