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You probably remember one thing about the Swiss folk hero William Tell: He used a bow and arrow to shoot an apple off the head of his son. But did you know that he did so on the orders of a cruel Austrian leader who wanted to quell any resistance to that country’s onerous occupation of Switzerland? Or that he became a leader of the Swiss resistance?

If you don’t remember the backstory to the bow, the boy and the apple, Irish director Nick Hamm’s “William Tell” is here to remind you, and to add a few of its own embellishments to the centuries-old folk tale. The film is big, brutal and beautiful — over the top at times and stirring at others. It finds modern resonance in a 14th century European legend, and for better and worse it also turns that legend into a slam-bang bit of muscular Hollywood-style entertainment.

Neon, the Oscar-winning distributor of “Parasite,” is getting back in business with “Titane” director Julia Ducournau.

In one of the first big rights deals of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the studio announced it has acquired North American territories for Ducournau’s “Alpha.” Plot details were not immediately disclosed, except that the film will be “genre-defying.” Neon previously released Ducournau’s acclaimed “Titane,” which won Cannes’ highest honor, the Palme d’Or, in 2021. She is only the second woman director to do so, following Jane Campion for “The Piano.”

“Alpha” will star Golshifteh Farahani and Tahar Rahim.

Producers are Jean des Forêts and Amelie Jacquis of Petit Film, and Eric and Nicolas Altmayer of Mandarin & Compagnie. Frakas Productions is co-producing. Charades and FilmNation Entertainment are handling global sales. The Neon deal was negotiated by its president of acquisitions and production Jeff Deutchman, with Charades’ Carole Baraton and FilmNation...

FilmNation and Charades are teaming up to present “Alpha,” the new film from Julia Ducournau, to buyers at Cannes.

It’s the same place where Ducournau caused a sensation with 2021’s “Titane,” her subversive and divisive body horror film, which won the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top award. Ducournau became the second female director to win the award, following Jane Campion (“The Piano”). “Anatomy of a Fall” director Justine Triet would become the third female winner in 2023. Ducournau’s other films include 2016’s “Raw,” a coming-of-age film about a young vegetarian who develops a taste for cannibalism.

“Alpha’s” cast includes Golshifteh Farahani, who appeared in “The Patience Stone” and “Paterson,” as well as César award-winning Tahar Rahim, best known for his work in “The Mauritanian,” “A Prophet” and “The Serpent.”

“‘Alpha’ is Julia’s most personal, profound work yet, and we are looking forward to a global...

Leading French production-distribution outfit Le Pacte has boarded the upcoming 2D animated feature project “Conference of the Birds,” which will be spotlighted at the Marché du Film’s Animation Day during this year’s Cannes Festival.

In addition to co-producing, Le Pacte will handle French distribution and serve as international sales agent on the film, part of the five-title Annecy Showcase at the Animation Day. Confirmed voice cast members include Golshifteh Farahani and Louis Garrel.

“Conference of the Birds” is an updated adaptation of Farid al-Din Attar’s 900-year-old Persian poem of the same name. The film centers on a flock of birds who are the sole survivors of a man-made natural disaster. Leading the avian gang is Hod-Hod, a young adventurous hoopoe who sets off on a quest to meet the legendary bird Simorgh, rumored to hold the key to solving all the birds’ problems.

According to the filmmakers,...

The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the eight members of the main Competition jury, who will join its previously announced president Ruben Östlund at the 76th edition, running May 16 to 27

They comprise Moroccan director Maryam Touzani, French actor Denis Ménochet, British-Zambian screenwriter and director Rungano Nyoni, American actress, director and producer Brie Larson, American Actor and director Paul Dano, Afghan writer and filmmaker Atiq Rahimi, Argentinian director and screenwriter Damián Szifrón and French director Julia Ducournau.

Like two-time Palme d’Or winner Östlund, most of the jury members have strong Cannes pedigrees.

Having long collaborated on her husband Nabil Ayouch’s films such as Much Loved, Touzani made her feature directorial debut in Cannes Un Certain Regard with Adam in 2019 and returned to the section in 2022 with The Blue Caftan, which made it onto the Oscars long-list in the Best International Film category.

Ménochet’s Cannes credits include Quentin Tarantino...

The Batman and The Fabelmans star Paul Dano, Titane-directing Palme d’Or winner Julia Ducournau, I Am Not a Witch breakout filmmaker Rungano Nyoni, and Captain Marvel herself, Brie Larson will help make up the superstar competition jury for this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Together with French actor Denis Ménochet, of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid; Argentinian director Damián Szifron (Wild Tales, To Catch a Killer); Afghani-born, French-based filmmaker Atig Ranimi (Earth and Ashes, The Patience Stone); and Moroccan director Maryam Touzani (The Blue Caftan, Adam), they will join jury president Ruben Östlund, director of last year’s Cannes winner The Triangle of Sadness, in judging the Palme d’Or winners at the 76th Cannes International Film Festival.

Together, the jury will screen the 21 films picked for Cannes competition this year —among them Todd Haynes’ May December, Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City,...

Iranian-born, France-based actor Golshifteh Farahani, who was nominated for a Cesar for “The Patience Stone,” played in Ridley Scott’s “Body of Lies,” and now stars in the Apple TV Plus drama “Invasion,” will feature alongside Marion Cotillard and Melvil Poupaud in the cast of Arnaud Desplechin’s “Brother and Sister,” Desplechin tells Variety.

The French auteur has become a near fixture in Cannes, where 11 of his 12 features have premiered. This year he could very well make a repeat visit, as the filmmaker confirms his new film will be ready for May.

Produced by Why Not Productions and sold by Wild Bunch, “Brother and Sister” will follow a pair of siblings, played by Cotillard and Poupaud, who are forced to reunite following two decades of shared silence after the death of their parents. Farahani will play Poupaud’s spouse.

The filmmaker describes his newest effort as a kind of companion...

In 2013 at the Toronto Film Festival, I saw ‘The Patience Stone’ and was so moved by the predicament of this woman, caring for a comotose husband in a bombed out building that I have never forgotten the impact of the film and have remembered it especially during these horrible days for Afghanistan.…

Continue reading on SydneysBuzz The Blog »...

In Scholastique Mukasonga’s semi-autobiographical novel Our Lady of the Nile, the author describes a Catholic boarding school she attended high on a hill in Rwanda. The girls came from the country’s elite and were educated to be the future ruling class, until the long-simmering conflict between the majority Hutu and minority Tutsi broke out into genocide, and 27 members of her family were killed.

In this terrifying film adaptation, director Atiq Rahimi shifts his lens from his native Afghanistan, the setting of Earth and Ashes and The Patience Stone, to the misty jungles of Rwanda in 1973, 20 years before the ...

In Scholastique Mukasonga’s semi-autobiographical novel Our Lady of the Nile, the author describes a Catholic boarding school she attended high on a hill in Rwanda. The girls came from the country’s elite and were educated to be the future ruling class, until the long-simmering conflict between the majority Hutu and minority Tutsi broke out into genocide, and 27 members of her family were killed.

In this terrifying film adaptation, director Atiq Rahimi shifts his lens from his native Afghanistan, the setting of Earth and Ashes and The Patience Stone, to the misty jungles of Rwanda in 1973, 20 years before the ...

Rwanda-born writer Scholastique Mukasonga’s 2012 novel “Notre-Dame du Nil” is not specifically about the 1994 Rwandan genocide but rather how class division, colonialism and economic disparity created a toxic stew of resentment and prejudice that made the genocide possible. By using a Rwandan all-girls Catholic boarding school as her microcosm, she lays out how the seeds of ethnic hatred were planted, nurtured and encouraged to blossom. Still, any adaptation of Mukasonga’s book holds the promise of being that long-awaited great film about the country’s ethnic strife and how it exploded into a historic bloodbath that saw members of Rwanda’s Hutu majority slaughter 800,000 of their countrymen, mostly members of the Tutsi minority, in only three months.

If “Our Lady of the Nile” is ultimately not the definitive telling of the genocide, it is something equally valuable: the tragedy’s illuminative prequel, a straightforward origin story faithfully adapted from an essential text.

3B Productions, the French production outfit behind Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Venice opener “The Truth,” is developing the next films of Atiq Rahimi (“The Patience Stone”) and Karim Dridi (“Chouf”).

Rahimi, whose latest film “Notre-dame du Nil” will be world premiering at Toronto, is developing with Jean Brehat at 3B Productions and Ron Senkowski (“The Prophet”) the adaptation of “Les echelles du levan” (“Port of Calls”), a novel by French-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf.

“I’ve always loved Amin Maalouf’s novels and I wanted to adapt one, so when Ron Senkowski proposed producing with him the adaptation of ‘Les echelles du levan,’ I didn’t hesitate,” said Brehat, adding that he thought of Rahimi to direct the film because he admires his books and the quality of the two films he’s helmed.

“Les échelles du levan” will reunite Rahimi with Golshifteh Farahani, who had starred in his 2012 film “The Patience Stone.

Notre-Dame du Nil (Our Lady of the Nile)

Afghan filmmaker Atiq Rahimi moves into the French language with his third feature Notre-Dame du Nil (Our Lady of the Nile), produced by Marie Legrand, Rani Massalha and Dimitri Rassam (a co-production between The Drum and Chapter 2 Films). The film is based on the 2012 novel by Scholastique Mukasonga. Noted French actor Pascal Greggory presides over a cast including Amanda Mugabekazi, Albina Kirenga, Malaika Uwamahoro, Clariella Bizimana, and Belinda Rubango. Rahimi’s 2004 debut Earth and Ashes premiered in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes. His 2012 sophomore film The Patience Stone (read our read / interview) starred Golshifteh Farahani and premiered in the Toronto International Film Festival.…...

“When they hear our female voices, they shake in fear.” So says Bahar (Golshifteh Farahani), the leader of an all-female battalion in French director Eva Husson’s “Girls of the Sun,” and it’s a rallying cry that echoes throughout the movie — almost to the detriment of the story itself. Loosely based on reporting about Iraqi and Syrian women who escaped kidnapping at the hands of Islamic Fighters, Husson’s second feature veers from taut showdowns of gun-wielding women reclaiming their lives to the weaker sentimental plot that surrounds them. But while it’s less than the sum of its parts, those parts know how to deliver.

It begins with a bleak symbol of life during wartime: a plume of smoke slowly expanding as a dust-caked Bahar watches it fill the frame. From this gloomy foreshadowing, the story shifts to Mathilde (Emmanuelle Bercot), a veteran war reporter with an eyepatch...

If this year is one of reckoning for women, then “Girls of the Sun,” screening in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, is the film for this era.

The fact-based story of a female Kurdish unit fighting Isis in northern Kurdistan, the film brings to vivid life the stories we have all read but found so hard to imagine — of women taken into sexual slavery, raped, impregnated, sold and resold like so much meat.

French filmmaker Eva Husson wisely anchors her story in two characters. The first is a French journalist (actress and director Emmanuelle Bercot) who is addicted to the life and drama of the front lines — so much so that after barely surviving bombings in Syria, she leaves a daughter behind to risk her life covering the Kurds.

Also Read: Cate Blanchett Calls for 'Parity and Transparency' in Red Carpet Protest of Gender Inequity in Cannes

The revelation of the film, though, is Bahar, as played by Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani (“The Patience Stone,” “Paterson”), she of almond eyes and perfect profile. Bahar wields an automatic rifle as effectively as she slowly unveils her tale of personal tragedy. She wanders between Kurdish, Arabic, French and English, plus her character has a law degree.

It spoils nothing to say that Golshifteh has lost a husband and son in captivity, but it fully explains her fearlessness. She and the other women of the unit have nothing to lose, and they fight like it. Their ululating cries as they charge into battle terrifies the Isis fighters, and Bahar rubs it in with the cold comfort of a hardened veteran.

(She answers the ringing cellphone of someone she killed to remind the dead fighter’s brother that he can’t go to paradise because he was killed by a woman.)

But before Bahar was a warrior, she was a victim. “Girls of the Sun” moves back and forth in time between the nightmarish invasion by extremists (the names of towns and terrorist organizations are changed for the film, but it’s not hard to figure out this was Isis), and the scenes of armed camaraderie among the women’s unit as it waits for the next attack.

Also Read: Jessica Chastain Spy Thriller '355' Lands at Universal After Bidding War

Some may find the thundering music manipulative, others will find it an effective counterpoint to the film’s heavy emotion. But the emotion is honestly won. This is, after all, how it has happened for hundreds if not thousands of women victimized by Isis’s brutality.

Any number of scenes swing between pathos and horror, but the film cannot possibly exaggerate the horrors that women in this part of the world have actually lived.

Read original story ‘Girls of the Sun’ Film Review: A Middle Eastern Feminist Hero Slays Isis At TheWrap...

A bevy of international productions are heading to Portugal, lured by its unique light, landscapes and a revamped 25%-30% cash-rebate scheme.

Terry Gilliam’s Cannes-closer “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” benefited from the incentives; upcoming productions include Ira Sachs’ “A Family Vacation,” starring Isabelle Huppert and Marisa Tomei, to shoot in Sintra and produced by Said Ben Said and Luis Urbano.

“The new scheme gives me greater chances to work with directors such as Ira Sachs,” Urbano says. “But for me, it’s important that the projects have an organic link with the locations.”

With its warm climate, beaches and long daylight hours, Portugal is positioning itself as the “California of Europe” — with a booming tourism industry, start-up culture and high-profile events such as the Web Summit.

In 2017, Portugal experimented with a 20%-25% tax rebate scheme, a minimum €1 million ($1.1 million) production spend and supported four projects, including “Don Quixote.

Sony Pictures Classics takes Us rights to Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado’s Un Certain Regard winner.

The Salt of the Earth, a documentary portrait of Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado, has been picked up for the Us by Sony Pictures Classics.

Co-directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, the documentary was in the Un Certain Regard section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Special Prize Award.

It was acquired from French sales company Le Pacte, who Spc previously partnered with on The Patience Stone.

The film revolves around Salgado’s eight-year project Genesis, which captured parts of the world untouched by modern civilisation; it also shows father and son (co-director Juliano Ribeiro Salgado) mending their relationship.

Exclusive: Sony Pictures Classics just completed a U.S. rights deal for Salt of the Earth, re-teaming them with Le Pacte, with whom Spc last partnered on The Patience Stone. The film played in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, where it earned the Un Certain Regard Special Jury Honor. It is directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado. Said partners Michael Barker and Tom Bernard: “Sony Pictures Classics is overjoyed to be back in business with the master, Wim Wenders, and to discover the work of Juliano Ribeiro Salgado.” Said Salgado: “Sony Pictures Classics has the legacy of releasing some of the most compelling films of our times. I’m very excited for “The Salt of the Earth” it couldn’t have found a better home in the Us.” “I’m very happy that my long-lasting relation with Sony Pictures Classics can continue...

From the novel of the same name, co-written and directed by the book’s author, Atiq Rahimi, The Patience Stone is named for a Persian folk story about a magical stone that one can confide anything to. In this case, the patience stone is the comatose husband of a beautiful young woman, who finally finds her voice, then rarely loses it, as she builds the strength to share her life’s story with a man who ruled over her as a tyrant.

The woman (Golshifteh Farahani) is never named, nor is her husband (Hamidreza Javdan). As the film opens, the evocative tableau suggests a penitent ideal of womanhood in wartime, an age-old image of the caring wife tending to her heroic and maimed husband. As the bombs shaking their provincial home cease, bringing an eerie calm, it is her voice that finally punctuates the silence. From there on, everything changes,...

A beautiful and haunting Afghan film about love, devotion, and a woman’s “duty”; a remarkable feminist story from the unlikeliest place on the planet. I’m “biast” (pro): nothing

I’m “biast” (con): nothing

I have not read the source material

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)

We don’t know where what we witness is occurring, but it is a place of sand and no running water, of mullahs and burqas, of battle raging nearby and grievously wounded soldiers. One of those soldiers (Hamidreza Javdan) lies comatose in his home, nursed by his much younger wife (Golshifteh Farahani: Body of Lies) to the degree that she is able. It’s getting more difficult now that the pharmacist refuses to give her, on credit, any more of the “serum” her husband needs — as a poor near-widow, her husband unable to support her or their small daughters,...

Moviefone's Top DVD of the Week

"Inside Llewyn Davis"

What's It About? Folk singer Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) has a guitar, a dream, and a big orange kitty cat. He's looking for his big break in New York City, but he's too busy being a bit of an aimless schmuck to do anything great. Inspired by the '60s folk scene in Greenwich Village, this comedy/drama has a whole lot of good music performed by stars Isaac, Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan, and Adam Driver.

Why We're In: The Coen brothers, a fantastic soundtrack produced by T-Bone Burnett, and one cool cat that rides the subway? We're in.

Moviefone's Top Blu-ray of the Week

"George Washington" (Criterion Collection)

What's It About? Writer/director David Gordon Green's feature-length debut is about a group of tweens in North Carolina, and the very bad thing we know they did one summer.

Why...

Based on the bestselling novel by Afghan-born Atiq Rahimi and co-adapted for the screen by the legendary Jean-Claude Carrière,The Patience Stone (2012) is a bold, powerful and ultimately uplifting story of one woman's resolve to break free from silence and years of oppression. To celebrate the DVD release of The Patience Stone this coming Monday (3 March), we have Three copies of Rahimi's second feature outing to give away to offer out to our valued UK readership, kindly provided by UK distributors Axiom Films. This is an exclusive competition for our Facebook and Twitter fans, so if you haven't already, 'Like' us at facebook.com/CineVueUK or follow us @CineVue before answering the question below.

★★★☆☆It takes a brave director to tackle a film set mainly in one room, the type of set-up usually far better suited to theatre than cinema. It makes more sense upon learning that director Atiq Rahimi is also the author of the novel The Patience Stone (2012) was adapted from. Perhaps then, the kudos should go to lead actress Golshifteh Farahani, who spends ninety per cent of the proceedings alone and yet still manages to maintain the viewer's attention with her tender, understated performance. Farahani, as 'The Woman', plays an Afghani wife and mother whose soldier husband lies in a vegetative state after being shot.

What’s new, what’s hot, and what you may have missed, now available to stream.

new to stream

Glory Road: based on a true story about the first interracial college basketball team, this predictable sports drama succeeds mainly thanks to its engaging cast, including Josh Lucas as the coach [at Netflix] A Hijacking (Kapringen): harrowing Danish drama of modern-day piracy as a sort of illicit corporate takeover; riveting and exhausting [my review] [at Netflix] Love Is All You Need: charming and wise, this is a delightful romantic dramedy about making the most of whatever life throws at you [my review] [at Netflix]

streaming now, before it’s on dvd

Ender’s Game: the Big Sf Ideas of this strange mashup of Starship Troopers and Harry Potter — gifted kids go to fascist military school! — seem positive only if your heart is made of stone [my review] [at Amazon UK Instant Video]

Oscar noms I caught up with

The Broken Circle Breakdown: heartbreaking melodrama about...

Need a last-minute prep session for tonight's Academy Awards? Turn to Blinkbox and Amazon Instant Video for everything from Captain Phillips to The Act of Killing

A night of sparkly distraction for most film lovers, but a veritable six-month industry in Hollywood, the Academy Awards will finally be dished out tonight. And once you've exhausted the Oscar-party cocktails and made the annual wisecracks about Sarah Jessica Parker's absurd dress, there's not much in it for you if you haven't seen the films in competition.

Happily, 19 of the nominees across various categories can now be viewed online, if you fancy doing some pre-ceremony prep work. Blinkbox has the widest range, including best picture nominee Captain Phillips, sure-fire best actress winner Blue Jasmine, best foreign film hopeful The Great Beauty and documentary favourite The Act of Killing. Amazon Instant Video (the recent reincarnation of LoveFilm), meanwhile, can help you out with Ernest & Celestine,...

To mark the release of The Patience Stone on 3rd March, we’ve been given 3 copies to give away on DVD.

Based on the best-selling novel by Afghan-born Atiq Rahimi (Winner of France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt) and co-adapted for the screen by the legendary Jean-Claude Carrière, The Patience Stone is a bold, powerful and ultimately uplifting story of one woman’s resolve to break free from silence and years of oppression, featuring a breath-taking performance from Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani (Asghar Farhadi’s About Elly, Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies).

In a country torn apart by a war, in Afghanistan or elsewhere, a beautiful young woman is left alone to care for her wounded husband who has been in a coma for the past two weeks. With no improvement in his condition, food and water in short supply and a war raging around her, she begins a heartfelt...

Chicago – The year caught up with me. 2013 was characterized by a soft start and a strong finish, but overall there were impressive contenders throughout the year and some fine examples of great storytelling and filmmaking. Risks were taken, some truth emerged and even in more “mainstream” films, there were flashes of promise.

This is the second set of top ten 2013 films on HollywoodChicago.com, as offered by film critic Patrick McDonald. Please also sample my colleague Brian Tallerico’s Top Ten. The following films are a testament to the experiences they gave me, what they made me think about afterward and how they fulfilled that feeling – for me – of what makes a movie great.

For every film in those ten spots, there are a number of other films coming in tied at number 11 – Joe Swanberg’s sublime “Drinking Buddies” and the anarchy of “Escape From Tomorrow”; the gutsy honesty of...

Disney's family-friendly movie tops the UK box-office charts, as rival animation Free Birds' fortunes take a dive

• More on the UK box office

• Frozen – review

• The Hunger Games: Catching Fire – review

The winner

Pushing The Hunger Games: Catching Fire aside after its two weeks at the top spot, Disney's Frozen opened with £4.70m. That's by no means the top number for an animation this year – Despicable Me 2 debut gathered £14.82m, including £4.87m in previews in June – but it's a solid start for a film presumed to play to the Christmas audience. Family films targeting the Christmas market have a knack of playing strongly right through until Christmas Eve, and if the festive association is not too strong can, continue to play beyond that date.

Two years ago, Aardman's Arthur Christmas debuted with a so-so £2.11m, but by Christmas Day had managed £19.66m, and eventually reached £20.84m. (A re-release...

This Ain't California | Nebraska | Frozen | Kill Your Darlings | Oldboy | Powder Room | Homefront | Getaway | The Patience Stone | Big Bad Wolves | Black Nativity | Floating Skyscrapers | Klown | Rough Cut | A Long Way From Home | Scatter My Ashes At Bergdorf's

This Ain't California (Tbc)

(Marten Perseil, 2012, Ger) 90 mins

Just as its East German teen subjects took skateboarding behind the Iron Curtain, so this "documentary" smuggles faked footage into its true 1980s history. The result is a fascinating parallel pop-cultural history with a moving (but imaginary) human centre. Working out what's true and what's not only adds to the fun.

Nebraska (15)

(Alexander Payne, 2013, Us) Bruce Dern, Will Forte, June Squibb. 115 mins

Stubborn old Dern and son take a quixotic road trip back into family, and American, history.

Frozen (PG)

(Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee, 2013, Us) Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, Idina Menzel. 108 mins

Disney's classy, sparkly assault on the Christmas holidays, with wintry vistas, musical numbers and a sister-powered fairytale.

Decadence, violence, love and space – Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw shares his fantasy award nomination list for 2013

• The 2012 Braddies

Awards season is now upon us and here, as every year, is my personal fantasy award nomination list for 2013, whimsically called the Braddies, which covers the period running from the beginning of the calendar year to the present. There are 10 nominations in eight categories: film, director, actor, actress, supporting actor, supporting actress, screenplay and documentary.

The reader is invited to nominate the winner in the comments section below, and perhaps to note omissions and evidence that the list betrays suggestions of sociocultural bias.

I like to think that these awards will one day evolve into an actual ceremony with chrome-and-glass statuettes, sponsorship from Sky Atlantic and a televised evening presided over by Dara Ó Briain or Mariella Frostrup. But until then, it exists in a world of fantasy only. And so,...

Take your pick of this week's cinema releases. Plus, what's coming up on the site today

What to watch

In the UK? Have a gander at The Guardian Film Show, where we're reviewing Alexander Payne's Nebraska, Daniel Radcliffe's turn as Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings, skateboarding sort-of doc This Ain't California and Spike Lee's remake of Oldboy.

Other films out there include Disney's cool-for-yule animation Frozen, Jason Statham action romper Homefront and Brit-com Powder Room.

In the Us? Have a sing-song with the Coen brothers folk drama Inside Llewyn Davis, on limited release from this week.

In the news today

- Nelson Mandela's death was announced to the guests at the premiere of Mandela: The Long Walk to Freedom. Peter Bradshaw reviewed the performances that took the great man's story to the screen.

- Time magazine have named and shamed their worst films of...

Today's film news is doing that impressive thing with bullets and metal bracelets

On the site today

• Israeli actor Gal Gadot to play Wonder Woman in Man of Steel 2

• Sundance 2014 announces competition lineup

• Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu to direct The Jungle Book

• Warner battling Weinsteins over Hobbit profits

• Britain and China sign landmark co-production deal

• National Board of Review heralds Spike Jonze's Her

• Video interview with Daniel Radcliffe and Dane DeHaan of Kill Your Darlings

• Peter Bradshaw on what to watch this week: The Patience Stone

• Week in geek examines the trailer for Amazing Spider-Man 2

• Callout for readers' films of the year

• Phil Hoad on the enduring influence of Cinema Paradiso

• Peter Bradshaw's review of Alexander Payne's road movie Nebraska

You may have missed

• A first look review of David O Russell's Oscar contender, American Hustle

• Awards season kicks off with American Hustle winning the New...

Having turned in an immensely empathetical performance in Asghar Farhadi’s About Elly, talented Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani now stars in a film equally as poignant with yet another absorbing lead performance, in Atiq Rahimi’s The Patience Stone, based on the director’s very own novel. However despite the melancholy that prevails within this drama, there is something uplifting and inspiring about this tale, as watch on as a lonely woman finds her voice in spite of the desolation that surrounds her.

Set in a war torn nation, Farahani plays ‘the woman’ – who devotes her life to caring after her husband (Hamid Djavadan), who lays in a motionless, vegetative state in a derelict room, following a bullet to the neck. Though struggling to make ends meet – also looking after two daughters in the process, the woman finds solace in finally being able to say things she’d never had the courage to say,...

Leviathan | Saving Mr Banks | Carrie | Jeune & Jolie | Marius, Fanny | Saving Santa | The Best Man Holiday | Free Birds | Day Of The Flowers | Life's A Breeze

Leviathan (12A)

(Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel, 2012, Fra/UK/Us) 87 mins

An arthouse fishing-trawler documentary sounds like a practical joke, but this takes us to places we've never before – into the ocean depths and back out on to the decks with the catch. It's a series of dark, semi-abstract tableaux full of flapping fish, clanking machinery and tattooed fishermen doing wet, gory work. It's easy to forget this is real life you're watching.

Saving Mr Banks (PG)

(John Lee Hancock, 2013, Us) Tom Hanks, Emma Thompson. 125 mins

How Walt Disney came to make Mary Poppins was hardly a pressing movie mystery, and one suspects a spoonful of drama has been added, but the leads are eminently watchable.

Carrie (15)

(Kimberly Peirce, 2013, Us) Chloë Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore. 100 mins

Brian De Palma...

Iffi to screen festival favorites Blue is the Warmest Colour, Ilo Ilo, The Past among others

A still from The Coffin Maker

Two Indian Films; Apu’s Song by Kaushik Ganguly and The Coffin Maker by Veena Bakshi have been selected in the International Competition section at the International Film Festival of India (Iffi) to be held in Goa from November 20-30, 2013.

Apu’s Song is a real-life story inspired by Subir Banerjee, the child actor who played the iconic role of Apu in Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali. The film released theatrically in August 1955 and it has been 58 long years hence. But ironically Subir never became a part of any film again in his entire life. On his way to receive an award in a film festival in Germany, he reminisces about his life.

The Coffin Maker by Veena Bakshi (India) is set in a small village in Goa.

Late as usual. People are attending Mipcom in Cannes and in November Afm in Santa Monica, and I’m only now getting around to writing about my own private Toronto. I chose films I would not be able to see soon in a theater near me and I chose films because my schedule permitted me to see them. Occasionally I chose films my friends were going to and that happened when my time was not demanding other things be done.

I wish I could have seen 100 other films too but for some reason or another I could not fit them in.

I moderated a wonderful panel (and we did blog on that!) on international film financing with Sffs’ Ted Hope, UTA’s Rena Ronson, Revolution’s Andrew Eaton, and Hollywood-based Cross Creek’s Brian Oliver, and Paul Miller, Head of Film Financing, from the Doha Film Institute, Qatar's first international organization dedicated to film financing, production, education and two film festivals.

I also spoke with Toronto Talent Lab filmmakers and then I filled my days with films – I did get an interview with Gloria’s director Sebastian Lelio and Berlin Best Actress winner Paulina Garcia and with Marcela Said, director of The Summer of Flying Fish but mostly I watched film after film after film – up to five a day, just like in the old days when I had to do it for my acquisitions jobs. This was pure pleasure. Friends would meet before the film, we would watch and disperse. And we would meet again at the cocktail hour or the dinner hour and then disperse again.

My partner Peter had lots of meetings with the Talent of Toronto from the Not Short on Shorts and the Talent Lab Mentoring Programs.

Parties like the Rotterdam-Screen International party gave us the chance to catch up with our Dutch friends whom we have not seen for the last two years. Ontario Media Development Corporation’s presenting the International Financing Forum luncheon gave us the chance to talk to lots of upcoming filmmakers and old friends again who were mentoring them. The panel Forty Years On: Women’s Film Festivals Today, moderated by Kay Armatage, former Tiff programmer, Professor Emeritus University of Toronto, and featuring Debra Zimmerman, Executive Director of Women Make Movies, NYC, Melissa Silverstein, Do-Fojnder an dArtistic Director of the Athena Film Festival in NYC and blogger of Women in Hollywood, So-In Hong, Director of Programming of the International Women’s Film Festival in Seoul had a rapport and didn’t hesitate to challenge each other. It felt like a party even though the subject was quite serious. The SXSW party was crowded as always, filled with everyone we could possibly know. It is always a great party we all want to attend.

One of the great dinners was that of The Creative Coalition Spotlight Awards Dinner honoring Alfre Woodard (12 Years a Slave), Hill Harper (1982, CSI: NY), Sharon Leal (1982), Matt Letscher (Scandal, The Carrie Diaries), Brenton Thwaites (Oculus, Maleficient), Tommy Oliver (1982, Kinyarwanda – I am a great fan of Tommy’s!), Tom Ortenberg (CEO, Open Road Films which has a coventure with Regal Theaters and AMC Theaters recently acquired by the richest man in China), and David Arquette (The Scream series). Our hostess, Robin Bronk is so welcoming and so dedicated to furthering the cause of universal education as a human right, education in the arts as a must. I admire her presence and her good work.

Here is a list of the great (and not so great, but never bad) films I got to see. I also list those I continue to hear about even now. I do not list all the films which were picked up during the festival and later. For that, you can go to SydneysBuzz.com and buy the Fall Rights Roundup 2013 and see all films whose rights were acquired (and announced) and by whom with links to all companies and Cinando for further research. For buyers it will, by deduction, show what is still available for Afm and for programmers, it will show who is in charge of the film for specific territories. The second edition will be issued two weeks after Afm.

One of the first films I saw and still retaining its place as one of my favorites was the documentary Finding Vivian Maier which begins with the discovery of photographs by an unknown woman named Vivian Maier by filmmaker John Maloof. As the mystery of this woman is uncovered, the audience is treated to her stunning work and the story of who she was.

One of my favorite films was by one of my favorite directors, Lucas Moodyson. We Are The Best (Isa: Trust Nordisk) was a great surprise, the story of three teeny-bopper punk-influenced girls who loved getting into unusual situations. It was loving and fun, darling and funny. I would take my children to see it and would delight in seeing it again. It was the biggest surprise for me. I can see why Magnolia snapped it up for the U.S. I thank programmer Steve Gravenstock for giving me the ticket for this film which I would have missed otherwise.

I had missed Jodorowsky’s Dune in Cannes. I am a great fan of El Topo and was eager to see this film. I was surprised at the elegance and skill of Jodorowsky in explaining his vision. Afterward, Gary Springer, our favorite publicist, arranged a wonderful reception at a classic comic book store where we loaded up on some fascinating graphic novels and Gary showed us his depiction on an old issue of Mad Magazine discussing the making of Jaws which he was in. picture here.

A totally unique and unexpected film about the African Diaspora, Belle, written and directed by Amma Asante was not talked about much to my surprise, perhaps because Fox Searchlight acquired all rights worldwide from Bankside before the festival. It is a stunningly beautiful British period piece of the 18th century about a mixed race aristocratic beauty.

My favorite film, on a par with The Patience Stone last year was Bobo (Isa: Wide) by Ines Oliveira starring Paula Garcia Aissato Indjai, produced by my friend Fernando Vendrell who gave me a ticket when I could not get one myself. This story of a woman who does nothing except go to work is forced to accept a claning woman and her young sister from Guinea-Bissau. Together they face down their demons. I love the cross-cultural understanding which results in their shared situations. I recently saw Mother of George and found the same warm connection across great cultural divides, though this one was of generations.

I wish I could have seen Pays Barbare/ Barbaric Land, the Italian/ French doc in Wavelengths about Mussolini’s attempted subjugation of Ethiopia (the only country in Africa never colonized). It sounds like great political poetry.

1982 which had previously won the prize of the jury I served on for Us Works in Progress held in July at the Champs Elysees Film Festival in Paris. It was deeply moving and disturbing film which depicts the shattering and the healing of a family. It also helps feed the pipeline begun with Lee Daniels producing Monster’s Ball who went on to direct to such films as Precious and The Butler. If the African American experience can continue to be expressed so eloquently by such filmmakers as Tommy Oliver, Rashaad Ernesto Green (Sundance 2012’s Gun Hill Road), Ava DuVernay (Middle of Nowhere), then a film literate audience will foster greater growth of even more talent in the coming generation. While I didn’t see All Is By My Side by U.K.’s John Ridley which is about Jimi Hendrix nor (yet!) the most highly acclaimed film of the festival, 12 Years a Slave by U.K.’s Steve McQueen, but I would include them in this discussion of the African American Experience.

On the subject of Africa, where last Sundance God Loves Uganda shocked and upset me, this year Mission Congo (Cinephil) revealed much of the same cultural divide only these two films show the negative impact of the Christian right upon already besieged Africans. What is done in the name of a righteous G-d is cause for dialogue and oversight.

Israel and the Middle East

No major turmoil or denunciations this year (Thank G-d, Allah, or whoever She may be). Katriel Schory, head of the Israeli Film Fund told me that if I could only see one film, then it should be Bethlehem which is the country’s submission for Academy Award Consideration for the Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. It was a sad and clear eyed microcosmic view of the issues of trust and betrayals played out among every level of the society. People compared it to Omar by Hany Abu-Assad,the filmmaker of a favorite of mine, Paradise Now, but I did not see Omar.

Rags and Tatters at first seemed like a documentary, and does have doc footage, but it is a circular story that ends where it began but with much more understanding of the chaotic events in Cairo. Really worth watching.

Latino

Of the Latino films two Chilean films, Gloria (Chile) and The Summer of Flying Fish (Review), were accompanied by interviews which you can read on my previous blogs here and here. El Mudo from Peru by the Vega brothers was in the odd vien of their previous film, October. Not sure at the end just what the film was saying…

Toronto Film Fest Programmer Diana Sanchez’s official count of Latino films in the festival is 16. Of these, 5 are by women; 30% is a strong number. Venezuela and Chile are strong with year with two films each. Two other films might have been chosen except they went to San Sebastian for their world premieres. Especially hot this year was Mexico. 4 films are here but she might have chosen 10 if she could have. Costa Rica is making a showing with All About the Feathers and Central America is making more movies. There is lots of industry buzz coming from the good pictures from Brazil like A Wolf at the Door from Sao Paolo production

She is not counting Gravity by Alfonso Cuaron as as Latino film but as a U.S. film.

And Our White Society

The Dinner (Isa: Media Luna) by Menno Meyjes ♀ (Isa: Media Luna), a Dutch film deals with the personal and political as two families disintegrate when the affluent sons kill a homeless woman. Deeply disturbing social issues on the other side of the spectrum from those of 1982 and yet very much the same. How a society can foster such dissonance in class structure today which results in the disintegration of family and even a nation’s political life is, as I said, deeply disturbing. Based on the N.Y. Times best selling book which sold over 650,000 in The Netherlands, and is published in 22 countries, it stars four of Holland’s most renowned actors, Jacob Derwig, Thekla Reuten, Daan Schuurmans, and Kim van Kooten. This is a story that could be remade in America and still maintain its strength. The writer-director Menno Meyjes wrote the Academy Award nominee The Color Purple and collaborated with director Steven Speilberg on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. In 2008 he directed Manolete with Penelope Cruz and Adrien Brody.

The Last of Robin Hood was a romp which thrilled us because Peter Belsito, my own dear husband, had a moment on screen (as the director of Errol Flynn’s last film Cuban Rebel Girls). He got the part because he had had an equally small role in the original Cuban Rebel Girls when it filmed in Cuba in 1959, four months after the Revolution. He happened to be there on vacation with his family including his 18 year old sister and his crazy aunt because Puerto Rico was full that year and Cuba had plenty of room. Directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland invited him to play in their film. The film actually had more meaning than merely a romp as it revealed what lays below the June-September love affair between Errol Flynn and 15 year old Beverly Aadland, the nature of fame (“a religion in this godless country” to quote Flynn himself) and ambition. Kevin Kline, Susan Sarandan and Dakota Fanning were all great in the repertoire piece.

Can a Song Save Your Life? garnered great praise as the film that followed the simple pure Once. I found it a bit flat though it kept my interest enough that I was not contemplating leaving. But it lacked the simplicity of Once.

Fading Gigolo proves that a Woody Allen Film is a Genre. John Turturro makes a Woody Allen middle-aged man fantasy of a wished for love affair with a Hasidic woman. Turturro is always lovable on screen, but his directing has something inauthentic about it…the only authentic thing was the twice-stated thought that somewhere in his heritage he was really Jewish. When I saw his previous film Passione, about Italians and passion, the opening song, being one of the first Cuban songs I ever heard, turned me off because again, it was inauthentic. It was Cuban, not Italian. I think he is not comfortable in his Italian guise.

Other films at Tiff I have seen previously:

Only Lovers Left Alive by Jim Jarmusch (Isa: HanWay, U.S. Spc). If you can see it as a dream of night, then the vampires dreaminess might appeal to you. I personally was ready to fall into my own stupor after watching this 123 minute movie of Vampires who have seen it all. Zzzzzz.

Don Jon is sexy and sweet. Scarlett Johansson is a superb comedienne, equal to Claudette Colbert in this film about two totally media mesmerized young lovers. ___ and his father are also great straight men. I loved this film, so funny and sweet and all about sex. Loved it!

Borgman Darkest humor, or is it humor? Creepy and definitely engrossing. Dutch filmmaker Alex van Warmerdam at his best. This is the Netherlands' Official Academy Awards Submission.

What I hear was good:

Aside from the ones that got snapped up for lots of money and are covered in all the trades already, there are films which I keep hearing about even now and will see:

Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon

12 Years a Slave (Isa: Summit, U.S. Fox Searchlight)

The Lunchbox (Isa: The Match Factory)

Prisoners (Isa: Summit/ Lionsgate, U.S.: Warner Bros)

Dallas Buyers Clubs (Isa: Voltage, U.S. Focus Features)

Life of Crime (Isa: Hyde Park, U.S.: )

A Touch of Sin (Isa: MK2, U.S. Kino Lorber)

Gravity (Isa: Warner Bros. U.S. Warner Bros.)

Enough Said (Isa: Fox Searchlight, U.S. Fox Searchlight)

La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty) (Isa: Pathe, U.S. Criterion) Italy’s submission for Academy Award Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film

Violette (Isa: Doc & Film, U.S.: ?)

Omar (Isa: The Match Factory, U.S.: ?)

Le Passe (The Past) (Isa: Memento, U.S. Spc) Iran’s submission for Academy Award Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

To the Wolf (Isa: Pascale Ramonda)

The Selfish Giant (Isa: Protagonist, U.S. IFC)

At Berkeley by Frederick Wiseman (Isa: Doc & Film, U.S. Zipporah)

The Unknown Known (Isa: Entertainment One, U.S. Radius-twc)

Ain’t Misbehavin (Un Voyager) by Marcel Ophuls (Isa: Wide House)

Faith Connections by Pan Nalin (Isa: Cite Films). This Indian French film, produced by Raphael Berduo among others is written about here.

Civil Rights (?)

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

12 Years a Slave (Isa: Summit, U.S. Fox Searchlight)

Belle (Isa: Bankside, all rights sold to Fox Searchlight)

Lgbt

Kill Your Darlings: The youthful finding of himself by Alan Ginsburg as he enters Colombia University and meets Lucien Carr, Jack Kerouac and Alan Bourroughs revolves around a murder which actually happened. The period veracity and Daniel Radcliffe’s acting carry the film into a fascinating character study. (U.S. Spc)

Dallas Buyers Club (Isa: Voltage, U.S. Focus Features)

Tom a la ferme / Tom at the Farm by Xavier Dolan Isa: MK2, U.S.:)

L’Armee du salut/ Salvation Army by Abdellah Taia (Isa: - U.S.:-)

Eastern Boys (Isa: Films Distribution)

Pelo Malo/ Bad Hair (FiGa Films)

The Dog (Producer Rep: Submarine)

Ignasi M. (Isa: Latido)

Gerontophilia (Isa: MK2, U.S. Producer Rep: Filmoption)...

Somewhere in an unnamed Afghanistan village torn apart by a war, a beautiful unnamed woman (Golshifteh Farahani) watches over her older soldier husband (Hamid Djavadan) in a decrepit room while Taliban-like gangs roam the streets. He is reduced to a vegetative state of because of a bullet in his neck sustained not through battle, but in a barroom brawl over an insult. One day, she begins a solitary confession to this silent man. She talks (and talks and talks) about her childhood, her suffering, her frustrations, her loneliness, and her dreams. She touches him, bathes him, kisses him – things she could never have done before, even though they have been married for 10 years. The paralyzed man becomes the title ‘patience stone’ which, according to myth, when placed in front of a person shields him or her from suffering and unhappiness. In this wait for her husband to come back to life,...

The title of this panel was Financing and Packaging: From Indie to Studio, but in fact, the most studio-like film, Rush , by the major director, Ron Howard, and produced by Brit indie production company Revolution (Andrew Eaton) and Hollywood-based Cross Creek (Brian Oliver), is actually quite independent.

Rush (U.S. Universal, International Sales by Exclusive)

Ron Howard and his producing partner Brian Grazer whose imagine Entertainment have had an overall deal at Universal for 27 years, however, this mid-budget range film of some $50,000,000 was considered not "big enough" for the majors.

To read more about this complex and fascinating film and its international film business background, read the following articles which are quoted throughout this article with thanks and acknowledgement to:

· Variety September 13, 2013 (reprinted at the end of this blog) · Wall Street Journal, September 5, 2013 · The Hollywood Reporter September 28, 2011

Aside from major director Ron Howard himself, the second “major” element of the film is that Universal is the North American distributor of the film. This happens through the three year minimum-6-picture distribution deal Brian Oliver’s Cross Creek has with Universal in which Cross Creek produces and finances either its own films or films chosen from Universal’s development slate. Cross Creek is set up to generate up to four films per year, with Universal to distribute at least two of them with a wide-release commitment.

Isa (International Sales Agent) Exclusive Media is also an independent. This too is the result of Oliver’s deal with Exclusive to jointly finance two projects per year.

Cross Creek, putting its own cash into the project, split the cost of the picture with Exclusive who financed it through a bank loan made against pre-sales generated in 2011 at the Afm. With Howard there to promote the project to buyers, Exclusive secured around $33 million in foreign pre-sales. See Cinando’s list of distributors .

Additionally, Oliver and Eaton structured the project as a U.K.- German co-production, enabling them to secure about $12 million in soft money from Germany (Egoli Tossell) in accordance with U.K.’s co-production treaty. As a result, U.K. rights ended up with Studiocanal.

Brian Oliver is a “one of Hollywood’s biggest and more unusual financiers of risky films, with coin coming mostly from oil and real estate investments in Texas”. This major Hollywood financier/ producer takes chances which prove his astute, if askew, view of what makes a “Hollywood” picture an indie at the same time, as shown by his credits, The Ides of March and Black Swan.

Andrew Eaton is a British producer with deep Hollywood connections through the British community here, e.g., Eric Fellner of Working Title, the British production company currently owned by Universal. (Parenthetically, I bought U.S. rights to Working Title’s first film, My Beautiful Laundrette for Lorimar along with Orion Classics and so I was quite thrilled to have a chance to be in touch with the talented Brits once again).

Working Title had worked with Andrew Easton on Frost/Nixon. Eric Fellner loved the script and offered it to Universal for funding. However, as said, Universal passed on it because it was too small.

“It is going to be easy for people to think this is a Hollywood movie, and it just is not,” quotes Variety from the film’s British screenwriter, Peter Morgan, who penned Frost/Nixon which was also directed by Howard. “It is a British independent film directed by a Hollywood director.”

Eaton and Oliver spoke of how they put this film together.

“We must champion the fact that this is basically 80% a British film in terms of the people who worked on it, the way it was structured and the way we ran it,” says Eaton, who was behind such indie films as 24 Hour Party People and the Red Riding TV series.

Can a Song Save Your Life? (U.S. UTA, Isa: Exclusive)

Exclusive has another film here, Can a Song Save Your Life? which is also repped by Rena Ronson, Co-Head of the Independent Film Group of UTA. Directed by John Carney who came to the public’s attention with his micro-budgeted Once which plays on stage here in Toronto at the moment, in New York and elsewhere regularly. The Weinstein Company picked it up in Toronto, reportedly paying around a $7 million minimum guarantee for U.S. rights with a P&A commitment of at least $20 million.

UTA as an agency also packages both large (studio) and smaller indie films. Rena Ronson, the co-head of UTA Indie explained how her own indie roots -- first at indie distributor Fox-Lorber and continuing into international sales before becoming the “indie agent” at Wma, succeeding the “indie” founder, Bobbi Thompson, have taught her to speak the language of the international as well as the independent film business. She knows the major modes of operating as well as she knows the independent style of business. She further explained that the successes of the larger films permit the “smaller”, i.e., “indie” films to be made.

UTA repped films in Toronto are listed below. For a full report of rights sold, before, during and after Toronto, watch SydneysBuzz.com for the Fall 2013 Rights Roundup.

Can A Song Save Your Life?

Writer/Director: John Carney Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Keira Knightley, Hailee Steinfeld, Adam Levine, Catherine Keener, Mos Def, Cee-Lo Green Publicity: Falco / Shannon Treusch, Monica Delameter U.S. Producer Rep: UTA / CAA . Isa: Exclusive Media Group

U.S. rights were acquired at Tiff 13 by TWC for a record breaking $7 million.

Since first announcing it in Cannes 2012, Exclusive has made other deals as well for Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan (Tanweer), Germany (Studiocanal), Japan (Pony Canyon Inc), Philippines (Solar Entertainment), Russia (A Company), So. Korea ( Pancinema), Switzerland ( Ascot Elite Entertainment Group ), Taiwan ( Serenity Entertainment International ), Turkey (D Productions), the Middle East ( Front Row Filmed Entertainment).

Tiff Special Presentations:

Hateship, Loveship

Director: Liza Johnson Writer: Mark Poirier Writer (Novel): Alice Munro Starring: Kristen Wiig, Guy Pearce, Hailee Steinfeld, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nick Nolte Publicity: Prodigy PR, Erik Bright

North American Sale: UTA / Cassian Elwes. Isa: The Weinstein Co. Sena has rights for Iceland.

The F Word

Director: Michael Dowse Writer: Elan Mastai Writers (Play): Michael Rinaldi & T.J. Dawe Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Zoe Kazan, Rafe Spall, Adam Driver, Mackenzie Davis, Amanda Crew Publicity: Strategy PR / Cynthia Schwartz, Michael Kupferberg Us Sale: UTA / Lichter, Grossman, Nichols, Adler & Feldman. Isa: eOne

After UTA sold the The F Word to CBS Films for the U.S. for around $3 million in Toronto, Entertainment One Films International completed other international sales. Besides Canada and the U.K., eOne itself will release the film in Australia/New Zealand, Benelux and Spain feeding its own international distribution pipeline. Other sales include Germany to Senator Entertainment, Middle East to Front Row Entertainment, Nigeria toRed Mist, Russia to Carmen Film Group, Turkey to Mars Entertainment Group

Night Moves

Writer/Director: Kelly Reichart Writer: Jonathan Raymond Starring: Dakota Fanning, Jesse Eisenberg, Peter Sarsgaard, Alia Shawkat Publicity: Ginsberg/Libby, Chris Libby North American Sale: UTA Isa: The Match Factory

Tiff Vanguard

The Sacrament

Writer/Director: Ti West Starring: Joe Swanberg, Aj Bowen, Amy Seimetz, Kate Lyn Sheil, Gene Jones Publicity: Dda, Dana Archer, Alice Zhou North American Sale: UTA / CAA Isa: Im Global sold to Pegasus Motion Pictures Distribution Ltd . For China

As of this writing, rather 1 hour ago, Magnolia Pictures, which lost on an earlier bidding war here for Joe, is finalizing a deal for the picture reportedly for seven figures.

Coincidentallywith the beginning of the Toronto Film Festival, the front page of L.A. Times quoted Rena Ronson in an article called "Making history as cameras roll" (print edition) or "Wadjda' director makes her mark in Saudi cinema" (online edition) about Wadjda , (Isa: The Match Factory) last year’s Venice and Telluride film which Rena had spotted at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, where it won a script award. It was written and directed by a woman which is notable in such a male-dominated part of the world. She met the writer-director, Haifaa Mansour, and that led to working with her for the next two years to finance the film. Its $2.5m budget was backed in part by the Rotana Group, the largest media company in the Middle East, owned primarily by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. The German production company Razor Film owned and operated by Gerhard Meixner and Roman Paul whose first coproduction in 2005, Paradise Now brought them into international prominence and who also picked up last year’s Tiff groundbreaking film from Afghanistan,The Patience Stone, and previously coproduced Waltz With Bashir, came on board and brought German broadcast deals and German film funds as well.

Doha and Film Financing

The fourth panelist was Paul Miller, Head of Film Financing, from the Doha Film Institute , Qatar's first international organization dedicated to film financing, production, education and two film festivals. Doha encourages submission for financing film financing opportunities from anywhere in the world. The Dfi Grants program supports first- and second-time filmmakers in producing and developing their own stories. There are two funding rounds per year. Applications are considered from three regions (basically divided into the Middle East, developing nations and the rest of the world – with some exceptions -- each with different eligibility criteria.

Consideration for funding is open to feature-length films in development, production and post-production, as well as short films in production and post-production. Since 2010, Dfi has provided funding to more than 138 filmmakers.

Beyond the regional grants program, Dfi also invests in a diverse slate of international productions to encourage greater collaboration, mentorship and co‑production opportunities between Gulf countries and the rest of the world. Co-financing applications apply to both Middle Eastern and international feature films, television and web series. Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis throughout the year.

Four films at Tiff that Doha has helped finance:

Mohammed Malas’s Ladder to Damacus, screening in Tiff’s Contemporary World Cinema section; Jasmila Žbanic’s For Those Who Can Tell No Tales in the Special Presentation section. Both films were co-financed by Dfi. Dfi grant recipients Néjib Belkadhi’s Bastardo and Mais Darwazah’s My Love Awaits Me by the Sea screening in the Contemporary World Cinema and Discovery sections, respectively.

The fifth panelist, Ted Hope, Director of the San Francisco Film Society, a non-profit training, festival, and funding operation is known to everyone from his history with Good Machine (which was acquired by Universal and renamed Focus Features), and from his blog Hope for Film/ Truly Free Film . In his always-inimitable fashion, Ted proposed a new sort of financing, called "staged financing", based on a progressive meeting of certain criterion from development through distribution. This way of financing is similar to the venture capital models of financing. His broad ideas on what has to change with the industry's funding and packaging methods brought the panelists and the audience to heel at attention. I reprint his blog after this because this idea goes against the current grain of financing an entire film which may or may not prove to be the final box office bingo winner it always purports to be when securing full financing.

The Sffs provided some funding to Thomas Oliver's 1982 which is in Tiff this year. Aside from winning Us in Progress’ $60,000 in post-production services at this year’s Champs Elysees Film Festival, 1982 also received Sffs’s $85,000 post production grant and participated in the Sffs’s A2E labs. The film is being represented by Kevin Iwashina’s Preferred Content.

The panel became very animated as Ted Hope and Rena Ronson faced off about whether a film is made for a broad audience or whether, if targeted correctly, it could actually make money with niche audiences. As always, the two of them, both equally astute, brought much to bear on both sides of the argument. And, I, as the panel’s moderator, hereby declare, They are both right.

The broader the audience the more potential for making money.

However, as Ted points out, with crowd sourcing, crowd funding and crowd theatrical exhibition, there are many other ways beyond ticket purchases that filmmakers can offer in order to make money with their targeted audience.

This, as well as the great contributions made by Doha’s Paul Miller and Revolution’s Andrew Eaton could have extended the panel into a full day. Paul Oliver of Cross Creek was the quietest, perhaps most reticent, of the speakers, but he amply demonstrated that he is one who puts his money where his mouth is. His acumen and taste make us all grateful for his existence as he is a pivotal point person in creating works of art that create substantial revenues for a sustainable art house film business.

The audience as well was most enthusiastic with their questions and post panel discussions with panelists who stayed to talk.

Articles Reprinted Here:

Truly Free Film

Staged Financing Must Become Film Biz’s Immediate Goal

Posted: 06 Sep 2013 05:15 Am Pdt

Each day I become more and more convinced that staged financing could be a cure to much of the Film Biz’s ills. Staged financing? What? Is the phrase not exactly center of your conversations right now? Why not?!! Whatsamattawidyou? Don’t you know a good solution when you see one?

Although it already exists in many fields, and even in a few small patches of our own yard, I recognize that a staged financing strategy is not yet the force behind Indieland’s own gardening. I am however growing convinced it could yield a far more fruitful harvest than our current methods. A staged-financing ecosystem can’t be built in a one-off manner though. Although it also does not need to the rule of the realm, it needs a permanent eco-system to support it.

Staged financing is part of a much bigger solution that we urgently need to bring to our industry: a sustainable investor class . We need smart money and need to stop seeking, encouraging, and propagating dumb money. Most film investors get out, win or lose, by their third film (I have been told this and don’t have the stats to back it up now, but if you do, please share — otherwise just trust that is what my experience has shown). The value of most independent money in the film biz is the money itself, and that is not good for anyone.

Staged financing is exactly what it says to be. I know in this world such literalness is a strange thing, but there is it. Staged financing is a funding process that is there for each distinct stage. In comparison, it is the opposite of up-front financing — the type that monopolizes the narrative feature world. I am proposing that we institutionalize the staged-financing process and make it easier to finance your film in drips and drabs. Why am I so bullish on what probably sounds like hell to many? Why do I think it will save indie film? Let’s count the ways.

Staged financing increases the predictability of success. Investors can base their continued commitment on a proof of prinicipal instead of just a pitch. The longer one waits the more they know — of course the longer one waits the lower the chance for their to be the opportunity for investment, so there. The more investors can project or even predict their success, the longer they will stay in the game, and the more that will gather to pay — i.e. more capital at play! Staged financing allows filmmakers and their supporters to pivot based on real world data. The old way had very little it could do when new information hit. Your film (and investment) could be rendered obsolete over night. But that does not have to be a done deal is this new world. This is just one of the many reasons for #1 above of course. Staged financing diversifies the creative class. Wouldn’t it be great if the film biz was actually a meritocracy? Well, if people had to make good movies to complete their financing, wouldn’t that be a bit closer to the case? Staged financing gives all people the opportunity to prove they have a good idea, whether that idea is completed or not. It is not about who you know, but about what you’ve done and can do. Documentary film — compared to the narrative world — already has a great deal of staged financing institutionalized — and benefits from gender proportional representation among directors. Need I say more?Staged financing allows ambitious artistic work to flourish. Instead of just having “commercial elements”, unique and inspiring work can be recognized for the potential it truly has. Instead of being rewarded for being able to earn trust or arrogantly claim to know what one is doing, staged financing allows good work to be rewarded for being good work. Currently, we mistake confidence for capability and those that boast to be able to predict what the end product will be (where there is no way that they will actually know what the 100+ decisions each day will yield), get to play — not the work that delivers something new and wonderful. Staged financing rewards quality over risk mitigation. Staged financing is actually a better form of risk mitigation than the present form that is only based on regurgitating what has already proven successful. When we limit risk by mimicking what has worked in the past, all we are doing is guessing and covering our ass — and this leads to a film culture of movie titles overrun with numerals. We live in an era of abundance, and as comforting as the familiar may be, we have more access to it than ever before. We rarely need the new version of it. We will however need truly original work more and more as time goes on as we will drowning in the repetitive. How will we prove what works? Staged financing, my friend, staged financing. Staged financing creates a better project as it incentivizes the creators every step of the way. Not that you truly need to incentivize those that are in the passion industries for the right reason, but it never hurts to weed out those that are in it for the wrong reason. When your financing is based on your work and not your connections or investors’ fears, you will do all you can to make each stage of financing shine, justify itself, and be truly competitive. Staged financing requires you to walk a series of steps, proving you have earned the right with every advance — and you better do your homework if you don’t want to get left behind. Staged financing requires you choose your initial partners wisely. It’s not just about the terms of the deal that should determine whom your investors are — but that is how we generally act nowadays. Everyone should instead seek value-add investors. You should get more than just money from your investors. You should benefit from their expertise. Filmmakers, agents, lawyers, and managers, often are willing to leap into bed with anyone who offers the most cash — there’s a name for that practice and it should not be film investment. Staged financing means the creators will have “skin in the game”. When it is an up-front finance model, the creators are not working for a payout in success but working just for the upfornt fees (or some semblance thereof); they may have “profit participation” but basically the only anticipated earnings are what is in the budget. It becomes increasingly difficult to motivate the creative team to be engaged in the needed work after the film premieres. Investors have long recognized that this is not the most beneficial arrangement, yet what can they do? The answer my friend, is… yup, you know the song I am singing: everyone loves that staged financing! Staged financing is a time-tested process that has already been adopted by many industries . Staged financing is the modus operandi of Silicon Valley and all the Vc firms. Other industries, from mining onwards, have seen real benefits from the process. Why do we limit our success and not apply proven models to our field? Could it be that somewhere someone is desperately clutching on to what ever paltry power they perceive themselves to possess? Hmmm… If they don’t offer the model you want at the store, build a new model — or maybe even a chain of stores. Staged financing gives producers of quality work more power. The main objection to staged financing is that it gives financiers more power. That is only true if you are making crap. Or mediocre work. If you are making something wonderfully astounding you will never struggle to progress to the next round — and in fact you will be able to improve your terms. And investors won’t complain either, because they now can have to know a good thing when they see one.

So if Staged Financing is this marvelous thing, why have our leaders not yet delivered it to you? Well, they don’t care about you; didn’t you know that?

And if Staged Financing could really save Indie Film, why has the community not constructed this marvelous ecosystem yet? Well, we’ve all been too busy chasing shiny objects and marveling at the reflections fed back of us.

But change is here. We have hope. We can build it better together. And I have already started. The San Francisco Film Society is committed to it. We have others who want to be part of. We are have spots for more to join in. And we are going to help a few select projects really rock this world.

Watch this space. Let’s do it together and truly astonish the world with your awe inspiring work. Just don’t be slack, okay?

Variety, August 21, 2013:

“Rush,” the high-octane car racing film about the public rivalry between legendary Formula One drivers Niki Lauda and James Hunt during the 1970s, has all the markings of tinseltown’s latest flashy biopic, withRon Howard at the wheel, Chris Hemsworth as its star, and Universal Pictures releasing the film Sept. 27. But that assumption couldn’t be further from the truth.

“It is going to be easy for people to think this is a Hollywood movie, and it just is not,” says the upcoming film’s British screenwriter, Peter Morgan, who penned “Frost/Nixon,” also directed by Howard. “It is a British independent film directed by a Hollywood director.” Get Weekly Online News and alerts free to your inbox

As the majors focus more on putting their money behind mega-budgeted projects with built-in brand awareness — sequels, reboots, films based on toys, videogames and comicbooks — filmmakers are finding Hollywood’s studio system rapidly shifting under their feet.

“Because studios are less interested in the midbudget area, there is a massive opportunity for independents to step into that (area) at the moment,” says “Rush” producer Andrew Eaton of London-based Revolution Films.

Indeed, it’s getting harder to set up a midbudget range original project at a studio, even for veteran filmmakers like Howard and his producing partner Brian Grazer, whose Imagine Entertainment has had an overall deal at Universal for 27 years (the longest standing deal U has had in its 100-year history with a production company). That’s forced directors to look elsewhere to tackle the kinds of films now considered too risky to make or the ones that won’t fill retail shelves with merchandise.

Another Hollywood vet, producer Marc Platt, who’s had a production deal at Universal since 1998 after stepping down as its production head, similarly had to find indie financing for his film “2 Guns” after Universal said it would not bankroll the picture but simply distribute it.

With “Rush,” Howard found himself in an entirely new role as the director of a $50 million film that was his first to be independently financed — through a series of bonds, contingencies and pre-sales. He also was a director for hire, replacing Paul Greengrass, who was originally set to bring the showy personalities of Hunt (Hemsworth), a British playboy; and the more serious Austrian champion Lauda (Daniel Bruhl) to the big screen.

“We must champion the fact that this is basically 80% a British film in terms of the people who worked on it, the way it was structured and the way we ran it,” says Eaton. The exec, who was behind such indie films as “24 Hour Party People” and the “Red Riding” series, is modest, and like most Brits politely shies away from the spotlight, tending not to grab credit even when its due.

But he believes “Rush” shows off Blighty’s mettle.

“These are the kinds of films we should be making in the U.K. because we can do it, and we can do it for better value of money,” he says.

Morgan began writing the story of Lauda, a friend of his wife’s, on spec some years ago, intrigued by the driver’s courageous comeback just 40 days after a devastating crash at the 1976 German Grand Prix that severely burned his face and saw him lapse into a coma, and how that might play against Hunt’s notorious womanizing and party lifestyle that gained him rock-star status.

Eager to work with Eaton again after Fernando Meirelles’ “360,” Morgan showed the producer the first draft of “Rush,” and Eaton was hooked.

“Andrew was always going to be a great fit for this project,” Morgan says. “If (the) responsibility was to make this at a price, Andrew could do this. He could make a $50 million film feel like a $150 million film.”

With Greengrass, another Brit, attached to direct, Morgan showed the script to close friend Eric Fellner at his Universal-owned British production outfit Working Title. Fellner, who had worked with him on “Frost/Nixon,” loved the new script and offered it to Universal for funding.

But the studio passed, considering it risky subject matter, given the biopic elements and low profile of F1 racing in the U.S. Universal also didn’t believe the film could be made for the right price. Still Fellner stayed onboard, and his contacts in the F1 arena proved invaluable. His relationships with Ferrari and McLaren thanks to his work on documentary “Senna” enabled “Rush” to enlist the brands in the pic without losing editorial control.

“Ron (Howard) jokes that my major contribution was engine noise,” Fellner says. “Maybe I can take credit for a bit of that.”

Soon after Universal passed, Cross Creek Pictures topper Brian Oliver reached out to Eaton to finance the project — so eager that he offered to put up $2 million before he even signed the deal so that Eaton could order replicas of the 1970s cars to be ready in time for the shoot. He also was instrumental in steering Hemsworth toward the project.

“Typically we don’t spend that kind of money without knowing the movie is going and the budget is done,” Oliver says. “But I was passionate about the script, and I really thought it was a film with a lot of heart, not just a race car movie.”

Cross Creek, also behind “The Ides of March” and “Black Swan,” has quickly become one of Hollywood’s biggest and more unusual financiers of risky films, with coin coming mostly from oil and real estate investments in Texas.

“He’s an unusual maverick in Hollywood because he really fought to get the budget to the highest level he could,” says Eaton of Oliver. “There’s no bullshit with him — he gets stuff done.” Adds Fellner: “Without Brian, the film wouldn’t have gotten off of the ground. He put his money where his mouth is.”

Shortly after funding started coming together, Greengrass dropped off the project due, ironically, to his issues with the budget. Within 24 hours, Morgan and Fellner enticed Howard to come onboard. The financing arrangement intrigued him, but what really attracted Howard was the ability to re-create the world of Formula One in the 1970s “when sex was safe and driving was dangerous,” as he has said in past interviews.

“Ron was incredibly gracious in trusting us to deliver,” Eaton says. “He was very smart about knowing we needed to make this film in a different way. He’d never made a film with a bond before, and never made a film with a contingency before, but he rolled up his sleeves and was ready to learn.” Some of that indie spirit has already rubbed off on Howard, who is now sticking with a mostly British crew on his next project, “In the Heart of the Sea,” including “Rush” cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle and costume designer Julian Day. “Heart” lenses in London.

Exclusive Media came in as the final partner on “Rush,” brought in by Oliver under his deal with Exclusive to jointly finance two projects per year.

Cross Creek split the cost of the pic with Exclusive, with the former putting its own cash in to the pic and the latter financing through a bank loan made against pre-sales generated in 2011 at the Afm, where Howard helped shop the project to buyers. The move proved a success, as Exclusive secured $33 million in foreign pre-sales.

Additionally, Oliver and Eaton structured the project as a U.K.-German co-production, enabling them to secure about $12 million in soft money.

As a result, U.K. rights ended up going to Studiocanal. Universal agreed to distribute “Rush” in the U.S. through its output deal with Cross Creek.

Eaton pressed to put all of the money raised on the screen. “Rush” became the highest-budget film he had ever worked with after 2000’s “The Claim,” which cost $18 million to produce.

“(‘Rush’) was financed in exactly the same way we finance every independent film, and we approached shooting in the same way as we do everything — you try to put as much money as you can onscreen,” Eaton says. “It’s about not wasting money on things you don’t need, like private jets and extravagances.”

Hollywood has tried to bring to life the world of Formula One before.

Sylvester Stallone directed “Driven,” which originally was set in the world of F1, before he changed course and based it on rival Cart racing, instead.

The reason? To gain access to F1, filmmakers must first get the greenlight from the often polarizing Bernie Ecclestone, the 82-year-old billionaire who holds a tight grip on the racing league that has long counted the elite as fans, including Carlos Slim, the world’s richest man, and celebs including Michael Fassbender, Patrick Dempsey, Gordon Ramsey, George Lucas, and Cirque de Soleil founder Guy Laliberte.

Although Stallone tried to gain Ecclestone’s approval, “I apologize to fans of Formula 1, but there is a certain individual there who runs the sport that has his own agenda,” Stallone said in 2000. “F1 is very formal, and it’s very hard to get to know people.”

David Cronenberg also planned to direct a tentpole around F1 for Paramount, in 1986, with the director scouting the project by attending Grand Prix races in Australia and Mexico. The film, “Red Cars,” would have revolved around American driver Phil Hill winning the world championship for Ferrari in 1961. Plans were shelved when Ecclestone decided not to support the project. Instead, Cronenberg published a limited edition art book based on the screenplay in 2005.

One of the few cinematic standouts so far is Asif Kapadia’s documentary “Senna,” about the charismatic Brazilian driver Ayrton Senna, killed in a race in 1994 that’s show in the docu. “Senna” went on to earn $8.2 million, and helped educate viewers of the sport by focusing not on the races but Senna’s iconic presence and his impact on pop culture.

“Rush” is looking to put a spotlight on the personalities behind the wheel and the often riveting rivalries between drivers — what many consider the real draw to the sport. Bruhl has compared them to “modern knights constantly facing death.”

As the film races toward its September release — it will be shown at the Toronto Film Festival out of competition — Howard has screened it for not only racing fans but Formula One, itself.

He recently showed the film to a group of F1 drivers (including Lauda, Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and Felipe Massa) at Germany’s Grand Prix, calling that audience the toughest test so far, and comparing the experience to screening “Apollo 13” to Nasa’s astronauts and mission controllers in 1995.

In his efforts to promote the film, Howard has called the Hunt-Lauda rivalry one of the greatest in all of sports. “Their story is so remarkable, you (could) only do it if it was true, because people wouldn’t quite believe it. They were willing to risk their lives to attain this elite status. They paid a price for it, but they defined themselves.”

Morgan also has been doing his part to reassure F1 fans that the film is authentic, stressing that it’s about the people in the cars, and not the sport itself.

Any way the wheel’s spun, it’s clear the film’s overall success will largely be driven by how it plays overseas. “Rush” will need to appeal to an international audience that’s more familiar with F1 — a sport second in popularity only to soccer — than to those in the U.S.

But Howard needs to hook moviegoers closer to home — making the American director’s job a much tougher sell.

It’s not really that surprising that there’s nothing all that American about “Rush.”

Formula One is still struggling to find an audience in the U.S. It’s looking to change that through a new $3 million broadcasting deal with NBC Sports that airs 13 races on the cable channel, two on CNBC, and four on NBC. The Monaco Grand Prix was the first of four F1 races to air live on NBC this year, with the final race taking place Nov. 24 from Brazil.

Ratings have averaged a 0.3 rating, although the Monaco race was watched by 1.5 million viewers, making it the most-watched Formula One race on U.S. television in six years, and up 40% over last year’s race when it aired on Speed TV, Nielsen said.

Promos have emphasized the speed of F1’s jetfighter cars, its international appeal and Olympics-like profiles of the drivers.

Formula One also is looking to rev up new fans in the U.S. through the opening of its first permanent track in Austin, Texas, last year, known as the Circuit of the Americas. Howard attended its first race, where Lauda also roamed the track’s garages.

What’s ironic is that Howard isn’t a very good driver. He proved that recently racing around the track of BBC’s hit show “Top Gear” to promote “Rush,” ending up in second to last place on the series’ celebrity leader board — behind Genesis’ Mike Rutherford.

Host Jeremy Clarkson was quick to mock him, saying “We finally found something you can’t do. Good at directing, brilliant in ‘Happy Days,’ a charming human being — but utterly crap at driving.”

Ron Howard's Risky Formula One Movie, 'Rush'

Can this Euro-centric car racing film play in the U.S.?

By Rachel Dodes Conn

Ron Howard's films, like "Apollo 13" and "Frost/Nixon," typically deal with issues very familiar to American audiences. His latest project, Mr. Howard's first independently financed film, is a bit of a departure: "Rush" chronicles the rivalry between Austrian Formula One racer Niki Lauda and his nemesis, the British driver James Hunt, over the course of the historic 1976 season. While competing in Nürburg, Germany during treacherous weather conditions, Mr. Lauda (Daniel Brühl, right) crashed his Ferrari and sustained severe burns to his face and lungs. Yet, fueled by a desire to beat Mr. Hunt (Chris Hemsworth, above), a playboy type whose wife (Olivia Wilde) ran off with Richard Burton, Mr. Lauda was back in his car just six weeks later—still wearing his bandages—to race against him in the Italian Grand Prix.

When Mr. Howard received the script on spec from screenwriter Peter Morgan ("Frost/Nixon," "The Last King of Scotland"), he wasn't a Formula One fan and didn't know who Messrs. Hunt and Lauda were. "I looked them up on Wikipedia," he admits. But as he read about the racers' personalities, he started to see broader themes that would appeal to U.S. moviegoers. "Maybe this is the American in me identifying this," he says, "but both these guys are utterly and entirely individuals—there was no Yoda telling them to seek their higher self."

For Mr. Howard, the process of researching "Rush" was surprisingly similar to learning about space travel for his "Apollo 13," because he found himself having to make arcane automotive engineering terms accessible to viewers. "It was really fun to understand a sport that combines cutting-edge technology with very dangerous competition," he says. "The visceral, cool and sexy element offered a kind of cinematic experience that nowadays exists only with sci-fi."

Formula One isn't nearly as popular in the U.S. as Nascar, and the subject matter is likelier to play well overseas, where the film's financing came from. It premiered Monday, in London, a few weeks before its U.S. opening. The filmmakers say it's more than just a sports picture, and they expect it to appeal to women as well as men.

Saudi Female Filmmaker Succeeds In Making A Movie About A Girl Who Wants A Bicycle

Los Angeles Times

By Rebecca Keegan

Sept. 6, 2013

In a country where women can't freely move around, Haifaa Mansour covertly films the story of a girl's quest for a bicycle.

The production lost two days to sandstorms. The crew faced a last-minute scramble when the nervous owner of a mall changed his mind about allowing filming there. Some days locals chased the cameras away; other days they brought platters of lamb and rice to the set, and asked to be extras.

Meanwhile, the director hid in a van, speaking to her cast via walkie-talkie. In Saudi Arabia, where driving a car is a subversive act for a woman, a 39-year-old mother of two has done something remarkable: written and directed what her distributor believes is the first feature film shot entirely in the ultraconservative kingdom.

Haifaa Mansour is the director of "Wadjda," a drama about a plucky 10-year-old girl who enrolls in a Koran recitation competition in order to win money for a bicycle she's forbidden by law to ride.

Like her young protagonist, Mansour's own story is one of feminine moxie.

In a sly protest of the country's ban on women behind the wheel, she drove herself to her wedding in a golf cart. Because women in Saudi Arabia can't mingle publicly with men outside their families, she shot her movie covertly on the streets of the capital, Riyadh. With movie theaters banned, she screened "Wadjda" in two foreign embassies and a cultural center.

Petite, self-assured, wearing white high-tops and blue nail polish, Mansour is modern in both her fashion and bearing. She speaks English quickly and colloquially, dropping frequent "you knows" into conversation. And she isn't afraid to counter misperceptions about her homeland, as when she gently corrected Bill Maher for calling Mecca the Saudi capital during a recent appearance on his HBO show.

Laced with empathy and humor, "Wadjda" is a quietly provocative portrait of a culture that straddles the centuries, where men wear the ancient white thobe but carry the latest iPads and women hold important jobs as doctors and news anchors but have yet to vote in an election.

"I didn't want to make a movie about women being raped or stoned," Mansour said in an interview in Beverly Hills in June. "For me it is the everyday life, how it's hard. For me, it was hard sometimes to go to work because I cannot find transportation. Things like that build up and break a woman."

The eighth of 12 children of a poet, Mansour grew up in a small town in a home that she describes as nurturing for a little girl.

"My family is very traditional, but my parents are very supportive, very kind," she said. "I never felt I can't do things because I'm a woman."

When Mansour was a teen, her mother removed the light veil she wore while picking her daughter up from school, a gesture that mortified the young woman at the time, but empowers her when she reflects on it now.

Though movie theaters have been shuttered in Saudi Arabia for decades for religious reasons, Mansour said her father, like others, often rented VHS tapes at Blockbuster for the family to watch -- she grew up on Jackie Chan movies, Bollywood productions, Egyptian cinema and Disney animated films. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was a particular favorite.

"In small-town Saudi, there is nothing to do. You don't get to exercise your emotions because nothing much is happening, you know?" she said. "So to see people falling in love and fighting, it's so powerful, you see beyond your small town."

After earning her bachelor's degree in comparative literature at the American University in Cairo, she returned to Saudi Arabia but quickly felt stymied.

"Going back to Saudi as a young woman, trying to assert yourself in the workplace, you have all those ideas … and all of a sudden you realize because you are a woman you are not heard," she said. "It was such a frustrating moment in my life. It was as if you are screaming in a vacuum."

The idea of women holding jobs still unnerves some Saudi men -- writer Abdullah Mohammed Daoud recently encouraged his more than 97,000 Twitter followers to sexually harass female grocery store clerks to intimidate women from working.

Recalling the freedom she found in movies, Mansour decided to make a short film with her siblings serving as cast and crew, a thriller about a male serial killer who hides under the black abaya worn by Muslim women. Her work -- two more shorts, a documentary and a stint hosting a talk show for a Lebanese network -- focused largely on the untold stories of Saudi women.

In 2005, at a U.S. embassy screening of her documentary, "Women Without Shadows," Mansour met her future husband, American diplomat Bradley Neimann. They now have two children, 2 and 5, and live in Bahrain, where Neimann works for the State Department.

When her husband was posted in Australia, Mansour pursued a master's in film studies at the University of Sydney, and wrote the script that became "Wadjda."

The story was inspired by her now teenage niece, who has tamped down her rambunctious personality to fit into Saudi norms.

"I thought, 'Wow, a woman writer from Saudi Arabia won?'" Rena Ronson said. "I had to meet her. She was so open and tenacious and smart."When Mansour's script for "Wadjda" won an award at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, it caught the eye of the co-head of the independent film group at United Talent Agency.

Over the next two years Ronson helped Mansour secure financing for her film, which cost a little less than $2.5 million. The primary obstacle, as far as many potential Middle Eastern producers were concerned, was Mansour's desire to shoot in Saudi Arabia, which she felt lent her story authenticity.

The production finally won the tacit approval of the Saudi government -- one of its backers is Rotana Group, an entertainment company primarily owned by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Another major financier is the German company Razor Film.

Finding actors was another hurdle. Mansour and her producers recruited child performers through small companies that hire folkloric dancers for the Eid holidays. Many of their parents were uncomfortable with a movie about empowering women.

A week before she was scheduled to start shooting, Mansour still hadn't cast her title character when 12-year-old Waad Mohammed entered the room in blue jeans, with headphones clapped over her ears. Singing along to Justin Bieber, she won over Mansour with her sweet singing voice and tomboyish style.

The movie's half-German, half-Saudi crew worked around the rhythms of Saudi life, using cellphone apps that alerted them of the five daily prayer calls. The Germans carried notebooks; the Saudis relied on oral planning.

On the first day of shooting, a start time of 7:20 a.m. came and went. "I don't know what we were thinking," said German producer Roman Paul. "I don't think 7:20 exists in Saudi time. We Germans learned to relax, and the Saudis learned that there is a benefit to doing things at a certain time."

Despite tension on the set -- both from disapproving observers and from the German and Saudi crews learning to work together -- Mansour was buoyant, Paul said.

"She's very fast in overcoming new difficulties, and in an upbeat spirit," Paul said.

Last summer "Wadjda" premiered at the Venice and Telluride film festivals, earning praise for Mansour's subtle direction and a U.S. release from Sony Pictures Classics, which handled the Oscar-winning 2011 Iranian drama "A Separation," about the dissolution of a marriage.

"'A Separation' was such an eye-opener to me in the sense that there were people questioning whether the film went too specific into the Iranian culture," said Michael Barker, co-president and co-founder of the Sony unit. "But if the overall story has a universal appeal, in 'Wadjda' it's about parents and kids and restrictions and freedom, that's something we can all relate to."

Sony Classics has been showing the film to noted feminists -- Gloria Steinem and Queen Noor of Jordan both attended screenings -- and will release it in the U.S. slowly over the fall, starting Sept. 13. (The movie premiered in multiple European countries this summer.)

Mansour said she plans to work in Saudi Arabia again. For her, screening her movie in the kingdom was a high.

"Film is about uplifting, embracing the love of life, it's about moving ahead, it's about victory," she said. "It's not about defeat."

One victory has already been won. This spring, a new law went into effect: With some restrictions, Saudi women are now allowed to ride bicycles.

European Film Academy reveals titles of the films on this year’s selection list.Scroll down for full list

The European Film Academy and Efa Productions have announced the titles of the 46 films on this year’s selection list - the list of films recommended for a nomination for the European Film Awards 2013.

A total of 32 European countries are represented. In the 20 countries with the most Efa Members, these members have voted one national film directly into the selection list. To complete the list, a selection committee consisting of Efa Board Members and invited experts have included further films.

In the coming weeks, the 2,900 Efa members will vote for the nominations in the categories European Film, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenwriter. The nominations will then be announced on Nov 9 at the Seville European Film Festival in Spain.

A seven-member jury will decide on the awards recipients in the categories European Cinematographer, Editor, Production...

Chicago – Despite any manmade restrictions through governments, religion, commerce or trumped-up morality, the truth has a way of mightily conquering all. “The Patience Stone” is a perfect example of that luxurious truth, and it is an important contemporary fairy tale.

Rating: 5.0/5.0

Through the most simplest of premises – a war victim is stuck caring for her vegetative husband – there emerges the passion of what is essential for human beings. Being authentic, unburdening the soul and coming to what is necessary in our lives to fully engage – that is what the film unleashes. The war zone depicted in the story is a Middle East-type setting, but is never named, and provides a presence to the native suffering that is occurs in perpetual conflict. The marginalization of women in these traditionally religious territories is another grand theme of the narrative, and speaks to the broader context of narrowing the humanity of females in general.

In the dark action comedy The Family, a Mafia boss and his family are relocated to a sleepy town in France under the Witness Protection Program after snitching on the mob. Despite Agent Stansfield’s (Tommy Lee Jones) best efforts to keep them in line, Fred Blake (Robert De Niro), his wife Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer) and their children, Belle (Dianna Agron) and Warren (John D’Leo), can’t help resorting to old habits by handling their problems the “family” way. Chaos ensues as their former Mafia cronies try to track them down and scores are settled in the unlikeliest of settings, in this subversively funny film by Luc Besson.

The Family stars Academy Award® winners Robert De Niro (Raging Bull, Silver Linings Playbook), and Tommy Lee Jones (Lincoln, No Country for Old Men), Academy Award nominee Michelle Pfeiffer (Scarface, The Fabulous Baker Boys), Dianna Agron (“Glee,” I Am Number Four...

Title: The Patience Stone Director: Atiq Rahimi Starring: Golshifteh Farahani, Hamid Djavadan, Hassina Burgan, Massi Mrowat Atiq Rahimi’s “The Patience Stone” is a unique, intimately scaled and enormously affecting dissection of patriarchal culture. The French-Afghan filmmaker’s drama, which debuted at last year’s Toronto Film Festival and was Afghanistan’s Best Foreign Language Academy Award submission, serves as a wonderful showcase for star Golshifteh Farahani, and if there’s any justice will deliver even more success her way. The film’s story is extraordinarily plain, yet still gripping. In contemporary, war-torn Afghanistan, a young wife (Farahani) and mother of two children, after around a decade of marriage, tends to her wounded husband (Hamid Djavadan), [ Read More ]

The post The Patience Stone Movie Review 2 appeared first on Shockya.com.

We’ve seen many facets of life in war-torn Middle Eastern countries, but none quite like the intimate depiction of a young woman’s existence in The Patience Stone. Iranian-born Atiq Rahimi adapted his best-selling novel in collaboration with the celebrated screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière (whose many credits include The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Unbearable Lightness of Being). And there is a third, equally important collaborator: the beautiful actress Golshifteh Farahani, who dominates the film as a young woman trapped in a loveless marriage with an older man. Once a prominent, heroic warrior, he now lies near death in their stifling home, with bursts of gunfire and...

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French based Afghan novelist turned director Atiq Rahimi adapted his second novel for the screen which puts him in a small circle of authors adapting their own material twice….from book form to the big screen. Set during an unspecified era, a young Afghan woman finds solace in her own comatose husband whom she imagines as her own magical stone that she can tell her secrets and desires. Rahimi who won the highest literature prize in France for his novel, the Prix Goncourt adapted his novel with legendary writer Jean-Claude Carrière helping him to open the mostly monologue driven novel for cinematic interpretation. Rahimi who also adapted his first novel “Earth and Ashes” for the screen, makes for a stronger case his second time out. With The Patience Stone, he cuts deep into the hypocrisy of the male dominated Afghan culture to shed light on the plight of Afghan women...

Stone Faced: Rahimi’s Concept Bogged Down By Transparency

As he did with his 2004 film, Earth and Ashes, Afghan filmmaker Atiq Rahimi adapts one of his own novels, The Patience Stone, for his latest feature. A situational drama inspired by a native fable concerning the titular stone, Rahimi proposes a ‘what if’ scenario that unfortunately gets repetitively tiresome, even if its locale grants it a certain compelling fervor. What if a Muslim woman could speak her mind truthfully without fear of consequence, relay her innermost thoughts and emotions to a catatonic spouse that’s kept her under the harsh thumb of his oppression for a decade? Whatever agency our lead protagonist is able to establish for herself, there’s an arid hue of hopelessness surrounding her specific situation, and its dubious streak of fortune makes this feel like science fiction.

In an unspecified Afghan city set during the country’s recent upheaval,...

Sony Pictures Classics' The Patience Stone drama has several new clips in the video page from the film starring Goshifteh Farahani, Hamidrez Javdan, Hassina Burgdan and Massi Mrowat. Atiq Rahimi directs the adaptation of his novel, scripted by Jean-Claude Carriere. The book has been translated into 33 languages, and is the 2008 winner of the Goncourt Prize, the most prestigious book award in France. Somewhere, in Afghanistan or elsewhere, in a country torn apart by a war... A young woman in her thirties watches over her older husband in a decrepit room. He is reduced to the state of a vegetable because of a bullet in the neck. Not only is he abandoned by his companions of the Jihad, but also by his brothers. One day, the woman decides to tell the truth to him about her feelings about their relationship to her silent husband. She talks about her childhood, her suffering,...

Atiq Rahimi's slender, wrenching novel The Patience Stone lays bare the heart of a devout Afghan woman, a Muslim who shields her face from her community and her truest self from her husband, a jihadist hero many years her senior. Rahimi works in miniature, in brief, detail-minded paragraphs separated by full section breaks so that individual moments and observations accumulate into a full yet abstracted portrait of the story's central drama. That husband lies comatose, a bullet in his neck, and his wife must try to care for him and their children as bombs and soldiers tear apart her city. The movie makes all this single-room, beating-her-breast stuff more punishing than the novel does, and less rewarding as well. Directing his adaptation of his book, Rahimi spackles those isolat...

The Rocket was voted most popular feature and The Crash Reel as most popular documentary at the 62nd Melbourne International Film Festival (Miff).

The 17-day festival screened 320 films from 63 countries in 45 different languages, including 23 world premieres and 52 Australian films. .2013 has been a very successful festival boasting more than 170 sold out sessions,. said Miff artistic director Michelle Carey. .It.s very heartening to see audiences embracing the program and engaging with our guests both through Q&As and the Talking Pictures program.. The Age critics (Philippa Hawker, Jake Wilson and Craig Matheison) presented the Miff Premiere Fund-supported These Final Hours with a $5,000 cash prize and the title of best Australian feature while fellow Miff Premiere Fund title In Bob We Trust was hailed by Wilson as .one of the best Australian films of any kind in years.. Highlights of the 2013 Festival included:

- The world premiere of the Miff Premiere Fund-supported Tim Winton.s The Turning,...

Title: The Patience Stone Sony Pictures Classics Director: Atiq Rahimi Screenwriter: Jean-Claude Carriére, Atiq Rahimi from his novel Cast: Golshifteh Farahani, Hamidrez Javdan, Hassina Burgan, Massi Browat, Hamid Djavadan, Massi Mrowat Screened at: Sony, NYC, 8/8/13 Opens: August 14, 2013 The expression “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” applies mightily in Atiq Rahimi’s “The Patience Stone.” In fact while that bon mot might best apply to the women of oppressive countries like Iran and Afghanistan, the quote comes strangely enough from William Congreve’s “The Mourning Bride,” written in 1697, from a country where compared to what women undergo in much of the profoundly sexist world, Britain must have [ Read More ]

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Relativity Media would like to introduce you to The Family with five brand new character posters.

Luc Besson’s new dark action comedy stars Robert De Niro as a killer dad, Michelle Pfeiffer as one bad mother, Dianna Agron as the mobgirl next door and John D’Leo as the young gun.

Also starring Tommy Lee Jones as Agent Stansfield, The Family hits theaters on September 13th.

In the dark action comedy The Family, a Mafia boss and his family are relocated to a sleepy town in France under the Witness Protection Program after snitching on the mob. Despite Agent Stansfield’s (Tommy Lee Jones) best efforts to keep them in line, Fred Blake (Robert De Niro), his wife Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer) and their children, Belle (Dianna Agron) and Warren (John D’Leo), can’t help resorting to old habits by handling their problems the “family” way.

Chaos ensues as...