Month: May 2019

Framed by the French Alps, the border region between Italy and France has become an unlikely hot spot for countless migrants risking their lives to flee poverty, war, and political persecution. In the Roya and Durance Valleys, local communities have banded together to help the influx of refugees by offering them food, shelter and legal

Rome-based sales company Coccinelle Film has closed U.S. deals on two new Italian LGBT titles, confirming the international appeal of what is becoming a small but significant local cinema sub-genre. Strand Releasing has taken North American rights to “Mom+Mom,” about two southern Italian women who struggle to have a child together because of a local

“The book is not about anything but itself. It has no allegorical intentions, topical, moral, religious or political. It is not about modern wars.” So said John Ronald Reuel Tolkien in a 1968 interview, pushing back at a growing fanbase that was all too eager to seek out topical, moral, religious, political and, most importantly,

May 3, 2019 4:09AM PT Paris-based company Indie Sales has acquired Chinese actor-turned-director Zu Feng’s feature debut “Summer of Changsha” which will world premiere at Cannes in Un Certain Regard and will vie for the Camera d’Or award. A popular Chinese actor, Feng previously starred in Lou Ye’s “Mystery” which played at Cannes in 2012

May 3, 2019 3:11AM PT A woman reunites with her father on his Bayou houseboat, where she discovers a mysterious body, in Brian C. Miller Richard’s languid drama. Resurrection of both a literal and figurative kind factors heavily into “Lost Bayou,” director Brian C. Miller Richard’s saga about a down-and-out young woman who reunites with

Big World Pictures has acquired U.S. rights to Radu Jude’s “I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians,” which won the Crystal Globe for best film at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival last year, and represented Romania in this year’s Academy Awards competition for foreign-language film. The sale was handled by

May 3, 2019 12:54AM PT This purported first Latino superhero movie is really more of a pedestrian grade-B cop thriller that lacks imagination. A cop thriller promoted as the first Latino superhero movie, “El Chicano” would seem to be arriving at the right time, with “Avengers: Endgame” having made the genre appear fail-proof and “Black

To say that child sex abuse in a documentary could in any way be connected to that Hitchcock/thriller word —  suspense — is, on the face of it, an offensive thought. We’re talking despicable crimes that reverberate for years and even for generations; they don’t exist for our “entertainment.” Yet “Capturing the Friedmans,” the remarkable

May 2, 2019 8:13PM PT “Sonic the Hedgehog” director Jeff Fowler has responded to fan criticism over the appearance and design of the titular blue hedgehog, writing on Twitter that design changes are “going to happen.” “The message is loud and clear,” Fowler wrote on Twitter Thursday. “You aren’t happy with the design & you

In today’s film news roundup, Sabrina Carpenter gets a starring role, Spike Lee’s “Son of the South” adds to its cast and inspirational drama “Edie” gets North American distribution. CASTINGS Singer-songwriter Sabrina Carpenter will star in STX’s dance-themed comedy “Work It” from STXfilms and Alloy Entertainment. Alicia Keys is producing with Elysa Koplovitz Dutton and

May 2, 2019 6:31PM PT The debut feature by Chinese screenwriter Cui Siwei is a solid action-thriller set on a snow-covered mountain. An above-average action thriller set in the snow-covered environs of Baekdu Mountain on the China-North Korea border, “Savage” marks a confident directing debut for Chinese screenwriter Cui Siwei (“The Island”). This no-nonsense affair

You don’t have to be a Pokémon aficionado to recognize that the arrival of the feature-length, live-action “Pokémon Detective Pikachu” movie represents a major turning point to the cult of the franchise’s superfans: For those who grew up playing the video games, collecting the trading cards, or watching the Japanese anime series, and have been

Woody Allen shopped around a manuscript for his new memoir, but publishers didn’t want anything to do with it. A New York Times report detailed how executives at multiple publishing houses rejected Allen’s memoir that he tried to sell late last year largely due to his increasing persona non grata status. A-list actors, producers, and

“Star Wars” fans around the galaxy mourned the death of Chewbacca actor Peter Mayhew after his family announced he had died. The 7-foot-3 actor appeared as the friendly Wookie in the original “Star Wars” film by George Lucas in 1977. He went on to reprise the fan-favorite role in “The Empire Strikes Back,” “Return of