News

Colombian filmmaker Laura Mora has clinched the Golden Shell in the main competition of the 70th San Sebastian Film Festival with her latest feature The Kings of the World (Los reyes del mundo).

Billed as a subversive tale of disobedience, friendship, and dignity, the film follows five boys living on the streets of Medellín who set out on a journey in search of the promised land. The film is a Colombian co-production with Luxembourg, France, Mexico, and Norway.

This is the third year running that a film helmed by a woman has taken home the Golden Shell following Dea Kulumbegashvili’s Beginning in 2020 and Alina Grigore’s Blue Moon last year. This is also the first time a Colombian production has picked up San Sebastian’s top prize in the festival’s seven decades.

In other main competition awards, Japanese writer Genki Kawamura picked up the Silver Shell for Best...

Charlotte Gainsbourg-starring “The Passengers of the Night” and Ralph Fiennes- and Jessica Chastain-starring “The Forgiven” are among the first batch of movies revealed by the Sydney Film Festival. The festival is planning an in-person event running 8-19 June, 2022.

Australian-produced titles include dance film “Keep Stepping”; “Sissy,” which mixes social media and horror; music title “Six Festivals”; and intimate portrait “The Plains,” which had its premiere in Rotterdam earlier this year.

The 22-film advanced lineup also leans heavily on other festival favorites. “Gentle” which premiered in Sundance; “Hinterland,” which won the audience award in Locarno last year; Peter Strickland’s “Flux Gourmet,” from the Berlinale; Kamila Andini’s “Yuni” winner of Toronto’s Platform award; “Private Desert,” audience award winner at Venice; documentary “Calendar Girls” from the recent Sundance and Cph:dox festivals; “Please Baby Please,” which opened the Rotterdam festival; “The Territory,” the documentary award-winner at Sundance; “Blue Moon,...

Festival organisers paid tribute to Ukrainian filmmakers at the awards ceremony.

Bartosz Blaschke’s Sonata has been named best film at Sofia International Film Festival, which is staging its first full in-person edition since the start of the pandemic.

The Polish filmmaker’s debut feature picked up the Sofia City of Film Grand Prix as well as the audience award at a ceremony in the Bulgarian capital on Saturday (March 19). The drama is based on the true story of musician Grzegorz Plonka, who was initially diagnosed as autistic before it is discovered he had acute hearing loss.

The feature received...

The smash hit monster-gore popcorn flick comes to 4K Ultra HD two years and four months after a deluxe Blu-ray, so we do a pointed comparison for purchase-crazy fans that want official sanction for their madness. Happily, you don’t need to be full-moon looney to go for the 4K: David Naughton and Griffin Dunne’s descent into a lycanthropic nightmare is as wrenching as ever.

An American Werewolf in London 4K

4K Ultra-hd

Arrow Video

1981 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 97 min. / Street Date March 15, 2022 / Available from / 59.95

Starring: David Naughton, Griffin Dunne, Jenny Agutter, John Woodvine, Brian Glover, Frank Oz, Sydney Bromley.

Cinematography: Robert Paynter

Art Director: Leslie Dilley

Film Editor: Malcolm Campbell

Original Music: Elmer Bernstein

Special Makeup Effects Designer and Creator: Rick Baker

Produced by George Folsey Jr., Peter Guber, John Peters

Written and Directed by John Landis

The street date for a 4K disc of a certain high-profile...

The International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg (Iffmh) has very much captured the social, cultural and political zeitgeist with this year’s film selections, exploring such themes as female empowerment, HIV/AIDS and the post-Soviet collapse of Ukraine.

“The festival doesn’t work in topics, we are trying to show the best films, but the interesting thing is that the topics come to us through the films,” says Iffmh director Sascha Keilholz. “Obviously we are sensitive to the whole range and diversity that can be had in cinema.”

Indeed, this year’s films in the On the Rise competition section and supplemental Pushing the Boundaries sidebar, which showcases cutting-edge works by young and established filmmakers, ended up sharing unmistakable themes. Many new female voices are putting their mark in Eastern European film with stories of women rebelling against patriarchy and male structures, for example, Keilholz points out. “That was quite striking for us.

American Horror Story Blue Moon Trailer — FX‘s American Horror Story: Season 10, Episode 9: Blue Moon TV show trailer has been released. Cast and crew American Horror Story: Season 10 (Double Feature) stars Frances Conroy, Leslie Grossman, Billie Lourd, Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Adina Porter, Lily Rabe, Angelica Ross, Finn Wittrock, Denis O’Hare, [...]

Continue reading: American Horror Story: Season 10, Episode 9: Blue Moon TV Show Trailer [FX]...

Germany’s Patra Spanou negotiated the deal with distributor Film Buró.

San Sebastian winner Blue Moon, which won the Golden Shell award for best film at this year’s 69th edition, has been secured for distribution in Spain by Film Buró.

German sales outfit Patra Spanou negotiated the deal with Film Buró’s Susana Rizzuti and Luis Angel Bellaba.

Romanian writer-director Alina Grigore’s debut feature is about a dysfunctional family living in a rural mountain region, a toxic environment that the film’s young heroine, played by Iona Chitu, is desperately trying to escape.

Grigore’s Blue Moon world-premiered...

An imperfect, attention-grabbing debut feature from Romanian actor-turned-director Alina Grigore, “Blue Moon” is named for a song, though not the one you might expect: a somewhat mordant local lullaby, sung late in proceedings, at a point when any hope of rest has long deserted its frazzled protagonist. Still, it’s impossible to approach the film without that Rodgers & Hart lonely-hearts standard running through your head — which, accidentally or otherwise, turns out to be an effective bit of misdirection. For the more time we spend with 22-year-old Irina (Ioana Chitu), the clearer it becomes that what she’s missing isn’t a love of her own or someone to care for: What she really, really needs is just to be left alone for longer than five minutes at a time.

That’s easier said than done in what turns out to be a . Whenever Irina tries to escape the noise, it...

The film stars John Malkovich

UK actors Tom Xander and Andrew Koji have joined John Malkovich, Geraldine Chaplin and Julian Sands, in the cast of German director Robert Schwentke’s English-language feature Seneca – On The Creation of Earthquakes which began filming on location in the southern Moroccan city of Ouarzazate at the weekend.

Xander plays Emperor Nero who is beginning to weary of the famous Roman philosopher Seneca, played by Malkovich, his teacher, mentor and close advisor since childhood, while the casting of Koji, whose credits include Peaky Blinders and Warrior TV series, marks his second collaboration with Schwentke after...

The Recognition of Journalism Work Award was presented at Spain’s leading film festival.

Fionnuala Halligan, chief critic and reviews editor for Screen International, has been honoured for her contribution to journalism at the San Sebastian International Film Festival.

Halligan was awarded the Recognition of Journalism Work prize at the festival in Spain on Thursday September 23. It was presented by Javier Hurtado, the minister of tourism, commerce and consumption in the Basque government, following an introduction by Ssiff director Jose Luis Rebordinos.

Also honoured at the event was Imma Merino, a Catalan film critic who writes for daily newspaper El Punt Avui.

Sadat was in conversation at the Zurich Film Summit.

Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat, well known internationally for her Cannes features Wolf & Sheep and The Orphanage, escaped Kabul one month ago with her family to come to Europe.

Speaking at the Zurich Film Festival’s Zurich Summit on Sept 25, she said she hopes to keep her passion for filmmaking going despite the turmoil in her homeland, wanting to show the many “colours” of Afghanistan.

With the help of many international friends including her Danish producer Katja Adomeit, Sadat was able to take a French flight out of Kabul.

In her final days living in Kabul,...

Blue Moon (Crai Nou) by Romanian director Alina Grigore won the Golden Shell at the 69th San Sebastian Film Festival whose top awards were swept by female filmmakers and actors.

For the first time, the film festival a gender neutral acting award. The Best Leading Performance prize was shared. Jessica Chastain was honored for her portrayal of televangelist Tammy Faye Messner in The Eyes of Tammy Faye. The other winner was 16 -year-old Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl, star of the Danish film As in Heaven (Du som er i himlen). The film’s Tea Lindeburg was named Best Director.

Other major female winners included Tatiana Huezo, whose Prayers for the Stolen (Noche de fuego) took the prize for Best Latin American film, Claire Mathon, Best Cinematography winner for Undercover (Enquête sur un scandale d’état) and Lucile Hadzihalilovic whose film Earwig was recognized with the festival’s special prize.

The sole...

Other winners included Earwig, Jessica Chastain, Tea Lindeburg and Terence Davies.

A debut feature by Romanian director Alina Grigore, Blue Moon has won the Golden Shell award for best film at the 69th edition of the San Sebastian International Film Festival (Ssiff).

The victory adds another woman director as winner of a festival’s main prize following the Palme d’Or win at Cannes for Julia Ducournau’s Titane and the Venice Golden Lion triumph for Audrey Diwan’s Happening.

Other awards in Ssiff’s main competition included a special jury prize for Earwig, by Lucile Hadzilhalilovic; the Silver Shell...

Female directors and actors reigned supreme at tonight’s San Sebastian Film Festival awards ceremony, with the Romanian actor-turned-director Alina Grigore taking the Golden Shell for Best Film for her intimate debut feature “Blue Moon.” The film, a raw realist study of a young woman attempting to free herself from an abusive rural household, was an unexpected winner, besting a number of higher-profile auteur films in the festival’s main competition. Yet a full spectrum was covered: At the opposite end of the celebrity scale, Jessica Chastain was one of two Best Leading Performance winners for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.”

This was the second year in a row that a first-time female filmmaker took the festival’s top prize. Last year, Georgian writer-director Dea Kulumbegashvili swept the board for her debut “Beginning,” which won the Golden Shell in addition to Best Director, Actress and Screenplay. Kulumbegashvili returned to the...

In “Blue Moon,” young Irina dreams of University in Bucharest while her chaotic, rural family serves to undermine her future. Alina Grigore’s directorial debut premiers in competition at the San Sebastian Film Festival, and follows Irina’s psychological take on ‘blood for blood.’

Grigore – who wrote and starred in Berlinale prize-winning film “Illegitimate” – moves behind the camera for “Blue Moon,” and uses her knowledge of focus and mise-en-scène to build bubbling tension from emotional violence. The film is also written by Grigore, who was inspired by her own community.

“Blue Moon” is produced by Gabriela Suciu and Robi Urs through InLight Center, and co-produced by Atelier de Film, Forest Film, Smart Sound Studios, Unfortunate Thespians and Avanpost. It was acquired by Patra Spanou Film for international sales.

Variety spoke with Grigore ahead of the film’s San Sebastian premiere.

What inspired you to tell a story regarding the dark side of family dysfunction?...

German sales outfit Patra Spanou Film has acquired the international sales rights to “Blue Moon,” the feature debut of Romanian director Alina Grigore, which will world premiere in main competition at September’s San Sebastian Film Festival.

“Blue Moon” follows the psychological journey of a young woman, played by Ioana Chitu, who struggles to receive a higher education and escape her dysfunctional family. An ambiguous sexual experience with an artist will spur her intention to fight the family’s violence.

Pic stars Chitu alongside Mircea Postelnicu, Mircea Silaghi, and Vlad Ivanov, and is produced by Gabi Suciu for InLight Center (“Illegitimate”), in co-production with Atelier de Film, Forest Film, Smart Sound Studios (“Monsters”) and Avanpost. It’s Grigore’s second feature as a writer, after she wrote and starred in Adrian Sitaru’s Berlinale prize winner “Illegitimate.”

“Romanian cinema has been in the focus of the international arthouse film scene for a while,...