Actualités

Canadian director Philippe Falardeau’s wedding movieLovely Day and Japanese filmmaker Hikari’s comedy drama Rental Family will bookend Malika Rabahallah’s second edition as director of the Filmfest Hamburg, which runs from September 25 - October 4.

Falardeau will be accompanied by his lead actors Neil Elias and Rose-Marie Perreault forLovely Day’s European premiere in Hamburg on September 25 following its world premiere in Toronto. The film is billed as aplayful but poignant deconstruction of the wedding movie.

This will be the third time that Falardeau has a film screening in Hamburg’s programme: Monsieur Lazahr was the Filmfest’s closing...

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, NYC Tourism + Conventions (NYC Tourism), and The Broadway League today presented “Founded By Broadway,” a free live concert to celebrate the 400th anniversary of New York City and spotlight Broadway’s vital role in the city’s history. “Founded By Broadway” celebrated the past, present, and future of Broadway, with performances and appearances by some of Broadway’s newest and most celebrated shows, including Aladdin, & Juliet, The Book of Mormon, Buena Vista Social Club, Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, Chicago, Death Becomes Her, The Great Gatsby, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Hell’s Kitchen, Just in Time, The Lion King, Mamma Mia!,...

Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) is set to honour filmmakers Lee Sang-il and Chloe Zhao with the Kurosawa Akira Award.

The award honors Kurosawa’s “legacy and ongoing influence” and is presented to filmmakers who have “made waves in cinema and are expected to help guide the industry’s future”. A ceremony to present the awards will be held at the Imperial Hotel Tokyo on November 3.

Lee, who was born in Niigata, Japan, won best director at the Japan Academy Awards for his 2006 film Hula Girls, and has since directed multiple award-winning films, including Villian (2010), Unforgiven (2013) and Rage (2016), of which...

The Busan International Film Festival has added pop-fueled spectacle to its 30th edition, announcing a one-night sing-along screening of KPop Demon Hunters alongside an inaugural main competition that features Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl and Sho Miyake’s Locarno winner Two Seasons, Two Strangers. Organizers said the animated hit will play with lyrics on screen at the Dongseo University Sohyang Theatre ShinhanCard Hall, inviting fans to belt out soundtrack staples such as Golden and Soda Pop during the September event. The festival runs Sept. 17–26 in the southern port city, marking its anniversary year.

The sing-along arrives after the movie’s surge from streaming breakout to theatrical phenomenon, including a late-August stint atop the U.

Busan International Film Festival has revealed the 14 titles for its first-ever Competition section, including 10 world premieres from across Asia.

The newly launched strand will comprise films from Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Iran, Tajikistan and Sri Lanka. Five of the titles are directorial debuts.

Scroll down for full Competition lineup

Titles include Gloaming In Luomu, the latest from Korean-Chinese auteur Zhang Lu, who played in Competition at the Berlinale in 2023 The Shadowless Tower and at Locarno in 2014 with Gyeongju, and won Cannes’ Acid award and Biff’s New Currents award with Grain In Ear in 2005.

Spying Stars marks the first feature...

Busan International Film Festival has revealed the 14 titles for its first-ever Competition section, including 10 world premieres from across Asia.

The newly launched strand will comprise films from Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Iran, Tajikistan and Sri Lanka. Five of the titles are directorial debuts.

Scroll down for full Competition lineup

Titles include Gloaming In Luomu, the latest from Korean-Chinese auteur Zhang Lu, who played in Competition at the Berlinale in 2023 The Shadowless Tower and at Locarno in 2014 with Gyeongju, and won Cannes’ Acid award and Biff’s New Currents award with Grain In Ear in 2005.

Spying Stars marks the first feature...

The Busan International Film Festival, which takes place every fall in the beachfront of the country’s largest port city, unveiled its 2025 lineup in Seoul on Tuesday. The 30th edition of the fest will run Sept. 17-26.

The Busan festival opens with director Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, a black comedy thriller based on the novel The Ax by Donald Westlak, which follows Man-su (played by Lee Byung Hun) in his desperate struggle to hunt for a new job after being fired from a position he has held for 25 years.

This year’s Busan presents 241 official selection films – up from 224 from last year, including satellite programs and community events taking place throughout the city and entertaining local audiences during the festival period.

Busan has also strengthened its competitive section, highlighting contemporary Asian cinema, with 14 Asian titles set to vie for the festival’s key award categories this year with sections including best film,...

South Korea’s Busan International Film Festival has unveiled the 14 titles selected for its inaugural competition section, ten of which are world premieres.

The world premieres include four titles from Korea and two from Japan, along with Chinese director Zhang Lu’s Gloaming In Luomu; Sri Lankan director Vimukthi Jayasundara’s sci-fi feature Spying Stars, Iranian filmmaker Hassan Nazer’s Without Permission and Isabelle Kalandar’s Another Birth, co-produced by Tajikistan, US and Qatar (see full line-up below).

The four films in competition that are not world premieres – Shu Qi’s Girl, Tsou Shih-ching’s Left-Handed Girl, Bi Gan’s Resurrection and Sho Miyake’s Two Seasons, Two Strangers – all premiered in either Cannes, Locarno or Venice, with the latter film taking the Golden Leopard in Locarno.

Biff is undergoing a major revamp this year, the festival’s 30th edition and the first under new festival director Jung Hanseok, including...

Three years ago, Japanese director Shô Miyake enjoyed an arthouse breakthrough with his gorgeous, unconventionally delicate boxing movie “Small, Slow But Steady.” Two features later, that title looks more and more like an announcement of Miyake’s own filmmaking credo. All three adjectives apply to his latest, “Two Seasons, Two Strangers,” though it’s more jagged and peculiar than that description might imply on its own. Playfully reorienting the viewer as it shifts from a contemplative film-within-a-film — depicting a fleeting connection between two strangers in a seaside village — to the equally low-key reality of that film’s shy, adventure-seeking writer, it’s a tale light on incident but rich, per its title, in doublings, parallels and reflective surfaces, layered to entrancing, cumulatively moving effect.

A deserving winner of the top prize in the main competition at the Locarno Film Festival — a boon to the distribution prospects of this unassuming mood...

by Cláudio Alves

Berlin, Cannes, and Venice are considered the major European film festivals, holding on to a level of world renown rarely afforded to such institutions. While not meaning to question their importance, it's worth noting that they are far from the only celebrations of cinema happening around the Old Continent, nor are they the ones most welcoming to the challenging and the avant-garde. Rotterdam has them beat on that account, not to mention more non-fiction-focused events and, of course, the Locarno Film Festival. With their propensity for honoring cineastes like Pedro Costa, Albert Serra, and Wang Bing, the Swiss fest will always struggle to capture the attention of more conventional-minded cinephiles,...

Films from Hlynur Palmason, Harris Dickinson and Lucile Hadzihalilovic are among the 23 titles competing in the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera programme at the 73rd San Sebastian Film Festival (September 19-27).

Icelandic director Palmason is world premiering his film Joan Of Arc, about three siblings who continually create and destroy a knight-like figure. His 2022 feature Godland previously won the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera award while his last film The Love That Remains premiered at Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.

The strand has no restrictions on length or style, with six shorts and two medium-length titles competing equally with 15 features for the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera award of €20,000 – split between...

Films from Hlynur Palmason, Harris Dickinson and Lucile Hadzihalilovic are among the 23 titles competing in the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera programme at the 73rd San Sebastian Film Festival (September 19-27).

Icelandic director Palmason is world premiering his film Joan Of Arc, about three siblings who continually create and destroy a knight-like figure. His 2022 feature Godland previously won the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera award while his last film The Love That Remains premiered at Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.

The strand has no restrictions on length or style, with six shorts and two medium-length titles competing equally with 15 features for the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera award of €20,000 – split between...

A hand holds a pencil, poised over a blank page. “Scene 1, Summer, Seaside,” the screenwriter Li writes, and with these few words, a world is summoned into existence. Sho Miyake’s Two Seasons, Two Strangers begins with this quiet act of creation, immediately placing us inside the mind of its protagonist. Li, a Korean writer living in Japan, is experiencing a profound creative and emotional stasis.

Her inner monologue, spoken in her native Korean, reveals a struggle with the very tools of her trade; she feels trapped in a “cage of words.” The film patiently observes her stillness, establishing a contemplative atmosphere that presents an inquiry into the porous divide...

Writing about another great Locarno film a few days ago, I lamented the critical inclination to always bring up Éric Rohmer and Hong Sangsoo. Regardless, it would be wrong not to note the echoes of their work in Sho Miyake’s breathtakingly gorgeous Two Seasons, Two Strangers, a film that was awarded the Golden Leopard from a Carlos Reygadas-led jury this weekend, beating out more obviously challenging films from the likes of Ben Rivers and Alexandre Koberidze. Like Hong’s peerless Tale of Cinema, Miyake begins his latest with a film-within-the-film, allowing us the pleasure of a confected human connection before dropping us in the choppy waters of something far more real. It’s an excellent piece of work and, I think, deserving of the prize.

Two Seasons is the third in a wonderful recent run by Miyake, joining Small, Slow But Steady (2022) and All The Long Nights (2024). With...

The fact that this year’s Golden Leopard went to Sho Miyake’s “Two Seasons, Two Strangers” (Tabi to Habi) has the most beautifully reassuring ring to it. In an ecosystem increasingly drowned by technical exhibitionism, this film touches a rare purity­­­­. Miyake abjures showiness and embraces humility, towards characters, the way they dwell within their specific loneliness. In his cinema, gestures are minute, considered, and reveal a surge of latent emotion. Just look deeper, and you can draw up worlds of anguish and grief bobbing beneath the unexpressed. In fact, the portrait of strangers forging a flicker of profound connection in Miyake’s artfully subdued drama sneaks up on you with poetry and pathos.

In the opening, a woman jots down a snatch of a scene, and you witness it come alive. There’s the conjuring element of art that lends a literal dimension. From someone waking up in...

Sho Miyake is one of the finest, most soulful Japanese filmmakers of his generation. His recent features, all patiently-paced dramas about circumstantial relationships, share a compelling interest in the quiet. Not necessarily tranquility; almost every Miyake lead is outright depressed or a bundle of nerves about key issues in their life.

Rather, he favors characters who struggle with loneliness, withdrawing from engaging with people much at all due to factors that make human connection harder for them. “All the Long Nights” saw two office workers suffering from different detrimental conditions form a supportive bond to ease their respective pains. And in Miyake’s gorgeous, lo-fi take on a sports movie, “Small, Slow but Steady,” the quiet demeanor of its young boxer protagonist is due to a literal hearing impairment. She reads lips to understand people, while choosing to not articulate many of her inner thoughts.

In Miyake’s latest tender,...

Two Seasons, Two Strangers by Sho Miyake (All the Long Nights, Small, Slow But Steady) is the winner of the 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival’s international competition, which was honored with the Pardo d’Oro, or Golden Leopard, in the Swiss town on Saturday.

The Japanese drama, based on the manga Mr. Ben and His Igloo, A View of the Seaside by Yoshiharu Tsuge, follows Lee, a scriptwriter who is processing what is happening in her life.

“We finally have Japan in the competition again,” Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro had told THR about the film marking Japan’s return to the competition lineup.

White Snail by Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter (Space Dogs), a romantic drama about a Belarusian model dreaming of a career in China who finds herself drawn to a mysterious loner who works the night shift at a morgue, won another top honor,...

Following extended runs in Boston and London’s West End, the new musical comedy Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) will open on Broadway this fall. Previews begin Saturday, November 1, 2025, ahead of an opening night on Thursday, November 20, 2025, at the Longacre Theatre. A Spotify Fans First Presale begins today, providing first access to Broadway tickets for top fans of the Two Strangers cast album on Spotify. Listeners can check their email to see if they qualify. Tickets will go on sale to the general public tomorrow, Wednesday August 13, at 10:00Am Et at Telecharge.com. In celebration of the musical’s Broadway premiere, all seats for 8 select previews in the first two weeks of the Broadway run will be available for $88 or under; purchases must be made by August 20 to...

Following extended runs in Boston and London’s West End, the new musical comedy Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) will open on Broadway this fall, with previews beginning Saturday, November 1, ahead of an opening night on Thursday, November 20, at Longacre Theatre.

Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) is written and composed by Jim Barne and Kit Buchan and is directed and choreographed by Tim Jackson (Merrily We Roll Along, Dylan Mulvaney’s The Least Problematic Woman in the World).

Starring in the musical’s Broadway premiere are Olivier Award-winning actor Sam Tutty (Dear Evan Hansen) in his Broadway debut as Dougal, and Broadway leading lady Christiani Pitts (A Bronx Tale, King Kong) as Robin, who reprise their roles from the show’s acclaimed run at American Repertory Theater this summer.

The production is described as an original new musical comedy about timing, connections, and unexpected detours.

A.R.T.’s North American premiere of Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) is playing now at A.R.T.'s Loeb Drama Center in Harvard Square, Cambridge. Christiani Pitts and Sam Tutty star in the A.R.T. production of the West End hit Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York). Phoenix Best and Vincent Michael are understudies. A naïve and impossibly upbeat Brit, Dougal, has just landed in New York for his dad’s second wedding—the dad he’s never known. Robin, the sister of the bride, is at the airport to pick him up—and she’s late for work. Hungry for an adventure in the city he’s only seen in movies, Dougal hopes native New Yorker Robin will be his guide. Taking inspiration from traditional...

Watch new video of star Christiani Pitts performing “What’ll It Be” from the musical Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) now playing at American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.). A.R.T.’s production of Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) is now in performance at the Loeb Drama Center in Harvard Square. A naïve and impossibly upbeat Brit, Dougal, has just landed in New York for his dad’s second wedding—the dad he’s never known. Robin, the sister of the bride, is at the airport to pick him up—and she’s late for work. Hungry for an adventure in the city he’s only seen in movies, Dougal hopes native New Yorker Robin will be his guide. Taking inspiration from traditional rom-coms, this “fresh, funny, ironic, and inventive” (The Observer) new musical balances...

American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) at Harvard University’s production of Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) begins performances tonight, Tuesday, May 20, at the Loeb Drama Center in Harvard Square. Get a first look at the cast in action! The musical follows Dougal, an optimistic British man visiting New York for the wedding of a father he’s never met, and Robin, the bride’s sister, who’s reluctantly tasked with picking him up from the airport. As they navigate the city together, the pair discover how a stranger can have a profound impact on one’s life. The show draws inspiration from classic romantic comedies and explores themes of connection, hope, and vulnerability. Sam Tutty and Christiani Pitts star as Dougal and Robin. Understudies for the production are Phoenix...

‘Love Lies Bleeding’ es la segunda película más nominada. © Elástica Films | Filmin | DeAPlaneta

Ya se conocen los nominados a los Premios BIFA (British Independent Film Awards). Estos premios son unos galardones cinematográficos que se otorgan en el Reino Unido para destacar y honrar las películas independientes británicas. Los ganadores de los premios BIFA 2024 se darán a conocer el 8 de diciembre. Aquí os dejamos con la lista de los nominados de esta edición:

Mejor PELÍCULA Independiente BRITÁNICA

Kneecap

Love Lies Bleeding

On Becoming Guinea Fowl

The Outrun

Santosh

Mejor PELÍCULA Independiente Internacional

All We Imagine as Light

Anora

La Chimera

No Other Land

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Mejor DIRECCIÓN

Andrea Arnold, Bird

Nora Fingscheidt, The Outrun

Rose Glass, Love Lies Bleeding

Rungano Nyoni, On Becoming A Guinea Fowl

Rich Peppiatt, Kneecap

Mejor Guion

Nora Fingscheidt & Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

Rose Glass & Weronika Tofilska, Love Lies Bleeding

Rungano Nyoni, On Becoming A Guinea Fowl...

This morning, the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) announced their list of nominations for 2024.

‘Kneecap’ leads 2024 nominations with 14, ‘Love Lies Bleeding has 12, ‘The Outrun receives 9 nominations, 7 nominations each for ‘Bird,’ on becoming a guinea fowl and unicorns, 6 for ‘Hoard’ and ‘Civil War.’

Celebrating remarkable films and outstanding talent from the British film industry and beyond, this year’s list highlights the UK’s brightest new talent alongside BIFA heroes such as Andrea Arnold, Rose Glass, Rungano Nyoni, Saoirse Ronan, Jack O’Connell, Barry Keoghan and Hayley Squires.

Also in news – John Krasinski to return for ‘Jack Ryan’ movie

The nominations are;

The Richard Harris Award for Outstanding Contribution by an Actor to British Film

Tba – This year’s award recipient will be announced in the coming weeks.

Best British Independent Film

Kneecap Rich Peppiatt, Trevor Birney, Jack Tarling

Love Lies Bleeding Rose Glass, Weronika Tofilska, Andrea Cornwell, Oliver Kassman

On Becoming A Guinea Fowl Rungano Nyoni,...

This year’s BIFA nominations have been unveiled and it’s a delightfully diverse group of great films. More on those below.

There’s less than two months of 2024 left, which means that the awards season is also upon us. It’s time to celebrate this year’s excellent films with fancy statuettes, and first in line is the British Independent Film Awards, aka BIFAs. Nominations were announced today (5th November).

Rich Peppiatt’s joyously anarchic Kneecap leads the pack with a whopping 14 nominations to its name. Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding follows with 12 nominations and Nora Fingscheidt also triumphed with nine.

Women are particularly well represented this year. Out of the five Best British Independent Film nominees, four are directed by women. It’s the same for the Best Director category, where Andrea Arnold, Nora Fingscheidt, Rose Glass and Rungano Nyoni are nominated along with Rich Peppiatt.

Amy Winehouse...

Chongdol Dew Sukulworapat and Noppharat Ramwong’s “Love Stuck” riffs on a time-loop romance. It tries to amp up charm, innocence, and relatability while invoking sci-fi elements. The mix of science fiction and romance doesn’t yield great results. It’s an inchoate balance that is not as arresting and playful as it should be. There’s no sparkle, just a routine, repetitive, and colorless string of loop-like incidents that promises inventiveness but delivers little. It’s too unsatisfying and the thinly stretched narrative keeps going in circles. This doesn’t work despite it being the undergirding conceit.

A story like this demands surprise and innovation, formally weaving it within the intricacies of recurring narrative elements and tricks. The film rests on romance as crafting a tender, strong, and binding way out of the destabilizing mess of the time loop. It becomes a soothing, grounding presence amidst the suffocating tension of the situation.

Exclusive: Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival has launched a new initiative supporting and promoting emerging directing, writing and producing talents in the Mena region and unveiled the first participants.

The Cinegouna Emerge Rising Stars initiative has been created within the framework of the festival’s Cinegouna Emerge program aimed at nurturing the next generation of Mena film professionals.

The inaugural selection comprises Mohammed Almughanni (Palestine), Faris Alrjoob (Jordan), Leila Basma (Lebanon), Rasha Hosny (Egypt), sibling directorial duo Noel and Michelle Keserwany (Lebanon) and Dessil Mekhtigian (Egypt).

Gaza-born director Mohammed Almughanni has a bachelor’s and master’s in film directing from Łódź Film School in Poland. His most recent short An Orange from Jaffa, about a young Palestinian man trying to cross an Israeli checkpoint to join his mother on the other side, won the Grand Prix in the International Competition of the Clermont Ferrand Short Film Festival earlier this year.

The Flats, a film about The Troubles in Northern Ireland, won the top award at Cph:dox in Copenhagen at a Friday night, earning a €10,000 prize.

The documentary directed by Alessadra Celisia takes place in “New Lodge in the center of Belfast, a neighborhood still haunted by the nearly 30-year conflict between Catholics and Protestants which officially ended in 1998.”

In their citation, the jury called the film witty, multi-layered, profound and provocative. They wrote, “Our main award recognizes not only creative and conceptual daring, but a filmmaker with the humility to realize when the story outgrows its framework, and the confidence to follow where it, and its fantastically vivid characters lead. We live in a world of divisions, borders and locked gates. Coming like a conversation shouted through one of those locked gates, our winning film is a collective portrait of several proud, funny, resourceful individuals, who would be willing to...

U.S. content management, financing and sales banner Cinetic Media has secured world rights to the life affirming doc “Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other,” about legendary photographer Joel Meyerowitz and artist and author Maggie Barrett, his wife.

Rising filmmaking duo Manon Ouimet and Jacob Perlmutter of London-based Manon et Jacob are making their documentary debut, with Ouimet serving as producer alongside multi-Oscar nominated Danish producer Signe Byrge Sørensen of Final Cut Four Real.

“Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other” is having its world premiere March 16 in the Dox:award main competition at Copenhagen’s leading documentary festival Cph:dox, and also screen in the international competition section of Thessaloniki Documentary Festival on the same day.

Pedigree co-producing partners attached include Fremantle-owned doc label Undeniable, helmed by Mandy Chang, and long-time Final Cut for Real U.S. partners Louverture Films.

The character-driven documentary chronicles the loving yet...

Merry Christmas Movie ft Katrina Kaif & Vijay Sethupathi. (Photo Credit – Instagram)

Merry Christmas, starring Katrina Kaif and Vijay Sethupathi, was one of the first theatrical releases in January this year. The Sriram Raghavan directorial made everyone curious about the story because of the exciting cast. After six years, the director had a theatrical release post-Tabu and Ayushmann Khurrana’s Andhadhun (2018). The film was earlier scheduled to release on December 23, 2023. However, it was then postponed to January 12, 2024.

When Merry Christmas was released in theatres, the film received many positive reviews from critics. Even the movie-going audiences were in awe of Sriram’s new convoluted story and Katrina and Vijay’s impressive performances. If you missed watching the movie on the big screen and are waiting to rewatch it, we have good news. The film has finally got an Ott release date. Read to know more about the romantic thriller in detail.