Month: September 2019

France-based media-technology network Webedia has formed The Boxoffice Company to serve the publishing, technology and data needs of the global film industry, Variety has learned exclusively. Webedia said on Tuesday that the move is a re-branding and reorganization of its offerings, including Boost (which provides tech products for movie theaters), Pulse (a provider of business

The dedicated entertainment junkie now has more options than ever before. So if you’re wondering which logy, derivative, visually pedestrian piece of made-for-Netflix pulp you should avoid at all costs this week, it would be hard to top “In the Shadow of the Moon,” a police thriller powered by a “head-spinning” sci-fi twist that’s revealed

May el-Toukhy’s Sundance prize-winning “Queen of Hearts” has been selected as Denmark’s Oscar entry in the international feature film race. “Queen of Hearts” beat out Michael Noer’s “Before the Frost” and “Daniel” by Niels Arden Oplev and Anders W. Berthelsen which had been shortlisted. The Danish Oscar committee is made up of representatives from the

IFC Films has acquired U.S. rights to “The Painted Bird,” the critically acclaimed and controversial adaptation of the Jerzy Kosinski novel. The film will be the Czech Republic’s Oscar entry for the foreign language category at the upcoming Academy Awards. Directed, written and produced by Václav Marhoul (“Smart Philip”), the film is an unsparing look

SAN SEBASTIAN —   ECAM’s Incubator program is open to feature films of all genres and form. Eligible producers need only a finished script and emerging director already attached to the project, but otherwise the program is open to diverse filmmakers from all over Spain. It just so happens that one of the projects selected

Family members and friends of the victims of a 2012 mass shooting at a screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” in Aurora, Colo., are expressing concerns about the upcoming release of “Joker,” a comic book adaptation that’s provoked controversy for its violent subject matter. In a letter to Warner Bros. CEO Ann Sarnoff, the families

SAN SEBASTIAN  —  In San Sebastian with two high-profile films, Jorunn Myklebust Syversen’s “Disco” and Mariko Bobrik’s “The Taste of Pho,” Polish sales agent New Europe Film Sales has announced the acquisition of world sales rights on upcoming Chile-Poland co-production “Blanquita,” from director Fernando Guzzoni (“Jesus”). It’s the first time that Chile and Poland have

Marco Bellocchio’s Cannes competition entry “The Traitor,” which follows the first high-ranking member of Cosa Nostra to break the Sicilian Mafia’s oath of silence, is Italy’s candidate for the Oscar for international feature film. The drama, which Sony Pictures Classics will release in the U.S., was selected out of a roster of five titles by

SAN SEBASTIAN  —  Lucía Alemany’s “The Innocence” could be called coming of age, a knowing portrait of Lis, 15, hanging out with her friends and carrying in with her older boyfriend in Traigera, a village perched on the Castellón plains of Eastern Spain. Come fall, one of the last full summers she may spend in

SAN SEBASTIAN —  Hinde Boujemaa might have started her filmmaking career later than others, but she hasn’t lost any time in the subsequent years. The Tunisian director’s 2012 documentary “It Was Better Tomorrow” premiered at the Venice Film Festival, and she now returns with her feature-length fiction debut, “Noura’s Dream,” which follows a working-class woman

SAN SEBASTIAN —   Ángeles Cruz, one of Mexico’s highest-profile indigenous cineasts, screened for the first time a nearly-finished version of her feature debut “Nudo Mixteco” at the San Sebastian Films in Progress sidebar. Having won two Mexican Academy Ariel Awards for her first two shorts, “Nudo Mixteco” arrived in Spain buzzing. It deftly intertwines

SAN SEBASTIAN —    Paul Hudson’s Outsider Pictures has picked-up U.S. distribution rights to César Díaz’s “Nuestras madres” (“Our Mothers”), Belgium’s submission for the international feature film Academy Award. Sold by Pyramide International, “Our Mothers” world premiered at Cannes’ Critics Week, winning the Golden Camera for best first film at the Cannes Festival. Outsider Pictures

SAN SEBASTIAN — The Noka Mentoring program, a local initiative to support up-and-coming Basque female filmmakers, kicked off on Monday morning at this year’s 67th San Sebastian Film Festival. The program was co-developed by the Basque Government’s Department of Culture and Language Policy and Zineuskadi, a non-profit org set up by the department and the two

‘+90dB’ A Basque rock band travels the globe playing to diehard fans from Japan, the U.S., Germany and France. Marina Lameiro’s second film, produced by Arena Comunicación and Txalap.art. ‘918 NIGHTS’ Arantza Santesteban writes and directs her first feature documentary in which she explores the experience of being incarcerated for what seemed to be 918

SAN SEBASTIAN — Basque cinema is attacking the future with higher industrial and creative expectations than ever, playing off two motors: Co-production with other parts of Spain, international equity partnerships. Two game-changers in the Basque film landscape, “Handia,” winner of 10 Spanish Academy Goya Awards in 2018, and “Loreak,” Spain’s 2016 Oscar submission, have contributed