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Michael Rowe.s Early Winter, Simon Stone.s The Daughter and Bentley Dean and Martin Butler.s Tanna will be launched internationally at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival in September.

A Canadian/Australian co-production starring Paul Doucet and Suzanne Clément, Early Winter (formerly Rest Home) will have its world premiere in the Venice Days sidebar.

The first English-language film from Mexican-based writer-director Rowe (Leap Year; The Well), the Montreal-shot psychological drama follows a janitor in a retirement home whose life spirals out of control when he catches his wife with a lover, pushing him to the brink of insanity.

Pyramide International is handling international sales and releasing in France, Rialto will distribute in Australia/New Zealand and Mongrel Media/Film Option in Canada.

.Pyramide will be selling in Venice and then at Toronto,. Freshwater Pictures. Trish Lake, who produced with Serge Noël.s Possibles Média, tells If. .There are...

Director/writer Bentley Dean and his family lived for six months in a remote Melanesian village earlier year.

Far from an extended holiday, Dean devoted his time to researching, casting and preparing to shoot Taboo, a novel romantic drama set on the island of Tanna near Vanuatu.

The screenplay by Dean, his co-director/co-writer Martin Butler and John Collee, will follow two teenage lovers who risk their lives for marriage, forcing the village to choose between traditional duty and individual freedom.

Screen Nsw funded development, Screen Australia has approved production investment and filming will starting next month, with Dean doubling as the DoP and Butler handling the sound. Dean and Butler will produce with Carolyn Johnson (Son of a Lion).

Dean has already filmed rehearsals with the cast, all locals, and says he is ..constantly floored. by the performances.

He showed the cast Rolf de Heer.s Ten Canoes on...

Female directors have dominated the Documentary Feature category of the 2014 Australian Directors Guild Awards, whilst Home & Away has muscled out any other competition for TV Drama Serial. The nominees, announced this morning, cover 16 categories across film, television, multiplatform, music and advertising. This year has seen the Adg receive more entries than ever before, making the judging process a difficult one. .In the TV drama category, the documentary feature category and the feature film categories especially, the caliber is really high so that.s why there are so many nominations,. says Adg Executive Director Kingston Anderson. .The judges take it very seriously and fully understand the recognition the awards can bring.. In the feature film category, Baz Luhrmann was unsurprisingly nominated for box office hit The Great Gatsby alongside strong contenders Kim Mordaunt (The Rocket), Ivan Sen (Mystery Road), Jonathan Teplitzky (The Railway Man) and Zak Hilditch, whose film These Final Hours,...

The Great Gatsby dominated. Aacta.s technical and short films awards today, collecting gongs in all six craft categories for which it was nominated, plus the Aacta award for outstanding achievement in visual effects.

The co-production Top of the Lake bagged two TV trophies while Matchbox Pictures. Nowhere Boys, created by Tony Ayres, was named best children.s TV series.

The TV documentary prize went to Redesign My Brain, which explores the revolutionary new science of brain plasticity, written and directed by Paul Scott and produced by Isabel Perez and Scott for ABC TV.

Writer-director Nick Verso's The Last Time I Saw Richard, produced by John Molloy, was honoured as best short fiction film. Developed and funded through Screen Australia.s Springboard program, the short is a prequel to the upcoming feature film Boys In The Trees, tracing the friendship between two teenagers in a mental health clinic in...

First Footprints, Jabbed, Fallout and Once My Mother were among the winners of the 2013 Ipaf Atom awards presented in Melbourne on Thursday night.

Founded in 1982 and voted by members of the Australian Teachers of Media, the awards recognise film and media excellence in the education and screen industry sectors.

There were more than 600 entries from Australian and New Zealand media producers in 29 categories. The event was hosted by Brian Nankervis from RocKwiz. The Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation (Ipaf) was the naming sponsor this year.

Martin Butler and Bentley Dean.s First Footprints, which tells how the first Australians adapted, migrated, fought and created in dramatically changing environments, was named best documentary, general.

Sonya Pemberton.s Jabbed, which poses the questions how do you decide whether to vaccinate or not, and what are the risks?, took the award for best docu, science, technology and the environment.

Lawrence Johnston.s Fallout, which...