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The title is not, in the end, some kind of code for “Romania.” But if it were, it would be appropriate: The enormous, troubling, intricately pessimistic “R.M.N.” from director Cristian Mungiu, probably the pre-eminent filmmaker of the Romanian New Wave, is little less than a pared-back state of the nation, a microcosmic analogy for an entire shattered society boiled dry of its softening vowels, in which only the harder elements — the bigotries, the betrayals, and a surprising number of bears — remain.

Laid out in discrete scenes of astonishing clarity and density, with the rigor of their construction belied by the spontaneity of their presentation, the connections between the various strands are initially difficult to discern. Rudi (Mark Blenyesi), a little boy walking to school, comes across a sight in the woods that is kept offscreen, but that instills in him such terror he runs home and ceases speaking.

The Producers Guild of America has invited 11 documentary producing teams to take part in the inaugural cohort of the PGA Create lab for emerging and mid-career documentary producers from diverse backgrounds. The program, which will take place from April 25-28, is designed for producers in active development, financing and packaging of nonfiction features or series, and the producing teams are making films about topics including climate change activists, women’s roles in the Catholic Church and queer activist Sarah Hegazi.

The first cycle of PGA Create, which took place in October, spotlighted scripted feature films or series. The nonfiction cycle includes nine feature docu projects and two docuseries. In all, 20 producers will be part of the four-day session.

Sponsored by Google, PGA Create works to support producers from underrepresented backgrounds. Participants will have opportunities to hone their project pitches, attend master classes with experienced producers and build their network of...

Grant Cramer sits at his office desk. On the wall behind him hangs framed movie posters: Willy’s Wonderland (2021), which he produced, and a poster of The Stunt Man (1980) autographed by its director, Richard Rush, who was a mentor to him. Cramer’s career in show business spans 40 years and includes film and television acting, producing, and writing. His dirty blond hair is pulled back into a ponytail. He sports a beard, and he has that kind of smile that spreads throughout his entire face and crinkles his eyes. He’s generous with his time, and over the next hour, we talk horror, killer klowns, absurdity, acting, Hollywood politics, and living a life in the present with gratitude and passion.

Cramer’s first film role was in the 1980 psychological slasher New Year’s Evil. “I’ve always loved the Sam Raimi-type whacky horror: a little goofy, and a little bit tongue in cheek,...

Joachim Trier, writer/director of the multi-Oscar nominated film The Worst Person in the World, discusses his favorite movies with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

A History of Violence (2005)

Gremlins (1984) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review, Tfh’s retrospective links

Innerspace (1987) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

The Worst Person In The World (2021)

Back To The Future (1985)

Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)

Hour of the Wolf (1968)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – John Landis’s trailer commentary, Dennis Cozzalio’s review

Mirror (1975)

Stalker (1979) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Soylent Green (1973)

Dr. Strangelove (1964) – Michael Lehmann’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Last Year At Marienbad (1961)

The Hunt (1959)

Remonstrance (1972)

Don’t Look Now (1973) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Bad Timing (1980) – Bernard Rose’s trailer commentary

Walkabout (1971) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary

Performance (1970) – Mark Goldblatt’s trailer commentary

Drive My Car (2021)

491 (1964)

The Seventh Seal (1957)

Persona (1966)

The Wild Strawberries...

Mikhail Romm’s dense tale of love – for people and for country – has lost none of its cold war potency in the 60 years since it was first released

As the French New Wave was starting to crest, and with the Cuban missile crisis just under a year away, Soviet film-maker Mikhail Romm directed what might have been the nuclear physicists’ version of Jules et Jim. This was the very intriguing Nine Days in One Year, now restored for its 60th anniversary. It’s a poignant love triangle, a story of broken hearts represented, in a rather David Nicholls-ish device, by the events of nine separate days over one year in the romantic lives of those whose duty was to the Soviet motherland – and to the great cause of the Ussr gaining nuclear power.

Dmitri Gusev, played by Aleksey Batalov, is a dedicated scientist working on thermonuclear physics in Siberia,...

The French New Wave classic chronicles the lives of two men and the dangerous object of their affections

François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim from 1962 is the love triangle that feels like it’s happening in the swinging 60s present moment, like Godard’s triple-header Bande à Part. Actually, it’s set before and after the first world war, and the three principals finally reunite by bumping into each other at a Paris cinema showing a newsreel about the Nazis’ book-burning.

Appropriately for this film’s internationalist ethos, neither male hero has a homeland-appropriate name. Oskar Werner is Jules, a diffident young Austrian living in 1912 Paris: scholar, translator and Francophile. He befriends the rather more worldly Frenchman Jim, the journalist and would-be author played by Henri Serre. They are instantly as thick as thieves, a couple of jaunty swells and elegant flâneurs, devoted to art and avowedly uninterested in money – though each,...

The third season of the Rai and HBO series “My Brilliant Friend” is ready to air in Italy and in the U.S., where the high-end show based the third book in Elena Ferrante’s quadrilogy has been set for a Feb. 28 debut on HBO and HBO Max.

The eight-episode adaptation of Ferrante’s 1970s-set novel, “Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay,” was unveiled Wednesday during an online presser held in Rome by Rai, ahead of its premiere on Feb. 6 on the pubcaster’s flagship Rai 1 station.

“My Brilliant Friend: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay” follows Lila (Gaia Gerace), who married at 16, has a young son, left her husband and comfortable life and is now working in a factory under tough conditions. Elena, aka Lenù, (Margherita Mazzucco) meanwhile has left the Naples neighborhood, earned her college degree and published a successful novel, all of which has...

(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they've been watching, why it's worth checking out, and where you can stream it.)

The Movie: "Contempt" ("Le Mépris")

Where You Can Stream It: The Criterion Channel

The Pitch: A French screenwriter, Paul (Michel Piccoli), sees his marriage break down as an American producer enlists him to rewrite a film adaptation of Homer's "Odyssey." Jack Palance plays the producer, whose prurient interest in Paul's wife, Camille (Brigitte Bardot) is just one meta facet of "Contempt," Jean-Luc Godard's first big-budget film and the only one he made with an...

The post The Daily Stream: Contempt Is a Gateway to Godard and the French New Wave appeared first on /Film.

Keep track of when films are coming out in the territory.

Cinemas in the UK and Ireland are set to reopen this spring, following months of closures due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Screen is listing the release dates for films in the territory in the calendar below. For distributors who wish to add/amend a date on the calendar, please get in touch with Screen here.

Indoor cinemas in England and Scotland will be allowed to reopen from May 17; with dates yet to be confirmed for Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland.

Screen is also tracking reopening dates of cinemas in...

Ramin Bahrani, Oscar-nominated writer/director of The White Tiger, discusses a few of his favorite movies with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The White Tiger (2021)

Man Push Cart (2005)

Chop Shop (2007)

99 Homes (2015)

The Boys From Fengkuei (1983)

The Time To Live And The Time To Die (1985)

The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie (1976)

Bicycle Thieves (1948)

La Terra Trema (1948)

Umberto D (1952)

Where Is The Friend’s Home? (1987)

Nomadland (2020)

The Runner (1984)

Bashu, the Little Stranger (1989)

A Moment Of Innocence a.k.a. Bread And Flower Pot (1996)

The House Is Black (1963)

The Conversation (1974)

Mean Streets (1973)

Nashville (1975)

Aguirre, The Wrath Of God (1972)

The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser (1974)

Paris, Texas (1984)

Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)

Vagabond (1985)

Luzzu (2021)

Bait (2019)

Sweet Sixteen (2002)

Abigail’s Party (1977)

Meantime (1983)

Fish Tank (2009)

Do The Right Thing (1989)

Malcolm X (1992)

Nothing But A Man (1964)

Goodbye Solo (2008)

The Spook Who Sat By The Door (1973)

Dekalog (1989)

The Double Life Of Veronique...

Young Hearts Trailer — Sarah Sherman and Zachary Ray Sherman‘s Young Hearts (2020) movie trailer has been released by Blue Fox Entertainment. The Young Hearts trailer stars Anjini Taneja Azhar, Quinn Liebling, Alex Jarmon, Ayla Carda, Kelly Grace Richardson, Eric Martin Reid, Tanner Orcutt, Kasey Brown, Morgan Demetre, Tristian Encinas, Dennis Fitzpatrick, Danny Garrison, [...]

Continue reading: Young Hearts Trailer: Quinn Liebling & Anjini Taneja Azhar Fall in Love in the Sherman Siblings’ 2020 Film...

"Dude - what gives!?" Blue Fox Entertainment has released an official trailer for Young Hearts, an indie romance film that originally premiered at last year's Slamdance Film Festival. This one is worth a watch. Produced by Jay and Mark Duplass, this charming coming-of-age story is about two high schoolers who fall into first love, only to discover life is a lot more complicated than they could ever imagine. Yeah surprise, surprise. Anjini Taneja Azhar & Quinn Liebling star as the lovers, with a cast including Alex Jarmon, Ayla Carda, Kelly Grace Richardson, Eric Martin Reid, and Tanner Orcutt. The film is described as "an honest look into the naive yet complex social/cultural worlds of today's young people." This looks way better than you're probably expecting, a refreshing update on contemporary young love. Check it out below. Official trailer (+ posters) for Sarah Sherman & Zachary Ray Sherman's Young Hearts, from YouTube...

Celinde Schoenmaker (Rocketman), Julia Nickson (Rambo First Blood Part II), Rayssa Bratillieri (Malhação Vidas Brasileiras) and Hana Hrzic (Métèque) have joined the cast of the romantic comedy Hong Kong Love Story. They join previous announced cast members Byron Mann (Wu Assassins), Dominika Kachlik (M jak milosc) Nichkhun, and Kenneth Tsang (Die Another Day). Production is set to begin in Hong Kong on December 18.

Based on real events, Hong Kong Love Story follows Mann and Nichkhun as scions of tycoon families as they stumble their way around Hong Kong to find love. Their friendship gets tested when a Polish model played by Kachlik comes into their lives.

On the stage in London’s West End, Schoenmaker played Fantine in Les Misérables as well as Christine in Phantom Of The Opera. She played Elton John’s ex-wife in Rocketman and appeared in the Red Light series which was nominated for best foreign...

The two leading female voices of European cinema will be under the festival’s spotlight this year. As the 61st Thessaloniki International Film Festival prepares to unspool online from 5-15 November (see the news), a special spotlight on the female voices of European cinema is being introduced. This time, the festival will pay tribute to pioneering Norwegian filmmaker Anja Breien and to that innovative auteur of the Czech New Wave, Věra Chytilová. One of the earliest feminist voices in Scandinavian cinema, Breien has been awarded and honoured at countless international festivals and arts venues around the world, and has been a true inspiration for the younger generation of filmmakers. Dealing with issues of gender, identity, love and loneliness, Breien’s cinema has often been compared to the works of Chantal Akerman or Ingmar Bergman. To mark the celebration of her 80th birthday this year, Thessaloniki will screen seven fiction films and one.

Speaking at the virtual Contenders Television: The Nominees event, Star Trek: Short Treks executive producer Alex Kurtzman said that the unique aspect of the Emmy-nominated series are the experiments it allows and its bridge to the greater Trekverse.

“I love the idea of using the shorts to run an experiment, which is how we can tell a satisfying Start Trek stories in a shorter form, often the kinds of scenes or the kinds of stories that would be happening on the ship but wouldn’t necessarily make it into the main episode,” he said.

CBS All Access’ short-form anthology series originated as a spinoff from Star Trek: Discovery, serving as companion to the sci-fi drama. Meanwhile, one of the Season 2 episodes, “Q&a”, serves a setup for the upcoming Strange New Worlds anthology series.

“Q&A” was one of two Short Treks episode showcased during the Contenders TV presentation, along...

Gangland London, 1960: Expatriate director Joseph Losey gives the Brit crime film a boost with a brutal gangster tale starring the ultra-tough Stanley Baker — and seemingly every up & coming male actor on the casting books. A committed thief returns to his craft the moment he’s freed from prison, but the emphasis is on the nasty betrayals and squeeze-plays of the criminal underworld, that conspire to foil Baker’s plans.

The Criminal

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1960 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 98 min. / Street Date February 18, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Stanley Baker, Sam Wanamaker, Grégoire Aslan, Margit Saad, Jill Bennett, Rupert Davies, Laurence Naismith, John Van Eyssen, Noel Willman, Kenneth Warren, Patrick Magee, Kenneth Cope, Patrick Wymark, Paul Stassino, Tom Bell, Neil McCarthy, Nigel Green, Tom Gerard, Edward Judd.

Cinematography: Robert Krasker

Film Editor: Reginald Mills

Original Music: John Dankworth

Written by Alun Owen and Jimmy Sangster

Produced by Jack Greenwood...

By Steve Jankowiak

The term "cult" as it refers to film today has become little more than a marketing cliché. So very few films truly merit the designation. The defining attribute of any true cult film is the quality of transgression: visions and/or portrayals that defy established modes of discourse and/or codes of conduct. Crash achieves multiple transgressions in its 100-minute running time. Cronenberg's Crash is a faithful adaptation of the psychosexual novel by "New Wave" science-fiction author J. G. Ballard (1930-2009). It involves a cult whose members seek sexual gratification from being in car crashes. The transgressive subject matter of the source novel was leveraged by Cronenberg, who was philosophically predisposed to undertake the adaptation to film. In a subsequent introduction to his novel Ballard wrote that the modern world is ruled by fiction, a sentiment expressed by Cronenberg through the medium of Professor Brian O'Blivion and...

Part journalism procedural and part depressing exposé, Alexander Nanau’s verité documentary Collective examines the institutional corruption at the heart of the Romanian health care sector. The existence of such organized malfeasance will come as no surprise to anyone who has seen any of the Romanian New Wave films that touch on the country’s nightmarish bureaucracy. But, really, any sentient human being living in the western world won’t be blindsided by the fact that for-profit industries cuts corners or that government officials outright lie to the press about various wrongdoings. Many Americans, currently living through an epistemological crisis of staggering proportions, are now slowly inured to such ugly realities.

With that said, even true cynics might still be disturbed by Collective. Nanau chronicles a scandal so devastating in its effects that it’s really only comparable to the horrifying incident that precipitated it. In 2015, a deadly fire broke...

One of the first ‘kitchen sink realist’ films of the British New Wave is also one of the best English films ever — believable, absorbing, and emotionally moving. The adaptation of John Braine’s novel launched Laurence Harvey as a major star, and English films were suddenly touted as being just as adult as their continental counterparts. It attracted a bushel of awards, especially for the luminous Simone Signoret. Unlike the average Angry Young Man, Joe Lampton’s struggle feels universal — bad things happen when ambition seeks a way through the class ceiling, ‘to get to the money,’ as says Donald Wolfit’s character.

Room at the Top

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1959 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 115 min. / Street Date January 14, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Laurence Harvey, Simone Signoret, Heather Sears, Ambrosine Phillpotts, Donald Wolfit, Donald Houston, Hermione Baddeley, Allan Cuthbertson, Raymond Huntley, John Westbrook, Richard Pasco, Ian Hendry, April Olrich,...

Night Tide

Blu ray

Powerhouse/Indicator

1960/ 1:85:1 / 86 min.

Starring Dennis Hopper, Linda Lawson

Directed by Curtis Harrington

During the early fifties, an anxious era that leaned on fanciful songs like Faraway Places, Beyond the Sea and Robert Maxwell’s Ebb Tide, Curtis Harrington wrote a similarly dreamy fable called The Girl from Beneath the Sea. The 34 year old director’s script was finally produced in 1960 and premiered as Night Tide at the Spoleto Film Festival in 1961. Thanks to Filmgroup, Roger Corman’s distribution company, the movie reached American theaters in 1963. Instead of the windswept romance of Maxwell’s song, ticket buyers were treated to a fatalistic thriller with the unpredictable qualities of a New Wave film.

Dennis Hopper plays Johnny Drake, a navy recruit from the arid climes of Oklahoma. Though he looks seaworthy in his white uniform and cap he still seems pretty landlocked, ambling through the beachfront...

After Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache (“The Intouchables”), Isabelle Huppert (“Elle”) and Juliette Binoche (“Let the Sunshine In”), it was Olivier Assayas’s turn to receive the French Cinema Award from the film promotion org UniFrance on Jan. 19.

Assayas was celebrated by UniFrance’s president Serge Toubiana and newly-appointed managing director Daniela Elstner for his contribution to making French cinema shine abroad. The swanky ceremony, hosted at the Bb Blanche restaurant in Paris, gathered the actors Nora Hamzawi and Vincent Macaigne, who both starred in his 2018 film “Non Fiction,” as well as many industry figures and journalists.

Assayas, who most recently directed “Wasp Network,” a Cuba-set political thriller starring Penelope Cruz and Edgar Ramirez, dedicated his French Cinema Award to Binoche whom he directed in “Summer Hours,” “Clouds of Sils Maria” and “Non Fiction.”

“My recognition abroad has so much to do with the fact that I did three movies...

Up until late Saturday afternoon, the odds of Bruce Springsteen showing up at the annual Asbury Park charity concert Light of Day seemed pretty miniscule. He was a regular (unannounced) guest at the show – which raises money to fight Parkinson’s Disease – most every year from its inception in 2000 through 2015, but he missed the past four consecutive shows. This year, he was booked to host an equestrian event in Wellington, Florida 24 hours before the start of the Light of Day festivities. Making matters worse, a winter storm just happened to...

While Lulu Wang’s emotional family drama “The Farewell” may have broken through last year, and upcoming comic book adaptations “Birds of Prey” (by Cathy Yan) and “The Eternals” (from Chloé Zhao) spell fresh opportunities for filmmakers of Chinese descent in 2020, a rollicking little follow-the-money caper called “Lucky Grandma” from first-time feature director Sasie Sealy and co-writer Angela Cheng proves there are plenty more emerging Chinese American talents just waiting for their shot. All it takes is a little good fortune — and the support of a few encouraging festivals, like the Tribeca team that gave this film a boost — and they should be on their way.

, Sealy’s high-attitude debut stars Tsai Chin of “The Joy Luck Club” as a surly, age-toughened widow who, reluctant to accept that it’s time to move in with her son (Eddie Yu), follows her fortuneteller’s advice and takes her life savings to the casino.

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Dariush Mehrjui's The Cow is exclusively showing January 8 – February 6, 2020 in Mubi's Rediscovered series.The silhouette of a four-legged creature emerges over an indistinct horizon. As it moves, it splits apart and merges together a few more times, revealing itself to be a man and his cow. This sequence, presented in a series of black-and-white negative images, comes at the start of Dariush Mehrjui’s pre-Iranian Revolution landmark The Cow—the story of a man whose beloved beast dies suddenly, and who subsequently goes insane, imagining himself to have become a cow. (And not just any cow—his cow.) An adaptation of “Gav,” by writer and playwright Gholam-Hossein Sa’edi, it’s a film of unstable, amorphous identity, for which that suggestive overture soon becomes emblematic. But given its ever-shifting borders, this portentous, almost phantasmic image also carries a different,...

‘Mustangs Fc’ producer Amanda Higgs, director Corrie Chen and producer Rachel Davis

Matchbox Pictures’ Mustangs Fc has been nominated for an International Emmy Kids Award.

The ABC Me-commissioned show produced by Amanda Higgs and Rachel Davis and directed by Corrie Chen, Fiona Banks, Tori Garrett and Roger Hodgman, will compete for best kids series with season 14 of Germany’s Die Pfefferkoerner (The Peppercorns), Canada’s Jenny and Brazil’s Malhacao – Viva a Diferenca (Young Hearts).

In June Screen Australia and the ABC commissioned a second series (13 x 24′) which sees the all-girls soccer team face a new season and new challenges including bullying, body image and sexuality as well as the politics of moon cups, menstruation and mansplaining. The first series was acquired by the UK’s Cbbc and Universal Kids in the Us, distributed by NBCUniversal.

Season 2 of Zodiak Kids’ Secret Life of Boys, which was co-commissioned by Cbbc and ABC Me,...