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Early in the sixth album from Big Thief, the band’s singer-­songwriter, Adrianne Lenker, misses a flight. For most of us, this wouldn’t be ­anything but a hassle. She turns it into a dream: “Driving with my lover,” she sings against distant guitar shimmer and agile, circular drumming, “We added up the hours/To see the lupine flowers/Way up past the border/We blew through Thunder Bay.” The song spirals into a beautiful meditation on memory, time, family, aging, and freedom that’s at once casually philosophical,...

Danish-Palestinian director Mahdi Fleifel’s second feature To A Land Unknown added to its long list of prizes when it received the €10,000 Transilvania Trophy of this year’s Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF) in Romania at the weekend.

Berlin-based Noaz Deshe won the €3,500 best director prize for his second feature Xoftex, which had its world premiere at last year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

The special jury prize went to Chinese-American filmmaker Julian Castronovo’s first film Debut which investigates the ethics and aesthetics of forgery, while thebest performance award was presented to Ghjuvanna Benedetti for her role in...

The 24th edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival has wrapped up in Romania.

During Saturday Night’s closing gala at the National Theatre in Cluj-Napoca, British director Mahdi Fleifel’s To a Land Unknown took home the Transilvania Trophy, the festival’s 10,000-euro top prize.

The film is described as an intense drama about two Palestinian refugees living in Athens, caught between petty scams and the hope of a better life in Germany. Amid a climate of despair and moral compromise, one spirals deeper into a cycle of manipulation and exploitation of those around him.

“It was more about survival than storytelling. We struggled for nearly ten years to make it,” said Fleifel, adding of the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict: “The problem in Palestine is not the Palestinians, it’s the occupation—and that must end.”

German director Noaz Deshe’s Xoftex won the €3,500 Best Directing Award, sponsored by the Romanian Cultural Institute.

A few months after Radu Jude’s Silver Berlin Bear for best screenplay in Berlin for “Kontinental ‘25,” Romania’s largest film festival, the Transilvania International Film Festival, is here to help take the temperature of the country’s national cinema. Jude’s latest, as well as the director’s Andy Warhol-inspired “Sleep #2,” spearhead the Romanian Days section of TIFF, taking place in Cluj-Napoca over June 13-22.

Jude’s two films join another 14 Romanian features at this year’s festival, as well as 25 short films. Standouts include Bogdan Mureșanu’s Orizzonti award winning “The New Year That Never Came” and the latest by renowned auteur Andrei Ujică, “Twst – Things We Said Today.”

Speaking with Variety ahead of the festival, artistic director Mihai Chirilov says: “Revisiting the past is always a winner” with Romanian cinema, as proven by both Mureșanu’s lauded feature debut and Jude’s latest comedy. But,...

Big Thief will hit the road this fall, with the band announcing the first leg of their Somersault Slide 360 Tour.

The 20-date run kicks off Sept. 17 at Channel 24 in Sacramento, California and wraps Nov. 7 at the White Oak Music Hall Lawn in Houston. The tour includes stops in Mexico City, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Dallas, and Austin, as well as previously-announced gigs at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles and Forest Hills Stadium in New York City.

Tickets for all the newly-scheduled gigs will go on sale May 9 at 10 a.m.

Adrianne Lenker has announced Live at Revolution Hall, a massive 43-track live album taken from three days of her 2024 “Bright Future” tour. The album arrives on April 24th; meanwhile, she’s also revealed the new song “happiness.”

Referred to more as a “sonic documentary” than merely a live album, Live at Revolution Hall features renditions of songs from Lenker’s 2024 album Bright Future, her 2020 projects Songs and Instrumentals, her 2018 debut Abysskiss, and her lengthy catalogue with her band, Big Thief. She’s also added performances of five new, unreleased tracks: “happiness,” “oldest,” “ripples,” “i do love you,” and “no limits.”

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Bright Future was recorded by close collaborator Andrew Sarlo across three shows at Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon in June 2024. Several songs were recorded as performed throughout the evenings, with others taken from behind-the-scenes moments. It will be released digitally and on double cassette (limited to 500 copies) on April 24th.

In 2002, the hype for Japanese horror films was declining rapidly, as the sequels to series like “Ring” or “The Grudge” were commercially and critically unsuccessful. Even though directors such as Hideo Nakata and Takashi Shimizu came to Hollywood to helm the remakes to their films or their sequels, Hollywood had already adapted J-horror tropes to its own productions. As Jerry White points out, one of the perhaps most disappointing entries in the J-horror remakes was Jim Sonzero’s version of Kiyoshi Kurosawa‘s “Pulse” (2001). Perhaps it was this particular experience which made Kurosawa change genres with his next project “Bright Future”.

Bright Future is screening at Black Movie

In general, Kurosawa is best known for his unique horror films such as “Pulse” or “Cure”, films which years after their release now unfold their true impact. At the same time, the director has also repeatedly explored the gap between youth and adults,...

My Hero Academia is packed with terrific action scenes. However, despite all the fighting, surprisingly few characters get themselves killed in the main story. My Hero Academia has generous plot armor for the heroes and villains alike since Pro Heroes are supposed to capture villains and the heroes use the power of hope and friendship to survive anything the villains can throw at them. Still, some fatalities are inevitable, and a handful of characters have died on-screen in the My Hero Academia anime.

The rarity and emotional impact of these My Hero Academia deaths made those scenes all the more tragic and memorable, and some deaths even felt like a turning point in the story or for certain characters. Protagonist Izuku Midoriya/Deku learned a grim lesson: that being a Pro Hero means risking one's own life and seeing other brave heroes perish in the line of duty. As such,...

Sales company Lightdox has boarded Igor Bezinović’s hybrid documentary “Fiume o morte!,” which premieres in the Tiger Competition section of the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

The Croatian-Italian-Slovenian coproduction takes the audience back to 1919, when the Italian nationalist poet, dandy and preacher of war Gabriele D’Annunzio occupied the city of Fiume.

“Today, the citizens of Fiume, now called Rijeka, retell and reinterpret the bizarre story about the 16-month occupation of their city in a brutally factual yet defiantly punk cinematic journey,” a statement explains.

“‘Fiume o morte!’ is a film on poetry, dynamite, cocaine, machine guns, football, airplanes, furniture flying out of windows, concerts, prisons, sunbathing, thousands of soldiers, millions of bullets, endless speeches, a platypus and on the power of political performativity. D’Annunzio might as well be considered its trailblazer heralding some of the biggest masters of ghastly political showmanship of our age.”

The film is Bezinović’s third feature,...

The International Film Festival Rotterdam revealed the lineups of its Tiger, Big Screen and Tiger Short competition sections Tuesday, and the first tranche of speakers for the Talks program, who include Cate Blanchett and Guy Maddin.

Following their recent collaboration on “Rumours,” Blanchett and Maddin will come together for “an expansive dialogue about creative collaboration, the role of film festivals, and the enduring power of the short film form,” IFFR said.

IFFR will also welcome Robby Müller Award recipient Lol Crawley, in conversation with writer and film critic Peter Bradshaw to discuss his cinematography, including his work on “The Brutalist” and other highlights from his career.

Filmmaker Alex Ross Perry, known for Locarno’s “Listen Up Philip,” Toronto’s “Her Smell” and Sundance’s “Golden Exits,” will talk about his documentary “Videoheaven,” part of the Focus program “Hold Video in Your Hands,” celebrating the community spirit of VHS culture. Perry...

International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has added 11 titles to its Harbour, Limelight and Bright Futures strands ahead of its 54th edition, which runs January 30-February 9.

In Harbour, the festival world premieres Jeppe Rønde’ Acts of Love following his feature debut at IFFR in 2015 with Bridgend. It’s the story of a woman’s quiet and orderly life in a religious community in rural Denmark which is disrupted by the arrival of her brother.

Tiger Special Jury Prize-winning US filmmakers Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan (New Strains) return with Removal of the Eye about a couple contending with a mother-in-law’s demand for a baby exorcism.

International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has added 11 titles to its Harbour, Limelight and Bright Futures strands ahead of its 54th edition, which runs January 30-February 9.

In Harbour, the festival world premieres Jeppe Rønde’ Acts of Love following his feature debut at IFFR in 2015 with Bridgend. It’s the story of a woman’s quiet and orderly life in a religious community in rural Denmark which is disrupted by the arrival of her brother.

Tiger Special Jury Prize-winning US filmmakers Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan (New Strains) return with Removal of the Eye about a couple contending with a mother-in-law’s demand for a baby exorcism.

Syndicado Film Sales has boarded documentary “Bright Future,” which has its world premiere at IDFA. Variety debuts the trailer here. The film is the directorial debut of Romanian archive researcher Andra MacMasters.

“Bright Future” goes back to the summer of 1989 when thousands of young people from various nations gathered in North Korea for the 13th edition of the World Festival of Youth and Students. The festival, which championed peace, friendship and anti-imperialism, took place at a pivotal moment in history. The students “were dancing on the edge of a volcano,” as the film’s narrator states.

In a statement, the director said: “In the last chapter of the Cold War, for one week, North Korea became the global meeting point for 20,000 people coming from 166 countries. The event was the space of the other, involving travel and contact with otherness, the creation of dialogue, of cohesion in the production of intellectual and affective links,...

International Film Festival Rotterdam has unveiled the first tranche of films selected for its 54th edition, which runs Jan. 30 – Feb. 9. These 13 titles, which will play in the Bright Future or Harbour sections, will each have their world premiere at IFFR.

Bright Future is dedicated to feature-length debuts, while Harbour offers a broad range of contemporary cinema.

The first wave of titles includes several IFFR alumni, including Daniel Hoesl, a former Tiger Award winner for micro-budget experimental feature “Soldate Jeannette,” with his new work “Un gran casino”; Hubert Bals Fund awardee Pelin Esmer, who returns to the festival with a world premiere of “And the Rest Will Follow”; Christina Friedrich presenting “The Night Is Dark and Brighter Than the Day,” which comes after her IFFR debut this year with “Zone”; and avant-garde trailblazer Alexander Kluge returns, after the world premiere of “Cosmic Miniatures” in the most recent edition of the festival,...

Out of the gate early, the International Film Festival Rotterdam (30 January – 9 February 2025) have unveiled the first wave of titles that make up the upcoming 54th edition with a baker’s dozen titles populating the Bright Future and Harbour sections. The complete programme will be launched on the December 17th – a couple of weeks after Sundance unveil their edition.

Bright Future

1 Girl Infinite (World Premiere)

Director: Lilly Hu

United States, Latvia, Singapore

Two teenage girls, Yin Jia and Tong Tong, live together in this colour-drenched vision of Changsha, China. When Tong Tong drifts away and falls in with a drug dealer, Yin Jia’s love for her means she’ll risk everything to keep Tong Tong by her side.…...

The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has unveiled the first titles selected for its 54th edition unfolding in early 2025.

They comprise 13 titles that will world premiere in the Bright Future strand, aimed at first films by emerging talents, as well as its Harbour line-up, campioning work pushing cinematic boundaries, and this year, digging into themes of self-discovery, societal norms and the human condition.

Bright Future titles include Mateo Ybarra’s doc Camp d’Éte, exploring the Swiss Scout Movement, and Oskar Weimar’s Invisible Flame about a modern-day witch hunt in Kenyan fishing village.

The Harbour selections include Un Gran Casino by Daniel Hoesl, a former Tiger Award Winner for micro-budget experimental feature Soldate Jeannette, Hubert Bals Fund awardee Pelin Esmer’s And The Rest Will Follow and avant-garde trailblazer Alexander Kluge with Primitive Diversity.

Previous Bright Future breakouts include King Baby, 78 Days and Schirkoa: In Lies We Trust,...

International Film Festival Rotterdam has made the first programming selections for its 54th edition in the Bright Future and Harbour strands.

The festival has selected 13 titles, all world premieres – five in Bright Future and eight in Harbour.

Scroll down for the full list of titles

Titles in Bright Future, the section for feature debuts, include Oskar Weimar’s Kenyan filmInvisible Flame. Set in a fishing community, it sees an elderly woman face accusations of witchhood when fish begin vanish. Melbourne-based director Weimar previously made 2021 short Each Other which played at Slamdance in the US.

Also in Bright Future is Lilly Hu’s One Girl Infinite,...

The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam — known globally as IDFA — has revealed its 2024 opening night and competition films coming this November. The 37th edition kicks off with Piotr Winiewicz’s “About a Hero” featuring Vicky Krieps and the filmography of Werner Herzog.

Per the festival, “The film presents a bold exploration into largely uncharted territories of artificial intelligence — reflecting on questions of authenticity and our understanding of what is real. With Werner Herzog’s permission, Winiewicz sets out to challenge Herzog’s assertion that ‘a computer won’t be able to create a film as good as mine for at least another 4,500 years.’ In a tantalizing experiment, Winiewicz trained an AI system on Herzog’s oeuvre and asked it to generate a screenplay. The result is a disturbing search for the soul — of human beings and of creative work.”

That assertion came from Herzog’s 2016 documentary “Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World,...

The Bear Season 3 sets a new record high for Hulu with over 5.4 million viewers in the first four days. The show's viewership increased by 24% compared to Season 2, and the Disney+ with Hulu bundle subscription expanded the audience. The Bear has been renewed for a fourth season, and the show maintains an authentic vibe and high-pressure restaurant world atmosphere.

The FX/Hulu series The Bear has achieved unprecedented viewership success with the recent release of its third season. Within just four days of dropping all ten episodes of Season 3 on June 26 on the streaming platform, The Bear amassed over 5.4 million total viewers, according to a report by Variety. This marks an incredible viewership number for a scripted television show premiere and sets a new record high for Hulu. Considering the unscripted content, The Bear Season 3 is the third-biggest season premiere in Hulu's history.

According to data acquired from Disney, it is...

When memory slips away, what do we know to be real anymore?

That’s the question asked by “Great Absence,” a new film that sees legendary Japanese actor Tatsuya Fuji return to the big screen in a father-son drama about life, death, mortality, and morality. Filmmaker Kei Chika-ura writes and directs the feature which centers on a rekindled family amid an Alzheimers diagnosis and a suicide.

The official synopsis reads: Distanced from his father Yohji (Tatsuya Fuji) for twenty years, actor Takashi (Mirai Moriyama) is brought back home by a jarring police call. Yohji has disconnected from reality due to dementia, and his second wife Naomi (Hideko Hara) is missing. Asked where she is, the old man replies that she committed suicide. While trying to find out about the stepmother, Takashi traces the past of Yohji he has never been able to accept. And since Yohji abandoned his family 20 years ago for Naomi,...

MPM Premium has taken world sales rights to Hernán Rosselli’s Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, an Argentinian film about a crime family that is screening in the 2024 Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes.

Set in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, the film follows the real-life Felpeto family running a clandestine gambling business for decades until police raids threaten their dynasty and a secret of their late father comes to light. Rosselli blends documentary and fiction to depict the heyday and downfall of a family.

The film is produced by Argentina’s 36 Caballos who produced Berlin Golden Bear-winning short Un Movimiento Extraño,...

Adrianne Lenker stopped by The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday night to perform her new song, “Free Treasure.”

Alongside Mat Davidson providing harmony and guitar, Lenker provides a faithful, intimate rendition of “Free Treasure.” The song, which appears on the Big Thief member’s upcoming solo album Bright Future, is powerfully simple, sparse in arrangement but loaded with consuming themes of love and trust. Watch Lenker’s performance of “Free Treasure” below.

Bright Future is out on Friday, March 22nd, and Lenker previewed the album by offering “Free Treasure,” “Ruined,” “Sadness As a Gift,” and “Fool.” She’ll begin a major 2024 tour this month in support of the new album; check out all her upcoming tour dates and get tickets here.

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Last week, Adrianne Lenker released i won’t let go of your hand, a six-song EP available on Bandcamp that benefits the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.

Adrianne Lenker appeared on The Tonight Show to perform her emotional single, “Free Treasure.” The Big Thief frontwoman took the stage with a guitar and an accompanying musician to showcase the track, which Lenker recently called “one of my all-time favorite songs.”

“Free Treasure” comes off Lenker’s upcoming solo album Bright Future, out March 22. The musician wrote of the single, “I hope we all can know love like this one. Full of ‘understanding, patience and pleasure, time and attention and love without measure.’” It followed previously released tracks “Fool,...

Love is a free treasure — and it feels even more special when Adrianne Lenker reminds you of it.

On Monday, the Big Thief frontwoman released her single “Free Treasure” ahead of her upcoming solo album Bright Future, out March 22.

“Free Treasure is one of my all-time favorite songs,” Lenker wrote on Instagram. “I was playing it on a stoop for my good friend @james_krivchenia, singing the last chorus when he chimed the words ‘free treasure.'”

“I hope we all can know love like this one,” she added, “Full of ‘understanding,...

The opening track of Adrianne Lenker’s Bright Future finds the Big Thief frontwoman reminiscing about formative childhood memories, both beautiful and terrifying. But scratch a bit deeper beneath the surface and “Real House” operates as something of an introduction to the album itself, contextualizing its creation within a specific setting, moment, and mindset: “We moved into a real house/A wild field behind it/I wanted to be an inventor/Collected scraps to make a portal/I wanted so much for magic to be real.”

Recorded in a secluded studio in the woods, Bright Future feels stunningly natural, with a bucolic sense of quiet and serenity. Musically, Lenker is accompanied by acoustic guitar, piano, violin, and only occasionally anything else. Using an analog approach, the album crackles and hisses with all the warm imperfections of live instrumentation.

The first sounds on the second track, “Sadness As a Gift,” are...

Prolific songwriter and Big Thief vocalist Adrianne Lenker has shared i won’t let go of your hand, a six-song collection of demos. Available via Bandcamp, 100% of the proceeds from the release will go toward the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.

Along with the collection of demos, Lenker released a statement urging for a permanent and immediate ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas.

“Everything I think to say feels like it is less than a micro-fraction of the power that is needed to convey the message,” she wrote via Instagram. “I can’t express how sad and angry I am about this ongoing violence towards Palestinians. The killing must stop. The need for a ceasefire is beyond urgent. Permanent Ceasefire Now!”

Get Adrianne Lenker Tickets Here

See the full tracklist for i won’t let go of your hand below, and purchase it on Bandcamp here.

i won...

My Hero Academia covers showcase stunning artwork, with unique styles inspired by western comics. Volume 16 features Kirishima in a fierce pose, highlighting his power and character development. Volume 18 captures Deku's epic battle with Overhaul, showcasing the intensity and power dynamics of the fight.

One of the things that My Hero Academia has received almost unanimous praise for is its art quality, with series creator Kohei Horikoshi always putting in the extra effort to have the series looking the best it possibly can. The covers for the manga's collected volumes are no different in this regard, and with 39 volumes released at the time of writing, that's really saying something.

My Hero Academia covers aren't afraid to try a different sort of art style, closer to their western comic inspirations, and often produce some incredibly striking results. The artwork retains the incredibly detailed style of the manga, and hones in on...

Adrianne Lenker has unveiled “Fool,” the latest single from her forthcoming solo album, Bright Future.

Guided by a muted acoustic guitar line, “Fool” lets Lenker’s wandering verses shine in their purest form. Describing a relationship at a standstill, she arrives at the chorus by requesting “Oh, just say what it is that you want,” and later concludes the track with the decisive “What more can I possibly say? / So if you wanna go I say baby okay, okay.” Throughout, light flourishes of strings pop in and out of Lenker’s homespun arrangement, including moments where you can practically hear Lenker smiling on the mic as she records.

“Fool” also arrives with a similarly homespun music video directed by her brother, Noah Lenker. The video features Lenker fashioned as a winter cowboy warrior with her family and dogs frolicking around her. Watch it below.

The third single off of Bright Future,...

Japanese auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who won best director at Venice in 2020 with Wife Of A Spy, is working on a new suspense thriller titled Cloud, which will be introduced to buyers at the EFM by Japanese studio Nikkatsu Corporation.

The feature is in post-production with a Japanese release set for September 2024. A first look at the film can be seen above.

Written by Kurosawa, the story centres on Ryosuke Yoshii, an enigmatic young man who tries to make money by reselling shrewdly obtained goods on the internet under the pseudonym ‘Ratel’.

The film stars Masaki Suda, who won best actor...

American Sports Story, Ryan Murphy's new anthology series, will explore controversial figures in American sports, starting with Aaron Hernandez. Josh Andrés Rivera, known for his role in The Hunger Games prequel, will lead the cast of Murphy's show. The show will delve into Hernandez's entire life, including his time in football, as well as his crimes, providing a different focus than Murphy's previous exploration of O.J. Simpson.

American Sports Story, Ryan Murphy's upcoming anthology series for FX, casts The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes star Josh Andrés Rivera as Aaron Hernandez.

The anthological universe of the creator is expanding once again after the success achieved with American Horror Story, its spinoff American Horror Stories, and American Crime Story with a new project that explores some of the most controversial figures in American sports history.

The first season of American Sports Story is based on...

Top Japanese director Kurosawa Kiyoshi is in post-production of “Le Chemin du Serpent,” a French-language adaptation of his own 1998 film “The Serpent’s Path.”

The story sees a mysterious woman team up with a man whose daughter was killed and who is now seeking revenge. Together they kidnap members of an organization and torture them to find out what really happened.

With Damien Bonnard and Shibasaki Ko in the leading roles, the picture is the anchor title of the Tiffcom sales slate of major Japanese studio Kadokawa.

Production is by Kadokawa and Jean-Luc Ormieres’ Cinefrance Studios. The Japanese company is handling world sales on the picture outside France and Belgium.

Kurosawa, who has been a regular visitor to Cannes with titles including “Pulse,” “Bright Future,” “Tokyo Sonata,” “Journey to the Shore” and “Before We Vanish”, is preparing to complete the new film in time for a summer 2024 release.

Kadokawa’s...

The 28th edition of the Shanghai TV Festival wrapped up on Friday with its Magnolia Awards presented to a range of TV drama series, documentaries and animation programs. The drama awards were dominated by two shows “A Lifelong Journey” and “Bright Future.”

“A Lifelong Journey,” adapted from a novel of the same name by Liang Xiaosheng, tells the story of three generations of one family in China’s Northeast as time moves from the late Cultural Revolution period through to the country’s reform and opening up. With a starry cast and broadcasters including CCTV-1 and Jiangsu Satellite TV, the show is reported to have attracted 310 million viewers at the beginning of 2022. In mainland China, it ran for 58 episodes, while in Hong Kong it played in 35 parts.

“Bright Future” is a 24-part CCTV-1 political drama which tells the story of a local official who united his county.

Chinese sci-fi also shone at the awards.

New films from Oscar laureate Vanessa Ragone (“The Secret in Their Eyes”) and Camera d’Or winners Edher Campos (“Leap Year”) and Juan Pablo Miller (“Las Acacias”) are among attractions at this year’s Ventana Sur’s Primer Corte and Copia Final, the pix-in-post industry centerpieces at Latin America’s biggest film-tv market.

Ragone co-produces “The Face of the Jellyfish,” from Argentina’s Rotterdam-prized Melisa Liebenthal. Campos unveils “Journey to the Land of the Tarahumara,” Mexican Federico Cecchetti’s follow-up to the multi-prized “Mara’akame’s Dream.”

Miller introduces “Sublime,” one of the section’s buzz titles, along with “Diogenes,” from Peru’s Leonardo Barbuy, and two titles from Brazil: Gregorio Graziosi’s “Tinnitus” and Gabriel Martin’s “Mars One,” winner of Ventana Sur’s prestigious Paradiso Wip Award.

Titles brim with talent, observes Eva Morsch-Kihn, curator of Primer Corte and Copia Final along with Mercedes Abarca and Maria Nuñez.

The Netherlands have always had a special place for Jews. Not always loved, but always protected, Amsterdam calls itself “Mokum” meaning “The Place” in Hebrew and Rotterdammers say “Mazel Tov” when they mean congratulations and all toast with “Daar Ga Je” which in Dutch sounds like “Le Cha’im”.

Jewish movies this year included two Russian films and films which while inclusive of Jews were not “Jewish” in nature.

Anna’s War, directed by Alexey Fedorchenko (2018, Russia, 75 minutes), is about a 6-year-old Anna whose entire family dies in the mass coordinated execution of Jews. The mother covers up Anna with her own body, and the girl miraculously survives. For the next few hundred days Anna hides in the disused chimney at the Nazi Commandant’s office. From her shelter she watches as life passes her by until the village is liberated from the Nazis. In these inhuman conditions Anna not...

I Am GodI’ve said it before and I will always be pleased to say it again: For a film festival to be relevant it is absolutely essential it presents to its audience a line connecting cinema’s present with cinema’s past. The education is key, the experience thrilling and the open-mindedness engendered are all requisite to keep the art living and enjoyed, especially in an age where an audience might be attracted to the event of a film festival but otherwise rarely, if ever, go to the cinema anymore. With over 250 feature films and a similar amount of shorts in its 2018 selection, it was easy to get lost in the massive schedule of the 47th International Film Festival Rotterdam. Which is why I greatly appreciated two particular sections at the festival curated by programmers with acute focus and taste that comparatively left the larger, more vaguely collected sections...

In 2016, Québécois filmmaker Sophie Goyette’s debut feature, Mes nuits feront écho, won the Bright Future Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. A poetic rumination on morality, the fragility of relationships, and the bravery that goes into cultivating human connection, the film flows between very distinct, even seemingly disparate, locales: Québec, Mexico and Asia. Goyette, however, links these places through the journeys of a young musician, Eliane (Eliane Préfontaine), who leaves Canada for Mexico City and ends up teaching piano to the son of a middle-aged man, Romes (Gerardo Trejoluna). Romes soon leaves for Asia with his aged father, […]...

Netflix has been playing a coy game with the upcoming fourth season of Charlie Brooker‘s anxiety-inducing “Black Mirror,” releasing trailer after trailer and posters for each episode and yet hiding the release date. The holiday flavored strategy has been called the 13 Days of Black Mirror, which is now wrapping up and the star of David on top is that final reveal: the Emmy-winning series launches on Friday, December 29th and they’ve delivered a final trailer teasing all the episodes in one big supercut-y mash-up.

Continue reading ‘Black Mirror’ Season 4 Trailer: Imagine A Bright Future With A Late December Release Date at The Playlist.

(Not So) Bright Future: Iwai’s Returns with Troubling Portrait of Modern Love

At the beginning of Japanese director Shunji Iwai’s latest film, A Bride for Rip Van Winkle, its main protagonist finds herself balking at the ease of getting into a relationship.

Continue reading...

Prototype (Blake Williams)The 36th Vancouver Film Festival recently wrapped, and with it, the second year of the Future//Present program, a selection of eight features (and a number of shorts) dedicated to emerging Canadian filmmakers. If the inaugural edition had the task of distinguishing itself from the rest of the festival's True North “stream,” this year's offered the opportunity to cement its relevancy and expand its vision. That's something for which the admirably varied program proved more or less able, albeit with higher highs and lower lows than in 2016, which speaks, at least, to chances being taken (something that can't necessarily be said of the festival's programming in general). Taken on the whole, there are—beyond the uniting sensibility of critic and programmer Adam Cook—filmmaking trends that one could identify, and patterns that one could connect, for better and for worse, to the larger contemporary arthouse scene. But the most successful selections,...

Watching the dreadful and painfully distended films Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa made over the last 10 years, you’d be forgiven for thinking that he was abducted in 2008 and hijacked by a clueless alien parasite trying to keep up appearances. A major figure during the early days of J-horror, Kurosawa distilled the entropy creeping into the digital age before most other artists even felt it — modern classics like “Cure,” “Pulse,” and even the less-horrifying likes of “Bright Future” continue to serve as invaluable time capsules from the era that we’re still trying to escape.

As recently as “Tokyo Sonata,” which is now almost a decade old, it seemed as though Kurosawa could sublimate his obsessions with societal decay into any genre, and the shattering final scene of that film left fans desperate to see where he would go next.

Then, things got bad. The falloff was subtle at first, and it came in small doses,...

After Courtney Waldon’s 51-day stay in the hospital — which was mostly spent in a medically-induced coma while she recovered from horrific burns she suffered from a fire on Sep. 30, 2016— she couldn’t wait to get home to her 4-year-old daughter, parents and husband.

Her goal was to make it home in time for Thanksgiving, and on Nov. 17, 2016, she was finally able to return to her family in Tallapoosa, Georgia.

But just two weeks later — as she still struggled to walk and eat — her husband of four months walked out on her and her daughter Caroline from her first marriage.

Kristen Terlizzi had no idea that maternal mortality was an issue in the United States until she almost lost her own life after she delivered her son, Leo.

“I had always focused on my baby’s health,” Terlizzi, 35, tells People. “It was scary to realize that I was in danger as well.”

Since 1990, the maternal mortality ratio in the U.S. has more than doubled, according to the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, with an estimated 700 to 900 women dying from pregnancy or childbirth related causes each year.

NPR reports that American women are more than three times as likely as Canadian...

The following excerpt serves as the forward to the paperback edition of Tom Roston’s book “I Lost It at the Video Store: A Filmmaker’s Oral History of a Vanished Era,” which is now available here. The new edition features more interviews with younger screen stars, including Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan, as well as new era film visionaries such as Tim League and Burnie Burns.

If you’re a film freak much under the age of 40, you likely have no personal memory of the history of film being anywhere other than at your fingertips. Those of us older than that lived through the last era of “cinematic scarcity.” And it was no joke—I remember putting in for vacation time from work just to be sure I could finally see “Mean Streets”—I saw that it was scheduled to show in a month or so for one night...

Oh how I wish the title of this article could be different. Sadly when England come up against Germany in any competition (especially in a semi-final) there’s a good chance it will end in defeat. Sad but true. Before the game, I let myself get carried away thinking of different titles for this piece on English football, such as ‘England’s Bright Future’, or ‘Bring on Russia’. But unfortunately as soon as the referee blew his whistle for the end of extra time, the title wrote itself.

After the major success of England winning the U20 ‘s World Cup, the nation inevitably turned their attention to the U21’s European Championships. The U20’s 1-0 win over Venezuela meant it was England’s biggest international title since Bobby Moore lifted the World Cup in 1966. That’s depressing. Not taking anything away from the U20’s impressive feat, but surely...

Exclusive: Films by Babak Jalali, Ricardo Silva and Deepak Rauniyar selected.

The Hubert Bals Fund (Hbf), which is administered by International Film Festival Rotterdam, has backed 13 projects in its latest funding round.

The Hbf Voices strand championing filmmakers who are more advanced in their careers, has selected Babak Jalali, pictured (whose film is titled Hymns), Ricardo Silva (Sleepwalk) and Deepak Rauniyar (Raja). Each project will receive script and project development funding worth €10,000.

The Nff+Hbf co-production scheme – a joint initiative by the Netherlands Film Fund and the Hubert Bals Fund – has backed two projects co-produced by Dutch producers.

Those are, Muayad Alayan’s The Reports On Sarah And Saleem, which is co-produced by KeyFilm, and Leonardo Brzezicki’s Almost In Love, which is co-produced by Keplerfilm. Both films receive a production grant of €50,000.

The Hbf Bright Future fund will grant €10,000 to eight features: Arun Karthick (Nasir); Sivaroj Kongsakul (Regretfully At Dawn); John Trengove (Estate); Omar Elzohairy (Feathers...

Dominican Republic drama wins Yellow Robin Award at festival.

The Watchman (El hombre que cuida) by Alejandro Andújar (Dominican Republic) won the Yellow Robin Award at the Curaçao International Film Festival Rotterdam, which wrapped its sixth edition yesterday (April 9).

Andujar’s debut feature is about a young man, recently separated from his wife, who is a watchman at a rich man’s villa; his peace is interrupted when the rich man’s son arrives with his spoiled friends.

The international jury praised the film for tackling “universal issues of race and class, of youth, loyalty and sex in a Caribbean setting”.

They said: “Atmosphere and pace are strong, and the jury was particularly impressed by the brooding lead actor who radiates both the captivity of his personal struggles and that of his confined place in society, in this case the luxury villa he has to take care of when the owner’s spoiled son brings friends and trouble...

In order to make accurate predictions about the potential Cannes Film Festival lineup, it’s first important to explore which films definitely won’t make the cut. The glamorous French gathering is notorious for waiting until the last minute before locking in every slot for its Official Selection. That includes competition titles, out of competition titles, a small midnight section and the Un Certain Regard sidebar. Cannes announces the bulk of its selections in Paris on April 13, but until then, there are plenty of ways to make educated guesses. Much of the reporting surrounding the upcoming festival selection is simply lists of films expected to come out this year. However, certain movies are definitely not going to the festival for various reasons.

That’s why our own list of potentials doesn’t include “Image Et Parole,” Jean-Luc Godard’s followup to “Goodbye to Language,” which sales agent Wild Bunch now anticipates as a 2018 title.

Don't be fooled by that all-too-topical title: Kevin Phillips' stylish American indie Super Dark Times is set two full decades ago, reminding us that teens were perfectly capable of screwing themselves up — and each other — before the internet, cellphones and social media came along to assist them in such activities.

A downbeat, intermittently violent study of friendship, guilt, suspicion and psychosis, this debut feature for Phillips and writing duo Ben Collins and Lukas Piotrowski feels much like a live Sundance competition candidate but actually premiered in the edgy Bright Future section of the...

Changes made to fund which support filmmakers from developing countries.

The Hubert Bals Fund has undergone a makeover. The Fund, founded in 1988 to support filmmakers from developing countries and one of the core parts of International Film Festival Rotterdam, has restructured.

As Iwana Chronis (soon to leave her position as Head of the Fund) explains:

“It seemed like a good a decision to cancel the fall (2016) selection round in order to have a moment to breathe and see how we could organise things differently and then to re-start at the festival with the new team, the new policies and the new financing (structure).”

With Chronis stepping down, Marit van den Elshout (head of Iffr Pro) will take over at the helm. She will be working closely with Iffr Pro Fund coordinator Fay Brennan.

The Fund has a track record for supporting films from talents like Chen Kaige, Carlos Reygadas and Elia Suleiman early in their careers. There...

Panelists including Tribeca’s Frederic Boyer and Cercamon’s Sebastien Chesneau weighed in at the Rotterdam event.

The requirement of a sales agent was hotly debated at International Film Festival Rotterdam today (Jan 29) during a panel about how filmmakers can make the most of film festivals.

Speakers included industry veterans Frederic Boyer (artistic director, Tribeca Film Festival); Sebastien Chesneau (partner, Cercamon Sales Agency) and Katharina Suckale (producer, Bombay Berlin Film Production).

Film-maker Gastón Solnicki, whose second feature Kékszakállú is screening in Iffr’s Bright Future section this year, kicked off the discussion stating that his preference is to work without a sales agent in order to be in full control of the process of taking his films to a festival.

“I would rather be the person in direct contact with distributors, making the marketing materials and putting the posters up. I know my film best, and I know I will work hard to secure sales,” said Buenos...