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Rising Greek filmmaker Evi Kalogiropoulou brings her long-awaited feature debut, “Gorgonà,” to the Venice Film Festival this week, where the movie — a genre-defying female-empowerment story set in a dystopian, male-dominated future — has its world premiere in Critics’ Week.

The film, which was awarded at the Rotterdam Film Festival’s CineMart and the Cannes Cinefondation’s Atelier while in development, follows on the heels of the director’s buzzy short films “Motorway 65,” which played in competition in Cannes in 2021, and “On Xerxes’ Throne,” a Cannes Critics’ Week prizewinner one year later.

Written by Kalogiropoulou and Louise Groult, it’s produced by Amanda Livanou for Greece’s Neda Film, in co-production with Bertrand Gore and Nathalie Mesuret at Blue Monday Productions, Alexandre Perrier and François-Pierre Clavel at Kidam, Fenia Cossovitsa for Blonde, Onassis Culture, Ert and Authorwave. Playtime is handling world sales.

“Gorgonà” takes place in a small, impoverished city-state dominated by...

Playtime has acquired international sales rights to Leyla Bouzid’s family drama In A Whisper about three generations of women in Tunisia, and Evi Kalogiropoulou’s Gorgonà about women rising up against the patriarchy at a Greek oil refinery.

Both films are in post-production and Playtime, part of European joint venture Vuelta Group, is launching sales at the EFM.

In A Whisper stars Eya Bouteraa, Hiam Abbass and Marion Barbeau and is about a woman living in Paris who returns home to Tunisia for her uncle’s funeral and sets out to uncover the truth behind his sudden death.

It...

"Europe is a tough place. And only the strongest of you will make it there." Voltage Pictures has unveiled an official trailer for a Belgian horror thriller survival film called The Hunted, made by French filmmaker Louis Lagayette. This seems to be a promo trailer to attract buyers more than for audiences, since there's no release dates set. After their boat capsizes in the Mediterranean Sea, a group of refugees are rescued by rich Europeans who offer them shelter on an idyllic island. But the miracle soon becomes a nightmare when the saviours turn into ruthless manhunters. So this is a campy modern twist on "The Most Dangerous Game" story, involving refugees who get turned into the prey when they're taken to a private island. Scary! Starring Lily Banda, Alec Newman, Mylène Jampanoï, Raj Bajaj, Vassilis Koukalani, Aurora Marion, & Daphne Alexander. It's a bit of a manipulative concept, but the...

Director Lawrence Valin has garnered quite an acclaim for both of his directorial efforts. His previous short-film won big at Clermont Ferrand. With ‘The Loyal Man’, he takes it to another level by getting an award for his acting performance as well. This second short film, which is also written and directed by him, is part of this year’s Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (Iffla). Within the 37 minutes, he is able to bring a surprising level of exuberance with his prowess over the craft.

“The Loyal Man” is screening at Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles

Through the short, we take a dive into the psyches of two characters, both of whom appear just as muted as the other. The male character, Aathi (played by the director himself), is part of a Tamil smuggling-ring that operates in Paris. As opposed to his problematic background, Minnale (played by Aurora Marion) is just another young,...

You wait a whole year for Doctor Who to come back and then two episodes reach our screens in one week. After debuting on New Year’s Day, season 12 continued this Sunday with the second part of “Spyfall.” It’s a good thing that we didn’t have to wait long for this episode, too, as the last one ended on a heck of a cliffhanger – with Sacha Dhawan’s O revealed to be the Master, the Doctor trapped in another dimension and her friends caught on a crashing, pilot-less plane. Thankfully, “Part 2” keeps up the adrenaline that the premiere injected into the show and ends up delivering one of the most robust installments of the Jodie Whittaker era so far.

In my review for “Part 1,” while largely positive about the episode, I noted that the pace dragged and it felt hard to justify the 65-minute runtime. Though “Part 2” clocks...

When discussing Almayer’s Folly, Chantal Akerman actively resists crediting the source material. Joseph Conrad’s first novel is set in Malaysia at the end of the 19th century and is a grotesque portrait of a young Dutch trader driven to madness by his own foolishness and avarice. A contemporary, sympathetic reading of the novel might commend it for its critique of the dehumanizing tendencies of colonialism, both on the colonized and the colonizer, but Akerman goes a few steps further. The film is less an adaptation than a loose, dream-like reimagining of its central conflict between a European man, his Asian wife, and their mixed-race daughter. Like Jean Rhys’s novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, which foregrounds the racist assumptions in Jane Eyre by giving life and a history to Charlotte Bronte’s exotic “madwoman in the attic,” Akerman rebalances the weight of Conrad’s narrative and in doing so finds—surprisingly,...

Chantal Akerman (center), Almayer's Folly World Cinema Selections Almayer's Folly: Chantal Akerman loosely adapts Joseph Conrad’s novel set in Malaysia, the tragic tale of a failed European trader and his "mixed blood" daughter. Dir Chantal Akerman. Cast Stanislas Merhar, Marc Barbé, Aurora Marion, Zac Andrianasolo. Belgium/France. U.S. Premiere. Alps: Dogtooth director Yorgos Lanthimos returns with a tale of a group offering an unusual service for grieving families: They inhabit the role of the recently deceased. Dir Yorgos Lanthimos. Scr Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthimis Filippou. Cast Aggeliki Papoulia, Aris Servetalis, Ariane Labed, Johnny Vekris. Greece/France. U.S. Premiere. CARRÉ Blanc: One of the strongest debuts in years, CARRÉ Blanc is a dystopian sci-fi vision of a world with limited resources and limitless cruelty. Dir/Scr Jean-Baptiste Léonetti. Cast Sami Bouajila, Julie Gayet, Jean-Pierre Andreani, Fejria Deliba, Valerie Bodson. France/Luxembourg/Russia/Belgium/Switzerland. The Day He Arrives:...