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A co-production between Japan, Malaysia and Philippines, Janus Victoria‘s “Diamonds in Sand” seems to take inspiration from “Perfect Days” to a point at least, this time putting a lonely Japanese man within both a Japanese and a Filipino setting, perhaps in an effort to show the cultural differences of the two. Let us take things from the beginning though.

Diamonds in Sand is sceening at Berlin International Film Festival

Divorced salaryman Yoji is experiencing a kind of depression that has led him into solitude, feeling disconnected from everyone and everything around him, as the few interactions with colleagues in the beginning of the film highlight. However, one day he discovers the decomposing body of his equally lonely neighbor, an old man whose name he does not know, whose death is ruled a kodokushi, or the lonely death. This prompts him to start visiting his ailing mother in the care home she resides,...

Cate Blanchett has shed more light on the Displacement Film Fund, a new €500,000 short film grant scheme to support refugee filmmakers to tell their stories.

Blanchett is chairing the selection committee of the Fund which was officially launched in collaboration with the Hubert Bals Film Fund at the Rotterdam international Film Festival (IFFR) on Saturday (February 1). It offers up to five individual grants of €100,000 for up to five displaced filmmakers, or filmmakers with a track record in creating authentic storytelling on the experiences of displaced people.

IFFR managing director Clare Stewart described Blanchett, who is a goodwill ambassador for the Un’s refugee agency Unhcr,...

Cate Blanchett has shed more light on the Displacement Film Fund, a new €500,000 short film grant scheme to support refugee filmmakers to tell their stories.

Blanchett is chairing the selection committee of the Fund which was officially launched in collaboration with the Hubert Bals Film Fund at the Rotterdam Film Festival (IFFR) on Saturday (February 1). It offers up to five individual grants of €100,000 for up to five displaced filmmakers, or filmmakers with a track record in creating authentic storytelling on the experiences of displaced people.

IFFR managing director Clare Stewart described Blanchett, who is a goodwill ambassador for the Un’s refugee agency Unhcr,...

Actress-producer Cate Blanchett spoke about how the newly-announced Displacement Film Fund will support displaced filmmakers and those working on stories about displaced people at a panel held at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) on Saturday.

Blanchett appeared alongside Oscar-nominated filmmakers including Perfect Days producer Koji Yanai, For Sama director Waad Al-Kateab and Flee director Jonas Rasmussen, as well as Hubert Bals Fund head Tamara Tatishvili.

“I do think that we’re releasing this fund in a really turbulent time when audiences are hungry to consume stories in many different ways,” said Blanchett. “The industry, in a lot of ways, is in free fall and that’s an opportunity to reforge itself into something more exciting.”

Bestowing up to five individual production grants of €100,000, the Displacement Film Fund was established to champion and fund the work of displaced filmmakers, or filmmakers with a proven track record in creating...

Cate Blanchett, who is a Goodwill Ambassador for refugee agency Unhcr, and Intl. Film Festival Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund have launched a refugee-focused short film grant program called the Displacement Film Fund.

The fund, which will give up to five production grants of €100,000 each in its pilot phase, aims to champion and fund the work of displaced filmmakers, or filmmakers with a track record of creating “authentic storytelling on the experiences of displaced people.”

The selection committee for the fund will be chaired by Blanchett and includes actor and musician Cynthia Erivo, Oscar-nominated for “Wicked” and “Harriet”; Oscar-nominated “For Sama” director Waad Al-Kateab; “Green Border” director Agnieszka Holland, an Oscar nominee with “Europa Europa”; IFFR festival director Vanja Kaludjercic; educator, activist and refugee Aisha Khurram; Oscar-nominated “Flee” filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen; and Amin Nawabi, which is an alias for the LGBTQ+ asylum seeker who was Poher Rasmussen’s inspiration for the story of “Flee.

Cate Blanchett has teamed with International Film Festival Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund to launch the Displacement Film Fund, a new short film grant scheme.

Offering up to five individual production grants of €100,000, the Displacement Film Fund has been established to champion and fund the work of displaced filmmakers, or filmmakers with a track record in creating authentic storytelling on the experiences of displaced people.

The Fund’s selection committee will be chaired by Blanchett, who is a goodwill ambassador for Unhcr, the Un’s refugee agency.

The selection committee also includes For Sama director Waad Al Kateab, Wicked star Cynthia Erivo,...

Berlin-based sales outfit M-Appeal has closed adeal on Dag Johan Haugerud’sBerlinale competition title Dreams (Sex Love) with leading Japanese distributor Bitters End.

The first English-language trailer for the film has also been unveiled. Watch it above.

Dreams is the final part of Haugerud’s Sex, Love, Dreams trilogy. Sex premiered in the Berlinale Panorama last year whileLove was in the main competition in Venice.

M-Appeal also confirmed Bitters End, which handled titles such as Oppenheimer, Perfect Days, La Chimera and The Holdovers in Japan,has also acquired the other two titles in the trilogy. A theatrical release is planned...

Berlin-based sales outfit M-Appeal has closed adeal on Dag Johan Haugerud’sBerlinale competition title Dreams (Sex Love) with leading Japanese distributor Bitters End.

The first English-language trailer for the film has also been unveiled. Watch it above.

Dreams is the final part of Haugerud’s Sex, Love, Dreams trilogy. Sex premiered in the Berlinale Panorama last year whileLove was in the main competition in Venice.

M-Appeal also confirmed Bitters End, which handled titles such as Oppenheimer, Perfect Days, La Chimera and The Holdovers in Japan,has also acquired the other two titles in the trilogy. A theatrical release is planned...

The Japanese Film Festival, Philippines (Jff), previously known as Eigasai, returns on January 30, 2025 until February 9 at Shangri-La Plaza’s Red Carpet Cinema, Ortigas City. Like in recent years, Jff will also have regional screenings.

For North Luzon, the festival will be at Sm City Baguio from February 7 to 16, while for Visayas, it will be at Sm City Iloilo and Sm Cebu from February 14 to 23, 2025. The final round of screenings is scheduled at Sm City Davao in Mindanao and Sm North Edsa, Metro Manila from February 21 to March 2, 2025.

This year’s 12- film lineup consists of award-winning titles, fan favorites, crowd pleasers, and those highly anticipated by Japanese cinema enthusiasts.

Among the critically-acclaimed films is Monster, a coming-of age drama directed by Hirokazu Koreeda and written by Yuji Sakamoto. It won Best Screenplay in the 76th Cannes International Film Festival and was the last movie scored by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto.

The Italian box office held steady in 2024 with cinemas taking €493.9m in 2024 from admissions of 69.7 million.

The result is almost in line with 2023, representing a slight 0.4% dip in box office and a 1.3% fall in admissions, according to figures from Italian box office organisation Cinetel.

It is a decent result for Italy given the disruption to film releases caused by the US actors’ and writers’ strikes and competition from major sporting events during the summer. Notably, Italy held on to the strong box office gains of 2023, when the box office surged by 62% in the wake of the pandemic.

Top 30 films in Italy,...

Image courtesy of Day for Night

As though to provide a measure of solace in a year when the world news could hardly have been more depressing, 2024 has provided far more cinema of quality than has been seen for a very long time. I can come up with no less than twenty-five titles that count as exceptional works, at least half of which are close to perfection. Even so, that does not mean that 2024 has been a year without worries about where cinema is going. The great films are there but how readily can they be seen? This is a time when the range of what is on offer at mainstream cinemas fails to satisfy as many tastes as one would wish, when many films play mainly or exclusively on platforms too numerous for subscribers to embrace all of them and when the number of releases is so high that,...

Naysayers be damned. The mainstream film industry may be on its last legs but the cinematic art form is alive and well. I enjoyed so many films this year I actually have two top-ten lists that are largely interchangeable. If you want to hear my other ten, feel free to check out the end of year review on my podcast The Cinematologists. Following on from last year’s approach, here are my ten for Dn. All ten were released in UK cinemas (or debuted on streaming) in 2024 and are listed here alphabetically.

Honourable mentions: The Delinquents, Sky Peals, The Holdovers, The Settlers, Sometimes I Think About Dying

10. Adam Sandler: Love You | Josh Safdie

The last two Sandler specials for Netflix have been wonderful. I admire his commitment to being silly, and sentimental. In a world as messy as this, there needs to be places for silliness, and there are...

Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez” won Best Film at the 37th European Film Awards on Saturday, December 7, claiming the most overall awards as well with five wins.

Going into the evening, Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance” led with nominations, having received recognition in multiple categories, including European Film and European Screenwriter, as well as will multiple technical awards including European Cinematography and European Visual Effects.

Held in Lucerne, Switzerland, the European Film Awards kicked off with a celebration of the vibrant diversity present throughout the room, with host Fernando Tiberini commencing the ceremony in all the languages spoken in Switzerland and encouraging all winners to say a few words in their native tongue upon accepting.

The first winner of the night was French filmmaker Audiard, who was presented the award for European Director by “The Apprentice” star Maria Bakalova in honor of his work for “Emilia Pérez.” The film is...

Emilia Pérez got an early boost in its awards campaign on Saturday night by cleaning up at the 37th European Film Awards, handed out in Lucerne, Switzerland.

Jacques Audiard’s Spanish-language transgender musical won best film, best director and best screenplay honors for Audiard. Karla Sofía Gascón, who plays the titular character, won best actress, becoming the first trans performer to win in the category.

“I didn’t prepare anything because I was sure I wasn’t going to receive anything tonight,” said Gascón, accepting her prize. She thanked Audiard, “the best European director for making the best European actress.” Gascón dedicated here prize “to my mother and to all mothers in this world because their values and their function are sometimes undervalued, [and] I would like to devote this prize to all families and ask all parents to love their children, because, unfortunately, in this world, there are families that...

Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez triumphed at this year’s European Film Awards, taking home five prizes including best film at tonight’s (December 7) ceremony in Lucerne.

The Mexico-set musical drama, about a feared drug lord who undergoes gender-affirming surgery, clinched the best film, director, screenwriter and actress prizes, in addition to its previously announced editing prize.

Receiving the first prize of the evening, for European director, Audiard said he had prepared no fewer than three speeches. “I was being very optimistic,” he joked. Accepting the best director award he quoted British paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott’s famous phrase:...

Mubi, which recently planted a flag in the U.S. with the wide release of Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance,” has welcomed Zhang Xin to its board of directors, as part of a new chapter for the rapidly expanding company which will also see Zhang’s New York-based film production and financing group Closer Media become an investor in Mubi.

A billionaire entrepreneur, Zhang co-founded Closer Media and previously co-founded Soho China, a construction giant in Beijing and Shanghai known for its iconic projects designed by leading architects from around the world. She left the company in 2022 and partnered with William Horberg, a veteran producer whose credits include “The Queen’s Gambit” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” to break into the media world.

A patron of the arts, Zhang also serves as a Trustee of MoMA, and is a member of both the Harvard Global Advisory Council and Asia Business Council.

The Chinese billionaire real estate mogul Zhang Xin has made an undisclosed investment in arthouse distributor and global streamer Mubi through her New York film company Closer Media, Mubi said Friday. Zhang will also take a seat on Mubi’s board of directors.

“We are thrilled to welcome Zhang Xin to our board of directors,” said Mubi founder and CEO Efe Cakarel. “She is an exceptional leader who has built an incredible company from the ground up, demonstrating unparalleled vision and resilience. I deeply admire her, and I personally look forward to learning from her expertise, strategic insight, and entrepreneurial spirit as we continue to grow and innovate.”

After making her fortune, and reshaping the Beijing and Shanghai skyline with real estate group Soho China, which she co-founded with her husband, Pan Shiyi, Zhang shifted gears in 2022, stepping down as Soho CEO and launching Manhattan-based film production and financing group Closer Media.

Tilda Swinton stars alongside Xin Zhilei (“Blossoms Shanghai”) and Chinese pop artist Leah Dou in a short film directed by Oscar-nominated German filmmaker Wim Wenders for Chanel’s 2024-2025 Métiers d’Art show which celebrates artistry and craftsmanship.

The show will take place Dec. 3 by the scenic West Lake in the Chinese city of Hangzhou. The latter provides a fitting backdrop for the Metiers d’Art show, given the city’s vibrant heritage of silk manufacturing and trade. The lush landscapes and lakes of Hangzhou have been a source of inspiration for many artists, notably Chanel founder Gabrielle Chanel whose imagination is reflected in Wenders’ film.

In her Paris home, Gabrielle Chanel contemplated the lake everyday, as rendered on a Chinese lacquer screen that adorned her private office at her home on Rue Cambon and was part of a collection of some twenty Coromandel pieces, dating from the 17th to the 19th centuries,...

One of the best things you can do is watch a movie based on pure vibes. Sure, you could aimlessly scroll through your favorite streaming platform, but where's the fun in that? It's never a bad idea to switch things up a bit and take a themed approach to watching movies and using one's zodiac sign as a yardstick for this occasion. Things can get a bit complicated, sure, as we have to consider the sun, moon, and rising signs, among other placements. Moreover, descriptors attributed to every zodiac sign can never adopt a one-size-fits-all approach, as every individual is bound to appreciate varying shades of filmmaking, even within the same genre.

That being said, here is a list of the 12 best films to watch based on your zodiac sign, which I have chosen keeping key behavioral tendencies of every individual sign in mind. My criteria for assigning a film...

Mubi has pulled the rug out from under its annual Mubi Fest Istanbul only hours before its opening night screening of “Queer.”

The indie distributor and streaming platform announced on social media that its festival in Turkey will no longer take place due to local authorities banning a screening of Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer.” The Kadıköy District Governor’s Office deemed the film a “threat to public peace” because of its core storyline involving a gay romance.

“Hours before the opening of Mubi Fest Istanbul 2024, which we have been meticulously planning for months, and which was announced a few weeks ago and sold out days ago, we were informed that the screening of ‘Queer’ — the festival’s opening film — has been banned by a decision of the Kadıköy District Governorate of Istanbul,” a representative for Mubi wrote in a statement shared with IndieWire.

The statement continues, “The decision states that...

Perfect Days is a beautiful, bittersweet, but ultimately joyful movie with an ending that, when explained, reveals the humanity in kindness and relationships. Wim Wenders, director of the acclaimed music documentary Buena Vista Social Club, the Western drama Paris, Texas, and many more celebrated movies, directed Perfect Days in 2023. While Wenders may not be in the highest echelons of European directors, he's still an incredible and fascinating moviemaker, with dramas like Perfect Days to prove it.

The movie is set in Tokyo, Japan, and follows Hirayama (Kji Yakusho), a public toilet cleaner in the Shibuya ward, an upscale neighborhood of the Japanese capital. Despite what may appear as a low station in life, Hirayama appears perfectly content. He takes his work seriously, but he doesn't let it consume him. In his free time, Hirayama enjoys music, reading, and gardening. Nothing really happens in Perfect Days and yet its story, tied up by a moving ending,...

The 37th Tokyo International Film Festival began its 10-day run on October 28 with a colorful Red Carpet event featuring Japanese and international cinema luminaries, ahead of the TIFF Opening Ceremony.

The Red Carpet festivities got underway with brief stage appearances by over 200 filmmakers, actors and luminaries from across sections of the festival, as well as the TIFF juries. They then moved along the 162-meter serpentine walk, stopping for multiple autographs and selfies with fans from far and wide before arriving at the elegant staircase leading into the Tokyo Takarazuka Theater. The theater was built in the style of yesteryear’s grand movie houses, providing the perfect backdrop for TIFF’s Opening Ceremony.

Among the international luminaries making the stroll were Chinese actor Zhao Liying and director Midi Z (at TIFF with the film The Unseen Sister); Hong Kong actor Michael Hui (The Last Dance); Taiwanese director Huang Xi and Hong...

“Black Ox,” a powerful rural drama from Japan’s Tsuta Tetsuichiro, has been picked up for world sales by Hong Kong and Beijing-based agency Asian Shadows. The film has its world premiere on Friday in the Asian Future section of the Tokyo International Film Festival and will go on commercial release in Taiwan the following week.

Set in the 19th century, “Black Ox” follows the life of a man, transitioning from a hunter-gatherer existence in the mountains to a life in the farm. One day, he comes across an ox, which somehow, he succeeds in leading back to his home. He lives with the animal, which becomes his companion in a life of changing seasons.

The Japan-set film is inspired by the “Ten Ox-Herding Pictures” a series of short poems and illustrations from the Zen Buddhist tradition that depict the path to enlightenment and spiritual awakening.

The cast includes the Taiwanese actor Lee Kang-sheng,...

“After the Quake,” a film adaptation of a Murakami Haruki story collection, has been picked up by Japan’s Bitters End for international rights sales.

Directed by Inoue Tsuyoshi (“Amachan”) and produced by “Drive My Car” producer Yamamoto Teruhisa, the film is based on four of the six short stories in Murakami’s 2000 book of the same title. The stories explore the complex aftermath of Japan’s earthquakes and other global crises.

The six short stories in the book were written in response to the Kobe earthquake and each one touches tangentially on the disaster. All were written in the third person and set in the narrow time period between the Feb. 1995 Kobe quake and the shocking poison gas attacks on the Tokyo metro system the following month.

The four short stories covered by the film are: “UFO in Kushiro”; “Landscape With Flatiron”; “All God’s Children Can Dance”; and “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo.

Anonymous Content has struck a partnership with Brouhaha Entertainment, the production banner behind “Boy Swallows Universe,” on a new joint venture in Australia and New Zealand.

Under the deal, Brouhaha will be working closely with AC Studios to develop and produce premium film and television projects. The first project stemming from the joint venture will be “Panopticon,” a TV series written by Australian screenwriter and director Craig Rosenberg, the showrunner of hit show “Based on a True Story” starring Kaley Cuoco and Chris Messina.

This partnership marks the latest international joint venture for Anonymous Content as they continue to build partnerships with local producers and companies in key territories around the world. As part of its strategy to ramp up its global footprint, the group has launched Anonymous Content Brazil, Anonymous Content España, France-based Anonymous Federation, Anonymous Content Nordic, and U.K.-based AC Chapter One.

David Davoli, Anonymous Content’s president of international,...

Top executives from Anonymous Content (True Detective, Alfonso Cuarón’s Disclaimer, Spotlight, The Revenant) and its joint ventures in Spain and Brazil took the stage in Madrid on Wednesday as day 2 of the fourth annual Iberseries & Platino Industria event kicked off.

Jacobo Aparicio director of international at Anonymous Content in L.A., Barbara Teixeira, CEO of Anonymous Content Brazil, the company’s joint venture with an investment from Hollywood talent agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA), and Beatriz Campos, managing director of Anonymous Content Spain, a joint venture with Morena Films, discussed their strategy and development plans in a spotlight session moderated by the writer of these lines.

Campos said that since she is only a few months into her role, she has no official titles to unveil, but shared that, “we have two films and four TV series in development.” All of them are Spanish-language, except for one international English-language project.

Italy’s Lucky Red is to be honoured with the best international innovation distribution award 2024 at the third International Film Distribution Summit, which takes place October 15-17 in Cologne, Germany.

Headed by Andrea Occhipinti, independent distributor Lucky Red’s activities also span exhibition, production, sales and streaming.

It runs the Circuito Cinema, a cinema chain with 40 cinemas and 126 screens, including several theatres in Rome, Florence and Bologna.

Sales outfit True Colors’ was launched in 2015 by Lucky Red, and Indigo Film as a global distributor for Italian films. Digital arthouse cinema platform MioCinema was created in 2020.

Recent Lucky Red releases include The Boy And The Heron,...

Exclusive: Perfect Days, the comeback feature from legendary German filmmaker Wim Wenders, has become boutique operator Curzon Cinemas’s longest-running film after passing 30 continuous weeks this past Friday.

Perfect Days has played at Curzon Bloomsbury in London for 206 continuous days. The film passes Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car, which played for 26 continuous weeks, to become the operator’s longest-running title under modern tracking. Perfect Days is currently the 7th highest-grossing film at Curzon Bloomsbury of all time.

Wenders’s quietly radical, Tokyo-set drama, stars Japanese actor Koji Yakusho as a man with a love of trees and literature who mysteriously opts for a simple life by working as a toilet cleaner. The film debuted in Competition at Cannes in 2023 where Yakusho won Best Actor.

All rights on the film for the UK, Latam, India, and Turkey were acquired by Mubi from The Match Factory at Cannes 2023. The pic recorded...

The 44th running of the Hawaii International Film Festival presented by Halekulani will open with “Tinā,” an uplifting drama film that marks the feature directorial debut of Miki Magasiva, and close with Sori Fumihiko’s “Hakkenden: Fiction and Reality.”

In between, the festival will pack in 92 features and 114 short films, major awards for guests including Jimmy O Yang, Hong Kong’s Sandra Ng and documentary filmmaking star Stanley Nelson.

“This year, we have the largest selection of Hawai`i films in competition in the festival’s history, are presenting multiple films that explore Indigenous perspectives, narrative sovereignty, and the nurturing of cultural identity, and additionally, we are launching a new spotlight showcasing the best in television,” said Beckie Stochetti, Hiff executive director.

Hailing from New Zealand, with dialog in English and Samoan, “Tinā” sees Anapela Polata’ivao (“Our Flag Means Death”) portray a well-respected and gifted vocal coach endure family tragedy...

Japan has picked Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s Cloud as the country’s submission for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Oscars.

The film will premiere out of competition at the Venice Film Festival this week.

Starring Masaki Suda, Cloud is a thriller that follows a young man named Yoshii who resells goods online and ends up triggering a series of mysterious events, blurring the boundaries between the online and offline worlds.

Cloud is produced by Nikkatsu Corporation and Tokyo Theatres Company. With Nikkatsu handling world sales, the feature has been acquired for France (Art House Films), Spain (A Contracorriente Films), Italy (Minerva Pictures) and Taiwan (Sky Digi Entertainment) so far.

Previously, Kurosawa previously won the festival’s Silver Lion for best director with Wife of a Spy in 2020. He has also won the Un Certain Regard jury prize at Cannes for Tokyo Sonata in 2008, as well as the Un Certain...

Entries for the 2025 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 97th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 3, 2025 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between November 1, 2023, and September 30, 2024. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 2.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is scheduled to...

Announced as the big comeback of veteran Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki, Cannes Jury Prize winner 2023 “Fallen Leaves” was one of the biggest Nordic successes worldwide between 2020-2023 with over one million admissions.

So what inspired release campaigns were used by arthouse banners in territories as diverse as Taiwan, Norway and the Czech Republic to widen Kaurismäki’s core audience and make him a cool name on social media?

The topic was explored Aug. 22 at the Europa Distribution panel, Around the World in 80 Minutes: The Distribution and Promotion of Nordic Films Internationally, hosted by New Nordic Films in Haugesund, Norway.

One of the highlights of the three-day Nordic market, the Europa Distribution panel was moderated by seasoned industryite Petri Kemppinen, founder of Good Hand Production, a consultant at Finland’s post-production house Totalpost and co-head of Baltic Event’s TV Beats Forum.

First, outlining his domestic release strategy for Kaurismäki’s Helsinki-set love story,...

After directing two features last year with Perfect Days and Anselm, there’s no better time to revisit Wim Wenders’ crowning achievement. His serene 1984 Palme d’Or winner Paris, Texas has been restored in 4K for its 40th anniversary and will now open in theaters beginning August 30 at NYC’s IFC Center, courtesy of Janus Films. Written by Sam Shepard, shot by Robby Müller, and starring Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski, and Dean Stockwell, the new trailer and poster has now arrived ahead of the theatrical rerelease.

Here’s the synopsis: “New German Cinema pioneer Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire) brings his keen eye for landscape to the American Southwest in Paris, Texas, a profoundly moving character study written by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Sam Shepard. Paris, Texas follows the mysterious, nearly mute drifter Travis as he tries to reconnect with his young son, living with his brother (Dean Stockwell) in Los Angeles,...

A drama about an Iranian human rights activist and a documentary about the hacking of queer indie pop duo Tegan and Sara are among the films that have been added to the lineup of the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, which unveiled its Centrepiece section on Tuesday to kick off a second week of programming announcements.

The 43 films come from filmmakers representing 41 countries, with 18 of the titles receiving their world premieres at TIFF. Those premieres include “Seven Days,” a film about an imprisoned Iranian activist directed by Ali Samadi Ahadi and written by Mohammad Rasoulof, a filmmaker who was himself sentenced to flogging and prison by Iranian authorities; “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,” a romantic comedy from French writer-director Laura Piani; “The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos,” a debut from the Nigerian filmmaking group known as the Agbajowo Collective; and Erin Lee Carr’s “Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara,...

The inaugural World Culture Film Festival kicks off in Los Angeles Thursday, a four-day event “dedicated to showcasing films that inspire, educate, and celebrate diverse cultures.”

Wcff opens with Oscar-shortlisted dramedy The Monk and the Gun, directed by Pawo Choyning Dorji. The Bhutanese filmmaker — whose Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom earned a 2022 Academy Award nomination for Best International Film — will be present for a Q&a to follow The Monk and the Gun screening.

The festival closes with Wim Wenders’ Oscar-nominated Perfect Days, a drama about Hirayama (Koji Yakusho), a man who cleans Tokyo’s public toilets, which are renowned for their immaculate appearance.

‘Perfect Days’

“Hirayama clearly derives enjoyment from performing his work well,” the New York Times wrote in a rave review, “but there’s more to his life than labor, and more to this movie than a simplistic celebration of manual toil.”

The Wcff program includes more than 60 films,...

“Escape,” a Korean-made action drama that has been on release for most of the month, took the lead at the South Korean box office over the latest weekend.

The film recounts the story of a North Korean soldier who dreams of defecting and the South Korean officer who pursues him. It is directed by Lee Jong-pil, who previously made surprise 2020 hit “Samjin Company English Class.” It stars Lee Je-hoon and Koo Kyo-hwan in the lead roles.

“Escape” earned $2.61 million between Friday and Sunday, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). That represented an unusual 7% week-on-week gain for the film, suggesting strong word of mouth sentiment. After 19 days on release “Escape” has accumulated $13.0 million, earned from 1.9 million spectators.

“Inside Out 2,” which headed the chart for the previous five weeks, slipped to second place. It earned $1.98 million over the weekend to extend its...

Should cinema be treated as a luxury or as a necessary form that brings people together? That’s the question facing another Toronto institution today as news surfaces of the city’s beloved Toronto Outdoor Picture Show facing dire financial straits. Beginning as the Christie Pits Film Festival in 2011, Tops became a registered non-profit organization in 2015 with a focus on presenting film programming to areas throughout Toronto, including Christie Pits Park, Fort York, Bell Manor Park, and Corktown Common. Over 25,000 people come out each summer for its free screening series, but Tops Founder and Artistic & Executive Director Emily Reid shared in a recent interview with Toronto’s CityNews that it may not have enough funding for next year.

“We’ve tried to keep our costs low, but we don’t sell tickets, so it’s always about what kind of funding we can bring in,” Reid said. “And it’s...

"At its core, this film is about healing." Strand Releasing has unveiled an official trailer for an indie drama titled I'll Be Your Mirror, made by the indie filmmaker Bradley Rust Gray. This initially premiered back in 2022 at the Sundance Film Festival, but it has been stuck in release limbo for the past few years. Now it's finally opening this summer. Chloe (starring Carla Juri) travels to Japan for work where she is welcomed by an old friend, Toshi. Sliding between the melancholy of loss of her husband and the awe of perspectives changed, she wanders an unfamiliar landscape. I'll Be Your Mirror explores grief and the road to emotional recovery. With a fresh rhythm, and unforgettably rich performances, this subtle study captures the vibrancy of healing. Also starring Takashi Ueno, Issey Ogata, Gustaf Skarsgärd, and Sachiko Ohshima. At Sundance it won a Special Jury Award for "Uncompromising Artistic Vision", but received mostly mixed-to-negative reviews.

Disney’s “Inside Out 2” held very strongly in its fourth weekend of release in South Korea to reach a cumulative score of $48 million.

It earned $6.30 million between Friday and Sunday, earned from 906,000 ticket sales, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). That represented a week-on-week decrease of just 11%. And the film held on to a powerful 43% market share in its fourth week.

Its $48.1 million cumulative total from 6.92 million ticket sales cements “Inside Out 2’s” position as the third-highest film of the year behind “Exhuma” and “The Roundup: Punishment.” And it has a score close to double that of fourth-placed “Wonka,” on $24.6 million.

Daily chart data showed “Inside Out 2” being bested on Wednesday by new Korean release “Escape,” but the new film’s lead was not sustained. “Escape” earned $3.64 million over the weekend and $5.01 million over its opening five-day run.

Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days suggests a kind of spring cleaning for the German filmmaker. The elaborate concepts and charged iconographies of The American Friend, Paris, Texas, and Wings of Desire are nowhere to be seen here. Wenders aims for simplicity with Perfect Days, following a middle-aged man, Hirayama (Yakusho Kôji), as he goes about his day cleaning Tokyo’s toilets, taking pictures of trees, listening to classic rock and pop, reading classic literature, and savoring the humble sources of day-to-day affirmation that we tend to take for granted.

Hirayama’s humility is the gauntlet that Wenders has thrown down for himself. Perfect Days wants to be an invitingly human movie that homes in intensely on the little moments of a man’s life so as to unearth universal truths. There’s a bit of Vittorio de Sica’s micro-texture-minded sensibility swimming around in it, and the impression that Wenders...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Ampas) has invited 487 artists and executives to become members, with Sandra Huller, Justin Triet, Celine Song and Da’Vine Joy Randolph among the high profile invitees.

Also invited to join are actors Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Fiona Shaw, directors Alice Diop, David Yates and S S Rajamouli, and writers Arthur Harari and Tony McNamara.

Executives invited to join that branch of the Academy include British Film Institute CEO Ben Roberts and Fifth Season co-CEOs Chris Rice and Graham Taylor.

Among those invited to join the costume designers branch are Holly Waddington and Małgorzata Karpiuk.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Ampas) has invited 487 artists and executives to become members, with Sandra Huller, Justin Triet, Celine Song and Da’Vine Joy Randolph among the high profile invitees.

Also invited to join are actors Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Fiona Shaw, directors Alice Diop, David Yates and S S Rajamouli, and writers Arthur Harari and Tony McNamara.

Executives invited to join that branch of the Academy include British Film Institute CEO Ben Roberts and Fifth Season co-CEOs Chris Rice and Graham Taylor.

Among those invited to join the costume designers branch are Holly Waddington and Małgorzata Karpiuk.

Every summer, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invites a deluge of new members to join its ranks. Since #OscarsSoWhite back in 2015, the Academy has moved away from its elitist tendencies and toward embracing younger and more diverse artists and executives from all over the world. This year’s invited class is no exception.

If the invitees all accept Academy membership, the total members will number 10,910 and voting members 9,934. And with the addition of the 2024 members, 35 percent of Academy members identify as women, 20 percent of Academy members are from underrepresented ethnic and racial communities, and 20 percent of Academy members are from countries or territories outside the U.S.

As usual, a slew of Oscar nominees and winners are gaining admittance to the club (71 Oscar nominees and 19 winners), including actors Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Sandra Hüller, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph (“The Holdovers”), costume designer Holly Waddington...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said Tuesday that it is extending invitations to 487 to join the membership ranks of the Oscar organizer. If all accept, it will bring the Academy’s total membership to 10,910, of which 9,934 would be voting members.

This year’s list across 19 branches include 2024 Oscar winners Da’Vine Joy Randolph from The Holdovers; Poor Things costume designer Holly Waddington and production design team James Price, Shona Heath and Zsuzsa Mihalek; 20 Days in Mariupol director Mstyslav Chernov, War Is Over! producer Brad Booker; The Zone of Interest sound duo Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn; the Godzilla Minus One VFX team Tatsuji Nojima, Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi and Takashi Yamazaki; American Fiction writer-director Cord Jefferson; and Anatomy of a Fall writing duo Justine Triet and Arthur Harari.

Jefferson and Triet are among eight names on the list who were invited to more than one branch (noted...

Foreign visitors were in short supply at Saturday’s opening ceremony of the 26th Shanghai International Film Festival, but that did little to diminish the festive atmosphere.

The ceremony was held at the Shanghai Grand Theater in the downtown area on an evening that was warm and spring-like and without the “plum rain” or summer downpours that the city is known for at this time of year.

Arguably the biggest names in attendance were Hong Kong actor and “Westworld” star Daniel Wu, Hong Kong director Dante Lam, Chinese star actor-director-producer Xu Zheng and Japanese actor Yakusho Koji, who won the best actor award a year ago at Cannes for his leading role in Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days.” Marco Mueller, a celebrated festival director and artistic consultant, was also on hand in his adopted home town.

Wu was representing new film “Decoded,” directed by Chen Sicheng, whose “Lost in the Stars...

One conversation around “Hit Man,” our movie contender to watch this week, is mostly about how it should have gotten a legitimate theatrical release and not been a streamer play for Netflix, where its impact will likely be lessened. It’s supposed to be a star turn for Glen Powell, and the type of charisma-driven indie-ish romantic comedy/thriller that people say they wish there were more of in theaters.

But what about the movie itself? Well, it’s a darkly funny based-on-a-true-story charmer, with Powell playing a mild-mannered man who has a gig posing as a hitman to entrap people in murder-for-hire plots for the police. But things get complicated when he falls in love with a “client” (Adria Arjona) who hires him to off her abusive husband. Powell is a long-shot contender for Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay (with director Richard Linklater), but even if this ends...

As part of a strategy to build a new cinephile audience and revive the filmgoing experience in Brazil, São Paulo-based distributor O2 Play is theatrically releasing a selection of classic films, starting with A24’s 4K restored version of the seminal ‘80s Talking Heads concert docu, “Stop Making Sense” by Jonathan Demme.

The company has also launched an app called “carteirinha de cinéfilo” (cinephile card), to offer moviegoers special discounts, collectibles and foster the theatrical experience.

“Available at the App Store and Google store, we decided to launch it to help engage our audience and bring them back to theaters,” said O2 Play founder Igor Kupstas who laments the universal decline in cinema attendance since the pandemic, felt in Brazil and most parts of the world.

According to Kupstas, who launched O2 Play in 2013, talks are underway with traditional and IMAX screen owners for the premiere of “Stop Making Sense...

Hulu has to be pretty pleased with its list of new releases for June 2024. That’s because it’s about to be the summer of The Bear once again.

The Bear season 3 premieres all of its episodes on June 27 on Hulu. This FX dramedy has proven to be one of the most successful shows of its era. Jeremy Allen White stars as Carmy Berzatto, a world-famous chef who returns home to Chicago to help his floundering family restaurant after the death of his brother. Season 2 saw The Original Beef of Chicagoland crew transform the spot into fine dining establishment The Bear. It ruled. So will season 3 probably.

FX is responsible for the other major TV release on Hulu this month. Clipped premieres on June 4 and is about the scandalous real life story of Donald Sterling, the awful owner of the basketball team the Los Angeles Clippers. Another intriguing TV option...

There's no place better than a Japanese onsen for taking a step back from the world, while a local sentou bathhouse has a more community feel: a place to wash, but also converse and reflect on the day. Atsushi Hirai's Franco-Japanese production is an almost real-time documentation of an evening's trip to a bathhouse, in a cleansing experience for body, mind and soul.

“Oyu” is screening at Vienna Shorts

Satoshi (Okihiko Yoshizawa) returns from Tokyo to his hometown of Toyama. He arrives at a local bathhouse to collect an item, though one he seems not to recognise. Handing over an old voucher, he finds it is still valid for an evening's bath. And here, he slowly and meticulously performs the routine of thoroughly cleaning himself, taking in the sounds around him, gradually appreciating the cleaning utensils he collected at the entrance.

As fathers clean sons and yakuza gruffly sit in the bath,...

As cinephiles talk of Asian filmmaking doyens, short films seem to fall off the radar, even if many outstanding short films from Asian are released every year. Diverse in genre, style, story, and length, we highlight below some recent Asian short films that are truly memorable in some way — perhaps for different audiences, but deserving of a watch all the same. The list below is presented in chronological order by release year, then alphabetically by production country.

1. Counterfeit Kunkoo by Reema Sengupta

A young single woman, Smita (Kani Kusruti), lives in Mumbai and is trying to find an apartment to rent in the city. However, as an unmarried woman, the landlords refuse to take her seriously, refusing her tenancy at every turn despite the undeniable fact that she would be a perfect resident. Although she tries many tricks to get around the patriarchal system, Smita begins to realize how futile her search might be.