Actualités

If they do not want to be persecuted by the state, while keeping their chances at the international film festival circuit, the Iranian filmmakers must not be too open in their criticism towards the state policies. Carefully inserted metaphors are usually the way to go for covering tracks and Vahid Jalilvand has so far managed to do so with his previous films, “Wednesday, May 9” (2015) and “No Date, No Signature” (2017) which both premiered at Venice Horizons section. He tries to do the same with his newest effort “Beyond the Wall”, which premiered at the main competition of last year’s Venice. After a tour of festivals like Toronto, Busan, Hamburg and Göteborg, it was shown at the competition of Belgrade International Film Festival, where we caught it.

When we meet our protagonist, Ali, he is in such a desperate state that he tries to commit suicide in his spartan apartment in...

The Film Circuit begins with Telluride, a small but perfect film festival in the mountains of Colorado as simultaneously Venice unfurls the films that will soon be released in the wonderful arthouse cinemas of Europe, followed closely by Toronto whose films foretell the coming year’s Oscars nominees. It is a very exciting time to be on the festival circuit.

And simultaneously with these great screenings are sidebars, panel discussions, workshops, master classes and all around great networking for filmmakers around the world.

Venezia 79 Competition

Il Signore Delle Formiche

Director Gianni Amelio

Main Cast Luigi Lo Cascio, Elio Germano, Leonardo Maltese, Sara Serraiocco / Italy / 134’

The Whale

Director Darren Aronofsky

Main Cast Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, Samantha Morton, Ty Simpkins / USA / 117’

White Noise

Director Noah Baumbach

Main Cast Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle, Raffey Cassidy, Sam Nivola, May Nivola, Jodie Turner-Smith, André L. Benjamin and Lars Eidinger / USA / 136’

L’IMMENSITÀ

Director Emanuele Crialese

Main Cast Penélope Cruz, Luana Giuliani, Vincenzo Amato, Patrizio Francioni / Italy, France / 97’

Saint Omer

Director Alice Diop

Main Cast Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville, Aurélia Petit / France / 123’

Blonde

Director Andrew Dominik

Main Cast Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale, Xavier Samuel, Julianne Nicholson, Lily Fisher / USA / 166’

TÁR

Director Todd Field

Main Cast Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss, Sophie Kauer, Julian Glover, Allan Corduner, Mark Strong / USA / 158’

Love Life

Director Kôji Fukada

Main Cast Fumino Kimura, Kento Nagayama, Atom Sunada / Japan, France / 123’

Bardo, Falsa CRÓNICA De Unas Cuantas Verdades

Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Main Cast Daniel Giménez Cacho, Griselda Siciliani, Ximena Lamadrid, Iker Sanchez Solano, Andrés Almeida, Francisco Rubio / Mexico / 174’

Athena

Director Romain Gavras

Main Cast Dali Benssalah, Sami Slimane, Anthony Bajon, Ouassini Embarek, Alexis Manenti / France / 97’

Bones And All

Director Luca Guadagnino

Main Cast Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, Mark Rylance, André Holland, Chloë Sevigny, Jessica Harper, David Gordon Green, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jake Horowitz / USA / 130’

The Eternal Daughter

Director Joanna Hogg

Main Cast Tilda Swinton, Joseph Mydell, Carly-Sophia Davies / UK, USA / 96’

Shab, Dakheli, Divar (Beyond The Wall)

Director Vahid Jalilvand

Main Cast Navid Mohammadzadeh, Diana Habibi, Amir Aghaee / Iran / 126’

The Banshees Of Inisherin

Director Martin McDonagh

Main Cast Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan / Ireland, UK, USA / 109’

Argentina, 1985

Director Santiago Mitre

Main Cast Ricardo Darín, Peter Lanzani, Alejandra Flechner, Norman Briski / Argentina, USA / 140’

Chiara

Director Susanna Nicchiarelli

Main Cast Margherita Mazzucco, Andrea Carpenzano, Carlotta Natoli, Paola Tiziana Cruciani, Luigi Lo Cascio / Italy, Belgium / 106’

Monica

Director Andrea Pallaoro

Main Cast Trace Lysette, Patricia Clarkson, Adriana Barraza, Emily Browning, Joshua Close / USA, Italy / 113’

Khers Nist (No Bears)

Director Jafar Panahi

Main Cast Jafar Panahi, Naser Hashemi, Vahid Mobaseri, Bakhtiar Panjeei, Mina Kavani, Reza Heydari / Iran / 107’

All The Beauty And The Bloodshed

Director Laura Poitras

USA / 117’

Un Couple

Director Frederick Wiseman

Main Cast Nathalie Boutefeu / France, USA / 64’

The Son

Director Florian Zeller

Main Cast Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby, Zen McGrath, Anthony Hopkins, Hugh Quarshie / UK / 124’

Les Miens

Director Roschdy Zem

Main Cast Sami Bouajila, Roschdy Zem, Meriem Serbah, Maïwenn, Rachid Bouchareb, Abel Jafrei, Nina Zem / France / 85’

Les Enfants Des Autres

Director Rebecca Zlotowski

Main Cast Virginie Efira, Roschdy Zem, Chiara Mastroianni, Callie Ferreira / France / 104’

Toronto is in spite of itself in a civilized sort of way in competition for the premieres with Venice, though the sequential festivals are serving different constituencies. Still, The Whale, for example is premiering in Venice and then traveling to TIFF.

TIFF Gala Presentations:

The Whale directed by Darren Aronofsky, produced and to be distributed in U.S. and actng as international sales agent A24.

TIFF says: “Brendan Fraser gives a career-defining performance in Darren Aronofsky’s arrestingly intimate drama about a reclusive English professor struggling with personal relationships and self-acceptance, adapted from the stage play by Samuel D. Hunter.”

Alice, Darling by Mary Nighy

Also playing are Alice, Darling (Mary Nighy) in which Anna Kendrick captures the anxious psychology of a woman in an abusive relationship as her friends try to reconnect with her while on a cottage getaway.

Black Ice(Hubert Davis) about Black hockey players facing systemic racism in the sport.

The Greatest Beer Run Ever (Peter Farrelly) about man’s story of leaving New York in 1967 to bring beer to his childhood buddies in the Army while they are fighting in Vietnam. An Apple TV+ production.

Butcher’s Crossing (Gabe Polsky) is a frontier epic about an Ivy League drop-out as he travels to the Colorado wilderness, where he joins a team of buffalo hunters on a journey that puts his life and sanity at risk. Based on the highly acclaimed novel by John Williams. Isa Altitude

The Hummingbird (Francesca Archibugi)Hunt (Jung-jae Lee)A Jazzman’s Blues (Tyler Perry)Kacchey Limbu (Shubham Yogi)Moving On (Paul Weitz)Paris Memories (Alice Winocour)Prisoner’s Daughter (Catherine Hardwicke)Raymond & Ray (Rodrigo García)Roost (Amy Redford)Sidney (Reginald Hudlin)The Son (Florian Zeller)The Swimmers (Sally El Hosaini)What’s Love Got to Do With It? (Shekhar Kapur)The Woman King(Gina Prince-Bythewood)

Special PRESENTATIONSAllelujah (Sir Richard Eyre)All Quiet on the Western Front (Edward Berger)The Banshees Of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh)Blueback (Robert Connolly)The Blue Caftan (Maryam Touzani)Broker (Hirokazu Kore-eda)Brother (Clement Virgo)Bros (Nicholas Stoller)Catherine Called Birdy (Lena Dunham)Causeway (Lila Neugebauer)Chevalier (Stephen Williams)Corsage (Marie Kreutzer)Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook)Devotion (Jd Dillard)Driving (Madeleine Christian Carion)El Suplente (Diego Lerman)Empire of Light...

Click here to read the full article.

Iranian director Vahid Jalilvand’s second film No Date, No Signature became Iran’s submission in 2019 for the Oscars’ Best Film Not in the English Language category. It would be a miracle if his latest, Venice competition entrant Beyond the Wall, gleaned the same honor, not because it wouldn’t be a worthy choice — it’s a ravaging, powerful work. It’s just that it’s impossible to imagine the Iranian authorities would approve submitting it.

Overtly critical of the repressive state apparatus, especially its capriciously cruel and violent police forces and merciless justice system, this feature played in Venice without Iranian government support and no doubt places Jalilvand in the ranks of audacious cinema dissidents, along with currently imprisoned filmmakers Jafar Panahi (whose latest No Bears also plays Venice this year), Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Aleahmad.

For this twisty study of guilt and self-sacrifice,...

Nobody emerges unscathed — least of all the audience — from Vahid Jalilvand’s highly effective, deeply unpleasant “Beyond the Wall,” a morbidly violent allegory for the effects of state-sponsored trauma on the individual that places contemporary Iranian society somewhere on the map between the sixth and seventh circles of hell. A strange combination of intricate, almost sci-fi-inflected psychological thriller, splenetic social-breakdown broadside and two-hander (torture) chamber drama, it is an exercise in bravura filmmaking applied to a story so relentlessly grim you might wish it were a little less well-made, giving you an excuse to look away. In his 2017 film “No Date No Signature” (which won Best Director and Best Actor in Venice’s Horizons sidebar), Jalilvand pictured a stratified society teetering on the edge of legality and morality; here, however, it has toppled entirely into the abyss. The only way is down, and the filmmaker is bringing you with it.

Filmmaker Vahid Jalilvand returns to the Lido for the third time.

The Match Factory has acquired worldwide rights to Vahid Jalilvand’s Iranian feature Beyond The Wall, which will have its world premiere in the Venice Competition in September.

It is a sixth Venice pickup for The Match Factory, and third Competition title; it announced the acquisitions of Gianni Amelio’s Lord Of The Ants and Susanna Nicchiarelli’s Chiara earlier this week.

Beyond The Wall follows a blind man whose suicide attempt is interrupted by his building’s concierge. The concierge informs him that an escaped woman is hidden...

The 79th Venice International Film Festival has just announced the line-up for the next edition. The 79th Venice International Film Festival is organised by La Biennale di Venezia and directed by Alberto Barbera. It will take place at Venice Lido from 31 August to 10 September 2022. The Festival is officially recognised by the Fiapf (International Federation of Film Producers Association).

The aim of the Festival is to raise awareness and promote international cinema in all its forms as art, entertainment and as an industry, in a spirit of freedom and dialogue. The Festival also organises retrospectives and tributes to major figures as a contribution towards a better understanding of the history of cinema.

Here are all the Asian Titles on the Programme:

Competition:

Love Life

Director Koji Fukada

Main Cast Fumino Kimura, Kento Nagayama, Atom Sunada / Japan, France / 123’

Shab, Dakheli, Divar (Beyond The Wall)

Director Vahid Jalilvand

Main Cast Navid Mohammadzadeh, Diana Habibi,...

“Vera Dreams of the Sea,” Kaltrina Krasniqi’s semi-autobiographical drama about a sign-language interpreter who battles for her rights in an inheritance dispute, was awarded the Tokyo Grand Prix at the closing ceremony of the 34nd Tokyo International Film Festival on Monday. The prize is worth $30,000.

Set in Krasniqi’s native Kosovo and based on the real-life experiences of her mother, the film previously screened in Venice’s Orrizonti section.

A female-led story also claimed the second place Special Jury Prize. “La Civil,” by Romanian director Teodora Ana Mihai, is a drama about a woman who goes hunting for a daughter kidnapped by a Mexican cartel.

In the Asian Future section for films by up-and-coming Asian directors, the best film award went to “World, Northern Hemisphere,” Iranian director Hossein Tehrani’s drama about a 14-yar-old boy who supports his family following his father’s death.

The closing ceremony also saw...

Exclusive: Here’s your first trailer for Bahman Ghobadi’s new feature The Four Walls, which launched today at the Tokyo International Film Festival as part of its Main Competition.

The film, produced by Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters, follows Boran, a musician working in Istanbul away from his family. His wife has never seen the sea and he has worked for years to buy a small home overlooking it so he can bring his family to live with him. One day he returns home to find a building blocking his sea view. Now begins his fight to reclaim his lost view in the most tragic of circumstances, a fight which gets progressively harder as time goes by.

Festival favourite Ghobadi (Turtles Can Fly) directs. Starring are Amir Aghaee, Funda Eryiğit, Fatih Al, Bariş Yildiz and Onur Buldu. The film is produced by Waters, Ghobadi and Gökçe Isil Tuna, with...

Screen’s regularly updated list of foreign language Oscar submissions.

Nominations for the 91st Academy Awards are not until Tuesday January 22, but the first submissions for best foreign-language film are now being announced.

Last year saw a record 92 submissions for the award, which were narrowed down to a shortlist of nine. This was cut to five nominees, with Sebastián Lelio’s transgender drama A Fantastic Woman ultimately taking home the gold statue.

Screen’s interview with Mark Johnson, chair of the Academy’s foreign-language film committee, explains the shortlisting process from submission to voting.

Submitted films must be released theatrically...

Iran has selected Vahid Jalilvand's psychological drama No Date, No Signature as its submission for best foreign-language film at the Oscars.

Written and directed by Jalilvand, No Date tells a complex story of a forensic pathologist, Dr. Nariman (Amir Aghaee), who injures an 8-year-old boy in a collision with a motorcycle driven by the child's father. The doctor's offers of help are rebuffed, but soon after, at the hospital where he works, Dr. Nariman learns that the boy has been brought in for an autopsy after a suspicious death.

No Date, No Signature screened in the Horizons section ...

Iran has selected Vahid Jalilvand's psychological drama No Date, No Signature as its submission for best foreign-language film at the Oscars.

Written and directed by Jalilvand, No Date tells a complex story of a forensic pathologist, Dr. Nariman (Amir Aghaee), who injures an 8-year-old boy in a collision with a motorcycle driven by the child's father. The doctor's offers of help are rebuffed, but soon after, at the hospital where he works, Dr. Nariman learns that the boy has been brought in for an autopsy after a suspicious death.

No Date, No Signature screened in the Horizons section ...