Month: May 2023

Baby Atómica, a new Costa Rican-U.S. film production company, has launched at the Cannes Film Market’s new genre-focused Fantastic Pavilion with a number of film projects already in development. The Los Angeles-based shingle, founded by Costa Rican producers Miguel and Dennis Gómez, who previously ran Atómica Films in San José, and Jesy Odio, likewise a

Norwegian distributor Fjong Film has picked up Hilmar Oddson’s award-winning Icelandic dark comedy “Driving Mum.” While French-U.K. sales and production company Alief has already sold the film widely in Europe, the Norwegian deal marks its first sale in Scandinavia. The Tallinn Black Nights Grand Prix winner, a theatrical hit in Iceland and Estonia, follows aimless

Harvest Moon, the film that was last year selected as Mongolia’s Oscars contender, has secured distribution deals in Europe and Asia through sales agent Asian Shadows. Directed by Amarsaikhan Baljinnyam, as an adaptation of a novel by T. Bum-Erdene, the narrative tells of the encounter between a man, who unexpectedly returns from the big city

Newcomer Docs-by-the-Sea, the international documentary Labs and Forum for creative doc projects from Asia, will present and works-in-progress showcase for the first time at the Marché du Film’s Cannes Docs.  Featuring four films in late production stage, the showcase is highly necessary, argues its curator, Gugi Gumilang, the executive director of In-Docs, the non-profit org

“Fast & Furious 10” (aka “Fast X”) drove off with the top prize at the South Korean box office on its opening weekend. It earned $4.99 million between Friday and Saturday, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). And over its full five-day run, from a Wednesday

One of the grand paradoxes of Jean-Luc Godard is that he was a radical, an outlier, a filmmaker who guarded his purity and always looked askance at “the system,” yet because the nature of filmmaking is that it requires a lot of money, and is connected to fame, and produces images that can spread with

“In Our Day,” the film by South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo which closes the Directors’ Fortnight section of the Cannes film festival, has seen distributors in multiple territories move early to strike rights deals. French rights were picked up by Capricci), Spanish rights by L’Atalante Cinema and Greek rights by Ama Films. The film has

Like a beloved monarch, Alicia Vikander was greeted with an eight-minute standing ovation at the May 21 Cannes premiere of Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz’s “Firebrand,” from a crowd that included best actress Oscar winners Michelle Yeoh and Marion Cotillard. With her husband Michael Fassbender beaming on from the row behind, Vikander motioned for the cheering

Romania’s culture minister Lucian Romașcanu is confident that the country’s beleaguered cash rebate system is back on track, insisting in Cannes on Sunday that the government is committed to “repairing” a scheme that has ground to a halt in recent years. “Everyone in politics, starting with the future Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, understands the importance

Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence and her producing partner Justine Ciarrocchi touched down at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday to promote their label’s first ever documentary feature, “Bread and Roses” — a harrowing and emotional look at the lives of women in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. After two decades of American occupation, the nation fell

Tudor, or not Tudor. That is the question in “Firebrand,” a revisionist royal portrait of Henry VIII’s last wife, Katherine Parr (played here by Alicia Vikander), that features all the pageantry you’d expect from a lavish costume drama, while showing the ahistorical audacity to call “Time’s Up” on the gluttonous king (Jude Law). Never mind

Afghan director Sahra Mani‘s well-received “A Thousand Girls Like Me” documented the quest for justice of a young incest victim, and now, Mani has returned with a similarly hard-hitting documentary, “Bread and Roses”, premiering in the official selection of Cannes as a special screening. Produced by Jennifer Lawrence, this film tackles an urgent and timely

A bold departure from France’s cinema tradition of social realism, Thomas Cailley’s widely ambitious sophomore outing “The Animal Kingdom” is equally a creature-filled dystopia, an emotionally charged father-and-son drama and a coming-of-age tale. The character-driven film world premiered to warm reviews at the Cannes Film Festival where it bowed the Un Certain Regard section. “The

Spain’s Revelations showcase has focused on shorts, not features, unveiling the huge breadth of animation talent and techniques in Spain. Some shorts directors are already stars, such as Alberto Mielgo with the Oscar-winner “The Windshield Wiper.” Diego Porral, director of “Leopoldo From the Bar,” served as animation lead on “Love, Death + Robots” episode “Kill

After an illustrious four-decade career, Michelle Yeoh finally became an Oscar-winning actor just two months ago for “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” Yeoh says Asian performers were ignored for far too long, but she is hopeful for the future. Speaking during the Kering Women in Motion talks at Cannes, Yeoh reflected on the first time

Depending on where you come down on the question of its main character’s guilt or innocence, Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” could be seen as a kind of “Gone Girl” in reverse: A frustrated writer dies of suspicious causes, leaving behind clues that implicate his wife (Sandra Hüller). If the man’s death was a