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Spanish director Carlos Saura has died at home in Spain at the age of 91.

The filmmaker was one of Spain’s most renowned filmmakers alongside Luis Buñuel and Pedro Almodóvar.

The Spanish Cinema Academy said the director had died at his home surrounded by loved ones and described him as “one of the most important filmmakers in the history of Spanish cinema”.

Saura began his filmmaking career in the 1950s, making short documentaries.

He broke out internationally with The Hunt which world premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 1966, winning the Silver Bear.

The drama tackled the legacy of the Spanish Civil War through the tale of three middle-aged veterans as they reminisce about their experiences while on a rabbit hunting trip.

Sam Peckinpah described it as a classic of Spanish Cinema and a major influence on his work.

Born in Huesca in northeastern Spain on January 4, 1932, Saura was just...

Above: Italian 2-foglio for Loves of a Blonde (Miloš Forman, Czechoslovakia, 1965).As the 54th New York Film Festival winds to a close this weekend I thought it would be instructive to look back at its counterpart of 50 years ago. Sadly, for the sake of symmetry, there are no filmmakers straddling both the 1966 and the 2016 editions, though Agnès Varda (88 years old), Jean-Luc Godard (85), Carlos Saura (84) and Jirí Menzel (78)—all of whom had films in the 1966 Nyff—are all still making films, and Milos Forman (84), Ivan Passer (83) and Peter Watkins (80) are all still with us. There are only two filmmakers in the current Nyff who could potentially have been in the 1966 edition and they are Ken Loach (80) and Paul Verhoeven (78). The current Nyff is remarkably youthful—half the filmmakers weren’t even born in 1966 and, with the exception of Loach and Verhoeven, the old guard is now represented by Jim Jarmusch, Pedro Almodóvar,...

The Nine Network is channelling tens of millions of dollars freed up from the end of its output deal with Warner Bros. into a record investment in local content.

Spending on local production will continue to rise over the next three years to the point where the network invests $100 million more per year than currently, executives said at the upfronts presentation today.

While Nine retains the first-run rights to The Big Bang Theory, director of programming and production Andrew Backwell said the broadcaster decided to relinquish the re-runs (subsequently acquired by Seven) because it preferred to spend the money on local content.

The 2016 line-up includes the Matchbox Pictures drama Hide & Seek, Cjz.s previously announced two-part Alan Bond miniseries House of Bond and a new factual series, Prison: First & Last 24 Hours.

Daryl Somers will return to TV as the host of You.re Back in the Room, a FremantleMedia Australia...

Carlos Reygadas‘ Post Tenebras Lux Cannes 2012 Winners Pt.1: Michael Haneke’s Amour, Matteo Garrone’s Reality, Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond The Hills The Best Actor was Mads Mikkelsen, who late last year received the European Film Award for European Achievement in World Cinema. (Among Mikkelsen’s future World Cinema "achievements" may be one of the villainous roles in Thor 2.) Mikkelsen’s Cannes victory was for his performance as a man (falsely) accused of sexually molesting a child — and the inevitable hysteria that ensues — in Thomas Vinterberg’s Danish psychological drama The Hunt. Carlos Reygadas cosmically surrealist family drama, Post Tenebras Lux ("Light After Darkness") earned the Mexican filmmaker the Best Director Award. In 2007, Reygadas’ Silent Night tied with Persepolis for the Jury Prize. And just a few days ago, Post Tenebras Lux was greeted by loud boos. And finally, the socially conscious British filmmaker Ken Loach won the...

All the latest news, reviews, comment and buzz from the Croisette

10.04am: Day three of Cannes 2012 rolls round. If you want to catch up with what happened yesterday (whenever that was), here's yesterday's blow-by-blow live blog.

But as is the way with Cannes, it's history already; all that's left is to pick over the bones. And that will assuredly be happening in the video we'll post later this morning, when Peter, Xan and Catherine run the rule over Rust and Bone, last night's biggie. We'll also have a gallery of red carpet pictures, featuring star Marion Cotillard and ice-cold director Jacques Audiard. (I've said it before, I'll say it again: he's the person I want to be when I grow up.)

So what to look forward to today? The line-up is perhaps a tad less starry that on days one and two: the competition films are Reality, from Italian director...

Alex Pettyfer, star of failed franchise starter “I Am Number Four,” and Steven Soderbergh's upcoming "Magic Mike," has found a new starring role in the new film from “Heartbreaker” helmer Pascal Chaumeil. “Diamond Dogs” is based on an Alan Watt novel that is described as a crime thriller. Pettyfer will play the son of a Nevada sheriff who makes a life-changing mistake, and his father is forced to cover it up. Casting is currently underway for the father and no start date has been set. [Variety]

Meanwhile, Gwyneth Paltrow is in talks to co-star in the Carlos Saura (“Raise Ravens,” “The Hunt”) directed “Guernica 33 Days.” The film, co-written by Suara with Elias Querejeta, and Louis-Charles Sirjacq, will follow Pablo Picasso’s emotional turmoil as he painted the famous artwork referenced in the title.

Antonio Banderas stars as Picasso, and Paltrow would play his lover, a Spanish-speaking French photographer named Dora Maar.

After collaborating on seven different projects, it was only inevitable that the directing and producing duo of Carlos Saura and Elias Querejeta would be teaming up once again. Now, Variety tells us that they’ll join forces for a project entitled 33 Dias, which will delve into the world of Cubist painter Pablo Picasso and his “emotional turmoil as he painted his masterpiece Guernica.

Throughout his almost 60-year career, Saura has written and directed over 40 pictures, including Cria Cuervos, The Hunt, and Tango; in the past, Saura and Querejeta worked together on Hunt, Raise Ravens, and Deprisa, deprisa, just to name a few.

The subject matter seems perfect for the Spanish duo, who have remained close to their Spanish roots throughout their careers. We’ve seen Picasso portrayed in film for many, many years — most recently depicted by Marcial Di Fonzo Bo in Woody Allen‘s Midnight In Paris. Anthony Hopkins...

His 1975 classic Raise Ravens still points the way for new film-makers wishing to tackle the tricky subject of the Spanish civil war. The old revolutionary reminisces to Giles Tremlett

Carlos Saura once wanted to murder his parents. Not literally, he stresses, but he remembers wishing them dead. "If they were punishing me I would sometimes think, 'Let them die!'," the veteran Spanish film director says. Ana, the child protagonist of his 1976 classic Raise Ravens, is also fond of a bit of parricide. She thinks, indeed, that she has killed her father and – in an attempt to repeat the trick – tries to poison her aunt and persuade her mute grandmother that she too might like some of the deadly powder.

Fortunately for Ana (and her family), the substance she thinks is elephant-strength poison is really bicarbonate of soda. Her powers over life and death exist only in her head – though...

Beyond Buñuel, Spanish film-makers struggled to make an international impact – until Franco's death in 1975 liberated an entire generation

Spain embraced the new medium of cinema at the turn of the century as fervently as any of its European counterparts; this film of a religious procession in 1902, by the splendidly named Fructuos Gelabert, is typical of the early amateurs.

In Segundo de Chomón, however, Spain produced a trickster director

to rival France's Georges Méliès.

De Chomón worked mostly in France, and even made An Excursion to the Moon, his own version of Méliès's most famous film.

The route from Spain to France was well-trodden by the time Buñuel and Dalí made Un Chien Andalou in 1928; otherwise, little of Spain's silent-film output made any impact internationally.

The early sound period fared little better, as political convulsions in the run-up to the civil war made a settled industry difficult.

After L'Age d'Or (1930), his second French film,...