New Berlin Festival director Tricia Tuttle continues to build up her team for the 2025 Berlinale, on Wednesday naming Michael Stütz and Jacqueline Lyanga the co-directors of film programming for the A-list German event. Stütz will stay on as head of Berlin’s Panorama sidebar, taking on the new duties in July. Lyanga also has close
International
Liu Cixin‘s bestselling sci-fi book The Three-Body Problem is heading home to China to get another screen adaptation. Zhang Yimou, arguably China’s most revered living filmmaker, is set to direct a Chinese-language feature film based on the novel, it was revealed Sunday during a forum at the Shanghai International Film festival. In Shanghai, Wang Changtian,
Less than a decade ago, the Shanghai International Film Festival was the preeminent annual hotspot for Hollywood and European dealmakers determined to forge alliances and carve out a foothold in China’s then-booming commercial film sector. In the post-pandemic era, however, as the Chinese industry continues to mature and the Hollywood hype over the country’s market
The 2024 Locarno Film Festival will honor veteran indie producer Stacey Sher, whose credits include Erin Brockovich, Gattaca and Django Unchained, with this year’s Premio Raimondo Rezzonico, or best independent producer, Award. The prize celebrates “outstanding personalities who have made major contributions to international film production.” Together with Danny DeVito and Michael Shamberg at Jersey
Life after The Beatles for legendary singer-songwriter John Lennon and wife Yoko Ono in New York City is the focus of Kevin MacDonald’s latest documentary, One to One: John & Yoko, from Mercury Studios. The Scottish filmmaker, coming off his fashion doc High & Low: John Galliano, recalls Lennon in 1972 performing his final full-stage
Ryoo Seung-wan has been a pillar of the South Korean film industry for over 20 years, respected there for his keen social observation and thrilling action. But Europe’s great film festivals have feted him conspicuously less than some of his more internationally well-known peers. The Cannes Film Festival recently took a step toward correcting that
The Seed of the Sacred Fig, the new film from Iranian dissident director Mohammad Rasoulof, may or may not be honored tonight when the Cannes jury hands out its awards. But at the press conference for the film on Saturday, Rasoulof displayed his own heroism. The director used his press conference to call out Iran’s
Grindstone Entertainment are getting into the ring with Ving Rhames. Grindstone have picked up all rights in North America for Uppercut, a boxing thriller starring the Mission Impossible and Pulp Fiction actor as a trainer who agrees to take on a new female fighter. The English-language debut of German writer/director Torsten Ruether, Uppercut is an
When asked to name her organization’s biggest accomplishment so far, Charlene Deleon-Jones, the executive director for Film AlUla and Saudi Tourism leadership board member, doesn’t hesitate to name-check Norah, the first Saudi film to crack the Cannes lineup. The Tawfik Alzaidi-helmed indie movie, which will compete in the fest’s Un Certain Regard section, was shot in
In his short but prolific acting career, 17-year-old Finn Little has covered a lot of terrain, from desolate shorelines to U.S. ranchlands. And his latest, The Surfer, took him to the idyllic beaches of Western Australia. From director Lorcan Finnegan (2019’s Vivarium), The Surfer centers on a man (Nicolas Cage), who takes his son (Little) to the beach where he used to surf
The 2024 Cannes Film Festival competition jury, led by president Greta Gerwig, met the international press Tuesday — and it didn’t take long before the assembled stars were urged to address the various fraught political issues swirling around this year’s edition of the world’s most glamorous film fest. On the eve of the 77th festival, Cannes artistic director
Chinese sales company Parallax Films has notched a batch of sales deals for director Qiu Jiongjiong‘s Locarno 2021 jury prize-winning historical drama A New Old Play. The acclaimed Chinese indie film has sold to France’s Carlotta Films, Japan’s Katsuben Cinema Club, and Singapore’s Cineaste Production House for distribution across all Southeast Asian territories, excluding Indonesia and Vietnam.
Mark Damon, who starred in the Vincent Price horror classic House of Usher and spaghetti Westerns before revolutionizing the foreign sales and distribution film business and producing features including 9 1/2 Weeks, Monster and Lone Survivor, has died. He was 91. Damon died Sunday of natural causes in Los Angeles, his daughter, Alexis Damon Ribaut, told
Veteran European film executive Tanja Meissner has been named the new director of Berlinale Pro*, a newly-created position that will include running the Berlin film festival‘s European Film Market. New Berlin film festival director Tricia Tuttle announced Meissner’s appointment on Friday, May 10, describing the Berlinale Pro* position as “a reshaped role [encompassing] the directorship
Tilda Swinton‘s feature directorial debut is up for an award at Sheffield DocFest where it will get its world premiere as part of a lineup of 48 world premieres from 56 different countries. The U.K. documentary festival, taking place June 12-17, revealed its full program on Wednesday. Its theme for the 31st edition this year
The Cannes film festival has responded to calls for a proposed strike by festival workers over pay and labor regulations. On Tuesday, the festival issued its first official statement, saying it hoped “solutions will be found” to prevent film festival workers from disrupting the 2024 festival, which kicks off May 14. Yesterday, a group calling
A French collective representing the interests of French film festival workers has called for a general strike “of all employees of the Cannes Film Festival and of its sidebars.” The Sous les écrans la dèche (Broke Behind the Screens) collective, made the call in a public statement on Monday. The group has long been sounding
Nishta Jain’s Farming the Revolution, a film about Indian farmers rising up against new laws, picked up the best international feature documentary prize at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival on Friday night. The top jury prize win at the festival means Jain’s film, which world premiered at Hot Docs, will qualify for consideration
Switzerland is set to take center stage at the 2024 Cannes Film Market, with the Alpine nation picked as this year’s country of honor at the Marché du Film, which runs May 14-22 alongside the Cannes Film Festival. National film promotion group Swiss Films, together with the Swiss Federal Office of Culture and Swiss public
The Sheffield DocFest will open its 2024 edition with the world premiere of Kevin Macdonald’s Klitschko: More Than a Fight on June 12 at Sheffield City Hall. The annual documentary festival in England also unveiled Roger Ross Williams, the first African American director to win an Academy Award for his 2010 doc short Music by
Cillian Murphy, Kin season two and Paul Mescal were among the winners of the Irish Film & Television Awards 2024, which were handed out during a ceremony in Dublin on Saturday. Lies We Tell, about an orphaned teenage heiress in 19th-century Ireland who is forced to embrace the dark legacy of her family, led the
BAFTA has confirmed the date for next year’s film awards ceremony, which will be held Sunday, February 16, 2025. The date means the BAFTAs will come exactly two weeks before the 2025 Oscars, set for March 2. Once again, the British awards will take place smack in the middle of the Berlin Film Festival, which
French actor Guillaume Canet is starring, writing, and producing the new Netflix thriller Ad Vitam Rodolphe Lauga (It’s Complicated) is directing the action film, which has begun shooting in Paris. Netflix will release the movie worldwide next year. Canet plays Franck Lazareff who, after surviving an attempt on his life, finds his wife has been
The Cannes Critics’ Week, the parallel film festival sidebar organized by the French film critics’ union, has unveiled its 2024 selection. The psychological thriller Ghost Trail, the first feature from acclaimed French shorts director Jonathan Millet, will open the 2024 sidebar. Adam Bessa (star of 2022’s Un Certain Regard winner Harka) plays the lead in
It’s official: Donald Trump — or at least a fictionalized version of him — is heading to Cannes. The prestigious French film festival unveiled its 2024 official film selection Thursday in Paris, and Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abassi’s The Apprentice was among the titles revealed for the event’s main competition. The biographical drama stars Sebastian Stan as
Japanese anime master Hayao Miyazaki is revered in China as much as he is anywhere. The 83-year-old filmmaker’s Oscar-winning swan song The Boy and the Heron opened last Wednesday in China to take advantage of the country’s Qingming public holiday and by Sunday it had earned $73 million — more than its totals in both
David Barrington Holt, who established and ran the first Creature Shop on the West Coast for The Jim Henson Company during his two-plus decades with the firm, has died. He was 78. Holt died March 13 of complications from cancer at his home in Los Angeles, his son, Chris Holt, announced. Holt started out with
Japanese anime master Hayao Miyazaki’s Oscar-winning swan song The Boy and the Heron has taken flight at China’s box office in a major way. The enigmatic Studio Ghibli hit opened in China on Wednesday and soared to $13.7 million (RMB 99.1 million), nudging aside Warner Bros and Legendary Entertainment’s prior box-office champ Godzilla x Kong:
Cannes is getting into the remake business. The Cannes film market, the Marché du Film, is launching a one-day event focused entirely on remakes and local-language adaptations of existing titles. Together with the CNC, the French national film board, and with support from Spain’s Institute of Cinematography & Audiovisual Arts (ICAA), Italy’s Directorate General for
The ever-busy Japanese character actor Tadanobu Asano — currently having a moment as one of the stars of Disney’s hit samurai series Shōgun — has joined the cast of Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang‘s upcoming culinary thriller Morte Cucina. The actor and director last collaborated two decades ago on the romantic crime film Last Life in the Universe (2003),