Notizie

The Berlinale has added Anu Rangachar to its programming team, as delegate for South Asia.

Appointed by festival director Tricia Tuttle, Rangachar will report to co-directors of film programming Jacqueline Lyanga and Michael Stutz. She will work alongside the existing programming teams.

Rangachar has headed up the international programme at Mami Mumbai Film Festival, working with US-based distributors to promote contemporary South Asia arathouse films.

Early last year she was appointed artistic director of the newly-merged Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles and The India Center Foundation, non-profit organisations working with South Asian film in the US.

“Anu beautifully rounds...

Former Jerusalem Film Festival artistic director Elad Samorzik, Berlin-based critic, essayist and programmer Jessica Kiang, Ghana-based festival and art consultant Jacqueline Nsiah, and Festival Scope co-founder and programmer Mathilde Henrot have been appointed to the selection committee of festival director Tricia Tuttle’s first Berlin International Film Festival, taking place from February 13-23, 2025.

The committee chooses the Competition and Berlinale Special titles and contributes to the Perspectives section. It is overseen by Tuttle. with co-directors of film programming Jacqueline Lyanga and Michael Stutz, who were appointed in June.

Tuttle, Lyanga and Stutz have also confirmed a group of advisors and...

Berlinale Festival Director Tricia Tuttle has unveiled the selection committee that will help her shape her inaugural Competition and Berlinale Special line-ups for the 2025 edition.

It comprises former Jerusalem Film Festival artistic director Elad Samorzik, Locarno and Festival Scope co-founder Mathilde Henrot, critic Jessica Kiang and Ghana-based festival, art and culture consultant Jacqueline Nsiah.

The quartet, which will also contribute to the discovery-focused Perspectives section, will work alongside Tuttle and her co-directors of Film Programming Jacqueline Lyanga and Michael Stütz, as well as the heads of the Panorama, Generation, Berlinale Shorts, Forum and Forum Expanded sections.

Tuttle has also appointed a number of advisors spanning: film critic and programmer Jin Park, who will advise on genre films; U.K. programmer Rowan Woods, who brings expertise in curating international series for film festivals; Berlin-based curator and programmer Ana David, Glasgow-based film programmer, festival organiser Kate Taylor, Berlin-based curator Rabih El-Khoury and...

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon East-West Award

Huang Jianxin

International Contribution to Chinese Cinema Award

Norman Wang

Fei Mu Awards

Fei Mu Awards: Best Film

“Only the River Flows” Dir. Wei Shujun.

Fei Mu Awards: Best Director

Geng Zihan for “A Song Sung Blue”

Film Review: A Song Sung Blue (2023) by Zihan Geng

Fei Mu Awards: Best Actress

Lyu Xingchen for “Carefree Days” (dir. Xu Lingling)

Fei Mu Awards: Best Actor

Zhang Yu for “Records Without Words” (dir. Li Lizhong)

Fei Mu Awards: Jury Award

“Dance Still” Dirs. Qin Muqiu, Zhan Hanqi

Fei Mu Awards: Special Mention (joint winners)

“The Night Rain South Township” Dir. Li Binbin.

“Undoing Time” Dir. Li Pu

Fei Mu Awards: Best Short Film

“Questions to Heaven” Dirs. Wenqi, Zheng Ziyi.

Roberto Rossellini Awards

Roberto Rossellini Awards: Best Film

“Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell” Dir. Pham Thien An

Roberto Rossellini Awards: Best Director

Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir for “City of Wind...

Two titles which debuted at Cannes this year were named as the major prize-winners at the seventh edition of the Pingyao International Film Festival in China.

Wei Shujun’s black comedy-thriller “Only the River Flows” won the festival’s Fei Mu prize for best Chinese film. “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell,” by Vietnamese feature film debutant Pham Thien An, won the Roberto Rossellini prize for best international film. The picture is a Vietnam, Singapore, France, Spain co-production and won Cannes’ Camera d’Or for best first film.

Other prizes went to Hong Kong-based Norman Wang, a veteran consultant, marketeer and festival scout, and to Huang Jianxin, a leading mainland Chinese director-screenwriter and producer whose directing career has ranged from satire to propaganda. He also produced Sun Zhou’s Gong Li- and Tony Leung-starring “Zhou Yu’s Train.”

The festival, originally conceived by Jia Zhangke and Marco Mueller, is held in the Unesco-heritage,...

Wei Shujun’s Only The River Flows was presented with Best Film in the Fei Mu Awards at this year’s Pingyao International Film Festival (Pyiff), while Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell, directed by Vietnam’s Pham Thien An, won Best Film in the festival’s Roberto Rossellini Awards.

The Fei Mu Awards recognise up-and-coming Chinese filmmakers selected in the festival’s Hidden Dragons section. The Roberto Rossellini Awards are presented to films in the Crouching Tigers section for emerging international filmmakers.

Both Only The River Flows and Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell premiered at this year’s Cannes film festival, the former in Un Certain Regard and the latter in Directors Fortnight where it won the Camera d’Or.

Geng Zihan won Best Director in the Fei Mu Awards for A Song Sung Blue, which also premiered in Cannes Directors Fortnight. Luc Besson, who was in Pingyao with Dogman,...

Only a few months ago, hundreds of Asian film executives were expecting to attend this week’s Berlin festival and the European Film Market. For many, it would have been their first participation in a top-tier overseas festival for nearly two years.

But the Omicron variant has upended those dreams. And, except for those folks with a film playing in the festival, most have stayed at home. Again.

That amplifies a trend of diminished Asian participation that was noticeable at both Cannes and Venice in 2021, though was less pronounced at Locarno.

And Asia’s own top festivals are becoming similarly disconnected from the rest of the world. Shanghai, Busan and Tokyo managed to return to their traditional calendar dates and operated as in-person events, but travel restrictions throughout the region crimped program scale, film selections and rendered their physical components almost entirely local. Tokyo said that there were just 42 international guests on its red carpet.

Under the new leadership of artistic chief Carlo Chatrian and executive director Mariette Rissenbeek, the Berlin Film Festival is instituting a new competitive section, along with a few other changes to the Berlinale program.

On top of the international competition for the Golden and Silver Bears and the Berlinale Shorts sections, the festival will now boast a competitive roster called Encounters that will showcase “daring works from independent, innovative filmmakers,” as well as “give more room to diverse narrative and documentary forms in the official selection,” the festival said in a release Tuesday.

The Encounters lineup will comprise 15 titles maximum, either fiction or documentary films of at least 60 minutes in length, which will have their world or international premieres at Berlin. A three-member jury will choose winners for best film, best director and a special jury award.

“The 21st century, with its technological and economical shifts, has changed film production in many ways,...

The new Berlinale director duo – artistic director Carlo Chatrian and executive director Mariette Rissenbeek – have introduced a new competitive section to sit alongside the Competition and Berlinale Shorts programs.

According to the festival, Encounters will look to “foster aesthetically and structurally daring works from independent, innovative filmmakers. Its goal is to support new voices in cinema and to give more room to diverse narrative and documentary forms in the official selection.”

The lineup will comprise a maximum of 15 works – world or international premieres of fiction or documentary films at least 60 minutes in length. A three-member jury will choose winners for best film, best director and a special jury award.

Also announced today, the festival will be discontinuing sections NATIVe and Culinary Cinema.

“The 21st century with its technological and economical shifts has changed film production in many ways, making boundaries between fiction and documentary, film essay and genre, less stable and more porous.

Strand called Encounters aims to support new voices in cinema.

Incoming Berlinale chiefs Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek have introduced a new competitive section called Encounters to support new voices in cinema, starting from next year’s festival.

Encounters will comprise a maximum of 15 world or international premieres of fiction or documentary films at least 60 minutes in length. A three-member jury will choose winners for best film, best director and a special jury award.

The festival said it aims to “foster aesthetically and structurally daring works from independent, innovative filmmakers” in its official selection.

It will run alongside the traditional...

Swiss-born filmmaker Rebecca Panian working on project.

Beki Probst, the grande dame of the international film world and outgoing president of Berlin’s European Film Market (Efm), is to be the centre of a feature documentary with the working title Beki, which is being directed by the Swiss-born filmmaker Rebecca Panian.

Speaking exclusively to Screen, Panian said that Zurich’s Dschoint Ventschr is producing the project which has been in the making for the past three years. The idea for a film about Probst was proposed by her close friend Edi Stöckli.

”She is such an impressive woman for what she has done at the Berlinale over the past 30 years and I also want to show the next phase where she will attend a script writing course at the film school in Lausanne, Switzerland,” Panian explained.

Panian had accompanied Probst to Jerusalem in 2015 for a memorial to the late Jerusalem Film Festival founder Lia Van Leer, ”It was...