Month: September 2021

Global superstar Celine Dion is getting the feature documentary treatment. The French Canadian singer has given her blessing to a new feature documentary from Sony Music Entertainment’s Premium Content Division, in partnership with SME Canada and Vermilion Films. The as-yet-untitled feature will be directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Irene Taylor (“Beware the Slenderman,” “Hear and Now”),

The Kindness In Film Summit’s debut online conference on Sept. 30 boasts a host of industry luminaries. Speakers set to feature at the event include Bianca Gavin (Pulse Films), Bee Devine (Sky), Gareth Unwin (Screenskills) Jules Hussey (Brazen Productions), Sara Putt (Sara Putt Associates), David Vickery (Industrial Light & Magic), Victoria Einslee (actor and founder

Mike Goodridge, who was appointed artistic director of the International Film Festival & Awards Macao (IFFAM) in 2017, is stepping down after four editions. The festival will not take place in 2021, as COVID-19 restrictions remain tight in Macau. In 2020, like many festivals, IFFAM went online. Last year, it featured a film screening section

The Tokyo International Film Festival’s competition section will skew heavily towards Asian titles, festival organizers said on Tuesday. The festival announced the full lineup for its 34rd edition to be held Oct. 30 – Nov. 8, 2021 at its new main venues in the Hibiya-Yurakucho-Ginza area of Tokyo. As previously announced, the festival will open with

RESTORATION The 20th anniversary 4K restoration of David Lynch‘s iconic surrealist mystery-drama is to get a home entertainment and limited theatrical release from Studiocanal and the Criterion Collection. 20 years after the film’s world premiere at Cannes in 2001, the restoration, supervised by Lynch himself, premiered at the Cannes Classics selection earlier this year. In

While Western cinema all too often equates film noir with retro pastiche and period fare, Chinese filmmakers continue to sustain the genre in bracingly contemporary, socially relevant ways — often sneaking a wealth of political and economic commentary past censors and straight into their sleek underworld narratives. Zhang Ji’s remarkable debut feature, “Fire on the

“Gensan Punch,” the upcoming film by celebrated Filipino director Brillante Mendoza (“Kinatay,” “Ma’ Rosa,” “Alpha: The Right To Kill”), has been set as an HBO Asia Original movie. It will become available on regional streaming service HBO Go in the next few months. Ahead of that, the film will have its world premiere next month

Indian director Jiju Antony’s “A Miracle of Love,” selected at Busan’s Asian Project Market, is informed by the filmmaker’s own life experience. “The script is heavily inspired by an episode from my personal experiences in raising my son who’s living with autism,” Antony tells Variety. “There are thousands of defining moments in our journey with

Feature debutant Natesh Hegde’s “Pedro,” which has its world premiere at Busan’s New Currents strand and has subsequent play dates at the BFI London Film Festival, explores the theme of outsiders in society. The titular Pedro is a taciturn electrician in a forest village in the foothills of western India. He also does odd jobs

The Busan festival has experienced its share of fandom in previous editions, with everything from frenetic crowds at guest visits in Haeundae, an overflowing BIFF Square in Nampodong, through to star-struck teenagers camping in the entrance to the Grand Hotel. None of these are particularly appropriate in the age of COVID and social distancing. With

Busan’s Asian Film Maker of the Year Award has become almost indistinguishable from a lifetime achievement award. But that need not diminish either the recipient or the festival. Im Kwon-taek is arguably the best-known South Korean film director to have straddled both the modern era and the earlier time when the country and the film

“The Rapist,” which has its premiere next month at the Busan International Film Festival is the hardest hitting film that Indian filmmaker Aparna Sen has ever made. A chronicler of different aspects of Indian life, Sen has previously won global acclaim for her eclectic body of work, which includes “36 Chowringhee Lane” (1981), “Paroma” (1985)

Leading Indian actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui (“Sacred Games”) is buzzing. He has just been nominated for a best actor international Emmy for Sudhir Mishra’s Netflix film “Serious Men.” Siddiqui’s next big international splash is with Bangladeshi director Mostofa Sarwar Farooki’s “No Land’s Man,” where he plays the lead. The film has its world premiere at the

As a strike authorization vote looms, some IATSE members have decided to cancel their streaming subscriptions in hopes of sending a message that would hit the studios in the pocketbook. Workers in the below-the-line entertainment unions are gearing up to vote to authorize a strike this weekend, amid anger over long production hours without adequate