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Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2023, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.

The greatest year in cinema since the monumental offerings of 2007––a transformative year that set the seeds for this very site to come into existence––2023 offered a resounding affirmative that indeed the medium is alive and well: auteurs flexing what they do best, newcomers providing a hopeful voice for the future of filmmaking, along with a plethora of worthwhile offers. Along with my personal favorites when it came to U.S. releases, two films also premiered that would’ve topped this list had they come out in 2023: Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast and Víctor Erice’s still-shockingly-undistributed Close Your Eyes.

While they didn’t make the top 15 cut below, I must make mention for the most essential, one-and-done viewing of the year with De Humani Corporis...

Wi Ding Ho’s dark drama “Terrorizers” doesn’t only share the title with Edward Yang’s classic from 1986, it likewise focuses on a group of individuals in Taipei outcasted in one form of the other, longing to break out from loneliness. Their destinies will intertwine through a slashing incident in a public space, with the film revolving around events that preceded or followed that moment, crucial in puzzling the story pieces together.

“Terrorizers” is screening at Udine Far East Film Festival

The plot is put in the context of societal malaise, dependency on social media and the switch of realities. The ‘earthly’ life gets hijacked by the pixelized in “Terrorizers”, a film that also speaks about how much power we gave to the internet and how little it takes to ruin a person’s life by exposing sensitive content online. While one of the four main characters finds his...

The Far East Film Festival in Italy’s Udine has set Chinese-Italian co-production “The Italian Recipe” as the opening title of a revived, largely in-person event.

The film, directed by Hou Zuxin, sees an unexpected series of events bring together a Chinese reality TV show contestant and a woman already resident in Italy. The collision of personalities, connections and chemistry between stars Liu Xun and Yao Huang resemble those of “Roman Holiday,” festival organizers suggest. The film has its world premier on Friday next week, launching a nine-day event that runs until April 22-30.

The 2022 selection runs to 72 titles, selected from over 400 submissions, numbers that organizers say, is proof that Asian filmmaking was not halted by the Covid-19 pandemic. “The fear, not unreasonable, given all the halted productions, dismantled sets and release dates announced and then postponed for months, that there wouldn’t be many films to choose from was...

By Ksenia Isakova

One of the film’s other messages seems to be that life also is too complicated to live under the harsh light of moral purity (Patrick Brzeski in the interview with Chung Mong-Hong about his movie “A Sun” for The Hollywood Reporter).

As time goes by, little by little we might forget about lots of details about a particular movie: the intricacies of the story development, setting nuances, even the director’s name or a movie title. However, certain stable and repeated patterns such as Maggie Cheung’s cheongsams in Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood for Love,” the impeccable and haunting sound effects of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Pulse”, or the vision of the serene yet frightening fields of “Memories of the Murder” by Bong Joon-ho, are probably there to stay with us in our memory for much longer. These are the elements of mise-en-scene, and as Bordwell and Thompson rightfully suggest,...

Hong Kong drama “Drifting” leads Taiwan’s Golden Horse Film Awards race with 12 nominations including best narrative feature and best adapted screenplay, organizers announced on Tuesday.

The film that revolves around the tragedy of homeless people in Hong Kong also earned a nomination for Jun Li in the best director category. Veteran actor Francis Ng, who plays a homeless drug addict battling for justice, was also nominated for best leading actor.

Since 2019, Beijing has operated a mainland Chinese boycott of the awards that for many years were seen as the highest accoladed for Chinese-language filmmaking. And in 2019 and 2020 most Hong Kong films and filmmakers also stayed away. This year’s list sees an uptick in the Hong Kong participation, but only in the cases of films that are unlikely ever to receive a release in mainland China.

The domination of “Drifting” in the race, however, is closely challenged by “The Falls,...

When Cannes announced it was going ahead in July, and pulled off a successful festival complete with red carpet glitz, it seemed the global film community breathed a sigh of relief. “Before Cannes, many producers were not so sure about submitting their films to the festival. But when Cannes announced and it went ahead, then, suddenly, there was a new festivals-are-back feeling and we saw a surge of submissions,” says Giovanna Fulvi, Asia selector for the Toronto Intl. Film Festival.

But if Toronto has been lucky enough to operate with a degree of normalcy — Canada reopens its borders to vaccinated visitors from Sept. 7 and the festival can host in-person screenings — many in the industry are worried about the direction and future of film festivals in Asia and that feature Asian fare.

Fulvi faced submissions from Asia that approached normal levels, but the number of available slots was slashed by budget...

After winning the Platform prize in Toronto in 2018 with his “Cities of Last Things,” Malaysian director Ho Wi Ding’s latest effort “Terrorizers” will get its premiere at the Canadian festival this month. It boasts shock value, stylish delivery and a director who has done his time serving convention and is now desperate to break the rules.

“Cities” was a three-part film in reverse order that enthralled some audiences – the Platform jury called it “deeply moving” – and infuriated others, who felt that the reverse chronology sub-genre is somehow the unique preserve of Christopher Nolan.

The twisty new picture, with multiple narratives about love, desire, envy and revenge, has similar potential to become a talking point that entertains and divides.

“ ‘Terrorizers’ is about a public slashing incident committed by a young man. It is about what happens before and after the event, and about the other five characters with whom he crosses paths,...

BenedictionThe lineup has been unveiled for the 2021 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, which will take place over 10 days (September 9-18) both in-person and physically in Toronto, and digitally across Canada. Wavelengths - FEATURESFutura (Pietro Marcello, Francesco Munzi, Alice Rohrwacher)The Girl and the Spider (Ramon Zürcher, Silvan Zürcher)Neptune Frost (Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman)A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia)Ste. Anne (Rhayne Vermette)The Tsugua Diaries (Maureen Fazendeiro, Miguel Gomes)Wavelengths - SHORTSThe Capacity for Adequate Anger (Vika Kirchenbauer)Dear Chantal (Querida Chantal) (Nicolás Pereda)earthearthearth (Daïchi Saïto)Inner Outer Space (Laida Lertxundi)Polycephaly in D (Michael Robinson)“The red filter is withdrawn.” (Minjung Kim)Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky)Midnight Madness After Blue (Dirty Paradise) (Bertrand Mandico)Dashcam (Rob Savage)Saloum (Jean Luc Herbulot)Titane (Julia Ducournau)You Are Not My Mother (Kate Dolan)Zalava (Arsalan Amiri)TIFF DOCSAttica (Stanley Nelson)Beba (Rebeca Huntt)Becoming Cousteau...

Cherry picking the better titles from Cannes and Venice, today TIFF programmers beefed up their Special Presentations and Gala slates and announced a truckload of items for their Contemporary World Cinema and Discovery programs. While there are indeed overlaps, there are a slew of world premiere titles for the likes in returning filmmakers Manuel Martín Cuenca’s The Daughter (La Hija), Bouli Lanners’ Nobody Has to Know, Ho Wi Ding’s Terrorizers, and Sébastien Pilote’s Maria Chapdelaine with fresh faces in Stephen Karam’s The Humans, Agustina San Martín’s directorial debut To Kill The Beast and Nathalie Biancheri’s sophomore feature in Wolf (Focus Features pick-up).…...

The 44th Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF44) announces its full lineup. “Filipinos in Focus: Lumpia With A Vengeance and The Fabulous Filipino Brothers,” will play as an in-person double feature Special Presentation event on Aug. 18. Cast and crew of both films will be attending the event. The Closing Night film will be Blue Bayou, with an in-person screening and reception on Aug. 22. AAIFF44 will take place from Aug. 11-22 as a hybrid festival.

Special Presentation – “Filipinos in Focus: A Double Feature of Lumpia With A Vengeance and The Fabulous Filipino Brothers”

Aug. 18 at the Philippine Center New York4:30 pm – Screening of Lumpia With A Vengeance + Q&A6:30 pm – Reception7:30 pm – Screening of Fabulous Filipino Brothers + Q&a$30 for double feature + reception, $20 for single film + receptionGet tickets at https://www.aaiff.org/aaiff44/filipinos-in-focus-a-double-feature

Closing Night – Blue Bayou

Aug. 22 at Quad Cinema6:00 pm – Screening8:00 pm...

The second shot of Edward Yang’s 1986 The Terrorizers—which just ended a month-long run on Mubi but which is still available in the Mubi library—is a close-up of a woman’s eyes. But the image is grainy and monochrome and there are paper folds beneath both eyes that look like tears. This is followed a beat later by a similar shot of the woman’s open mouth and a man in profile, again highly pixellated. Anyone familiar with Mike Nichols’ film of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but especially anyone familiar with its French poster, might recognize the faces of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.The grande-sized poster (though you never see the title or any of the other lettering) hangs on the wall of a photographer who is living with his girlfriend. Over the course of the film their lives will intersect with a number of other disparate characters,...

In his third directorial effort, Taiwanese filmmaker Edward Yang once again told a story about the relationship of people within the urban space, in this case, as with many of his other works, the city of Taipei. Along with his previous movies, it further manifested Yang’s reputation and inclusion as a founding member of what film scholars called the “Taiwanese New Wave” which represented a farewell to the old ways of making movies, formally and thematically. Apart from “The Terrorizers” being awarded upon its screening at the Locarno Film Festival, it would continue to receive many more honors, along with critics praising it as a work reminiscent of the movies by Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, especially “Blow-Up” which seems to have inspired the narrative strand revolving around the young photographer played by Mao Shao-chun.

The story, which deals with the lives of three couples living in the Taiwanese capital,...

“Traveller,” the first major screen credit of “The Crying Games’” Neil Jordan, Canadian Denis Coté’s debut feature “Drifting States” and Arturo Ripstein’s “The Place Without Limits,” a 1977 Mexican LGBTQ movie, are three titles featured in the inaugural lineup of the Locarno Film Festival’s Heritage Online section.

Another, 1954 Egyptian transgender comedy “Miss Hanafi,” underscores the wealth of discoveries offered by Heritage Online, a digital database and screening room collating details of classic film catalogs from all over the world, facilitating the work of buyers, especially VOD platforms in search of rights holders to heritage titles.

Heritage Online fully launches on Saturday with the distribution to its subscribers of a newsletter in which companies detail their offer on the website, plus a panel on heritage film distribution.

Aimed at “establishing a loop between the heritage industry and streaming platforms” by clarifying rights ownership, the site launches with film-by-film details...

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...

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,...