Month: November 2018

Japan’s film industry is still highly insular, making films mostly by Japanese for Japanese audiences. But over the past two decades Japan-resident, non-natives have been making inroads. They include Australian scriptwriter Max Mannix with the Kiyoshi Kurosawa drama “Tokyo Sonata,” Welsh director John Williams (“The Trial”,) and Canadian producer Jason Gray with the futuristic anthology

Victor Moreno’s “The Hidden City” is an underground doc – literally – years in the making. The film had help in finding its light at the end of a tunnel with awards at the Abycine Lanza independent film market and the inaugural European Council Eurimages Lab Project Award in 2016, and competed at the Seville

AMSTERDAM — Despite divisions in the outside world, the community spirit still thrives in IDFA’s Forum. It used to be called The Cuban Hat. But now, before the main awards are handed out at IDFA, the festival’s industry arm has a more personal honor to bestow: The Dutch Clog. The business equivalent of the main

In 1998, French filmmaker Olivier Meyrou filmed Yves Saint Laurent as he prepared what would be his final collection before the top-tier fashion brand sold to Gucci the following year. It was the end of an era, as Saint Laurent was already the last of the great French designers to operate his own house, and

AMSTERDAM — Under the banner of ‘The Humanoid Cookbook.’ this year’s DocLab is going back to the basics of human interaction. In the Brakke Grond, a table and chair are set in front of a TV monitor. There’s a white tablecloth, a place setting and even a little bunch of decorative flowers. But the woman

November 21, 2018 7:48PM PT Singaporean filmmaker, Yeo Siew Hua is to receive the Young Cinema Award at the upcoming Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Indian director and actress, Nandita Das will receive the FIAPF Award. Yeo’s prize is awarded in recognition of his film “A Land Imagined,” which won the Golden Leopard prize at Locarno earlier this

Even after the baton has been passed, and a new hero has laid just claim to our allegiance, the uniquely enduring Rocky legend continues. More than four decades ago, “Rocky” appeared, seemingly from out of nowhere, to introduce relatively-unknown Sylvester Stallone (who also wrote the screenplay) as Philadelphia club fighter Rocky Balboa (aka The Italian

In today’s film news roundup, William Sadler is starring in the thriller “Alice Fades Away,” Janos Szasz will direct a “Black Friday” movie, and “Superman Vs. The Ku Klux Klan” is in the works as a movie. CASTINGS William Sadler, Ashley Shelton, Blanche Baker, and Paxton Singleton are starring in the independent thriller “Alice Fades

November 21, 2018 2:49PM PT “Ralph Breaks the Internet” is set to stuff its Thanksgiving box office competition, with Disney estimating a domestic launch of $80 million-plus at 4,017 sites for the five-day period. Other projections come in between $90 million to $100 million, which would break the previous Thanksgiving record set by Disney’s “Frozen”

AMSTERDAM — Delivering on new artistic director Orwa Nyrabia’s commitment to giving space to documentaries from the global south, this year’s IDFA festival handed its main prize to Anand Patwardhan’s “Reason”, described by the festival as “a broad-ranging examination of Indian society, in which secular rationalists are hunted down as they attempt to stem the

November 21, 2018 12:20PM PT Sony Pictures is staking out two significant dates in 2020 for their piece of the Marvel pie, the Spider-Man universe. An untitled Sony–Marvel project will hit theaters on July 10, 2020, with an untitled Sony-Marvel sequel following on Oct. 2. While no specifics were provided in the studio’s announcement, the