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Exclusive: Stephen Graham (Boardwalk Empire), Andrea Riseborough (Birdman) and Anson Boon (1917) are leading under-the-radar thriller Good Boy, from director Jan Komasa (Corpus Christi) and producers Jeremy Thomas (The Last Emperor), Ewa Piaskowska (Essential Killing) and Jerzy Skolimowski (Eo).

Filming recently completed on the movie at studios in Warsaw and on location in Yorkshire, UK, with HanWay films set to introduce footage to buyers at the upcoming American Film Market in Las Vegas.

The synopsis reads: “Nineteen year old Tommy likes his life as a criminal, and leads his friends in acts of horrifying violence, until one night he is kidnapped by a stranger, Chris (Graham). Waking up with a chain around his neck in the basement of an isolated home, Tommy (Boon) finds himself at the centre of a dysfunctional family dynamic as Chris and his mysterious wife Kathryn (Riseborough) try to make Tommy a “good boy”, in a process of forced rehabilitation.

Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski, whose sixty-year career in cinema has included the highest honors of the Berlin, Venice and Cannes film festivals, received an invitation to attend China’s Shanghai International Film Festival earlier this year while he was in Los Angeles for the Academy Awards, where his latest movie, Eo, was nominated for an Oscar. Skolimowski says he accepted the surprise invite — which included serving as Shanghai’s jury president for the festival’s 30th-anniversary edition — for reasons both “very private and a little sentimental.”

Skolimowski, 85, revealed those reasons on stage Friday at the Shanghai Grand Theater, during the festival’s opening ceremony.

“My father was born in North East China over 100 years ago, where my grandfather, the famous Polish architect, Kazimierz Skolimowski, devoted himself to designing the urban plan for one of the great cities 1,000 kilometers from here,” Skolimowski said during his brief remarks before the mostly Chinese crowd.

‘Eo’ director will help decide the winner of the festival’s Golden Goblet Awards.

Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski has been named jury president for the 25th Shanghai International Film Festival.

The veteran director, whose drama Eo won the jury prize at last year’s Cannes and went on to secure an Oscar nomination, will preside over the jury that decides the winner of the festival’s Golden Goblet Awards.

Skolimowski’s credits include includes Berlin Golden Bear winner The Departure (1967), Cannes Grand Prix winner The Shout (1978), Cannes best screenplay winner Moonlighting (1982), and Essential Killing (2010) which was awarded the special jury...

Exclusive: French distributor Arp Selection has just acquired Cannes Competition movie Eo by Polish veteran Jerzy Skolimowski.

The film is a vision of modern Europe as seen through the eyes of a donkey. HanWay Films is handling worldwide sales and the deal was negotiated by Gabrielle Stewart and Arp’s Michèle Halberstadt.

Eo is presented by Skopia Film and Jeremy Thomas and stars Sandra Drzymalska, Isabelle Huppert, Lorenzo Zurzolo and Mateusz Kosciukiewicz. Pic was produced by Ewa Piaskowska, Jerzy Skolimowski and Eileen Tasca.

Jeremy Thomas is the executive producer. Screenplay was written by Ewa Piaskowska and Jerzy Skolimowski.

Here’s the film’s official synopsis: “The world is a mysterious place when seen through the eyes of an animal. Eo, a grey donkey with melancholic eyes, meets good and bad people on his life’s path, experiences joy and pain, endures the wheel of fortune randomly turn his luck into...

Feature presents view of modern Europe seen through eyes of a donkey.

HanWay Films will launch worldwide sales on the Croisette next month on Jerzy Skolimowski’s Cannes Competition selection Eo presented by Skopia Film and HanWay founder Jeremy Thomas.

The feature, which was announced in the Cannes line-up today, presents a vision of modern Europe through the eyes of a donkey who encounters on his journeys good and bad people, experiences joy and pain, and feels the wheels of fate crushing his innocence.

Ewa Piaskowska and Skolimowski co-wrote Eo, which stars Sandra Drzymalska, Isabelle Huppert, Lorenzo Zurzolo and Mateusz Kosciukiewicz...

Cult and controversial actor-director Vincent Gallo is returning to acting after a near decade-long absence from features.

Quietly, Gallo took on one of the lead roles in D.J. Caruso’s movie thriller Shut In, which is the first original movie from conservative media outlet-turned film producer The Daily Wire, which just revealed the casting.

The project marks Gallo’s first feature acting role since 2013 film The Human Trust. The actor-filmmaker, now 60, is best known for directing controversial indie movie The Brown Bunny (2003) with Chloe Sevigny and Christina Ricci starrer Buffalo 66 (1998). In 2010 he won the best actor prize at the Venice Film Festival for his turn in Jerzy Skolimowski’s well-received movie Essential Killing.

Gallo is also known for making incendiary and provocative comments. His website — described by The Daily Wire as “satirical” — has come under fire for discriminatory passages. As an avowed Trump fan and a political conservative,...

“Every week, we have received 5-8 letters from Oleg. He is involved in everything - in the cast, costumes, props, and set construction.”

Final preparations are now underway for the start of prinicpal photography on Numbers, the feature film based on the 2011 play of the same name by the imprisoned Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov. It will be directed by Ukrainian actor-director Akhtem Seitablaev on Sentsov’s recommendation.

Sentsov is in a remote Arctic prison camp in protest at his detention and that of some 70 compatriots in Russia. He was on hunger strike for 145 days, which ended in October.

He had...

At Lyon’s Lumière Festival to present “Walkover,” and “The Departure,” Jerzy Skolimowski will be the subject of a five-film tribute at the Cinématheque Française’s Toute La Mémoire du Monde Festival as event distribution emerges ever more as one of the biggest hopes for the classic film business.

Titles screening at the Toute La Mémoire du Monde Festival, which runs March 2019, take in two films from Skolimowski’s raved-about 1960s Polish quartet: 1964 feature debut “Identification Marks: None”; and “Walkover,” with Skolimowski playing a young boxer facing a big fight.

Also in the tribute: 1982’s “Moonlighting,” with Jeremy Irons, decanted by The New York Times to be one of the best films ever made about about exile. It was inspired by the declaration of martial law in Poland in December 1981 but ready for the Cannes Festival where it won bests screenplay in May 1982.

Completing the tribute is 1967 Berlin Golden Bear Winner “The Departure,...

The 73rd Venice International Film Festival will award its Golden Lion awards for lifetime achievement to French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo and Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski.

The festival noted that it plans to start awarding two Golden Lions for career achievement at each edition of the festival, starting this year. One will be to a director and one to an actor.

Belmondo is well known for films such as Breathless, Pierrot le Fou (which competed in Venice in 1965), Hit Man, That Man From Rio and The Professional.

Venice festival director Alberto Barbera said: “Thanks to his fascinating face, irresistible charm and extraordinary versatility, he has played roles in dramas, adventure movies and even comedies, making him a star who is universally respected, by engagé directors and escapist cinema alike.”

Skolimowski has enjoyed a 50-year career including his early Polish trilogy of Rysopis, Walkover and Barrier; The Departure; Deep End; The Shout; Moonlighting and Essential Killing (which won a special...

★★★☆☆ The last time a new film from Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski arrived he was chasing Vincent Gallo through the snow in 2010's Essential Killing. His latest film smacks more of a precocious 17-year-old arriviste rather than a director of almost 80 years. 11 Minutes is a mad punk smorgasbord of fractured time, multiple narratives, point-of-view shots, vague apocalyptic anxiety and a pounding soundtrack. A found footage prologue of sorts, taken from various sources, introduces us to our characters. A video snatched from a camera phone sets up a couple in a luxury apartment. He has a black eye and dinner suit; she is lazily sensual and teasing.

Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski's Essential Killing (review) ruffled a lot of feathers when it premiered a few years ago though the movie itself proved to be far more complicated than the initial premise suggested. For a follow-up, Skolimowski is staying well within the action thriller genre though this time around, the politics seem buried a little deeper.

In 11 Minutes Skolimowski weaves together 11 minutes in the lives of apparently unconnected people, all taking place around a Warsaw hotel. They include an American film producer conducting an audition with a young actress, the actress' husband who i [Continued ...]...

The last thing I saw at the 2015 Camerimage Film Festival was Jerzy Skolimowski‘s 11 Minutes, which I was fortunate enough to enter with almost no pre-existing knowledge of. The surprise, shock, and joy that came from this experience were all strong enough for me to recommend a) the film and b) entering said film with a similar lack of awareness.

This, of course, means you’d be best-served avoiding everything until it arrives in just two weeks — including a U.S. trailer that gives away particulars of its amazing climax. (Just don’t click play! It’s that easy!) Or perhaps you’ll end up disliking it as much as our critic out of Venice, who said, “An emperor’s new clothes of technical virtuosity, veteran Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski’s latest is a frenetic, kinetic, but largely insipid speed through the lives of ostensibly random people in modern day Warsaw.

A lot can happen in eleven minutes. It can mean the difference between sleeping in and missing your bus to work. You could use that time to listen to Led Zeppelin's "In My Time Of Dying." It's also the length of time that could lead you to overcooking your pasta. But for director Jerzy Skolimowski, "11 Minutes" is the framework of his upcoming movie. Starring Richard Dormer, Paulina Chapko, Wojciech Mecwaldowski, Dawid Ogrodnik, and Andrzej Chyra, the movie presents its slices of narrative in eleven-minute segments, all of them overlapping and interlocking in a town square in Warsaw. Here's the synopsis: In the span of eleven tense minutes, a whirlwind of interlocking tales of life in the surveillance age unfold in this stylish, propulsive thriller from acclaimed director Jerzy Skolimowski (Deep End, Essential Killing). In a city square in Warsaw, a sleazy film director “auditions” a married actress in a...

Essential Killing: Inarritu’s Remarkable New Thanksgiving Film

After winning a trio of Academy Awards last year for Birdman (which took home Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu returns in surprising succession with another English language masterpiece, The Revenant. Based loosely on a 2002 novel by Michael Punke, which documents a near mythical 1820’s cross country trek by fur trapper and frontiersman Hugh Glass, it’s perhaps most important to note Inarritu’s ‘looseness’ in adapting an already embellished ‘true account.’ Grueling, impressively detailed, and beautifully shot by Inarritu’s returning DoP Emmanuel Lubezki, it’s a ragged portrait of the American frontier, a period and time often glorified for the white, European perspective. Though the film sees a theatrical release during the high tide of awards season zenith, one wishes it had been ready in time to open on Thanksgiving weekend due to its barbed depiction of historical American gang wars,...

It’s good to have Jerzy Skolimowski back. After a hiatus from filmmaking of nearly two decades after the release of 30 Door Key (1991), the blackly comic Polish filmmaker returned in fine form with the perverse voyeur's journal Four Nights with Anna (2008). Any worry that revival would be singular was abrasively destroyed with the bleak, near minimalist survival film Essential Killing (2010), and now a small orchestral movement of virtuosic nihilism, 11 Minutes. Debuting in competition at the Venice Film Festival, we caught up with this fractured, anxious drama in microcosm (or microcosm in drama) at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Fernando F. Croce wrote that the film is“an abstract panorama that in the Polish director’s hands suggests not classical art but a ruthlessly modern pointillism. Is there a stranger, more provocative late-career renaissance in recent memory? After Four Nights with Anna and Essential Killing, accounts of singular psyches both,...

The Polish Film Institute announced today that an expert committee led by Oscar-winner Pawel Pawlikowski  unanimously selected the thriller "11 Minutes" as the country's Oscar submission in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 88th Academy Awards. The film prevailed over more traditional period pieces that were released in the European nation this year. 

Read More: Ophir Award-Winner 'Baba Joon' Becomes Israel's Firs-Ever Farsi Language Oscar Entry 

"11 Minutes" is the latest film by veteran Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski and recently screened at the Venice Film Festival were it won a Special Mention award. This is Skolimowski's first directorial effort since 2010's "Essential Killing," and the one he considers his most personal film to date as it's inspired by personal tragedy. 

The filmmaker has also played small roles in American films such as "The Avengers" and "Eastern Promises."  

The festival's synopsis of the film describes it as a story about "a jealous husband out of control, his sexy actress wife, a sleazy Hollywood director, a reckless drug messenger, a disoriented young woman, an ex-con hot dog vendor, a troubled student on a mysterious mission, a high-rise window cleaner on an illicit break, an elderly sketch artist, a hectic paramedics team and a group of hungry nuns. A cross-section of contemporary urbanites whose lives and loves intertwine. They live in an unsure world where anything could happen at any time. An unexpected chain of events can seal many fates in a mere 11 minutes." 

Read More: France Surprisingly Picks Turkish-Language 'Mustang' as Oscar Submission 

International rights are being handled by HanWay Films. U.S. rights are still available. 

Poland is the returning champion in the category having won the award for the first time this year with "Ida." ...

Dear Danny,Hot damn, now that’s a variegated mix of cinema! Even for Tiff, a place where we routinely travel among completely different genres and styles, your report shows just what a dizzyingly wide-ranging experience film festivals can be. Where else could you have your concepts of screen space repeatedly stretched, whether in the iridescent experimentations of the Wavelengths entries or in the three-dimensional swoops of To’s beguiling Office, a movie so rich with visual invention that even musical notes seem tangible and close enough to touch? And where else could you step out of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s majestically gorgeous The Assassin and right into Yakuza Apocalypse, Takashi Miike’s newest full-frontal genre blitzkrieg?The flashes of swordplay in Hou’s period tale function as sudden shifts in rhythm that fascinatingly intrude into the film’s ornate pattern, like cracks in an imperial jade vase. In Miike’s underworld/supernatural mishmash,...

Rushes collects news, articles, images, videos and more for a weekly roundup of essential items from the world of film.Above: The stellar trailer for Yorgos Lanthimos' English-language debut, The Lobster. Daniel Kasman loved it at Cannes, where it picked up a prize.New issues of Film Comment and Cinema Scope are out, which many articles available online. Additionally, Cinema Scope has been publishing extensive pre-coverage of the Toronto International Film Festival's program online.Via Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Twitter: "Midnight talk with Tsai Ming-Liang. Dream, Buddhism, Piracy, an aspiration to do nothing."As the world seems to go into paroxysms of desire for new Star Wars toys, we give in a bit, charmed by this photo of Leia and Han in a deleted sandstorm scene from Return of the Jedi. Above: Another trailer, far more cryptic, this time for Jerzy Skolimowski's 11 Minutes, the long-awaited follow up to his severe and impressive Essential Killing.

Need proof that a lot can happen in a short amount of time? Well the teaser for Polish film 11 Minutes certainly serves as that proof. Writer/director Jerzy Skolimowski (Essential Killing) is making the festival rounds this year with his new film that stars Richard Dormer, Andrzej Chyra, Wojciech Mecwaldowski, Dawid Ogrodnik and Paulina Chapko. Here’s the synopsis:

A jealous husband out of control, his sexy actress wife, a sleazy Hollywood director, a reckless drug messenger, a disoriented young woman, an ex-con hot dog vendor, a troubled student on a mysterious mission, a high-rise window cleaner on an illicit break, an elderly sketch artist, a hectic paramedics team and a group of hungry nuns. A cross-section of contemporary urbanites whose lives and loves intertwine. They live in an unsure world where anything could happen at any time. An unexpected chain of events can seal many fates in a mere 11 minutes.

Jerzy Skolimowski knows how to rattle an audience. He's the co-writer behind Roman Polanski's "Knife In The Water," his last feature "Essential Killing" cast Vincent Gallo as an Afghan Pow, and now he's back on the festival circuit with "11 Minutes." And it looks like one that you can only dare to ignore. Starring Richard Dormer, Wojciech Mecwaldowski, Andrzej Chyra, Dawid Ogrodnik, and Paulina Chapko captures various slices of life in Warsaw all in eleven minute fragments, with everything pulling together for a grand finale. Sounds like a one that will be a lot of fun to see how it's pulled off. Here's the official synopsis:  After a seventeen-year break from filmmaking in the 1990s and 2000s, one of the major figures of Polish cinema returned to his native country and emerged with 2008's wonderful Four Nights with Anna, heralding the resurrection of a protean artist. Firmly ensconced back in Poland,...

Read More: Venice Film Festival Unveils Lineup: Includes 'Equals' and 'The Danish Girl' World Premieres, New Noah Baumbach Documentary Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski is no stranger to the fall festival circuit. Over his five decades in the business, the writer-director has won the Venice Grand Jury Prize ("Essential Killing"), the Cannes Best Screenplay award ("Moonlighting") and the Berlin Golden Bear ("The Departure"), among other prizes, so consider us quite excited that his new film, "11 Minutes," will world premiere in Venice before hitting the Toronto Film Festival's Masters of Cinema section this September.  The official synopsis reads: "A jealous husband out of control, his sexy actress wife, a sleazy Hollywood director, a reckless drug messenger, a disoriented young woman, an ex-con hot dog vendor, a troubled student on a mysterious mission, a high-rise window window cleaner on an illicit break, an elderly sketch...

Exclusive: UK sales outfit to handle Venice-bound thriller starring Richard Dormer.

London-based Hanway Films is to handle sales on Jerzy Skolimowski’s Venice-bound thriller 11 Minutes, starring Richard Dormer (Good Vibrations, Fortitude).

The Poland-Ireland co-production is Skolimowski’s fourth film to play in competition at Venice and follows the same 11 minutes in the lives of several different characters: young and old, prosperous and destitute.

Dormer plays the lead role of a film director in the English and Polish-language production, alongside Agata Buzek, Beata Tyszkiewicz and Mateusz Kościukiewicz.

Skolimowski’s wife and regular producer Ewa Piaskowska produces for the duo’s Skopia Film with Andrew Lowe and Ed Guiney co-producing for Element Pictures.

The Irish Film Board and Element Pictures are among backers of the project after previously collaborating on the director’s most recent outing, Essential Killing.

Essential Killing was also repped by HanWay and played at Venice in 2010, where it picked up the Special Jury Prize, CinemAvvenire...

11 Minutes

Director: Jerzy Skolimowski // Writer: Jerzy Skolimowski

Esteemed Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski began his directorial career in the late 60′s, but gained international acclaim outside of his native film system, dipping into the French/Belgian production of The Departure (1967), headlined by Jean-Pierre Leaud (and winning the director the Golden Berlin Bear), before helming a trio of infamous UK productions starting with 1970′s iconic Deep End, an adaptation of Nabokov’s King, Queen, Knave (1972) and the mystical genre film The Shout (1978) featuring Alan Bates and John Hurt. Skolimowski would compete at Cannes five times, winning the Grand Jury prize twice, for The Shout and 1982′s Moonlighting. And then three rounds in Venice would nab him two more Jury Prizes, for The Lightship (1985) and Essential Killing (2010). Skolimowski was assumed to have retired after a hiatus dating from 1991′s 30 Door Key, but broke his silence with 2008′s Four Nights With Anna, followed by Essential Killing,...

While it went home empty handed after competing in Cannes, and was released in dozens of territories before Sundance Selects dropped the title onto the market this past April, Venus In Fur did manage to rack up seven Cesar award nominates back home and netted Roman Polanski the Best Director prize. Dark, playful, and featuring a dizzying performance from Emmanuelle Seigner, the title is destined to be one of the year’s most overlooked gems.

The once quite reticent Polanski quickly returned with yet another adaptation of a popular Broadway play. Working from the same stage title, this followed his 2011 star studded Carnage. Say what you will, but Polanski, who often tends to favor claustrophobic chamber pieces, excels with chatty subversiveness, and detractors of the sometimes forced Carnage should revel in this latest effort, a dark labyrinth of comedic mind games that does with words what something like Lady from Shanghai does with mirrors.

Element Pictures have announced that principal Photography begins this week on renowned Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski's (Essential Killing, Deep End, Moonlighting) latest feature, currently titled 11 Minutes. The Polish/Irish co-production, which has the backing of Skopia Pictures, Element Pictures and the Irish Film Board, will shoot in Dublin for five days, with Richard Dormer (Good Vibrations, Game of Thrones) taking the lead role of a film director. The film also stars an ensemble cast of Polish actors, including Agata Buzek, Beata Tysziewicz, and Mateusz Kościukiewicz. The full synopsis is below. The film follows the same 11 minutes in the lives of several different characters; young and old, prosperous and destitute. Some story elements surprisingly intertwine, others follow their own intricate rhythm. Some characters are shown just as they are about to make crucial life changing decisions, others are idly passing time, caught in the midst of their day‐to‐day.

Director Roman Polanski to hold a public masterclass at Swiss festival.

Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski, accompanied by his wife and actress Emmanuelle Seigner, is to be a guest of honour at the 67th Locarno Film Festival (Aug 6-16), where he will give a public talk about film.

As well as the masterclass with young filmmakers of the Locarno Summer Academy and public on Aug 15, Polanski will receive a special award from the festival.

He will also introduce a screening of Venus in Fur alongside actress Seigner on Aug 14 on the Piazza Grande.

The director, actor, producer and screenwriter is best known for features includes Repulsion (1965), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Chinatown (1974) and The Pianist (2002), for which he won the Oscar for best director.

Locarno artistic director Carlo Chatrian said: “Roman Polanski’s films have been a regular feature of my trajectory as a filmgoer - making me laugh, shiver, think, and be emotionally moved.

“It has been...

Mighty Aphrodite: Polanski Returns With Spirited Adaptation

The once quite reticent Roman Polanski quickly returns with yet another adaptation of a popular Broadway play, Venus In Fur, which follows his 2011 star studded Carnage. Say what you will, but Polanski, who often tends to favor claustrophobic chamber pieces, excels with chatty subversiveness, and detractors of the sometimes forced Carnage should revel in this latest effort, a dark labyrinth of comedic mind games that does with words what something like Lady from Shanghai does with mirrors.

A dreary, desolate evening sees a desperate theater director, Thomas (Mathieu Amalric) pacing the stage as he bitches angrily on the phone about the miserable auditions he witnessed all day long for the lead in his new play, Venus In Furs, an adaptation of an infamous novel credited with birthing the term masochism. Clearly, the play is a labor of love for the man, and...

This is the second of two dispatches from Michael Pattison on International Film Festival Rotterdam 2014.

The spectre of barbarism isn’t just haunting European Cinema. False radicalisms and tentative engagements with the world today are prevalent all over the seventh art. And while all-out bunk is as infrequent as what others might call ‘great cinema’, it’s the ever-widening middle ground—the one that pervades and defines many a film festival—that seems especially disappointing.

Just as the cinematic landscape as a whole is peppered too sporadically with outstanding works, so on a micro level, unremarkable films frustrate precisely because otherwise fine technical rendering is undone by an apparent unwillingness to confront prevailing political currents. Even if chewable nuggets intermittently emerge over the course of a single film, we are on the whole limited to thanking the Lord for small mercies.

Of course, it’s difficult enough to make a film to begin with.

Exclusive: Essential Killing partners Element, Ifb on board, targeting spring 2014 shoot.

Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski is preparing what he describes to Screen as a “catastrophic thriller” to shoot in 2014.

While production details are being kept under wraps, Skolimowski’s wife and regular creative collaborator Ewa Piaskowska confirmed that the production is aiming for a late April 2014 shoot.

The film is currently being produced under Skolimowski and Piaskowska’s Skopia Film banner, with Element Pictures currently on board as co-producer and an offer of backing from the Irish Film Board.

In its latest round of funding the Ifb pledged €150,000 production support to the project, which will also look to draw funding from other sources.

Both the Ifb and Element collaborated with the feted Skolimowski on his latest film as director, 2010 thriller Essential Killing, starring Vincent Gallo and Emmanuelle Seigner.

That film won three awards at Venice and was sold widely by HanWay, with Tribeca...

#74. J.C. Chandor’s All Is Lost

Gist: Robert Redford stars as a man lost at sea in a survival story that is widely reported to have no dialogue. The screenplay also apparently includes no other characters, making this seem like a cross between something like Buried and Essential Killing.

Prediction: The Sundance premiere of his 2011 debut Margin Call saw J.C. Chandor emerge as one of the most hailed new voices in independent cinema that year. He quickly penned and filmed his follow-up and happened to nab the infrequent working Redford for a nonspeaking role. With reports stating that Cannes Fest Director Thierry Fremaux has been courting Chandor’s latest, we are thinking this could end up in the Main Competition.

prev next...

Mourning the Mythic: Revenge has no Taste in Bin Laden Hunt Film

Director Kathryn Bigelow willfully reigns in her own mythologizing instincts in the harrowing ‘Zero Dark Thirty‘ to present an unmediated “real reality” of the terrible, terribly ordinary violence which men and women perpetrate in the 21st century. Depicting in exacting detail the CIA’s 10-year manhunt for Osama Bin Laden, including the final Seal Team mission targeting bin Laden’s Pakistan hideout, the majority of the film is a nervy detective story stressing the white-noise confusion of contemporary intel gathering and timeless lessons on the impossibility of knowing anything, really. But in an abrupt twist, Bigelow adds a final-act execution sequence—No American action movie has ever come as close to being a snuff film. Though Bigelow and screenwriter/producer Mark Boal disable the usual action-movie cathartic climax, they take no joy (or as in Michael Haneke’s adolescent ‘Amour,...

Director: Jerzy Skolimowski Starring: Vincent Gallo, Emmanuelle Seigner Why did you not tell me that Essential Killing is essentially a silent film? Well, okay, it is not exactly silent. In fact, sound does play a pretty major role in the film; so much so, that even the few lines of spoken dialogue become just another part of the sound design. The main character -- Mohammed (Vincent Gallo) -- never utters one word, just a few grunts, moans and cries here and there. Mohammed is a Taliban terrorist fighter in Afghanistan. Early in the film, Mohammed kills three Americans -- one soldier and two contractors -- who would have killed him if they saw him first. (This is Mohammed's first essential killing.) Soon thereafter, Mohammed is captured by the United States military. (Judging from the sound design, Mohammed's hearing is apparently damaged during the process -- this may or may not be why he never talks.

Two events in the life of Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski inspired the survival adventure Essential Killing: Rumors of the airfield near his home functioning as a transport hub for Middle East prisoners, and an incident in which his car nearly toppled down a snowy embankment. From the latter, Skolimowski imagined an accident that led to the escape of a Taliban prisoner in a forbidding Eastern European forest. On the former subject, he treads all too carefully, initially lifting the politically charged premise of black-ops waterboarding, then casting it aside in favor of a more basic, generalized tale of one man ...

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson 

Ratings (out of five): ***

Jerzy Skolimowski's Essential Killing placed on Cahiers du Cinema's ten best list for 2011, a not-too-shabby achievement. It says a great deal for the Polish-born director Skolimowski, who has been a favorite of that magazine for generations. But it also says something about the critics, who were given two big themes to think about: the primal theme of man-versus-nature, and the more newsworthy theme of Middle Eastern terrorists.

At least in our eyes, any news on the enigma that is Vincent Gallo is good news. His performance as the titular, tortured artist in Francis Ford Coppola's "Tetro" was a welcome reminder just how much the talened writer/director/actor/musician has to offer and, while he's unfortunately already noted that his last effort behind the camera "Promises Written In The Water" isn't going to see a theatrical release anytime soon, he's recently been taking on interesting acting roles with Jerzy Skolimowski's "Essential Killing," a sure-to-be wacky part in "The Legend Of Kaspar Hauser" as well as an appearance in 'Twilight' actor Peter Facinelli's "Loosies." Gallo now looks to have added another lead role to his plate, as Thompson On Hollywood reports he's set to star in Alexandre Nahon's adaptation of David Goodis' "Down There" -- a novel previously adapted by Francois...

Looking back at 2011 on what films moved and impressed us it becomes more and more clear—to me at least—that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, our end of year poll, now an annual tradition, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2011—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2011 to create a unique double feature. Many contributors chose their favorites of 2011, some picked out-of-the-way gems, others made some pretty strange connections—and some frankly just want to create a kerfuffle. All the contributors were asked to write a paragraph explaining their 2011 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative...

10) The Sleeping Beauty Perverse, bizarre, sexy, funny, provocative. In other words, signature Catherine Breillat. More scattered than her superior 'Bluebeard,' but still fearless and fun. Challenging, uncompromised insights into the female psyche and sexuality, without any pat prescriptions or audience pandering. 9) Rise of the Planet of the Apes A pop-art plea for the primal rebirth of mankind. Rebel ape Caesar -- tamed but intemperate, savage but sedated, a beast who experiences self-awakening not through a celestial’s arrow but a technician’s syringe -- is one of the great Hollywood protagonists of our time. Andy Serkis is riveting as Caesar, giving a great silent-movie performance, all (almost) without words. Spielberg fell disappointingly short of making ‘War Horse’ his ‘Au Hazard Balthazar’ (though perhaps he already has done so, with the Bresson-ian ‘E.T.’), leaving director Rupert Wyatt as the only director this year to truly make a non-human his protagonist.

Michel Piccoli, We Have a Pope

Nanni Moretti's Habemus Papam / We Have a Pope was the top movie of 2011 according to the Cahiers du Cinéma editors and film critics. The Cahiers du Cinéma list is available in the December print edition of the French magazine.

A Vatican-set satire about a newly elected, psychologically fragile pope (European Film Award Lifetime Achievement winner Michel Piccoli) and his therapist (Moretti himself), earlier this year We Have a Pope won six awards from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists, including Best Director and Best Producer (there's no Best Film category). Margherita Buy co-stars as another psychotherapist.

Tied in second place were Manoel de Oliveira's Portuguese drama O Estranho Caso de Angélica / The Strange Case of Angelica, about a photographer (Ricardo Trêpa) who becomes obsessed with the dead daughter (Pilar López de Ayala) of a wealthy hotel owner, and Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life,...

The actual list of the top ten films as chosen by the editors of Cahiers du Cinéma is not online, but the cover of the December issue with the ten titles swirling in some sort of electrified vortex into or out of "2011" is. I've looked around for the order and, if and when I find it, I'll revise accordingly, but for now, in alphabetical order:

A Burning Hot Summer (Philippe Garrel) Essential Killing (Jerzy Skolimowski) House of Tolerance (Bertrand Bonello) Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt) Melancholia (Lars von Trier) Outside Satan (Bruno Dumont) The Strange Case of Angelica (Manoel de Oliveira) Super 8 (Jj Abrams) The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick) We Have a Pope (Nanni Moretti)

Update: Thanks to Dimitri Biniaris, we now have the proper order — quite a few ties here. See his comment below.

David Edelstein's year-end list of ten films is alphabetical, too, so, as it happens,...

Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Melancholia Melancholia Tops European Film Awards, Lars von Trier Bypassed, Colin Firth Beats Jean Dujardin Lars Von Trier/Melancholia Dominate European Film Awards European Film 2011 The Artist, France Written & Directed By: Michel Hazanavicius Produced By: Thomas Langmann & Emmanuel Montamat Le Gamin Au Velo (The Kid with a Bike), Belgium/France/Italy Written & Directed By: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne Produced By: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Denis Freyd & Andrea Occhipinti HÆVNEN (In a Better World), Denmark Directed By: Susanne Bier Written By: Anders Thomas Jensen Produced By: Sisse Graum Jørgensen The King's Speech, UK Directed By: Tom Hooper Written By: David Seidler Produced By: Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Gareth Unwin Le Havre, Finland/France/Germany Written & Directed By: Aki Kaurismäki Produced By: Aki Kaurismäki & Karl Baumgartner * Melancholia, Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany Written & Directed By: Lars von Trier Produced By: Meta Louise Foldager & Louise Vesth European Director 2011 * Susanne Bier for...

The live stream of the European Film Awards from Berlin this evening was pretty spotty, but a few fine moments came through, particularly the moment when a special honorary award was inaugurated and presented to a very surprised Michel Piccoli by Volker Schlöndorff and Bruno Ganz.

Another special award was given to producer Mariela Besuievski, Stellan Skarsgård presented the European Achievement in World Cinema Award to Mads Mikkelsen, and Stephen Frears received this year's Lifetime Achievement Award.

The full list of winners and nominees:

European Film 2011: Melancholia, Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany

Written and Directed by Lars von Trier

Produced by Meta Louise Foldager and Louise Vesth.

Also nominated:

The Artist, France

Written and Directed by Michel Hazanavicius

Produced by Thomas Langmann and Emmanuel Montamat

Le Gamin au Velo (The Kid with a Bike), Belgium/France/Italy

Written and Directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Produced by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne,...

Melancholia, The Artist, Le Havre and the other nominations for the 2011 European Film Awards have been announced. The 24th Annual European Film Awards are presented “by the European Film Academy to recognize excellence in European cinematic achievements. The awards are given in over ten categories of which the most important is the Film of the year. They are restricted to European cinema and European producers, directors, and actors.” This year’s European Film Awards “ceremony will be held on December 3, 2011 in Berlin’s Tempodrom near Potsdamer Platz.”

The full listing of the 2011 European Film Awards nominations is below.

European Film 2011

The Artist, France

Written and Directed by: Michel Hazanavicius; Produced by: Thomas Langmann & Emmanuel Montamat

Le Gamin au Velo (The Kid with a Bike), Belgium/France/Italy

Written and Directed by: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne; Produced by: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Denis Freyd & Andrea Occhipinti

Hævnen (In a Better World), Denmark...

Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia Lars von Trier's Melancholia is the clear favorite at the 2011 European Film Awards. Nazi joke or no, Cannes Film Festival ban or no, the von Trier-directed apocalyptic drama received eight nominations in seven categories, among them Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay (also von Trier), and Best Actress (Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg). Melancholia failed to be shortlisted only for Best Actor and Best Composer. [European Film Awards 2011 Nominations.] Five films tied in second place, with four nominations apiece: Aki Kaurismäki's Le Havre, Finland's submission for the 2012 Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award; Susanne Bier's In a Better World, this year's Best Foreign Language Film winner; Tom Hooper's The King's Speech, this year's Best Picture Oscar winner; Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist, which is already considered one of the top contenders for the 2012 Best Picture Oscar; and Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne's The Kid with a Bike,...

Lars von Trier’s Melancholia leads the nomination race for the 24th European Film Awards with 7 nominations in various categories including Best European Film and Best European Director.

The award ceremony will be held in Berlin on December 3, 2011.

The complete list of nominees:

European Film 2011

The Artist

The Kid With A Bike

In A Better World

The King’s Speech

Le Havre

Melancholia

European Director 2011

Susanne Bier for In a Better World

Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne for The Kid with a Bike

Aki Kaurismäki for Le Havre

Béla Tarr for The Turin Horse

Lars von Trier for Melancholia

European Actress 2011

Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia

Cécile de France in The Kid with a Bike

Charlotte Gainsbourg in Melancholia

Nadezhda Markina in Elena

Tilda Swinton in We Need To Talk About Kevin

European Actor 2011

Jean Dujardin in The Artist

Colin Firth in The King’s Speech

Mikael Persbrandt in In A Better World...

"Melancholia" is the film to beat at this year's European Film Awards, which announced its nominated films Saturday at the Seville European Film Festival. The Lars von Trier film leads the pack with eight nominations including best film, best director, two best actress nods for Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg and best screenwriter. Following "Melancholia" -- all with half the number of noms it earned -- are Tom Hooper's "The King's Speech," Michel Hazanavicius' "The Artist," Aki Kaurismaki's "Le Havre," Susanne Bier's "In a Better World" and Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne's "The Kid with a Bike." "The King's Speech" and "In a Better World" won best picture and best foreign film, respectively, at the Academy Awards this year.

Whether "Melancholia" will get as much love outside of Europe remains to be seen, when it opens in the U.S. in limited release on Nov. 11. The film,...

"Lars von Trier's Melancholia led the 24th European Film Award nominations, which were announced this morning," reports indieWIRE's Peter Knegt. "The film took 8 nominations including best film, director, screenplay and a double nominations for best actress with Kirsten Dunst [who, of course, won Best Actress in Cannes] and Charlotte Gainsbourg." Peruse the full list below and note that the list of nominees for European Film 2011 is identical to the one for European Director 2011 — except that Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist) has been switched out for Béla Tarr, whose The Turin Horse also scores nominations for cinematographer Fred Kelemen and composer Mihály Vig.

European Film 2011

The Artist, France

Written and Directed by Michel Hazanavicius

Produced by Thomas Langmann and Emmanuel Montamat

Le Gamin au Velo (The Kid with a Bike), Belgium/France/Italy

Written and Directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Produced by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Denis Freyd and Andrea Occhipinti

Haeven (In a Better World...

Watch this exclusive interview with Essential Killing director Jerzy Skolimowski about Vincent Gallo's award-winning performance. Telling the tale of a Taliban fighter who is captured by the Us military in Afghanistan, director Jersy Skolimowski's Essential Killing is not for the light of heart - or for that matter, for those who can't seem to stay warm. After a turn of events finds Mohammed (played by Vincent Gallo) trudging through sub-zero terrain and doing all that he can to survive, the audience begins to feel the character's (and the actor's) frostbitten pain as snowy landscape after frozen tundra whiz by on the screen. Essential Killing was picked up for distribution by Tribeca Film, and is currently available nationwide on VOD. In this Tribeca Film exclusive interview, Skolimowski remembers his shooting experiences and the pain he and his crew suffered while shooting in the dead of winter. Watch this one with a warm blanket at hand.

Three Irish co-productions have been selected by the European Film Academy's for this year's European Film Awards. Juanita Wilson's 'As If I am Not There' has been selected along with Fastnet Film's Irish/Finnish co-production 'Silent Sonata' and Element Pictures co-production 'Essential Killing'. The Efa have selected 45 offerings from 32 countries, with the Irish competitors facing strong competition from 11 French productions (eight co-productions), seven German nominations (four co-productions) and four Spanish nominations. Competition from the UK includes 'We Need to Talk About Kevin', 'Neds' and 'The King's Speech'.

Essential Killing Click here to read the review! "Tiny stretches of credibility – that could have easily been forgiven once or twice – begin to enlarge and ultimately dominate the proceedings. By the time all is said and done, the film, much like its taciturn protagonist, withers into a fine powder of blowing snow. And audiences are left to quietly wonder just what veteran director Jerzy Skolimnowski was hoping to achieve."...

Early on, director Jerzy Skolimowski’s Essential Killing might seem like harsh finger-wagging at the torturous exercises our American military employed towards the renegade rebels and terrorists after 9/11. It is not. Nor is it a tale from the terrorists side of life, like a Paradise Now mix with Letters from Iwo Jima. Essential Killing introduces us to the ugly conflict of our current war on terror, but it immediately strips the politics down and away, quickly, and instead uses it as a launching pad for an incredible existential chase film that cuts survival back to its most black-and-white.

The film opens with a look at “us vs. them”. Who’s the “us” and who’s the “them”, we do not know, and really, Skolimowski does not care. The “us” and “them” approach is the fine line of who survives, who doesn’t, and with the backdrop of the terrorist insurgence in the Afghan borders,...