Notícias

French romantic comedy “This Charming Girl” and French comedy “Vanishing Goats” have joined the slate of Paris-based sales company MPM Premium, which will introduce the films to buyers at the Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Paris.

“This Charming Girl,” directed by Jean-Luc Gaget and co-written with Raphaële Moussafir, will be released in France by Nour Films. The cast is led by Pauline Clément, Arthur Dupont, Emilie Caen (“Ducobu”) and Karin Viard.

The film centers on Clémence, a quiet yet amusing Parisian, who had a complicated childhood. At the age of 30, she struggles with low self-esteem. Fate intervenes when she meets Paul, a man with a domineering personality whom everyone calls “Paul Pot.” Clémence begins to ask herself: could he be the one?

The production companies are La Féline Films, Les Films du Capitaine and Karé Productions.

“This Charming Girl” will have a market screening at Rendez-Vous on Jan. 16.

Marie Rémond’s “Vanishing Goats,...

As Martin Scorsese once said, “Music and cinema fit together naturally. Because there’s a kind of intrinsic musicality to the way moving images work when they’re put together. It’s been said that cinema and music are very close as art forms, and I think that’s true.” The right piece of music––whether an original score or a carefully selected song––can do wonders for a sequence, and today we’re looking at the 25 films that best expressed that notion in 2024.

From seasoned composers to accomplished musicians, as well as a smattering of soundtracks, each perfectly transported us. Check out our rundown of the top 25, which includes streams to each soundtrack in full where available.

25. Plastic (Ide Kensuke/Exne Kedy)

24. Disco Boy (Vitalic)

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23. Red Rooms (Dominique Plante)

22. Dune: Part Two (Hans Zimmer)

21. Nosferatu (Robin Carolan)

20. Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (John Debney)

19. The Wild Robot (Kris Bowers...

Lina Soualem’s Spain-set family tale “Alicante,” Walid Messnaoui’s gangster Western “The Last Beast of Atlas” and Linda Lô’s search-for-identity drama “Lucky Girl” rank as buzz titles at the 7th Atlas Workshops, running Dec. 1-5 at the Marrakech Festival.

“Mud” director Jeff Nichols has already been announced as this year’s Workshops tutor.

They will also unveil first images from three of the most awaited movies from the Arab world – from “Amreeka” director Cherien Dabis and “The Yacoubian Building” helmer Marwan Hamed and Tarzan and Arab Nasser, behind Palestine Oscar entry “Gaza Mon Amour.”

Adding to this, however, are a slew of first or second features by young filmmakers hailing from Morocco, Africa and the Arab world who have already gained Academy Awards or big fest recognition, giving the 2024 Atlas Workshops one of the highest-caliber and exciting lineups of any development program this year.

“Arab and African cinema...

Late last week the Music Box Films people made a pick-up for a remarkable debut feature that kicked off last May’s Critics’ Week section in Cannes – a gem that I called “unhurried and in protracted process bliss, tonally enthralling and buoyantly evasive, revenge here is served … slow.” Jonathan Millet’s revenge thriller Ghost Trail (aka Les Fantômes) will receive a theatrical release next Spring. This is easily Adam Bessa’s career best work to date as an actor. Millet comes from a docu background – and his research is well served here. Films Grand Huit’s Pauline Seigland (Giacomo Abbruzzese’s Disco Boy) produced the film.…...

Paris-based sales agent Luxbox has backed Erige Sehiri’s next feature, “Marie & Jolie.”

Written by Sehiri, Anna Ciennik and Malika Cécile Louati, and produced by Henia Production and Didar Domehri of Maneki Films, the drama explores the quiet Christian communities in the predominantly Muslim metropolis of Tunis. Pathé Afrique and Jour2Fête have boarded as respective Tunisian and French distributors, while production is now underway.

Actors Aïssa Maïga (“Bamako”) and Laetitia Ky join newcomer Deborah Naney as women sharing a house that hides an Evangelical church. Upon taking in a child migrant who survived a shipwreck, each member of this makeshift family must reconsider their place in the house and in society.

“We often hear about people who migrate from Africa to Europe, while 80% of migrants actually migrate within Africa,” says Sehiri. “Among them, some settle in North Africa. Telling their stories opens up new perspectives, another way of looking at the world.

Programmers from Sundance, Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, Toronto, and Rotterdam, sales agents such as Goodfellas and Coproduction Office and U.S. distributor Magnify Pictures are among 50 top international guests expected at the inaugural Ecam Forum co-production market in Madrid, which is due to unspool June 10-14.

More than 300 delegates have signed up for the co-pro event where a curated slate of 37 Spanish, Latin American and international films and series will compete for the best project, including the next Lois Patiño (“Samsara”), Pablo Hernando (“Berserker”), Belén Funes (“A Thief’s Daughter”) and Sergi Perez (“The Long Way Home”).

Other highlights include masterclasses from U.S. indie mogul Ted Hope, and France’s illustrious cinematographer Hélène Louvart, a regular Alice Rohrwacher and Karim Aïnouz collaborator, and Silver Bear winner 2023 for “Disco Boy.”

In this exclusive interview, Ecam Forum’s coordinator Alberto Valverde maps out the full program of the latest industry initiative of Madrid’s Ecam film school,...

Nihilism and neon-popped lust collide in Brazilian filmmaker Karim Aïnouz’s Portuguese-language “Motel Destino,” set in a love motel so sordid that lay tourists should best avoid it, and only criminals and castaways are likely to check in. The “Invisible Life” director’s steamy psychosexual thriller set in the sweatiest armpit of the equator speaks melodrama and noir but with a Brazilian accent, Aïnouz returning to his home state of Ceará to shoot on his own turf for the first time in five years. The writer/director lifts from classics such as Lawrence Kasdan’s “Body Heat” and Billy Wilder’s “Double Indemnity” but also from ‘70s Brazilian sex comedies to tell a perverse yarn of extramarital betrayal turned murderous. But while the pre-“Body Heat” noirs he’s channeling could only suggest rather than spell out sex, Aïnouz goes graphic — and relentlessly — in an arthouse-only erotic genre piece that...

Franchise animation Kung Fu Panda 4 and creature clash Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire lead a bumper weekend of 16 new films at the UK-Ireland box office.

Universal’s Kung Fu Panda 4 has the biggest opening of the weekend in 715 sites – a significant jump for the series, after 2008’s Kung Fu Panda (448) and sequels in 2011 (514) and 2016 (585), all through Paramount.

Conversely, the total grosses of each film have dropped, with the first title making £20.4m, followed by £17m and £14.2m for the sequels. All of these were pre-pandemic; number four will look to cross the £10m mark before challenging any of those totals.

Sony’s “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” debuted atop the U.K. and Ireland box office with £4 million ($5.1 million), according to numbers from Comscore.

In the process, the band of ectoplasm hunters ended the three-week reign of Warner Bros.’ “Dune: Part II” in pole position. The Timothée Chalamet-starring film collected £2.6 million in its fourth weekend in second place for a total of £30.7 million.

Black Bear’s “Immaculate,” starring Sydney Sweeney, scared up £522,583 in a third place debut. In fourth place, in its fifth weekend, Studiocanal’s “Wicked Little Letters” earned £373,505 and now has a total of £8.1 million.

Rounding off the top five was Universal’s “Migration” that collected £370,464 in its eighth weekend for a total of £19.5 million.

There were two more debuts in the top 10 – Vertigo’s “Late Night With The Devil” in seventh place with £220,436 and Trafalgar’s “Romeo Et Juliette – Met Opera 2023/24” in 10th with £81,880.

With the Easter holidays imminent,...

Pulsar Content has boarded “Mikado,” a heartwarming family film written and directed by Baya Kasmi, who previously directed “Iʼm All Yours” and “The (in)famous Youssef Salem.”

“Mikado” is produced by Karé Production (“The Presidentʼs Wife”) and Films Grand Huit (“Disco Boy”). The film stars Felix Moati (“No Manʼs Land”) alongside Ramzy Bedia (“Donʼt Die Too Hard!”) and Vimala Pons (“Vincent Must Die”), who previously worked with Kasmi.

Pulsar Content will be launching international sales at the European Film Market with an exclusive promo-reel.

The film follows Mikado and Laetitia, who lead an alternative lifestyle aboard a van with their home-schooled children Nuage and Zephir. One day, their van breaks down, forcing them to lead a somewhat “normal” life over summer.

“We immediately fell in love with Bayaʼs script,” said Pulsar Content co-founders Gilles Sousa and Marie Garrett. “It is both heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time, and a wonderful role for Felix Moati.

Disco Boy, directed by Giacomo Abbruzzese, is about the search for independence and its subsequent consequences.  Aleksei/Alex (Franz Rogowski) is an illegal Belarusian immigrant in Paris, who enlists in the French Foreign Legion to legalize his stay. This trade has him cross paths with Jomo (Morr Ndiaye) in Nigeria, a man defending his delta from exploitation. The last main character who yearns for freedom is his sister, Udoka (Laetitia Ky), who wants to leave the village for city life. It's a bit of a ghost story, too. Alex takes center stage, is plagued by his actions, his decisions, his debts. Alex is the first one we meet as the audience, watching him cross a river into France. Disco Boy could absolutely not work with a French citizen...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Mal Travaille: Abbruzzese Finds the Rhythm of the Night in Hypnotic Debut

“E’en hell hath its peculiar laws,” remarked Faust in Goethe’s eternal classic, the wellspring of the cursed, compromising dealing with the devil in which all similar narratives are indebted. A captivating take on the Faustian parable arrives in Giacomo Abbruzzese’s feature debut, Disco Boy, inextricably uniting two lost souls struggling to make better lives for themselves.

Franz Rogowski headlines with another fascinating, internalized performance as a Belarusian refugee who has to sell his soul for the chance at a better life. Expectedly, the situation waxes Biblical, for even if he gains the world, what does it matter if it means losing his soul?…...

“Bird,” Andrea Arnold’s first narrative feature in almost a decade, has been picked up by Cornerstone Films with the company set to launch the feature at the upcoming European Film Market in Berlin.

Little is known about the film, except that it was shot in the U.K. around the Kent area last summer and, like much of Arnold’s work, examines life on the fringes of society. It also stars two of the buzziest actors on the circuit: Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski.

Keoghan is currently on a phenomenal run that began with his BAFTA-winning and Oscar-nominated supporting role in “The Banshees of Inisherin” and has continued with a BAFTA-nominated lead turn in Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn” as well as a major part in the recently launched Apple TV+ drama “Masters of the Air.” He reportedly joined “Bird” after leaving the cast of Ridley Scott’s upcoming “Gladiator” sequel,...

Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall was named best film of the year at France’s Lumiere Awards on Monday evening.

Triet and co-writer Arthur Harari also took home the best screenplay award and lead Sandra Hüller earned the prize for best actress at the 29th edition of the awards, considered to be France’s version of the Golden Globes and voted on by international correspondents from 36 countries.

The courtroom drama about a woman on trial for her husband’s death in the French Alps was nominated in six categories, but Lumiere voters spread their votes across the board...

Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall continued its prize-winning run on Monday at France’s 29th Lumière Awards clinching Best Film and Best Screenplay, while its German star Sandra Hüller won Best Actress.

The Lumières fete the best films, performances and technical achievements of French cinema across 13 categories.

The French equivalent of the Golden Globes, they are voted on by the Académie des Lumières which is made up of France-based international journalists representing 36 countries.

In other key prizes, Thomas Cailley won Best Director for Cannes 2023 Un Certain Regard opener The Animal Kingdom, while Arieh Worthalter won Best Actor for his performance in Cédric Khan’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight opener The Goldman Case.

Triet’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall, which was nominated in six Lumière categories, is on an award-winning streak.

The movie swept the board at the European Film Awards in Berlin last December...

Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winning “Anatomy of a Fall” picked up top accolades at the 29th Lumiere Awards, France’s equivalent to the Golden Globes, at a ceremony held Monday at the Forum des Images in Paris.

While Triet lost the best director nod to Thomas Cailley for his supernatural family drama “The Animal Kingdom,” “Anatomy of a Fall” won best film, actress for Sandra Huller, and screenplay for Triet and Arthur Harari. The movie is nominated for seven BAFTA awards, and won two Golden Globes (for screenplay and foreign-language film) earlier this month. While on stage to receive the best screenplay award, Triet and her partner Harari delivered the ceremony’s highlight, debating whether they’re collaborate again on a project. Triet admitted that the writing process had been complicated and said, “I don’t think he’s accept to work again with me but one time was already great.

“Kingdom of the Blind,” “Little Trouble Girls” and “Wind, Talk To Me” were among the projects which won prizes at the milestone 15th edition of Les Arcs Film Festival‘s Industry Village.

The event, held in a popular French Alps resort, was attended by more than 700 professionals, including top sales agents, distributors and festival programmers, on top of high profile talent, such as two-time Palme d’Or winning Ruben Ostlund (“Triangle of Sadness”) who was the festival’s guest of honor.

The growing popularity of Les Arcs’s industry sidebar underscores “the resilience of the independent European film market and the continued interest in original stories along with feature debuts,” said Jeremy Zelnik, an indie producer (“Kubrick by Kubrick”) who heads the Industry Village and co-founded the festival with Pierre-Emmanuel Fleurantin, Guillaume Calop and Fabienne Silvestre.

This year, the Coproduction Village and Work in Progress section received a record 680 projects...

France’s awards season has officially kicked off with Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” landing six nominations at the Lumières Awards, including best film and director.

The courtroom drama, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, is the season’s frontrunner. The Lumières are voted on by Paris-based correspondents working for foreign outlets across 36 countries.

Sandra Huller, who stars in the film as a German novelist put on trial after her French husband dies mysteriously, is nominated for best actress, while Milo Machado Graner, who plays her astute, low-vision son, is nominated for best male newcomer.

“Anatomy of Fall” has been on a roll, garnering a raft of international prizes at the European Film Awards, Gothams, as well as Los Angeles and the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, along with four Golden Globe nominations for best film, screenplay, actress and foreign film. The movie that was...

The Lumieres are voted on by international correspondents from 36 countries.

Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winning Anatomy Of A Fall leads the nominations for France’s Lumiere awards, nominated in six categories, including best film and best director.

Cedric Kahn’s courtroom drama The Goldman Case and Thomas Cailley’s The Animal Kingdom, have each received five nominations.

All three films have been nominated in the best film category alongside Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer that earned four nominations and Clément Cogitore’s Son of Ramses with three.

The filmmakers of all five of those titles have also been nominated for best director.

"Are you willing to take risks?" Big World Pictures has revealed an official US trailer for an indie thriller titled Disco Boy, marking the narrative feature debut of an Italian filmmaker named Giacomo Abbruzzese. This premiered at the 2023 Berlin Film Festival earlier this year to mostly positive reviews, and layer played at the New Directors/New Films Festival in NYC. The film stars acclaimed German actor Franz Rogowski as a Belarusian immigrant haunted by his actions as a mercenary in the French Foreign Legion. After fleeing Belarus, he joins the French Foreign Legion and goes through hell at boot camp to make it out as a soldier & gain his French citizenship. It also stars Morr Ndiaye, Laetitia Ky, Leon Lucev, Robert Wieckiewicz, and Matteo Olivetti. Disco Boy will open at The Quad in New York City on February 2nd, and at Laemmle Theaters in LA on February 9th. The "ambitious film is a jarring,...

Coming off one of the best performances of the year in Ira Sachs’ Passages, Franz Rogowski will next be seen in Giacomo Abbruzzese’s stylish debut Disco Boy, which picked up the Silver Bear at Berlinale earlier this year and was a New Directors/New Films selection. Acquired by Big World Pictures, who will release it on February 2 in NYC at the Quad and February 9 in LA at Laemmle Theaters, they’ve now debuted the new trailer and poster.

Here’s the synopsis: “Aleksei is a young Belarusian on the run from a past he must bury. In a form of Faustian pact, he becomes a member of the French Foreign Legion in exchange for the promise of French citizenship. Far away, in the Niger Delta, Jomo is a revolutionary activist, engaged in armed struggle to defend his community. Aleksei is a soldier, Jomo a guerrilla fighter. Because of one more senseless war,...

German actor Franz Rogowski is on the rise after winning Best Actor from the prestigious New York Film Critics Circle for his performance as a toxic bisexual in Ira Sachs’ “Passages.” The “Happy End” breakout actor’s turn also featured in IndieWire’s Critics Poll of the best films and performances of 2023.

That means you shouldn’t ignore his performance in Giacomo Abbruzzese’s debut feature “Disco Boy,” winner of the 2023 Berlinale’s Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution. In this vividly dreamlike postwar drama, Rogowski plays a Belarusian immigrant haunted by his actions as a mercenary in the French Foreign Legion. Comparisons to Claire Denis’ similarly themed “Beau Travail,” as Ben Croll pointed out in his Berlinale review for IndieWire, are inevitable and apt. After all, there’s a movie that made another unusual European actor — French actor Denis Lavant — an everlasting arthouse favorite.

In “Disco Boy,” following a difficult journey across Europe,...

Swedish director Ruben Östlund has been announced as a guest of honor at the 15th edition of France’s Les Arcs Film Festival, in the role of its Talent Village Ambassador.

The two-time Cannes d’Or winner has a strong connection with the festival’s Alpine setting, having shot his breakthrough 2014 feature Force Majeure in and around the Les Arcs ski resort, and he has also attended the festival as its jury president in 2018.

Previously announced high-profile guests of this year’s edition of Les Arcs, running from December 16 to 23, include Iranian director Asghar Farhadi as president of the jury.

In his role of Talent Village Ambassador, Östlund will meet with eight emerging directors selected for the sixth edition of Les Arcs’ Talent Village and also give a masterclass.

The Talent Village takes place under the auspices of the Les Arcs Industry Village, running from December 16 to 19.

The program has...

Palme d’Or-winning filmmaker will share advice and experiences with up and coming directing talents.

Two-time Palme d’Or-winning filmmaker Ruben Ostlund will be guest of honour at the sixth Talent Village of France’s Les Arcs Film festival and will mentor this year’s selection of eight first-time feature directors.

Part of the festival’s Industry Village, the four-day development initiative is aimed at helping emerging filmmakers make their feature debuts and will run from December 16-19 in the French Alps mountain town.

The eight directors taking part in the development initiative have made short films that have played...

Adriano Valerio’s documentary “Casablanca,” which will world premiere on Thursday at Venice Days, has been acquired by Salaud Morisset for world sales. Variety has been given an exclusive clip from the film.

“Casablanca” follows Fouad, a Moroccan living in Italy without papers, and Daniela, a former drug-addict from Apulia’s upper middle-class, who find each other by chance in Umbria. The meeting is the beginning of a love that helps them heal. But Fouad’s feeling of not belonging and the interminable wait for a visa are pushing him to the brink: will he stay in Umbria or go back to Casablanca, even if it means never to return?

Valerio followed the two characters for seven years after he met Fouad in 2016 in a bar and immediately became fascinated by his way of seeing life and his determination fueled by his almost undestroyable hope.

Valerio said: “I wanted to...

Giacomo Abbruzzese’s debut feature is a hazily seductive, frequently dreamlike study of life in the French Foreign Legion, fixated on masculine bodies in synchronized and sometimes violently clashing motion. It is also called “Disco Boy.” You almost certainly wouldn’t choose that subject, tone and title for a film if you didn’t want viewers’ minds to immediately wander to “Beau Travail,” Claire Denis’ seminal Foreign Legion cine-ballet, with its climactic solo number set to a thumping Eurodance classic; even if you somehow made that error, you wouldn’t compound it with electro-scored terpsichorean interludes of your own. Choosing homage this direct for a first feature is a brazen move, but notwithstanding its openly derivative qualities, “Disco Boy” doesn’t want for boldness or surprise — Abbruzzese’s hot, fluxional command of sound and image keeps us curious.

One feature of “Disco Boy,” at least, plays as expected: the reliably fragile,...

Finally, it is Big World Pictures that have landed one of the best films from the 2023 edition of the Berlinale. Featuring Franz Rogowski, a winner at the festival (Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution: cinematography) Giacomo Abbruzzese’s Disco Boy (per Deadline) is set to be launched in 2024 but will have some U.S fall film festival showings. Our Nicholas Bell was a fan of the film:

“Franz Rogowski headlines with another fascinating, internalized performance as a Belarusian refugee who has to sell his soul for the chance at a better life. Expectedly, the situation waxes Biblical, for even if he gains the world, what does it matter if it means losing his soul?…...

Exclusive: Big World Pictures has acquired U.S. and Canadian rights from Paris-based sales firm Charades to Giacomo Abbruzzese’s debut feature, Disco Boy.

Winner of the Berlinale’s Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution earlier this year, the largely French-language film stars rising German actor Franz Rogowski as a Belarusian immigrant haunted by his actions as a mercenary in the French Foreign Legion. Above is an English-language trailer for the movie.

An early 2024 theatrical release is being lined up following fall festival play. France’s Films Grand Huit produces.

Rogowski is best known for Ira Sachs’ Passages, Christian Petzold’s Transit and Sebastian Meise’s Great Freedom. Upcoming he will star in Andrea Arnold’s Bird and David Michôd and A24’s Wizards!.

In Disco Boy, Rogowski plays Aleksei, who reaches Paris following a difficult and undocumented journey across Europe. In Paris he enlists in the French Foreign Legion,...

18 films across three Kinoscope sections.

Sarajevo Film Festival has selected 18 features for its Kinoscope strand, composed of festival hits from the past year.

Titles include Giacomo Abbruzzese’s Disco Boy starring Franz Rogowski and Morr Ndiaye, which had its world premiere in competition at this year’s Berlinale; as did Lila Aviles’ Totem, about a seven-year-old girl who comes to understand her changing world.

Dani Rosenberg’s The Vanishing Soldier arrives at Sarajevo following a world premiere last weekend at Locarno Film Festival. The thriller centres on an 18-year-old Israeli soldier who flees back to his girlfriend in Tel Aviv...

The Melbourne International Film Festival has confirmed that it will provide $202,000 will go to the winner of its Bright Horizons competition for features by first- and second-time directors. Bragging rights to being the richest film competition in the country previously belonged to the smaller CinefestOZ festival in West Australia, which follows later in August.

The Melbourne festival (in cinemas Aug. 3-20) has this year added two significant prizes: the inaugural First Nations Film Creative Award in collaboration with Kearney Group, and the return of the Blackmagic Design Australian Innovation Award, worth $47,500 recognizing an outstanding Australian creative within a film playing in the Melbourne 2023 program.

Winners across long-form awards categories will be announced at Melbourne’s closing night gala on Aug. 19, These will include the juried prizes and the Miff Audience Award.

The First Nations Film Creative Award supports First Nations talent and storytelling with the recipient awarded a $13,500 cash prize and $16,900 worth of financial services.

The Melbourne International Film Festival has unveiled the full lineup for its 2023 edition, with “Shayda,” by Iranian-Australian director Noora Niasari, set as the opening title.

The festival will run as a live event August 3-20, at venues around the city and its suburbs, and online Aug 18 – 27. The hybrid format was developed during the Covid pandemic and Miff found it useful as a tool to reach further away audiences and wider demographics than a strictly in-theater edition.

The ‘Bright Horizons’ competition section open to films by first- or second-time feature directors contains an 11-title mix of new and recently-debuted works.

As well as opening the festival, “Shayda” will play in competition. The competition’s other Australian-made title was announced as “The Rooster,” from actor turned writer-director Mark Leonard Winter.

International titles in competition include “Banel & Adama,” by Franco-Senegalese director Ramata-Toulaye Sy, which played in competition in Cannes; “How to Have Sex,...

Also new this weekend: Dreamworks animation ’Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken’ and ’La Syndicaliste (The Sitting Duck)’, starring Isabelle Huppert.

Disney is leading the pack this weekend with Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny out at 743 venues, the widest UK-Ireland release of 2023 so far.

It opens ahead of Disney’s The Little Mermaid, which debuted at 732 sites in May. The Cannes premiere, the fifth instalment in the franchise, sees James Mangold take the reins from Steven Spielberg. Harrison Ford returns as the titular adventurer, this time in 1969. Jones is living a quieter life, until his estranged goddaughter – played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge...

Also new this weekend: Dreamworks animation ’Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken’ and ’La Syndicaliste (The Sitting Duck)’, starring Isabelle Huppert.

Disney is leading the pack this weekend with Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny out at 743 venues, the widest UK-Ireland release of 2023 so far.

It opens ahead of Disney’s The Little Mermaid, which debuted at 732 sites in May. The Cannes premiere, the fifth instalment in the franchise, sees James Mangold take the reins from Steven Spielberg. Harrison Ford returns as the titular adventurer, this time in 1969. Jones is living a quieter life, until his estranged goddaughter – played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge...

Franz Rogowski stars as a young Belarusian who ends up in the heart of the Niger Delta.

Conic has acquired UK-Ireland distribution rights to Giacomo Abbruzzese’s debut feature Disco Boy starring Franz Rogowski.

The film premiered in competition at the Berlinale in February, winning the Silver Bear for outstanding artistic contribution for Helene Louvart’s cinematography.

Conic acquired the film from Paris-based sales agent Charades. Rogowski stars as Aleksei, a Belarusian who enlists in the French foreign legion in pursuit of a passport. He is sent to the Niger Delta where he crosses paths with Jomo, a revolutionary who...

The titles include Zarrar Kahn’s Directors’ Fortnight selection In Flames.

Scandinavian and Baltic distributor NonStop Entertainment has been on a buying spree for 20 titles since Sundance.

The titles include Zarrar Kahn’s Directors’ Fortnight selection In Flames for which NonStop has acquired Scandinavian and Icelandic rights from XYZ Films, and Return To Reason, the restored 4K version of the four improvisational films that Man Ray made from 1923-1929.

It has a Cannes Classics screening with a new soundtrack composed by Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan’s band Sqürl. NonStop acquired Scandinavian, Icelandic and Baltics rights from Film Constellation.

From the Berlinale,...

Film stars Raphael Personnaz and Jeanne Balibar.

Paris-based Snd has boarded Anne Fontaine’s Boléro about the birth of the renowned orchestral work from Maurice Ravel, now shooting in France.

Set in the Roaring 1920s, the film stars Raphael Personnaz, known for Our Brothers, Julia(s) and The French Minister, as the composer. Jeanne Balibar, who has appeared in Lost Illusions, Cold War and Grace Of Monaco, plays the Russian dancer-choreographer Ida Rubinstein who commissioned the now legendary music.

Snd, the film arm of France’s M6 group, is on board as co-producer and French distributor and is launching international sales at Cannes.

Giacomo Abbruzzese’s debut feature stars Franz Rogowski.

Paris-based sales company Charades has inked a slew of deals for Giacomo Abbruzzese’s debut feature following the film’s February world premiere in Berlin’s Competition and ahead of the film’s Wednesday (May 3) release in France via Kmbo.

Disco Boy has been sold to Madman in Australia and New Zealand, New Cinema in Israel, Adso in Spain, First Hand Films in Switzerland, Filmladen in Austria, Non Stop Entertainment in Scandinavia, Film Europe for the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Mars in Turkey, Av Jet in Taiwan, Edko in Hong Kong, Pandora...

French director and writer Audrey Diwan, who won the Venice Golden Lion in 2021 for her second feature Happening, has been announced as jury president for this year’s edition of Cannes Critics’ Week.

The parallel Cannes section devoted to emerging talents and first and second features will unfold from May 17 to 25 this year.

“Born in 1980, she belongs to this new generation of female filmmakers whose sharpness and formal freedom are reinventing the codes and redefining the boundaries of international cinema,” Cannes Critics’ Week said of the director.

Diwan will be joined on the jury by Portuguese director of photography Rui Poças (Tabu, Zama, Will-o’-the-Wisp), German actor, choreographer and dancer Franz Rogowski (A Hidden Life, Undine, Disco Boy).

Further jury members comprise Indian journalist, curator and advisor to the programming of the Berlin Film Festival, Meenakshi Shedde as well as American film programmer Kim Yutani, Sundance’s Film Festival programming director.

Before the summer movie season consumes the local multiplex, discerning cinephiles and festival fans can bone up on some of the best films of the year, thanks to the always-excellent slate on offer at this year’s New Directors/New Films festival. Over the course of the New York City festival, it will play home to films from 41 directors, including 27 features and 11 shorts.

As ever, this year’s Nd/Nf features a variety of films from around the festival circuit, Sundance to Cannes, Venice to Berlin, and more. The 52nd edition of the festival kicks off this week with Savannah Leaf’s A24 drama “Earth Mama” and concludes with Vuk Lungulov-Klotz’s trans coming-of-age story “Mutt.” In between, film fans can see projects from rising stars, fresh voices, and finally (finally!) get to check out gems like “Joyland,” “Totem,” and “Disco Boy.”

The 52nd edition of New Directors/New Films...

European Film Promotion (Efp), an international network of film promotion institutes from 37 countries, is heading back to Hong Kong’s FilMart for its in-person return.

“It wasn’t clear if the reopening of the market [post-pandemic] will immediately lead to business, but people want to reconnect with local companies,” observes deputy managing director Jo Mühlberger.

This year, 28 sales companies from five European countries will be joining Efp’s Europe! Umbrella (22 onsite and six online). Most of them hail from France, as Unifrance won’t have its own stand, explains Mühlberger.

“Some could say it’s naïve to go there so soon, but these professionals know what they are doing. They really have something to offer, including Berlinale winners. In some Asian territories, awards still sell,” he says.

Among the titles presented this year, eight were awarded at the German fest, including “The Plough” by Philippe Garrel (pictured), sold by Wild Bunch,...

The Asian premiere of Soi Cheang’s “Mad Fate” is just one of three locally-produced movies that have been set as the opening and closing titles of the upcoming Hong Kong International Film Festival.

“Mad Fate” is joined in the festival opening slot on March 30 by “Elegies,” Ann Hui’s documentary portrayal of the topography of contemporary local poetry, which will have its world premiere. The closing film, another world premiere, is “Vital Sign,” an affecting drama directed by Cheuk Wan-chi and starring Louis Koo, Yau Hawk-sau, and Angela Yuen, which will wrap up proceedings on 10 April.

In total, the festival has programmed some 200 films from 64 countries and territories. These include nine world premieres, six international premieres, and 67 Asian premieres.

“Mad Fate,” an intense examination of murder, local superstition and the lower depths of society, premiered last month at the Berlin festival in a special section. Cheang will be a major feature of the Hkiff,...

The 2023 edition of the Berlin International Film Festival has come and gone (we got plenty more to insert here), but here are some of the reviews and future interviews for a huge swath of films from the prestigious film fest.

20,000 Species of Bees (read review)

Afire (Roter Himmel) (read review)

Bad Living (read review)

The Beast in the Jungle (read review)

BlackBerry (read review)

Disco Boy (read review)

Le grand chariot (The Plough) (read review)

Ingeborg Bachmann – Journey into the Desert (read review)

Limbo (read review)

Living Bad (Viver Mal) (read review)

Manodrome (read review)

Music (read review)

Past Lives (read review)

The Shadowless Tower (read review)

She Came to Me (read review)

Silver Haze (read review)

Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything (read review)

The Survival of Kindness (read review)

The Teachers’ Lounge (read review)

Till the End of the Night (read review)

Tótem (read review)…

Continue reading.

Lassoing international film titles as far back as last year’s Manuela Martelli’s Chile ’76 and Saim Sadiq’s Joyland and as recent as Berlinale’s Abbruzzese’s Disco Boy, Lila Avilés’ Tótem and Tia Kouvo’s Family Time, the 2023 edition of the New Directors/New Films is loaded in special filmmaker guests from all corners of the globe. One of our Sundance faves in Savanah Leaf’s Earth Mama will open the fest and Vuk Lungulov-Klotz’s Sundance-Berlinale preemed Mutt will be the Closing Night film. Here is the complete lineup and screening dates.

Opening Night

Earth Mama

Savanah Leaf, USA, 2023, 97m

New York Premiere

A devastating and evocative portrait of motherhood refracted through the prisms of race and class, Savanah Leaf’s auspicious debut feature is a deeply affecting work of cinematic humanism.…...

The 73rd Berlin International Film Festival came to a close this past weekend, and despite speculation that Sundance import “Past Lives” or Lila Avilés’ “Tótem” would take the Golden Bear, the jury, led this year by Kristen Stewart, awarded it to the French documentary “On the Adamant.” Directed by Nicolas Philibert, the movie follows operations at the Parisian Centre de jour l’Adamant, a floating medical facility on the Seine that offers its patients innovative forms of art therapy.

Jordan Mintzer (The Hollywood Reporter) writes, “While documenting the daily routine of a small clinic that most Parisians walk by without ever noticing, ‘On the Adamant’ ultimately becomes a moving testament to what people are capable of, if they could just find the right place to do it.” Guy Lodge (Variety) compares the film to Philibert’s “To Be and To Have,” which is set inside a single-room schoolhouse in rural France,...

The gender-neutral acting prize was won by Spain’s Sofía Otero for ’20,000 Species of Bees’.

Nicolas Philibert’s documentary On The Adamant, about a floating care centre in Paris, was awarded Golden Bear for best film at the Berlin International Film Festival tonight (February 25).

The film, which is being handled internationally by Les Films du Losange, is the fourth documentary to take top honours at the Berlinale.

German films found particular favour with the jury, presided over by Kristen Stewart, with no less than three of the Bear statuettes going to local productions: the Silver Bear Grand Jury award for Christian Petzold’s Afire,...

The documentary “On the Adamant” has been named the best film of the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival, Berlin organizers announced on Saturday.

The film from director Nicolas Philibert follows life in a daycare center located on the Seine in Paris for adults with mental disorders. It is the first documentary to win the festival’s top prize since “Fire at Sea” in 2016.

German director Christian Petzold won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize, essentially the runner-up award, for his drama “Afire,” while Philippe Garrel won the directing award for “The Plough.” The gender-neutral acting prizes went to Sofia Otero for “20,000 Species of Bees” in the leading performance category and Thea Ehre for “Till the End of the Night” in the supporting category.

The jury president was actress Kristen Stewart. The other jurors were actress Goldshifteh Farahani, directors Valeska Grisebach, Radu Jude and Carla Simón and Johnnie To and casting director Francine Maisler.

After the misery of the 2022 Berlin Film Festival, held toward the tail-end of the pandemic and with strict social distancing and Covid testing regulations still in place, it was back to normal at this year’s 73rd edition.

Festivalgoers were so pleased to return to a proper, physical event that they were remarkably tolerant toward a competition programme that was very patchy, at least by comparison with those found in rival events like Cannes and Venice.

The Berlinale launched with Rebecca Miller’s quirky new romantic comedy, She Came to Me, starring Peter Dinklage as an opera composer with writer’s block, Anne Hathaway as his neurotic therapist wife, and the scene-stealing Marisa Tomei as a salty, seafaring but very amorous tugboat captain. This was a film with such oddball charm that it was easy to overlook its self-indulgence. Festivals can take themselves far too seriously. She Came to Me...

Winners have been announced at the 73rd Berlin Film Festival, with On the Adamant by Nicolas Philibert scooping the coveted Golden Bear prize as the best film of the festival’s International Competition. Scroll down for the full list of winners, which were revealed Saturday evening at the Berlinale Palast.

The film chronicles a unique day-care center in the heart of Paris that welcomes adults suffering from mental disorders, offering the kind of care that grounds them in time and space and helps them to recover or keep up their spirits.

Introducing the film, jury head Kristen Stewart said the pic is “masterfully crafted” and acts as “cinematic proof of the vital necessity of human expression.”

Other winners in the International Competition included Philippe Garrel, who picked up the Silver Bear for Best Director for his latest pic Le grand chariot (The Plough). Garrel dedicated the award to the late filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard.

On the Adamant, a documentary by French director Nicolas Philibert that gives an intimate look at the patients and caregivers in a mental health center located on the Seine River in the heart of Paris, has won the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival’s Golden Bear for best film.

For his 11th feature, the 72-year-old Philibert spent months aboard a barge anchored on the Seine in Paris, chronicling a mental health care facility that caters specifically to its patients’ creative needs. His documentary explores issues of creativity and art, of sanity and madness, but does so without applying labels or clear-cut distinctions.

“I don’t like partitions or labels,” Philibert said. “In this film on psychiatry, we were always [careful] to not always distinguish very clearly between patients and carers. I tried to reverse the image we always have of mad people [which I see] as discriminating and stigmatizing. I wanted us to be able,...

As the Berlin Festival turns into its final straight, the industry has warmed to a busy, packed European Film Market which at one and the same time has underscored the challenges still facing the international independent film business.

Following by way of an industry wrap, a dozen takeaways on the 2023 Berlin market, including its Berlinale Series Market, an ever more building proposition at the festival.

The Verdict

If the European Film Market is anything to go by, broadly, the international movie market is in some ways making a comeback, despite still vastly challenging circumstances. On Thursday, the EFM reported “record results” of a total of over 11,500 market participants from 132 countries. “It was a rather busy market, with no single must-have, but much mid-sized product,” Constantin’s Martin Moszkowicz says of this year’s EFM, noting that Constantin received about 90 project submissions prior to market, “which is a lot.” “There’s...