The red carpet will soon roll out for the 77th Festival de Cannes. The international film festival, playing out May 14-25, has a distinct American voice this year. “Barbie” filmmaker Greta Gerwig is the first U.S. female director name jury president. Many veteran American helmers are heading to the French Rivera resort town. George Lucas, who turns 80 on May 14, will receive an honorary Palme d’Or. Francis Ford Coppola’s much-anticipated “Megalopolis” is screening in competition, as is Paul Schrader’s “Oh Canada.” Kevin Costner’s new Western “Horizon, An American Saga” will premiere out of competition and Oliver Stone’s “Lula” is part of the special screening showcase.
Fifty years ago, Coppola was the toast of the 27th Cannes Film Festival. His brilliant psychological thriller “The Conversation” starring Gene Hackman won the Palme D’Or and well as a Special Mention from the Ecumenical Jury. The film would earn three Oscar nominations: picture,...
Fifty years ago, Coppola was the toast of the 27th Cannes Film Festival. His brilliant psychological thriller “The Conversation” starring Gene Hackman won the Palme D’Or and well as a Special Mention from the Ecumenical Jury. The film would earn three Oscar nominations: picture,...
- 4/25/2024
- by Susan King
- Gold Derby
Though festivals and distributors were very excited to sell you a “final” film by Jean-Luc Godard, Fabrice Aragno made clear Phony Wars would not be the last transmission. Continuing Tupac-like beyond-the-grave releases, it’s been announced this year’s Cannes Film Festival will include in their “Events” sidebar the “ultimate film by Jean-Luc Godard,” Scenarios, which I cannot possibly summarize better than their official description and thus:
Scenarios is the title that Jean-Luc Godard chose to give to a final 18-minute gesture, made, literally, the day before his voluntary death. Furthermore, Jean-Luc Godard recorded a 34-minute film in which, mixing still images and moving images, halfway between reading and vision, he presented the Scenarios project .
Worth noting that Scenario was, with Phony Wars, one of two films with which Godard planned to end his career. A project made with single-digit hours left on Earth… well, one’s mind reels at the potential.
Scenarios is the title that Jean-Luc Godard chose to give to a final 18-minute gesture, made, literally, the day before his voluntary death. Furthermore, Jean-Luc Godard recorded a 34-minute film in which, mixing still images and moving images, halfway between reading and vision, he presented the Scenarios project .
Worth noting that Scenario was, with Phony Wars, one of two films with which Godard planned to end his career. A project made with single-digit hours left on Earth… well, one’s mind reels at the potential.
- 4/25/2024
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
The Mother and the Whore.Jean Eustache orbited the world of criticism without ever fully falling into it. His intellectual biographer, Alain Philippon, describes him as a marginal figure at Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1960s and yet actively involved in the debates unfolding in its offices.1 Though Eustache was close with future Cahiers editor-in-chief Jean-Louis Comolli and the magazine championed his films from the start, his critical output was minuscule. He started contributing to Cahiers only after completing his first short, Bad Company (1963). Even then, he wrote little, publishing a few brief pieces on some early films by Paul Vecchiali, Jean-Daniel Pollet, and Costa-Gavras. Luc Moullet would later admit that prior to Bad Company, he thought him the only person at Cahiers “that had absolutely nothing to do with the movies.”2 Indeed, Eustache was often at the offices to pick up his wife, who was employed as a secretary at the magazine.
- 2/26/2024
- MUBI
The world of Indian cinema mourns the loss of Kumar Shahani, a visionary filmmaker whose contributions have left an indelible mark on the landscape of parallel cinema. Shahani, who breathed his last on Sunday at the age of 83, leaves behind a legacy rich with artistic brilliance and innovation.
Born into a world enamored with the magic of storytelling, Kumar Shahani embarked on a journey that would redefine the contours of Indian cinema. His alma mater, the Film and Television Institute of India (Ftii) in Pune, served as the crucible where his cinematic sensibilities were honed. It was here that he found himself under the mentorship of the legendary director Ritwik Ghatak, who recognized in Shahani a spark of genius.
Following in the footsteps of his mentor, Kumar Shahani ventured into the realm of filmmaking with a thirst for experimentation and a keen eye for detail. His sojourn to France, where...
Born into a world enamored with the magic of storytelling, Kumar Shahani embarked on a journey that would redefine the contours of Indian cinema. His alma mater, the Film and Television Institute of India (Ftii) in Pune, served as the crucible where his cinematic sensibilities were honed. It was here that he found himself under the mentorship of the legendary director Ritwik Ghatak, who recognized in Shahani a spark of genius.
Following in the footsteps of his mentor, Kumar Shahani ventured into the realm of filmmaking with a thirst for experimentation and a keen eye for detail. His sojourn to France, where...
- 2/25/2024
- by Chesta Singh
- ReferSMS
The Satire Strikes Back: Dumont Claims His Own Multi-Verse
It’s sometimes difficult to predict what mode French auteur Bruno Dumont will be choosing for his latest film project. Initially revered for his rural, austere tendency for Neo-realism, which earned him comparisons to Bresson and Pialat, Dumont has also shown a penchant for outrageous provocations and thorny social satires. His latest, L’empire, was rumored to be a Star Wars parody, but even this kind of statement is rather superficial considering Dumont seems to hold such reference points in cultural contempt. The film quite infamously triggered the self-exile and retirement of Adèle Haenel from the French film industry, which may lead many to expect Dumont would be pushing boundaries with this odd bird premise.…...
It’s sometimes difficult to predict what mode French auteur Bruno Dumont will be choosing for his latest film project. Initially revered for his rural, austere tendency for Neo-realism, which earned him comparisons to Bresson and Pialat, Dumont has also shown a penchant for outrageous provocations and thorny social satires. His latest, L’empire, was rumored to be a Star Wars parody, but even this kind of statement is rather superficial considering Dumont seems to hold such reference points in cultural contempt. The film quite infamously triggered the self-exile and retirement of Adèle Haenel from the French film industry, which may lead many to expect Dumont would be pushing boundaries with this odd bird premise.…...
- 2/19/2024
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Film at Lincoln Center
“Never Look Away: Serge Daney’s Radical 1970s” brings films by Kurosawa, Bresson, Tati, Godard and more.
IFC Center
As Francis Ford Coppola’s latest recut, One from the Heart: Reprise, continues, Bertrand Bonello’s masterpiece Coma gets a New York premiere; Ken Russell’s Whore, Saw III, and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome also have late showings.
Roxy Cinema
A Ryan O’Neal retrospective brings The Driver on 35mm and Partners, while Cronenberg’s Crash shows on a print; City Dudes returns on Saturday and Sunday brings a puppet program and the Iranian feature Downpour plays on Sunday.
Film Forum
A 4K restoration of The Pianist begins a run while I Heard It Through the Grapevine and The Third Man continue; The Sunshine Boys plays on Sunday.
Museum of the Moving Image
A retrospective of snubbed performances brings films by Howard Hawks,...
Film at Lincoln Center
“Never Look Away: Serge Daney’s Radical 1970s” brings films by Kurosawa, Bresson, Tati, Godard and more.
IFC Center
As Francis Ford Coppola’s latest recut, One from the Heart: Reprise, continues, Bertrand Bonello’s masterpiece Coma gets a New York premiere; Ken Russell’s Whore, Saw III, and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome also have late showings.
Roxy Cinema
A Ryan O’Neal retrospective brings The Driver on 35mm and Partners, while Cronenberg’s Crash shows on a print; City Dudes returns on Saturday and Sunday brings a puppet program and the Iranian feature Downpour plays on Sunday.
Film Forum
A 4K restoration of The Pianist begins a run while I Heard It Through the Grapevine and The Third Man continue; The Sunshine Boys plays on Sunday.
Museum of the Moving Image
A retrospective of snubbed performances brings films by Howard Hawks,...
- 1/26/2024
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Rodrigo Moreno's The Delinquents is screening exclusively on Mubi in many countries.The Delinquents.Words have no owner. They simply are. They live in the speakers of a language, but no one has possession of a verb or a noun. If anyone can come close to such ownership, it is an artist, who puts the word in a complex combination that is theirs alone. A filmmaker's material is not words—though some might say a shot is its equivalent—but rather the world. Through framing, cutting, and duration, the director makes a movie their own, yet what is shot does not obey the will of the filmmaker. The material of the world is the filmmaker's lyrics, and the world does not belong to them.The arrangement and rearrangement of material—whether of words or of the world when it is filmed—into new works of art can be linked...
- 12/18/2023
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSStranger by the Lake.Production has begun on Alain Guiraudie’s next noir-esque feature, Miséricorde, with Dp Claire Mathon—their third collaboration after Stranger by the Lake (2013) and Staying Vertical (2016). The plot centers on a 30-year-old man named Jérémie who returns to a village in southern France, his prior home, for an old friend’s funeral, only to find himself at the center of a police investigation.Recommended VIEWINGJanus Films have shared a trailer for a new 4K restoration of Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil (1964). A virtuosic, formally experimental work of militant cinema, it tells the story of Manoel, a cowherd who, after murdering a ranch owner, flees to join a religious cult headed by a self-proclaimed saint, only to find himself back among violence. A landmark of Brazil’s Cinema Novo...
- 11/9/2023
- MUBI
The Movie Orgy.The title is a kind of ontological dare: can an assemblage of movies all lay on top of each other, swap positions, feel each other? Surely humans love, as they say, “to watch,” to raise voyeurism up as art. But when left to its own devices, does cinema also experience such base urges? Asked another way: when we say “the movie orgy,” don’t we mean “editing”? Disparate parts colliding with and enveloping one another, penetrating and being penetrated, and finally mutating after coming together? Cinema is transformed by—and transforms (us) through—the spaces between the images. A classier writer might cite Robert Bresson, speaking to Cahiers du cinéma at Cannes in 1957: “The cinema must express itself not with images, but with relationships between images, which is not at all the same thing.” A happy vulgarian—I betray that I am one, as I suspect Joe Dante,...
- 10/31/2023
- MUBI
Among the myriad reasons we could call the Criterion Channel the single greatest streaming service is its leveling of cinematic snobbery. Where a new World Cinema Project restoration plays, so too does Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight. I think about this looking at November’s lineup and being happiest about two new additions: a nine-film Robert Bresson retro including L’argent and The Devil, Probably; and a one-film Hype Williams retro including Belly and only Belly, but bringing as a bonus the direct-to-video Belly 2: Millionaire Boyz Club. Until recently such curation seemed impossible.
November will also feature a 20-film noir series boasting the obvious and the not. Maybe the single tightest collection is “Women of the West,” with Johnny Guitar and The Beguiled and Rancho Notorious and The Furies only half of it. Lynch/Oz, Irradiated, and My Two Voices make streaming premieres; Drylongso gets a Criterion Edition; and joining...
November will also feature a 20-film noir series boasting the obvious and the not. Maybe the single tightest collection is “Women of the West,” with Johnny Guitar and The Beguiled and Rancho Notorious and The Furies only half of it. Lynch/Oz, Irradiated, and My Two Voices make streaming premieres; Drylongso gets a Criterion Edition; and joining...
- 10/24/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
"Now what?" "Would you like to go to the cinema?" Any fans of awkward romance must watch this. Mubi has unveiled their official trailer for Aki Kaurismäki's latest film Fallen Leaves, his light-hearted romantic tragicomedy that first premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Two lonely people who meet each other by chance in the Helsinki night, until then can't find each other again. "With this film, Kaurismäki tips his hat to Bresson, Ozu and Chaplin, wanting to tell a story about the things that may lead humanity to a future: longing for love, solidarity, hope, and respect for another human being, nature and anything living or dead." Starring Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen. The film was initially inspired by the song “Les feuilles mortes" (translates to "Dead Leaves”), composed by Joseph Kosma with lyrics by Jacques Prévert. And the fun song in the trailer is by the Finnish band Maustetytöt,...
- 10/12/2023
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
While watching Aki Kaurismäki’s films, one may become aware of how peculiarly attentive the Finnish auteur is to room tones. And his latest, Fallen Leaves, is no exception: the vacuum-sealed deadness of a prefabricated one-room apartment; the cavernous bellow of a factory, enlivened by faraway clanks and moans; the slightly reverberant calm of a bar after the activity has died down; and the humming sine waves of a hospital room.
Such pleasantly varied tones constitute the sparse sonic world of Fallen Leaves, which takes place in an impoverished, industrial corner of Helsinki that will be familiar to viewers of Kaurismäki’s stubbornly proletariat cinema. They provide shades to the film’s overarching loneliness and drudgery, and it seems there are only two alternatives to this droning stillness: music, which wafts in the air from karaoke bar stages and record players, and radio news broadcasts, which unfailingly transmit tragic missives from the war in Ukraine.
Such pleasantly varied tones constitute the sparse sonic world of Fallen Leaves, which takes place in an impoverished, industrial corner of Helsinki that will be familiar to viewers of Kaurismäki’s stubbornly proletariat cinema. They provide shades to the film’s overarching loneliness and drudgery, and it seems there are only two alternatives to this droning stillness: music, which wafts in the air from karaoke bar stages and record players, and radio news broadcasts, which unfailingly transmit tragic missives from the war in Ukraine.
- 9/9/2023
- by Carson Lund
- Slant Magazine
Fallen Leaves, Aki Kaurismäki’s first film since 2017’s The Other Side of Hope, took home the Jury Prize from this year’s Cannes while charming critics more than just about anything else in competition. His “gentle tragicomedy” marks the fourth part of a working-class series, following Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, and The Match Factory Girl, bearing influence from Ozu, Bresson, and Chaplin.
Ahead of a fall-festival run and November 17 theatrical release, Mubi have unveiled a brief but lovely teaser that confirms Rory O’Connor’s Cannes diagnosis of “a charming, moving, bittersweet romance packed with all the lovely things we’ve come to associate with him after four decades.” As he continued, “The locations and colors still come in admirable shades of mustard and pea soup––as do the characters and their moods. As a film, Fallen Leaves could hardly be simpler––two people living separate, lonesome lives meet and...
Ahead of a fall-festival run and November 17 theatrical release, Mubi have unveiled a brief but lovely teaser that confirms Rory O’Connor’s Cannes diagnosis of “a charming, moving, bittersweet romance packed with all the lovely things we’ve come to associate with him after four decades.” As he continued, “The locations and colors still come in admirable shades of mustard and pea soup––as do the characters and their moods. As a film, Fallen Leaves could hardly be simpler––two people living separate, lonesome lives meet and...
- 8/30/2023
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Marvel ended up casting superstar Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular character in Dr. Strange. But due to his personal connection with the film’s director, Ethan Hawke believed he was once wanted for the popular role.
Ethan Hawke once explained why he felt he was the first pick for ‘Dr. Strange’ Ethan Hawke | Rocco Spaziani/Getty Images
There was a point where Hawke was keen on starring in a superhero project. The Training Day star couldn’t help notice how well-crafted the first Iron Man film was. After becoming a fan, he wondered what other veteran actors could do with similar roles. But he also felt committing to these superhero projects was a potential setback.
“So my point is I am totally open to doing something like that, [but] there’s a problem that comes along whenever Marvel’s gonna approach Joaquin [Phoenix] or me or anybody who’s in love with acting,...
Ethan Hawke once explained why he felt he was the first pick for ‘Dr. Strange’ Ethan Hawke | Rocco Spaziani/Getty Images
There was a point where Hawke was keen on starring in a superhero project. The Training Day star couldn’t help notice how well-crafted the first Iron Man film was. After becoming a fan, he wondered what other veteran actors could do with similar roles. But he also felt committing to these superhero projects was a potential setback.
“So my point is I am totally open to doing something like that, [but] there’s a problem that comes along whenever Marvel’s gonna approach Joaquin [Phoenix] or me or anybody who’s in love with acting,...
- 7/10/2023
- by Antonio Stallings
- Showbiz Cheat Sheet
Since Sofia Bohdanowicz introduced Deragh Campbell’s Audrey Brenac in Never Eat Alone, the eye-gravitating protagonist has always been on some inquiry, not unlike a non-criminal investigator. In A Woman Escapes, Audrey ventures into new territory for her fifth film, where she heals from losing her friend Juliane in Paris at her grandmother’s home. Along the path, Williams and Çevik play fictional versions of Audrey to help her in her grief through filmmaking while separated during the pandemic.
Containing dialogue and imagery recalling Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped, this explicit homage to the French auteur allows the three filmmakers to expand what experimental film could be. Throughout her work, Bohdanowicz seeds a bridge between fact and fiction to evoke the audience’s connection with their existing reality. She, Williams, and Çevik emit a patient, inquisitive approach to gazing at the world: Williams’ 3D layering of subtitles and physical...
Containing dialogue and imagery recalling Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped, this explicit homage to the French auteur allows the three filmmakers to expand what experimental film could be. Throughout her work, Bohdanowicz seeds a bridge between fact and fiction to evoke the audience’s connection with their existing reality. She, Williams, and Çevik emit a patient, inquisitive approach to gazing at the world: Williams’ 3D layering of subtitles and physical...
- 6/7/2023
- by Edward Frumkin
- The Film Stage
Early in Aki Kaurismäki’s slender but enormously satisfying Fallen Leaves (Kuolleet Lehdet), the male protagonist is invited by his buddy to go to Friday night karaoke. “Tough guys don’t sing,” he replies, in the signature affectless deadpan shared by all the Finnish master’s characters. But that tough guy turns out to be yearning for love, refusing to give up when a lost phone number and a series of other obstacles keep him from a woman he barely knows. In a sense the tough guy is also Kaurismäki himself, inhabiting a world defined by dourness and melancholy but always seeking pathways to comfort, hope and light.
The director had spoken of retirement after his beautiful Syrian refugee tale The Other Side of Hope in 2017, and this return after six years is waggishly described as a work previously believed to be lost. It’s an expansion of Kaurismäki’s Proletariat Trilogy,...
The director had spoken of retirement after his beautiful Syrian refugee tale The Other Side of Hope in 2017, and this return after six years is waggishly described as a work previously believed to be lost. It’s an expansion of Kaurismäki’s Proletariat Trilogy,...
- 5/22/2023
- by David Rooney
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Humor, it seems, has returned to the Main Competition at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. After a few days of mostly serious dramas about Nazis and terrorists and sweatshops, a lighter touch has emerged from a couple of expected sources: first Todd Haynes, a filmmaker with a great range but also a real touch for pulpy material that he shows in “May December,” and now Aki Kaurismäki, the Finnish master of comedy so deadpan that it can take an audience half the movie to figure out that it’s Ok to laugh.
They figured it out when Kaurismaki’s “Fallen Leaves” premiered in Cannes on Monday. With a brisk one-hour-and-21-minute running time, the film is a wry delight whose very restraint is part of the joke. Jonathan Glazer’s Cannes standout “The Zone of Interest” might be a movie without a single closeup, but “Fallen Leaves” is pretty much a...
They figured it out when Kaurismaki’s “Fallen Leaves” premiered in Cannes on Monday. With a brisk one-hour-and-21-minute running time, the film is a wry delight whose very restraint is part of the joke. Jonathan Glazer’s Cannes standout “The Zone of Interest” might be a movie without a single closeup, but “Fallen Leaves” is pretty much a...
- 5/22/2023
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
The very first winner of the Palme d’Or in 1955 was future Best Picture Oscar winner Marty, which starred Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair as two lonely middle-age adults beginning a tentative relationship in search of love. Before it was called the Palme d’Or, the top Cannes prize known then as the Grand Prix, went in 1946 at the festival’s beginning to David Lean’s Brief Encounter, also the story of two adults who meet by chance and get together.
Both of those Cannes Classics have something inherently in common with Aki Kaurismaki’s wonderful, wryly funny, and poignant new film, Fallen Leaves, which premiered today at Cannes, the latest Competition entry for the master Finnish filmmaker who was last in the run for the Palme d’Or with 2011’s equally great Le Havre. Despite several Eumenical prizes at the fest over the years, Kaurismaki only came close to...
Both of those Cannes Classics have something inherently in common with Aki Kaurismaki’s wonderful, wryly funny, and poignant new film, Fallen Leaves, which premiered today at Cannes, the latest Competition entry for the master Finnish filmmaker who was last in the run for the Palme d’Or with 2011’s equally great Le Havre. Despite several Eumenical prizes at the fest over the years, Kaurismaki only came close to...
- 5/22/2023
- by Pete Hammond
- Deadline Film + TV
In the prelude to the big Cannes opener, the Johnny Depp-starring “Jeanne du Barry,” a journalist who was spat on by the film’s director has said that the (female) filmmaker is “outspokenly anti-#MeToo.” Maïwenn admitted last week to assaulting the journalist.
“She’s outspokenly anti-#MeToo and she made a gesture to please her world, and that’s why she bragged about it on TV,” stated Edwy Plenel when speaking to Variety in his first interview since the incident. “We could see a sort of pride that echoed that world.”
Planel was referring to Maïwenn’s comments in Paris Match in 2020 saying that “It’s crazy how many stupidities they say these days! These women don’t like men, that’s clear, and they’re causing very serious collateral damage.” In that same interview she noted “When I hear women complaining that men are only interested in their bottom,...
“She’s outspokenly anti-#MeToo and she made a gesture to please her world, and that’s why she bragged about it on TV,” stated Edwy Plenel when speaking to Variety in his first interview since the incident. “We could see a sort of pride that echoed that world.”
Planel was referring to Maïwenn’s comments in Paris Match in 2020 saying that “It’s crazy how many stupidities they say these days! These women don’t like men, that’s clear, and they’re causing very serious collateral damage.” In that same interview she noted “When I hear women complaining that men are only interested in their bottom,...
- 5/16/2023
- by Scott Mendelson
- The Wrap
"I don't even know your name." "I'll tell you next time." The Match Factory has revealed a trailer for Aki Kaurismäki's latest film Fallen Leaves, his light-hearted romantic "tragicomedy". This is premiering at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival later this month, playing in the Main Competition, not his first time either (he won the Grand Prix once before in Cannes for The Man Without a Past). Two lonely people who meet each other by chance in the Helsinki night and try to find the first love of their lives. "With this film, Kaurismäki tips his hat to Bresson, Ozu and Chaplin, wanting to tell a story about the things that may lead humanity to a future: longing for love, solidarity, hope, and respect for another human being, nature and anything living or dead." The movie is inspired by the song “Les feuilles mortes" (translates to "Dead Leaves”), composed by Joseph Kosma...
- 5/10/2023
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
One of the great directors working today, Aki Kaurismäki, is returning with his first film since 2017’s The Other Side of Hope. Fallen Leaves, the latest work from the Finnish director, will premiere in competition at Cannes Film Festival this month and now The Match Factory has debuted the first trailer as sales kick off. Described as a “gentle tragicomedy,” it marks the fourth part of Kaurismäki’s working-class trilogy, following Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, and The Match Factory Girl.
Here’s the synopsis: “Fallen Leaves tells the story of two lonely people (Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen) who meet each other by chance in the Helsinki night and try to find the first, only, and ultimate love of their lives. Their path towards this honorable goal is clouded by the man’s alcoholism, lost phone numbers, not knowing each other’s names or addresses, and life’s general tendency...
Here’s the synopsis: “Fallen Leaves tells the story of two lonely people (Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen) who meet each other by chance in the Helsinki night and try to find the first, only, and ultimate love of their lives. Their path towards this honorable goal is clouded by the man’s alcoholism, lost phone numbers, not knowing each other’s names or addresses, and life’s general tendency...
- 5/10/2023
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Museum of the Moving Image
A series on Jeanne Dielman‘s influences brings the film itself and work by Snow, Bresson, and Pasolini; somewhat different from Jeanne Dielman, Godzilla vs. Megalon plays Friday and Sunday.
Anthology Film Archives
A Joe Dante retrospective begins; films by Luis Buñuel and Chaplin screen through the weekend in Essential Cinema.
Film Forum
The recently restored Finnish classic Eight Deadly Shots begins its two-part run; Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity and The Conformist continue; two Harold Lloyd movies screen; The Jackie Robinson Story plays on 35mm this Sunday.
Film at Lincoln Center
The newly restored Drylongso continues screening. (Read our interview with director Cauleen Smith here.)
IFC Center
White Material, Chocolat, and Beau Travail offer a Claire Denis fix; Before Sunrise and Before Sunset screen, while Fight Club, Akira, Jaws, Barb Wire, and Poison Ivy have late showings,...
Museum of the Moving Image
A series on Jeanne Dielman‘s influences brings the film itself and work by Snow, Bresson, and Pasolini; somewhat different from Jeanne Dielman, Godzilla vs. Megalon plays Friday and Sunday.
Anthology Film Archives
A Joe Dante retrospective begins; films by Luis Buñuel and Chaplin screen through the weekend in Essential Cinema.
Film Forum
The recently restored Finnish classic Eight Deadly Shots begins its two-part run; Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity and The Conformist continue; two Harold Lloyd movies screen; The Jackie Robinson Story plays on 35mm this Sunday.
Film at Lincoln Center
The newly restored Drylongso continues screening. (Read our interview with director Cauleen Smith here.)
IFC Center
White Material, Chocolat, and Beau Travail offer a Claire Denis fix; Before Sunrise and Before Sunset screen, while Fight Club, Akira, Jaws, Barb Wire, and Poison Ivy have late showings,...
- 3/31/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Thirty or so minutes into Angela Schanelec’s Music, a character makes a startling discovery. We’re inside a prison on the outskirts of an unidentified Greek town, where Jon (Aliocha Schneider) is to spend a manslaughter sentence. And we’re watching him bathed in the cell’s cold light when he suddenly opens his mouth and starts to sing. It’s a moment that shatters the film, one of the loudest in a tale otherwise marked by wistful silences. Jon’s stuck a grocery list of classical composers to the wall, and he intones an aria from Vivaldi’s Il Giustino, “Vedrò con mio diletto.” It’s the first time we hear him sing and it amounts to an otherworldly revelation, both for the young man crooning and those of us who listen: a human being waking up to a superpower.
There’s a tendency to write off Schanelec’s cinema in medical terms.
There’s a tendency to write off Schanelec’s cinema in medical terms.
- 3/6/2023
- by Leonardo Goi
- The Film Stage
Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
Alcarràs (Carla Simón)
Big agriculture and a renewable energy company (of all people) threaten the livelihood of a Catalonian peach farming family in Alcarràs, Carla Simón’s latest sunny pastoral and her first since the 2017 debut Summer 1993. Alcarràs is set in the present day, though you’d hardly notice, and like many of its characters it looks towards the past. That idea––that time has a way of sometimes flattening out––feels central to Simón’s film and distinguishes it from similar works of social realism: Alcarràs appears simple, even slight at first, but is deceptively far-reaching; enough at least to have impressed a Berlinale jury led by M. Night Shyamalan (and including no less than Ryusuke Hamaguchi), who collectively awarded Simón the Golden Bear.
Alcarràs (Carla Simón)
Big agriculture and a renewable energy company (of all people) threaten the livelihood of a Catalonian peach farming family in Alcarràs, Carla Simón’s latest sunny pastoral and her first since the 2017 debut Summer 1993. Alcarràs is set in the present day, though you’d hardly notice, and like many of its characters it looks towards the past. That idea––that time has a way of sometimes flattening out––feels central to Simón’s film and distinguishes it from similar works of social realism: Alcarràs appears simple, even slight at first, but is deceptively far-reaching; enough at least to have impressed a Berlinale jury led by M. Night Shyamalan (and including no less than Ryusuke Hamaguchi), who collectively awarded Simón the Golden Bear.
- 2/23/2023
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Now in his mid-80s, Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski proved that age is just a number when his film Eo premiered in Cannes last year, earning him the Jury Prize for this picaresque story of a donkey on the move, from good situations to bad. His lucky streak continued this year when the film was Oscar-nominated for Best International Feature — surprisingly, his first nod from the Academy in a career spanning 60 years.
Related Story Pawel Mykietyn Admits He Loved The “Crazy” Of Composing Music For A Wandering Donkey In Poland’s Oscar Entry ‘Eo’ – Sound & Screen Related Story 'Fire Of Love' Team On Their Volcanic Love Story For The Ages – Contenders Film: The Nominees Related Story Alice Rohrwacher & Alfonso Cuarón's 'Le Pupille' Draws Inspiration From Classic Italian Cinema – Contenders Film: The Nominees
Accompanied by his wife and writing partner Ewa Piaskowska for a panel at Deadline’s Contenders Film: The Nominees event,...
Related Story Pawel Mykietyn Admits He Loved The “Crazy” Of Composing Music For A Wandering Donkey In Poland’s Oscar Entry ‘Eo’ – Sound & Screen Related Story 'Fire Of Love' Team On Their Volcanic Love Story For The Ages – Contenders Film: The Nominees Related Story Alice Rohrwacher & Alfonso Cuarón's 'Le Pupille' Draws Inspiration From Classic Italian Cinema – Contenders Film: The Nominees
Accompanied by his wife and writing partner Ewa Piaskowska for a panel at Deadline’s Contenders Film: The Nominees event,...
- 2/18/2023
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
The words “Quentin Tarantino” and “video store” will forever be linked in the popular imagination. But imagine that Quentin didn’t just work at a video store. Imagine that he owned, operated, designed, and organized every shelf of the video store of his dreams. That place might have looked a lot like Kim’s Video.
If you were an ardent film fanatic and you walked into Kim’s, the fabled New York movie-rental emporium, which opened in 1987 and ultimately expanded to five Manhattan locations (the most famous was Mondo Kim’s on St. Mark’s Place), the store looked like nothing so much as the inside of your brain. At Kim’s, you seemed to be standing in the middle of an explosion of cinema. It was a store where grindhouse movies rubbed shoulders with Bergman and Bresson, where the wall of horror included films by Dario Argento that weren’t even out on video,...
If you were an ardent film fanatic and you walked into Kim’s, the fabled New York movie-rental emporium, which opened in 1987 and ultimately expanded to five Manhattan locations (the most famous was Mondo Kim’s on St. Mark’s Place), the store looked like nothing so much as the inside of your brain. At Kim’s, you seemed to be standing in the middle of an explosion of cinema. It was a store where grindhouse movies rubbed shoulders with Bergman and Bresson, where the wall of horror included films by Dario Argento that weren’t even out on video,...
- 1/20/2023
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
A decades-in-the-making sequel to a critically dismissed landmark of ’80s schlock-buster culture. A wild speculative-fiction odyssey from two directors whose previous feature centered on a flatulent corpse. A cannibal love story. A three-hour Telugu-language action epic. A Bresson-inspired Polish art film whose protagonist is a donkey.
For most of Oscar history, it would have been unusual to see any films with the above descriptions in contention for the night’s biggest prize. And yet it would hardly be a major surprise to see any one of them land a nomination when the best picture Academy Award slate is announced next month.
Even more so than the pandemic-era Oscar years, which always felt contingent and ad-hoc, a system in crisis doing its best to hold the line, a look at the 2022 best picture race sees a snapshot of a business clearly deep into a profound transition. On the surface, normality...
For most of Oscar history, it would have been unusual to see any films with the above descriptions in contention for the night’s biggest prize. And yet it would hardly be a major surprise to see any one of them land a nomination when the best picture Academy Award slate is announced next month.
Even more so than the pandemic-era Oscar years, which always felt contingent and ad-hoc, a system in crisis doing its best to hold the line, a look at the 2022 best picture race sees a snapshot of a business clearly deep into a profound transition. On the surface, normality...
- 12/21/2022
- by Andrew Barker
- Variety Film + TV
Inspired by Robert Bresson’s 1966 classic “Au Hasard Balthazar,” Jerzy Skolimowski’s “Eo” also follows the life and times of a humble donkey. However, this latest offering by the 84-year-old Polish filmmaker is in no sense a direct remake of one of cinema’s enduring masterworks. So titled for the hee-hawing sounds a donkey makes, “Eo” (now in theaters) is an experimental donkey picaresque, dispensing with the ascetic filmmaking aesthetic for which Bresson was best known and instead capturing the world as vividly experienced — seen, felt, imagined, perhaps mourned — through all the senses of one noble ass.
Continue reading ‘Eo’: Jerzy Skolimowski On Presenting A Donkey’s Inner Monologue [Interview] at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘Eo’: Jerzy Skolimowski On Presenting A Donkey’s Inner Monologue [Interview] at The Playlist.
- 12/17/2022
- by Isaac Feldberg
- The Playlist
John Waters officially unveiled his semi-annual list of top 10 films of the year, filled mostly with sex-laden dramas and yes, one Polish existential donkey movie.
Waters awarded the top honor of 2022 to François Ozon’s “Peter Von Kant,” calling the Rainer Werner Fassbinder-inspired feature “by far the best movie of the year” in a list shared with Artforum.
“Fassbinder’s classic lesbian melodrama is appropriated and remade as a gay Frenchman’s love letter to the original version,” Waters wrote. “Hilariously stilted, often overwrought, but always highly entertaining, this cock-eyed tribute will make you swoon when Hanna Schygulla finally makes an appearance and Isabelle Adjani soon follows. My God, it’s just plain Douglas Sirk perfect.”
Waters’ second pick, “Eo” by Jerzy Skolimowski, is another “tribute film” with Waters calling it “Bresson’s ‘Au Hasard Balthazar’ meets ‘Old Yeller.'”
“Can a donkey remember? Just ask Isabelle Huppert, who...
Waters awarded the top honor of 2022 to François Ozon’s “Peter Von Kant,” calling the Rainer Werner Fassbinder-inspired feature “by far the best movie of the year” in a list shared with Artforum.
“Fassbinder’s classic lesbian melodrama is appropriated and remade as a gay Frenchman’s love letter to the original version,” Waters wrote. “Hilariously stilted, often overwrought, but always highly entertaining, this cock-eyed tribute will make you swoon when Hanna Schygulla finally makes an appearance and Isabelle Adjani soon follows. My God, it’s just plain Douglas Sirk perfect.”
Waters’ second pick, “Eo” by Jerzy Skolimowski, is another “tribute film” with Waters calling it “Bresson’s ‘Au Hasard Balthazar’ meets ‘Old Yeller.'”
“Can a donkey remember? Just ask Isabelle Huppert, who...
- 12/7/2022
- by Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
Polish maestro Jerzy Skolimowski calls Eo, winner of the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize and just this week the Best Foreign Film award from the New York Film Critics Circle, “practically a road movie” whose POVs from the titular donkey “were the most effective element of the whole filming and editing.”
Eo is a vision of modern Europe seen through the eyes of a donkey on a stoic journey through a world where disaster and despair alternate with unexpected bliss. From Sideshow & Janus Films, it’s Poland’s entry into the Best International Feature Film Oscar race.
Related: The Contenders International – Deadline’s Full Coverage
Comparisons have been made to Robert Bresson’s 1966 study of the same breed of animal in Au Hazard Balthazar, something Skolimowski welcomes. During Deadline’s Contenders Film: International event, Skolimowski discussed the profound impact that movie had on him.
“I was a young unknown filmmaker...
Eo is a vision of modern Europe seen through the eyes of a donkey on a stoic journey through a world where disaster and despair alternate with unexpected bliss. From Sideshow & Janus Films, it’s Poland’s entry into the Best International Feature Film Oscar race.
Related: The Contenders International – Deadline’s Full Coverage
Comparisons have been made to Robert Bresson’s 1966 study of the same breed of animal in Au Hazard Balthazar, something Skolimowski welcomes. During Deadline’s Contenders Film: International event, Skolimowski discussed the profound impact that movie had on him.
“I was a young unknown filmmaker...
- 12/3/2022
- by Nancy Tartaglione
- Deadline Film + TV
I have been breathlessly awaiting the release of Sight and Sound's once-a-decade poll on the 100 greatest films of all time. Even though the makeup of the list has absolutely no bearing on my own feelings about the films I love, I am always curious to get a lay of the land and see what kind of filmgoing consensus is out there, especially in a corner of the film community that isn't constantly obsessed with superheroes and the box office. This only comes around every 10 years, so it's important for us to treasure this celebration of Hollywood classics, art-house favorites, and international landmarks.
In this new 2022 update of the poll, 25 of the films that appeared on the previous list in 2012 are completely gone. This isn't a case of 25 films released in the last 10 years — or, actually, 24 new films, as the 2012 list featured 101 titles due to a tie — joining the list since it was last published.
In this new 2022 update of the poll, 25 of the films that appeared on the previous list in 2012 are completely gone. This isn't a case of 25 films released in the last 10 years — or, actually, 24 new films, as the 2012 list featured 101 titles due to a tie — joining the list since it was last published.
- 12/2/2022
- by Mike Shutt
- Slash Film
Buenos Aires — Buenos Aires-based Meikincine Entertainment, one of the most active sales agents at this year’s Ventana Sur, has closed the U.S. and Canada with Cinephobia Releasing on “Sublime,” produced by Buenos Aires’ Tarea Fina and a standout at Ventana Sur’s 2021 Copia Final pix-in-post competition.
“Sublime” went on to world premiere at Berlin’s Generation 14-Plus strand this February.
In parallel, Meikincine has picked up world sales rights outside Argentina to Tarea Fina’s latest feature, “Alemania,” directed by Maria Zanetti (“Furia”), which wraps its shoot on Dec. 2.
A coming of age tale “Sublime” marks the feature debut of Argentina’s Mariano Biasin, who scored a Crystal Bear for best short film at the 2016 Berlinale Generation KPlus for “El inicio de Fabrizio.”
“Sublime” turns on Manuel, 16, as he struggles with desire, tangled relationships and a coalescing identity in a coastal Argentinian town.
“Anchored by a soundtrack played...
“Sublime” went on to world premiere at Berlin’s Generation 14-Plus strand this February.
In parallel, Meikincine has picked up world sales rights outside Argentina to Tarea Fina’s latest feature, “Alemania,” directed by Maria Zanetti (“Furia”), which wraps its shoot on Dec. 2.
A coming of age tale “Sublime” marks the feature debut of Argentina’s Mariano Biasin, who scored a Crystal Bear for best short film at the 2016 Berlinale Generation KPlus for “El inicio de Fabrizio.”
“Sublime” turns on Manuel, 16, as he struggles with desire, tangled relationships and a coalescing identity in a coastal Argentinian town.
“Anchored by a soundtrack played...
- 12/2/2022
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
At the age of 84, Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski has crafted one of the most vigorously energetic and vibrant films of the year. Inspired by Bresson’s seminal classic Au Hasard Balthazar, but taking the idea to formally dazzling new heights, Eo tells the journey of a donkey traversing through Europe. Via a series of striking vignettes, we witness the totality of the human (and animal) experience.
As Poland’s Oscar entry opens in U.S. theaters courtesy of Sideshow and Janus Film, I had the pleasure of speaking with Skolimowski and his co-writer, producer, and wife Ewa Piaskowska about the total freedom they found in creating Eo, the power of Bresson, leaving room for the audience’s imagination, and the Christ-like allegory in the film.
The Film Stage: There’s a sense, watching the film, that you gave yourself total freedom in where this journey would go. Can you talk about developing the structure?...
As Poland’s Oscar entry opens in U.S. theaters courtesy of Sideshow and Janus Film, I had the pleasure of speaking with Skolimowski and his co-writer, producer, and wife Ewa Piaskowska about the total freedom they found in creating Eo, the power of Bresson, leaving room for the audience’s imagination, and the Christ-like allegory in the film.
The Film Stage: There’s a sense, watching the film, that you gave yourself total freedom in where this journey would go. Can you talk about developing the structure?...
- 11/18/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Eo (2022).It is not often that a film is made with radical sympathy. Too often, movies ignore the longing and pain of people, excluding their existence in form and feeling from storyworlds. And if such things are acknowledged, the movie will tend to make up for this rarity by overplaying misery and desperation. Jerzy Skolimowski's Eo, a tremendously sad but also overwhelmingly beautiful picture, chooses the radical path. The film is devoted, in body and soul, style and spirit, to sympathizing with another creature, and one who suffers a great deal without exploiting either its pathos or the viewer’s emotional reserves. Skolimowski and his co-writer, producer, and wife Ewa, in the spirit of great compassion, tell the story not of a human creature, but of an animal; and better yet, a donkey.Even with Robert Bresson’s Au hasard Balthazar (1966) as a precedent, it’s an unexpected subject,...
- 11/17/2022
- MUBI
Five Inspirations is a series in which we ask directors to share five things that shaped and informed their film. Lorenzo Vigas's The Box is now showing exclusively on Mubi in many countries—including the United States, United Kingdom, India, Turkey, Germany, Ireland, and Canada—starting November 11, 2022, in the series The New Auteurs.Inspiration #1Mouchette by Robert BressonRobert Bresson's work has influenced me because it goes against the established norm within the cinematographic narrative. Bresson moves away from the usual tools of manipulation and seeks to convey emotion through pure cinematic language. Actors should not convey emotion through their performances; rather, as a result of the cinematographic narrative, the viewer comes to feel the emotional movement of the actors. The individual shot should not convey beauty, but the sum of them together is what should achieve meaning. The work is the sum of all its elements and none of them should stand out.
- 11/10/2022
- MUBI
‘Old ways’ meet modernity in its purest brutality in Li Ruijun’s drama “Return To Dust”, a shocking proof of life’s injustices that have the tendency of pouring on some people’s heads bucketwise. When they do not exactly pour over the head of Ma (Renlin Wu), the least loved of many brothers, than the heavy rains do. But as the good man is very much used to it, he takes whatever comes with the calmness of someone who doesn’t wish much of life, and has even less to lose.
“Return to Dust“ is screening at Thessaloniki International Film Festival
Li takes us to the vast landscapes of Gaotai and its surroundings on a journey through all four seasons and different stages of radical changes Ma is met with during that time. It is not only his life that gets impacted by the sudden appearance of land developers.
“Return to Dust“ is screening at Thessaloniki International Film Festival
Li takes us to the vast landscapes of Gaotai and its surroundings on a journey through all four seasons and different stages of radical changes Ma is met with during that time. It is not only his life that gets impacted by the sudden appearance of land developers.
- 11/8/2022
- by Marina D. Richter
- AsianMoviePulse
In "Saint Omer," the fiction debut of French filmmaker Alice Diop, Rama (Kayije Kagame) is a literature professor at a prestigious French university. She seems disconnected from her family -- when she's at dinner with them, she barely speaks, and when she does, her responses are short and deliberately non-descript. There's the sense that Rama would very much rather keep things to herself than share with her family. She's traveling to witness a high-profile court case, with the hopes of using the case to write a contemporary adaptation of the Medea myth.
The case in question involves Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanga), a Ph.D. student studying philosophy and a Senegalese immigrant. She's accused of something unthinkable -- when her child was just 15 months old, she abandoned her on the beach with the intention of leaving her to be swept away by the tide to die. To put it simply, and no less brutally,...
The case in question involves Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanga), a Ph.D. student studying philosophy and a Senegalese immigrant. She's accused of something unthinkable -- when her child was just 15 months old, she abandoned her on the beach with the intention of leaving her to be swept away by the tide to die. To put it simply, and no less brutally,...
- 11/7/2022
- by Barry Levitt
- Slash Film
The trailer of the upcoming drama film, ‘Eo’, directed by Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, was unveiled recently. The film, inspired by Robert Bresson’s 1966 film ‘Au Hasard Balthazar’, follows the life of a donkey born in a Polish circus.
The film, which shared the Cannes Jury Prize with Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s ‘The Eight Mountains’, shares a vision of modern Europe through the prism of a grey donkey, Eo, who is torn away by animal activists from his beloved circus performer owner, and passed from hand to hand in the service of humans, reports ‘Variety’.
On his life’s path, Eo meets all sorts of people and experiences joy and pain, as well as disasters and unexpected bliss.
As per ‘Variety’, Skolimowski is an animal lover. He saw ‘Au Hasard Balthazar’ soon after its 1966 release. “This was the lesson I got from Bresson,” said Skolimowski, quoted by...
The film, which shared the Cannes Jury Prize with Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s ‘The Eight Mountains’, shares a vision of modern Europe through the prism of a grey donkey, Eo, who is torn away by animal activists from his beloved circus performer owner, and passed from hand to hand in the service of humans, reports ‘Variety’.
On his life’s path, Eo meets all sorts of people and experiences joy and pain, as well as disasters and unexpected bliss.
As per ‘Variety’, Skolimowski is an animal lover. He saw ‘Au Hasard Balthazar’ soon after its 1966 release. “This was the lesson I got from Bresson,” said Skolimowski, quoted by...
- 10/7/2022
- by Glamsham Bureau
- GlamSham
Our narrator is a donkey, but this story is far from asinine.
Jerzy Skolimowski’s “Eo,” which shared the Cannes Jury Prize along with “The Eight Mountains” this year, centers on the titular donkey, who is taken from his circus performer owner by a group of animal activists. Yet Eo’s life remains in the service of humans despite their efforts, and Eo acts as a witness to the many adventures life has to bring.
“Eo” is playing at the London Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and Mill Valley Film Festival. The film will open in New York on November 18 and in Los Angeles on December 2 from distributor Janus Films and Sideshow.
“The popular opinion [is] that donkeys are stubborn and stupid, but I disagree. Stubborn? Yes, sometimes very stubborn. But not stupid. I found them extremely intelligent animals,” Polish director Skolimowski told Variety. “The whole film is dedicated to...
Jerzy Skolimowski’s “Eo,” which shared the Cannes Jury Prize along with “The Eight Mountains” this year, centers on the titular donkey, who is taken from his circus performer owner by a group of animal activists. Yet Eo’s life remains in the service of humans despite their efforts, and Eo acts as a witness to the many adventures life has to bring.
“Eo” is playing at the London Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and Mill Valley Film Festival. The film will open in New York on November 18 and in Los Angeles on December 2 from distributor Janus Films and Sideshow.
“The popular opinion [is] that donkeys are stubborn and stupid, but I disagree. Stubborn? Yes, sometimes very stubborn. But not stupid. I found them extremely intelligent animals,” Polish director Skolimowski told Variety. “The whole film is dedicated to...
- 10/6/2022
- by Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
It may officially be the year of the tiger in the Chinese Zodiac calendar, but in the world of film, it’s definitely the year of the wee donkey.
The humble equine features in films such as Searchlight’s “The Banshees of Inisherin” and even Neon’s “Triangle of Sadness,” but nowhere is this loyal beast of burden in the spotlight more than Janus Films and Sideshow’s “Eo,” from legendary Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski.
The film — which shared the Cannes Jury Prize with Félix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s “The Eight Mountains” — shares a vision of modern Europe through the prism of a gray donkey, Eo, who is torn away by animal activists from his beloved circus performer owner, and passed from hand to hand in the service of humans. On his life’s path, Eo meets all sorts of people and experiences joy and pain, as well as disasters and unexpected bliss.
The humble equine features in films such as Searchlight’s “The Banshees of Inisherin” and even Neon’s “Triangle of Sadness,” but nowhere is this loyal beast of burden in the spotlight more than Janus Films and Sideshow’s “Eo,” from legendary Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski.
The film — which shared the Cannes Jury Prize with Félix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s “The Eight Mountains” — shares a vision of modern Europe through the prism of a gray donkey, Eo, who is torn away by animal activists from his beloved circus performer owner, and passed from hand to hand in the service of humans. On his life’s path, Eo meets all sorts of people and experiences joy and pain, as well as disasters and unexpected bliss.
- 10/6/2022
- by Manori Ravindran
- Variety Film + TV
Dennis Lim, the artistic director of the New York Film Festival, has a confession.
“I hate ‘back to normal’ as a phrase and as a concept,” he said with a chuckle. For the festival, however, the 60th edition kicking off tonight with White Noise “does feel kind of close to the experience we know. We’re at pre-pandemic levels of attendance, almost every filmmaker coming to present their work. It will hopefully feel like a welcome return to familiar things but with a lot of fresh aspects as well.”
In 2020, while Cannes, Telluride and others opted to cancel their events due to Covid, New York managed to pull off a mostly virtual edition with online and drive-in screenings. Last year, while auditoriums were once again allowed to be 100 full, vaccines were still rolling out, travel restrictions were tight and many filmgoers were not yet comfortable being back in theaters.
Lim’s colleague,...
“I hate ‘back to normal’ as a phrase and as a concept,” he said with a chuckle. For the festival, however, the 60th edition kicking off tonight with White Noise “does feel kind of close to the experience we know. We’re at pre-pandemic levels of attendance, almost every filmmaker coming to present their work. It will hopefully feel like a welcome return to familiar things but with a lot of fresh aspects as well.”
In 2020, while Cannes, Telluride and others opted to cancel their events due to Covid, New York managed to pull off a mostly virtual edition with online and drive-in screenings. Last year, while auditoriums were once again allowed to be 100 full, vaccines were still rolling out, travel restrictions were tight and many filmgoers were not yet comfortable being back in theaters.
Lim’s colleague,...
- 9/30/2022
- by Dade Hayes and Jill Goldsmith
- Deadline Film + TV
Venice film festival: Sigourney Weaver and Joel Edgerton can’t save this stilted, eccentric crime story
Paul Schrader is back with another variation on his signature theme, although now it feels like a fifth-generation Xerox. Here again is the lonely, driven male – derived from the philosopher-hero of Bresson’s Pickpocket – broodingly writing his journal of an evening in conditions of monkish austerity, haunted by the existential revelations of crime and a violent past, trying to transform or subsume his trauma into some new vocational obsession.
Master Gardener has been described as the third film in a trilogy with First Reformed (2017) and The Card Counter (2021), although the resemblances go further back into his cv than that and Schrader is probably unique in that he is not merely an auteur but a genre unto himself. This new iteration is eccentric – an oddity, certainly, with its stately, formal dialogue set-pieces which feel somewhat...
Paul Schrader is back with another variation on his signature theme, although now it feels like a fifth-generation Xerox. Here again is the lonely, driven male – derived from the philosopher-hero of Bresson’s Pickpocket – broodingly writing his journal of an evening in conditions of monkish austerity, haunted by the existential revelations of crime and a violent past, trying to transform or subsume his trauma into some new vocational obsession.
Master Gardener has been described as the third film in a trilogy with First Reformed (2017) and The Card Counter (2021), although the resemblances go further back into his cv than that and Schrader is probably unique in that he is not merely an auteur but a genre unto himself. This new iteration is eccentric – an oddity, certainly, with its stately, formal dialogue set-pieces which feel somewhat...
- 9/4/2022
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Click here to read the full article.
Ahead of the world premiere of Paul Schrader’s latest feature, Master Gardener, at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, the legendary screenwriter and director was nudged into casting a backward glance on his 50-year career in the movies. Next week in Venice, the auteur will receive an honorary Golden Lion for his contributions to cinema.
Early in the press conference, Schrader was asked which of the films he’s directed he thinks best represents him.
“You know, directors like and dislike their children for different reasons,” he replied. “Probably my favorite is Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, just because it’s the damnedest thing. I still can’t believe I ever made that film. The most personal for me is First Reformed or Affliction. The best stylistically, I think, is Comfort of Strangers. Cat People is kind of special. You know,...
Ahead of the world premiere of Paul Schrader’s latest feature, Master Gardener, at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, the legendary screenwriter and director was nudged into casting a backward glance on his 50-year career in the movies. Next week in Venice, the auteur will receive an honorary Golden Lion for his contributions to cinema.
Early in the press conference, Schrader was asked which of the films he’s directed he thinks best represents him.
“You know, directors like and dislike their children for different reasons,” he replied. “Probably my favorite is Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, just because it’s the damnedest thing. I still can’t believe I ever made that film. The most personal for me is First Reformed or Affliction. The best stylistically, I think, is Comfort of Strangers. Cat People is kind of special. You know,...
- 9/3/2022
- by Patrick Brzeski
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Final Cut, a workshop supporting films in post-production from African and Arab countries – launched by the Venice Film Festival’s industry section, Venice Production Bridge – celebrates its 10th anniversary this week.
Its goals have remained the same, however, as it continues to provide emerging filmmakers with concrete assistance as well as visibility, all the while strengthening Venice’s role as “bridge builder,” says Alessandra Speciale, its curator. The final selection features titles made by directors from nine different countries: Algeria, Jordan, Guinea, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Central African Republic and Tunisia.
This year, two additional projects were added to the usual six work-in-progress films, thanks to the France in Focus initiative, supported by Unifrance: Karim Bensalah’s debut “Black Light,” sold internationally by The Party Film Sales, and “The Cemetery of Cinema,” directed by Thierno Souleymane Diallo and marking Guinea’s first presence at the workshop.
Diallo, who has been...
Its goals have remained the same, however, as it continues to provide emerging filmmakers with concrete assistance as well as visibility, all the while strengthening Venice’s role as “bridge builder,” says Alessandra Speciale, its curator. The final selection features titles made by directors from nine different countries: Algeria, Jordan, Guinea, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Central African Republic and Tunisia.
This year, two additional projects were added to the usual six work-in-progress films, thanks to the France in Focus initiative, supported by Unifrance: Karim Bensalah’s debut “Black Light,” sold internationally by The Party Film Sales, and “The Cemetery of Cinema,” directed by Thierno Souleymane Diallo and marking Guinea’s first presence at the workshop.
Diallo, who has been...
- 9/1/2022
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
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