Month: September 2020

While international film and TV shoots have been halted in South Africa for the past six months due to a ban on foreign flights during the COVID-19 pandemic, members of the local industry have found a novel way to lift their spirits. On Thursday, hundreds of South African actors and crew members will come together

In “Spagat,” his feature film debut, Swiss director Christian Johannes Koch tells the story of a high school teacher whose double life begins to come apart while also examining the difficult life of an immigrant laborer with no papers. Set in rural Switzerland, the film follows Marina, a married mother and teacher who is having

César Augusto Acevedo, director of Cannes’ Camera d’Or winning “Land and Shade,” has boarded Fidelio Films’ movie adaptation of “Noche sin Fortuna,” to be directed by Fidelio partner Mauricio Leiva Cock. Acevedo, Cock and Swiss-Colombian Lony Welter will now co-write “Noche sin Fortuna,” the big screen makeover of the bleak, nihilist novel that revered young

The Toronto International Film Festival’s Grolsch People’s Choice Award is one of the first indicators for a film heading towards the Dolby Theatre during an awards season. On Sunday, “Nomadland” from Chloé Zhao won the TIFF audience award, joining a list of epic pictures that have gone on to Oscar attention. The Searchlight Pictures film

Disney’s “Mulan” made only $6.47 million over its second weekend in China, allowing it to be handily defeated once again by the local war epic “The Eight Hundred,” according to data from industry tracker Maoyan. As of Sunday evening, the Disney title has earned a cumulative $36.5 million (RMB 247 million) in the key territory.

Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” hit an important milestone, crossing the $250 million mark at the global box office. That benchmark is bolstered by international revenues, where the sci-fi thriller has surpassed $200 million in ticket sales. But in the U.S., “Tenet” is still struggling to attract audiences. The movie earned $4.7 million in its third weekend,

Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland,” which took the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, has won the top People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. The win bodes well for the film’s Oscar chances. In the last decade, every People’s Choice Award winner has gone on to earn a best picture nomination at the

A gracious and deliberate Johnny Depp was joined by “Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan” director and music video/documentary filmmaker Julien Temple on Sunday for a San Sebastian Festival press conference about their documentary, playing in the main competition. “I’ve had a long, long history with Shane,” Depp started out, explaining his

In “Infidel,” Jim Caviezel plays Christian blogger Doug Rawlins, who travels to Cairo to participate in a televised conference on religion. The Muslim host seeks commonalities between the two faiths. “We love Jesus Christ,” the man says, after which Doug pauses for a moment, weighing his words, before rejecting the figurative olive branch. “He is

A 17-year-old Parisian girl of Algerian parentage struggles to negotiate the conflicting tensions between desire, familial expectation, peer pressure and heritage in debuting writer-director Kamir Aïnouz’s intermittently successful “Honey Cigar.” Refreshingly empowering in how it foregrounds the female gaze together with the young woman’s ownership of her sexual urges, the film too often falls back

There is no writing credit for “Sportin’ Life,” which feels like an omission, but an apt one. On the one hand, this documentary self-portrait by rogue auteur Abel Ferrara feels wholly the product of his eccentric imagination, colored by his voice from beginning to hasty end. On the other, it’s impossible to imagine such a

There are cinephiles who are transported to aesthetic nirvana by Naomi Kawase’s eco-spiritualism, and there are critics who flee her cinematic ashram. Neither will be wholly satisfied with “True Mothers,” the director’s contemplation of motherhood and adoption, which is her most plot-driven but least visually lustrous film yet. Like most of her previous features, this

Palme d’Or winning producer Luis Miñarro (“Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”) is set to direct his fifth feature, ”Impalpable” (a working title), produced by Miñarro’s label, Barcelona-based Eddie Saeta, one of Spain’s most prominent arthouse shingles. Written by Miñarro, “Impalpable” follows a series of characters who take a bus to an unspecified

“The Maus” director Yayo Herrero is preparing a second feature, “Los Quinquis,” a standout at this year’s edition of Madrid’s ECAM film school Incubator program, which he will take to this year’s San Sebastian Festival to pitch in the Meet Them! section for projects. Apart from its inclusion at ECAM’s Incubator, the film took part

Solidifying the ties between the ECAM Community of Madrid film school and the European industry, its Screen Incubator, one of its industry programs, has selected Estibaliz Urresola’s “20,000 Species of Bees” among the five new projects in its third edition. Produced by Gariza Films and Urresola’s own Sirimiri Films, the feature turns on Lucía, a

Set in Extremadura, south-west Spain, “Nights Gone By” marks the debut feature of Switzerland-based, Madrid-born Alberto Martín Menacho, participating in this year’s ECAM Incubator. One of Spain’s most important film schools, Madrid’s ECAM has long proven a launchpad for generations of Spanish filmmaking talent. Previously, Menacho had put the script through San Sebastian’s Ikusmira Berriak

In Alvaro Gago’s “Matria,” a 2018 short film Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, Ramona works in a canning factory, under the orders of a remarkably termagant, foul-mouthed female factory foreman. Ramona hardly exchanges a word with her husband, but manages the household and her job – a punishing daily routine – and yet still manages