News

“Erupcja,” Pete Ohs’ mysterious romantic movie starring Charli xcx, Lena Góra and Jeremy O. Harris, has been boarded by Magnify in the run up to its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival.

The company will handle international sales on the buzzy movie, which is slated to bow in the Centrepiece section at Toronto. CAA Media Finance represents domestic rights.

Set in Poland, “Erupcja” follows two women as they complicate their romantic lives. Nel (Góra) lives in Warsaw, where she works at a flower shop. When her childhood friend Bethany (Charli xcx) comes to visit with a new boyfriend, a volcano erupts. The cast is completed by Harris, Will Madden (“Jethica”) and Agata Trzebuchowska (“Ida”). “Erupcja” is produced by Ohs, Harris, Charli xcx, Luke Arreguin and Josh Godfrey.

“We’re thrilled to partner again with Pete and the team on ‘Erupcja,’” said Austin Kennedy, head of sales at Magnify. “Charli...

Exclusive: Magnify has boarded international sales to Stillz’s Colombia-set coming-of-age story Barrio Triste ahead of its world premiere at Venice Film Festival (August 27-September 9) in Horizons.

The feature directorial debut by Stillz, the Colombian-American music video director and photographer who has worked with Bad Bunny and Rosalía, takes place in Medellin in 1987 as teen outcasts steal a news camera to document their dangerous lives.

Barrio Triste is produced by Harmony Korine’s collective Edglrd and according to the film’s representatives “taps into the anxieties of a youth culture from the margins of history yearning to be understood”.

The cast features Juan Pablo Baena,...

Major figures from the Austrian film industry have come together to protest at proposed cuts to the Austria’s production incentive amid fears that this would lead to “destruction of the industry”, “massive increase in unemployment” and “permanent damage to a whole culturalsector”.

Directors Jessica Hausner and Marie Kreutzer (who both participated in the Investors Circle initiative in Cannes with new projects), Barbara Albert, Stefan Ruzowitzky and Ulrich Seidl are among the signatories of an open letter orgainsed by 17 industry associations protesting at the Austrian government’s plan to slash the ÖFI+ incentive’s annual budget from €22m to €15.5m...

Exclusive: Magnify has bolstered its Cannes sales slate with international rights to Pete Ohs’ recent SXSW genre-bender The True Beauty Of Being Bitten By A Tick.

The Narrative Spotlight premiere stars Zoë Chao, whose credits include Bubble & Squeak, as a young woman whose idyllic rural escape unravels after a tick bite triggers a series of unsettling transformations.

The cast includes Callie Hernandez, Jeremy O. Harris (The Sweet East), and James Cusati-Moyer (Maestro).

Ohs, Hernandez, Harris, Chao, and Cusati-Moyer co-wrote the screenplay, and the producers are Ohs, Hernandez (Invention), Harris (Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play.), and Josh Godfrey...

24 years ago, Isabelle Huppert starred in an erotic psychological drama called The Piano Teacher, which won the Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival, where Huppert also earned a Best Actress award (and her co-star Benoît Magimel won Best Actor). The Piano Teacher was based on a novel by Elfriede Jelinek – and now, Huppert and Jelinek have reteamed for a vampire movie called The Blood Countess, where Huppert takes on the role of the title character, Countess Elizabeth Báthory, a 16th-century Hungarian serial killer! Magnify sales recently acquired U.S. and global sales rights to the film, and today they have unveiled the first image of Huppert’s character. You can check it out at the bottom of this article.

German New Wave artist and filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger directed The Blood Countess and wrote the screenplay with Jelinek. Huppert plays Báthory as she awakens from her long beauty sleep and emerges from the underworld.

Isabelle Huppert stars as the infamous Countess Elizabeth Báthory in the twisted new vampire mystery film The Blood Countess, and a first look image arrives today giving us a closer look at Huppert in character as the titular vampire.

The Blood Countess is directed by Ulrike Ottinger, who co-wrote the screenplay with the Nobel Prize in Literature winner Elfriede Jelinek (The Piano Teacher).

The feature is inspired by Countess Elizabeth Báthory, a Hungarian noblewoman who purportedly tortured and murdered hundreds of young women in the 16th and 17th centuries, the crimes so heinous that her serial killing ways evolved into folkloric tales of vampirism.

Tom Neuwirth (aka Eurovision Song Contest 2014 winner Conchita Wurst ), Birgit Minichmayr, Lars Eidinger, Thomas Schubert (Afire), and André Jung (The Forger) also star.

As for the plot, “After ‘The Blood Countess’ (Isabelle Huppert) awakens from her long beauty sleep and emerges from the underworld, she and...

Tom Neuwirth aka Conchita Wurst, the bold Austrian bearded diva who won the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest, will make her acting debut in a twisted vampire mystery, “The Blood Countess,” starring opposite Isabelle Huppert.

Magnify handles global and U.S. sales rights on the hot title and has unveiled a striking first-look image (pictured) from the film ahead of the Cannes film market where Austin Kennedy, head of global sales, and Phoebe Liebling, manager of global sales, will be pursuing deals.

Directed by renowned German New Wave filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger, “The Blood Countess” draws inspiration from the life and legend of Countess Elizabeth Báthory, the infamous 16th-century Hungarian noblewoman which is played by Huppert. The screenplay was penned by Ottinger and Elfriede Jelinek, the Nobel Prize in Literature winner and acclaimed author of “The Piano Teacher.” The film is currently in post-production.

The cast is completed by Birgit Minichmayr (“Daughters”), Lars Eidinger,...

Willem Dafoe has signed on to star in “The Souffleur,” an English-language dark comedy directed by rising Argentinian director Gastón Solnicki. Magnify has boarded worldwide sales (excluding Austria) ahead of the Cannes Film Market. Variety has been given exclusive access to a first-look image for the film (below), which is currently in post-production.

“The Souffleur” sees Dafoe playing the tenured hotelier of Vienna’s InterContinental Hotel. Upon learning that his cherished hotel is about to be sold to an Argentine developer who plans to demolish and reconstruct the landmark completely, he wages a personal vendetta against the new owner. “Spiraling into absurd paranoia, his profound unraveling begins to manifest in his surroundings — the hotel pipes become blocked, the clocks go haywire and his trademark soufflés refuse to rise,” reads the synopsis. The movie shot on location in Vienna at the InterContinental Hotel.

Willem Dafoe in “The Souffleur.”

Dafoe stars alongside Solnicki,...

As the European Film Market kicks off Feb. 13 in Berlin with a new market head, Tanja Meissner, at the helm, this year’s buzziest titles suggest the industry will be looking toward tried-and-true genre fare and splashy, star-driven packages to thaw the winter chill.

Bankable stars are expected to heat things up in Berlin, with Ari Aster and A24’s “Eddington”, Guy Ritchie’s “Wife & Dog”, Ernest Dickerson’s untitled hitman thriller and Kantemir Balagov’s “Butterfly Jam” showcasing how marquee names remain a safe bet as uncertainty continues to reign in the theatrical market.

On the genre side of things, horror is still expected to scare up sales, with buyers looking to sink their fangs into Isabelle Huppert’s 16th-century vampire mystery “The Blood Countess” and Jacob Chase’s killer canine genre-bender “Bad Boy,” starring Ke Huy Quan and Lili Reinhart. Meanwhile, comedy could be making a comeback,...

24 years ago, Isabelle Huppert starred in an erotic psychological drama called The Piano Teacher, which won the Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival, where Huppert also earned a Best Actress award (and her co-star Benoît Magimel won Best Actor). The Piano Teacher was based on a novel by Elfriede Jelinek – and now, Huppert and Jelinek are set to reteam for a vampire movie called The Blood Countess, where Huppert will be taking on the role of the title character, Countess Elizabeth Báthory, a 16th-century Hungarian serial killer!

Variety reports that German New Wave artist and filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger will be directing The Blood Countess and wrote the screenplay with Jelinek. Huppert will be playing Báthory as she awakens from her long beauty sleep and emerges from the underworld. She and her devoted maid (Birgit Minichmayr) embark on a baroque quest through Vienna to recover the red elixir of life.

Big names, high concepts, and crowd-pleasing thrills are the order of the day at this year’s European Film Market, where commercial fare is dominating over the usual arthouse prestige plays, reflecting an industry uncertain of the future of the theatrical business in the post-covid world. Action, horror, and comedy are leading the charge, with star-driven projects like Guy Ritchie’s Wife & Dog (Benedict Cumberbatch, Rosamund Pike), Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Rose Byrne, Conan O’Brien, A$AP Rocky), and Ernest Dickerson’s untitled hitman thriller (Samuel L. Jackson, Daveed Diggs) among the titles generating early buzz.

Genre filmmakers are also stepping up in a big way, with The Raid’s Iko Uwais launching a new production/sales outfit in Berlin for his brand of martial-arts madness, and horror entries like Bad Boy — starring Ke Huy Quan and Lili Reinhart — and the body-horror thriller...

An auteur-actor pairing to nearly match last week’s word of Johnnie To and Tony Leung comes via Variety, who tell us Ulrike Ottinger will direct Isabelle Huppert in The Blood Countess, a vampire feature based on the infamous Elizabeth Báthory from a script by Ottinger and Elfriede Jelinek (The Piano Teacher). Lars Eidinger (Irma Vep), Thomas Schubert (Afire), and Birgit Minichmayr (Everyone Else) will co-star; sales start at the European Film Market imminently.

The Blood Countess is described by “immersive and delightfully eccentric vampire mystery” that unfolds as “a highly visual, narrative scavenger hunt.” Here’s sales agent Magnify’s official synopsis

“[Madame Báthory] and her devoted maid (Birgit Minichmayr) embark on a baroque quest through Vienna to recover the red elixir of life. The book, if found and read by the vampire’s enemies, threatens their vampire realm. Hot on their heels are a vegetarian nephew (Thomas Schubert), his psychotherapist (Lars Eidinger), two vampirologists,...

Isabelle Huppert is starring as the notorious Countess Elizabeth Báthory in the upcoming vampire mystery feature The Blood Countess, which is set to launch sales next week at EFM, Variety reports today.

The Blood Countess is directed by Ulrike Ottinger, who co-wrote the screenplay with the Nobel Prize in Literature winner Elfriede Jelinek.

The film follows Elizabeth Báthory as “She and her devoted maid (Birgit Minichmayr) embark on a baroque quest through Vienna to recover the red elixir of life. The book, if found and read by the vampire’s enemies, threatens their vampire realm. Hot on their heels are a vegetarian nephew (Thomas Schubert), his psychotherapist (Lars Eidinger), two vampirologists, a police inspector, and more lively characters in this twisted and humorous vampire tale.”

For the uninitiated, Countess Elizabeth Báthory was a Hungarian noblewoman who purportedly tortured and murdered hundreds of young women in the 16th and 17th centuries,...

Magnify has boarded “The Blood Countess,” a vampire mystery movie starring Isabelle Huppert as Countess Elizabeth Báthory, a 16th-century Hungarian serial killer.

Directed by renowned German New Wave artist and filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger, the movie is inspired by the life and legend of Countess Elizabeth Báthory. The screenplay was penned by Ottinger and Elfriede Jelinek, the Nobel Prize in Literature winner and acclaimed author of “The Piano Teacher.”

Huppert stars in the film opposite Birgit Minichmayr (“Daughters”), Lars Eidinger (“Dying”), Thomas Schubert (“Afire”) and André Jung (“The Forger”).

“The Blood Countess” is one of the hottest European projects to head to the EFM next week where Magnify’s sales team, led by Lorna Lee Torres, will be introducing the movie to buyers.

Huppert plays the Countess Elizabeth Báthory (aka ‘The Blood Countess’), as she awakens from her long beauty sleep and emerges from the underworld. “She and her devoted maid...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.News Office Space.Some Hollywood insiders are blaming post-pandemic work-from-home policies—rather than rampant financialization and an overinvestment in stale intellectual-property tentpoles—for the industry’s recent decline.A coalition of human-rights groups have penned an open letter to Netflix demanding the renewal of its “Palestinian Stories” collection, which expired earlier this month after three years on the platform.Workers in RadicalMedia’s nonfiction division have launched a union drive, having collected an “overwhelming majority” of signature cards from the 65-person bargaining group. They plan to join the Writers Guild of America East.China will not have an Oscar entry this year, after the Academy deemed the documentary The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru (2023) ineligible for the Best Foreign Picture award,...

Ulrike Ottinger came out of a long gestation period for The Blood Countess and now fellow female German filmmaker Maren Ade is in early prep mode to direct her fourth feature film — which comes almost a full decade since Toni Erdmann premiered in Cannes to critical acclaim. Ade has been busy wearing the producer’s hat: some notable recent items include About Dry Grasses, Ahed’s Knee, Corsage, Exile, Spencer and The Story of My Wife. In a Screen Daily profile on power horse producers Janine Jackowski and Jonas Dornbach of Komplizen Film, they revealed that they are now tying up financing coin for Ade’s Zauberwort (aka Magic Word).…...

Palme d’Or winning director Ruben Östlund’s next film The Entertainment System Is Down has been awarded €500,000 in production support from Berlin-Brandenburg’s regional film fund.

It is one of 30 feature films and series projects, from directors such as David Wnendt and Ulrike Ottinger, to share more than €7.2m in Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (Mbb)’s latest funding round.

Phlippe Bober’s Berlin-based Essential Filmproduktion received the €500,000 for Östlund’s second English-language production The Entertainment System Is Down, starring Daniel Brühl, Kirsten Dunst and Keanu Reeves. The long gestating project is set on a long-haul flight whose inflight entertainment system breaks down.

It has been over a dozen years in the making. We can confirm that Isabelle Huppert has indeed remained on board, so has Sophie Rois, and they will be surrounded by Birgit Minichmayr (of Everyone Else fame) and Huppert’s About Joan co-star in Lars Eidinger in Ulrike Ottinger’s long-gestating The Blood Countess. At eighty-two years young, the German filmmaker has been receiving some much needed pre-production coin support as of late and just landed another round of coin via German funding bodies Film und Medienstiftung Nrw, Fff Bayern and Hessen Film & Medien. Tilda Swinton, Udo Kier and Irm Hermann (who passed away in 2020) were once mentioned way back in 2010.…...

Three German regional film funds - Film- und Medienstiftung Nrw, Fff Bayern and Hessen Film & Medien - have allocated more than €12m to new film and TV series projects in their latest funding sessions.

The fifth and final season of Babylon Berlin, scheduled to start production this autumn, received the largest sum of €2m from the funding committee of Düsseldorf-based Film- und Medienstiftung Nrw.

In total, the fund distributed €5.3m to 12 projects including Coin Film’s production of writer-director Jutta Brückner’s drama The Assistant, starring Corinna Harfouch and Sandra Hüller; Heimatfilm and Amour Fou’s co-production of Ulrike Ottinger...

The projects for the upcoming Venice Gap-Financing Market have been unveiled (27 feature-length fiction) and there’ll be several listed here projects that we’ll discuss at length next year when they start hitting the festival circuit of 2025 and especially, 2026. At the top of our most anticipated list, we find Ulrike Ottinger‘s The Blood Countess (which might still have Tilda Swinton and Isabelle Huppert attached) in almost ready to shoot mode. Also from Europe, we have Polish filmmaker Aga Woszczyńska readying Black Water. She premiered Silent Land in TIFF’s platform section in 2021. We also find Directors’ Fortnight favorite Shahrbanoo Sadat (2016’s Wolf and Sheep / 2019’s The Orphanage) rounding out final funds for No Good Men.…...

Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof is set to attend the Cannes premiere of his latest feature, The Seed Of The Sacred Fig, after receiving an eight-year prison sentence from Iranian authorities and fleeing his home country.

Speculation had been rife that the dissident director would attend the festival when the film receives its world premiere in Competition on Friday (May 24), having found asylum in Germany, but Cannes’ general delegate Thierry Fremaux has now confirmed his attendance.

“We are particularly touched to welcome [Rasoulof] here as a filmmaker,” Fremaux said in a statement to Agence France-Presse (Afp).

Our joy will be that of...

International filmmakers are calling for solidarity with Mohammad Rasoulof and persecuted filmmakers in Iran in an open letter, shared with Variety.

Rasoulof – about to screen his latest film “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” in Cannes’ main competition – was sentenced to imprisonment and torture by the Islamic Republic of Iran. He fled the country.

“We condemn the inhumane treatment of Rasoulof and numerous other independent artists in Iran, who are being severely punished, criminalized and silenced for exercising their artistic freedom,” it was stated in the letter, already signed by “Holy Spider” star Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Fatih Akin, Atom Egoyan, Ildiko Enyedi, Andrew Haigh, Agnieszka Holland, Laura Poitras, Sandra Hüller, Sean Baker, Payal Kapadia and Ariane Labed.

“We stand in full solidarity with Rasoulof’s demands and call upon the international film community to raise our voices against an Islamist dictatorship that systematically oppresses every aspect of their society’s lives.

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Film Forum

“Sapph-o-rama” highlights lesbian cinema with films by Chantal Akerman, Nicholas Ray, Ulrike Ottinger, and more; a 4K restoration of The Pianist and The Third Man on 35mm continue; A Hard Day’s Night plays on Sunday.

Museum of the Moving Image

A retrospective of snubbed performances brings films by Cassavetes, Jonathan Demme, and more; The Gods of Times Square and a print of Prince’s vastly underrated Under the Cherry Moon both play on Sunday.

Metrograph

The series “Dreamlike Visions” puts modern master Alain Gomis front-and-center.

Roxy Cinema

Carpenter’s Christine, Almodóvar’s Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, and Secretary all play on 35mm.

Museum of Modern Art

As the massive run of Luis Buñuel’s Mexican films continues, a retrospective of Finnish filmmaker Ilkka Järvi-Laturi begins.

IFC Center

A Dario Argento series continues; Audition, Basket Case 3,...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Museum of Modern Art

A massive run of Luis Buñuel’s Mexican films begins; “To Save and Project,” continues.

Film at Lincoln Center

“Never Look Away: Serge Daney’s Radical 1970s” brings films by Tati, Samuel Fuller, Nicholas Ray (x2), Godard, Straub-Huillet, Pasolini, and more.

Film Forum

“Sapph-o-rama” highlights lesbian cinema with films by Chantal Akerman, Lizzie Borden, Ulrike Ottinger, Yvonne Rainer, Celine Sciamma, and more; a 4K restoration of The Pianist, I Heard It Through the Grapevine, and The Third Man continue; a print of Calamity Jane plays on Sunday.

IFC Center

As Francis Ford Coppola’s latest recut, One from the Heart: Reprise, continues, Bertrand Bonello’s masterpiece Coma gets a New York premiere and a Dario Argento series begins; Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar plays late.

Roxy Cinema

Cronenberg’s Crash and Keith McNally...

Above: 1963 German re-release poster by Heinz Edelmann for Kind Hearts and Coronets.If you are near Berlin during the next four months there is a movie poster exhibition that you must not miss. It opens today at the Kulturforum and it is called Grosses Kino: Filmplakate aller Zeiten, which translates as The Big Screen: Film Posters of All Time.Grosses Kino has been curated by Dr. Christina Thomson and Christina Dembny of the Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (the Art Library at the Berlin State Museum) in collaboration with the Berlin International Film Festival and the Deutsche Kinemathek. The Kunstbibliothek has an extraordinary collection of over 5,000 film posters, 300 of which—dating from 1905 to 2023—have been selected for the exhibition. Earlier this year I was asked to be one of 26 “film industry experts” from the fields of acting, directing, cinema management, film studies, art, and graphic design selected to choose one...

Each December, we invite Notebook contributors to pair a new release with an older film they watched for the first time that year, creating a “fantasy double feature.” In practice, this offers something like a collective viewing diary, speaking to the breadth of moving-image art and the imagination of our writers. Even a quick scroll through this year’s doubles—dreamed up and defended by over 60 Notebook contributors—reveals an inspired bounty. Where else would you find Ulrike Ottinger on a bill with Adam Curtis or Jackass Forever?Our annual poll, now in its fifteenth year, is less about anointing the best than it is about bottling the year’s energy. What unexpected resonances arise between the past and present?CONTRIBUTORSArun A.K. | Jennifer Lynde Barker | Juan Barquin | Margaret Barton-Fumo | Rafaela Bassili | Joshua Bogatin | Anna Bogutskaya | Danielle Burgos | Adrian Curry | Frank Falisi | The Ferroni Brigade | Soham Gadre | Lawrence Garcia | Sean...

Click here to read the full article.

Sam Mendes spoke of his collaborations with cinematographers from Conrad Hall to Roger Deakins, while also voicing support for Ukraine, during the opening ceremony of the 30th EnergaCamerimage international cinematography film festival.

Saturday in Toruń, Poland, the Academy Award-winning helmer accepted the Special Krzysztof Kieslowski Award for a Director while acknowledging that “it’s difficult to speak of celebration” after hearing from and seeing images of those in Ukraine that were presented during the ceremony. “I made a movie (1917) with Roger [Deakins] about two young men caught up in a senseless war. The question I got asked over and over again is, ‘Is this relevant?’ I’m afraid to say, it is and it will always be. We stand with everyone in Ukraine.”

He acknowledged the cinematographers with whom he has worked, starting with the late Hall, who won Oscars for Mendes’ first two movies,...

Sometimes it’s like they read your mind—or just notice upcoming releases as you do. Whatever the case, I’m thrilled that the release of Terence Davies’ Benediction played (I assume!) some part in a full retro on the Criterion Channel this June, sad as I know that package will make me and anybody else who comes within ten feet of it. It’s among a handful of career retrospectives: they’ve also set a 12-film Judy Garland series populated by Berkeley and Minnelli, ten from Ulrike Ottinger, and four by Billy Wilder. But maybe their most adventurous idea in some time is a huge microbudget collection ranging from Ulmer’s Detour to Joel Potrykus’ Buzzard, fellow success stories—Nolan, Linklater, Jarmusch, Jia Zhangke—spread about.

Criterion Editions continue with Bertrand Tavernier’s Round Midnight, Double Indemnity, and Seconds, while Chameleon Street, Karen Dalton: In My Own Time,...

No two ways about it: April’s a great month for the Criterion Channel, which (among other things; more in a second) adds two recent favorites. We’re thrilled at the SVOD premiere of Hamaguchi’s entrancing Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, our #3 of 2021, and Bruno Dumont’s lacerating France, featuring Léa Seydoux’s finest performance yet.

Ethan Hawke’s Adventures in Moviegoing runs the gamut from Eagle Pennell’s Last Night at the Alamo to 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, while a 14-film John Ford retro (mostly) skips westerns altogether. And no notes on the Delphine Seyrig retro—multiple by Akerman, Ulrike Ottinger, Duras, a smattering of Buñuel, and Seyrig’s own film Be Pretty and Shut Up! That of all things might be the crown jewl.

See the full list of April titles below and more on the Criterion Channel.

—

3 Bad Men, John Ford, 1926

Aar paar, Guru Dutt,...

After a hiatus as theaters in New York City and beyond closed their doors during the pandemic, we’re delighted to announce the return of NYC Weekend Watch, our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. While many theaters are still focused on a selection of new releases, there’s a handful of worthwhile repertory screenings taking place.

IFC Center

Solaris screens for its 50th anniversary.

Metrograph

As a retro of melodrama master John M. Stahl gets underway, the six-film retrospective of Miklós Jancsó has its final weekend.

Museum of the Moving Image

Films by Paul Thomas Anderson, Sergei Eisenstein, and Ulrike Ottinger screen for “See It Big: Extravaganzas!“

Museum of Modern Art

“To Save and Project,” one of the most eye-opening series in any given year, has its final weekend as a pre-code series kicks off.

Film Forum

As a new 35mm print of The Conversation continues its run, a collection...

After a hiatus as theaters in New York City and beyond closed their doors during the pandemic, we’re delighted to announce the return of NYC Weekend Watch, our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. While many theaters are still focused on a selection of new releases, there’s a handful of worthwhile repertory screenings taking place.

Roxy Cinema

Prints of Speed Racer, Nightmare Alley, Batman Returns, and Amadeus screen through the weekend.

Metrograph

Films by Stanley Donen, Jonathan Glazer, Melvin Van Peebles and others are playing in a series curated by Diamantino director Daniel Schmidt; the Wachowskis’ Bound screens Friday night.

Museum of the Moving Image

“See It Big: Extravaganzas!” offers films by Hype Williams, Ulrike Ottinger, and Zhang Yimou.

Japan Society

A fantastic 4K restoration of Priest of Darkness, by one of Japanese cinema’s great figures, Sadao Yamanaka, plays on Friday, while films by Naomi Kawase, Junji Sakamoto,...

FIms from Brazil, Ukraine, Russia and Romania are among those that have been selected.

Films from Ukraine, Brazil and Russia are among seven world premieres selected for the international competition of Doclisboa, taking place as a physical event in Portugal from October 21-31.

Ukrainian director Eva Neymann’s Pryvoz about one of the oldest and largest European shopping markets will be screening, while Brazil is represented in this year’s line-up with two world premieres: Thiago B. Mendonça’s Short Journeys Into Night and Aline Lata and Helena Wolfenson’s The Safest Place In The World.

Mendonça’s film follows...

Ulrike Ottinger’s recollections of life as a budding artist in 1960s Paris challenge the city’s image as a creative utopia

Mostly comprising of a voiceover and archival footage, German auteur Ulrike Ottinger’s new film feels like a stylistic shift from the avant-garde, carnivalesque works of queer radicalism for which she is best known. Underneath the unhurried pace and the exhaustive account of Ottinger’s experience of 1960s Paris as a budding artist, there is a politically conscious playfulness that displays her ability to interweave different art forms and storytelling styles.

True to its title, the film rolls like a calligram, a text format where words are arranged to form a thematically relevant image. Ottinger’s recollections of past encounters with intellectual and artistic luminaries coalesce into a portrait of Paris, as well as herself. Calligrammes is the name of a bookstore owned by Fritz Picard that became...

Next month’s lineup at The Criterion Channel has been unveiled, featuring no shortage of excellent offerings. Leading the pack is a massive, 20-film retrospective dedicated to John Huston, featuring a mix of greatest and lesser-appreciated works, including Fat City, The Dead, Wise Blood, The Man Who Would Be King, and Key Largo. (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre will join the series on October 1.)

Also in the lineup is series on the works of Budd Boetticher (specifically his Randolph Scott-starring Ranown westerns), Ephraim Asili, Josephine Baker, Nikos Papatakis, Jean Harlow, Lee Isaac Chung (pre-Minari), Mani Kaul, and Michelle Parkerson.

The sparkling new restoration of La Piscine will also debut, along with Amores perros, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s To the Ends of the Earth, Cate Shortland’s Lore, both Oxhide films, Moonstruck, and much more.

See the full list of August titles below and more on The Criterion Channel.

Abigail Harm,...

The Criterion Channel has unveiled their lineup for next month and it’s another strong slate, featuring retrospectives of Carole Lombard, John Waters, Robert Downey Sr., Luis García Berlanga, Jane Russell, and Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman. Also in the lineup is new additions to their Queersighted series, notably Todd Haynes’ early film Poison (Safe is also premiering in a separate presentation), William Friedkin’s Cruising, and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorama.

The new restorations of Manoel de Oliveira’s stunning Francisca and Francesco Rosi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli will join the channel, alongside Agnieszka Holland’s Spoor, Bong Joon Ho’s early short film Incoherence, and Luc Dardenne & Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s Rosetta.

See the lineup below and explore more on criterionchannel.com.

#Blackmendream, Shikeith, 2014

12 Angry Men, Sidney Lumet, 1957

About Tap, George T. Nierenberg, 1985

The AIDS Show, Peter Adair and Rob Epstein, 1986

The Assignation, Curtis Harrington, 1953

Aya of Yop City,...

Portuguese documentary festival reveals future ambitions after six months of events.

Eduardo Saraiva’s 42.Ze.66 has won the top prize at Portuguese documentary festival Doclisboa, which wrapped its extended 2020 edition after six months of events.

The documentary about a female truck driver was feted with the Fernando Lopes Award for best Portuguese first film during a closing ceremony on Monday (May 10).

It marks the end of a unique edition for the Lisbon festival, which saw its format reimagined in the wake of the pandemic and has been staged across six smaller events since October, at the rate of one per month.

Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival, better known as Cph:dox, has unveiled its full program, which includes the screenings of 180 films, interactive art, and 40 live debates and talks with artists, experts and opinion-makers.

The festival offers new films from a number of leading directors. Werner Herzog, Gianfranco Rosi, Shelly Silver, Errol Morris, Ulrike Ottinger, Spike Lee and Sergei Losnitza all participate in the festival with their films, as does Muppet master Frank Oz, who is back with “In & Of Itself.”

As previously reported, Marina Abramovic, David Byrne, and Slavoj Zizek will feature in the discussion program “An Evening With.”

The digital festival will be available on Cph:dox’s digital platform from April 21 to May 5. From May 6-12, a selection of films will be screened in movie theaters in Copenhagen.

Tine Fischer, CEO of Cph:dox, said: “The lineup includes films focusing on new platform economies, the dominance of tech giants, new democratic movements,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Radu Jude's Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn. Radu Jude's Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn has won the Golden Bear at the 71st Berlinale. See the list of this year's award winners here. Recommended VIEWINGFeminist film journal Another Gaze has announced the upcoming launch of its free streaming platform, Another Screen, which will be available worldwide from March 12. Programming will begin with a retrospective dedicated to the late Italian filmmaker Cecilia Mangini. The official trailer for Roy Andersson's About Endlessness, which won Best Director at the Biennale in 2019. Read Leonardo Goi's Venice review of the film here.Janus Films has released its trailer for the restoration of Eric Rohmer's Tale of Four Seasons, an elegant cycle of moral parables. Until March 23, viewers have the opportunity to watch Tsai Ming-Liang's Madam...

In the nearly 50 years that she has served as the director of Film Forum, Karen Cooper has seen more than a few threats to the future of the moviegoing experience. “The fact that you could take the damn box home and watch the movie was a real sea change,” Cooper said in an interview this week, remembering the mid-’80s rise of the VHS. “Our numbers went down terribly for a couple of years. Then the newness of it wore off and the public became sensitized to that experience being entirely different to sitting in a theater. It’s just not the same thing as your own living room. People said that was the death of cinema.”

Still, those challenges pale in comparison to the past 12 months. On Monday, it will be exactly once year since New York’s venerated arthouse closed its doors as pandemic shutdowns took hold. Since then,...

German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger has been making films for nearly 50 years now, creating experimental and often transgressive work that frequently walks the line between documentary reality and artistic truth. Nothing has fazed her in this time, even working in the bohemian heyday of the late Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Berlin, but her latest film, in which she turns the camera on herself, proved to be the most challenging so far.

Making its Dutch premiere in IDFA’s Masters section—after debuting at the Berlin Film Festival, where she was honored with the Berlinale Camera—“Paris Calligrammes” finds the director reflecting on her own formative experiences as a young painter and photographer in Paris, where she lived from 1962 to early 1969. She moved there to learn etching, but, because of a voracious appetite for learning, she also attended lectures by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, philosopher Louis Althusser and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu at the Collège de France,...

Swiss sales company Lightdox has acquired international rights to Lars Edman and William Johansson Kalén’s legal documentary “Arica” ahead of its IDFA world premiere in the Frontlight section.

Andreas Rocksen at Laika Film & Television Ab and William Johansson Kalén produced the legal documentary, with Clin d’Oeil films, Relation04 Media As, Radio Film Ltd. and Aricadoc each contributing as co-producers.

One of several high-profile Chilean productions or co-productions featuring at this year’s event, “Arica” examines the circumstances, long-term fallout and eventual legal battle resulting from illegal waste dumping of toxic chemicals by the Boliden mining company on the outskirts of Arica, a village in northern Chile.

According to the Business & Human Rights Resource Center, Boliden shipped approximately 20,000 tons of smelter sludge to the Polygono area in Arica between 1984 and 1985. The waste, originating from Boliden’s Rönnskär arsenic plant in Sweden, was sold to Chilean company Promel for processing, however,...

Christian D Bruun's Calendar Girl on Ruth Finley, the creator of the Fashion Calendar, is a Doc NYC highlight. Other feature films of note include Chris McKim’s Wojnarowicz (on David Wojnarowicz); Nathan Grossman’s I Am Greta (on Greta Thunberg); Ulrike Ottinger’s Paris Calligrammes; Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker’s The Meaning of Hitler; Oliver Murray’s Ronnie’s (on Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club); Katja Hogset, Margreth Olin, and Espen Wallin’s Self Portrait (Selvportrettet) (on photographer Lene Marie Fossen); Yael Bridge’s The Big Scary "S" Word; and two shorts, Jennifer Callahan’s Making The Case on Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s handbags (thank you to Alessandro Nivola and Emily Mortimer) and Alison Klayman’s Flower Punk (on artist Azuma Makoto).

Calendar Girl (written with producer Natalie Nudell) features interviews with the who’s who of the fashion world (including Bill Cunningham; Carolina Herrera, who designed the white pantsuit and pussy-bow blouse.

Director Ulrike Ottinger received the Berlinale Camera at this year’s festival.

Contemporary Films has acquired UK and Ireland rights to Ulrike Ottinger’s Berlinale 2020 feature documentary Paris Calligrammes from Switzerland’s Lightdox.

Contemporary is planning a theatrical release for early 2021 at independent sites including the Ica and Ciné Lumière in London, and Home in Manchester.

The film launched as a Special screening at this year’s Berlinale, where Ottinger was also awarded the Berlinale Camera – an honorary award given for a unique contribution to film.

Paris Calligrammes resurrects Ottinger’s time living in Paris as an artist in the 1960s,...

Doc NYC, America’s largest documentary festival and staple of the New York film community, announced the lineup for its 11th edition, running online November 11-19 and available to viewers across the US. The program includes new films about John Belushi, Pope Francis, Bill T. Jones, Jamal Khashoggi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Frank Zappa, and many more. The 2020 festival lineup includes 107 feature-length documentaries among over 200 films and dozens of events. Included are 23 World Premieres, 12 international or North American premieres, and 7 US premieres. Fifty-seven features (53% of the lineup) are directed or co-directed by women and 36 by Bipoc directors (34% of the feature program).

World Premieres at the festival include Nelson G. Navarrete and Maxx Caicedo’s “A La Calle,” Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker’s “The Meaning of Hitler,” Gong Cheng and Yung Chang’s “Wuhan Wuhan,” Sian-Pierre Regis’s “Duty Free,” Noah Hutton’s “In Silico,” Nancy Buirski’s “A Crime on the Bayou,...

Experimental doc section Paradocs has also added 11 titles.

The European premiere of Sam Pollard’s MLK/FBI, and Victor Kossakovsky’s buzzy Berlin title Gunda are among the 18 titles selected for the Masters section at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.

The festival has added 47 titles in total to the programme for its 2020 edition, which will take place both in cinemas in Amsterdam, and online.

Looking at the US government surveillance and harassment of Martin Luther King, MLK/FBI premiered at Toronto last month, and will be distributed by IFC Films in the US. Gunda follows the daily life of a pig,...

Leading documentary festival Idfa has added 47 films to its program, which run as part of its Masters, Paradocs and Best of Fests sections.

In the Masters section, Idfa has selected 18 titles from today’s auteurs of documentary cinema. In “Irradiated,” winner of the Berlinale Documentary Award, Rithy Panh “contemplates the image of human suffering throughout history in a revolutionary film that approaches cinematic installation,” according to a statement from the festival.

In “Gunda,” Victor Kossakovsky “intimately examines our relationship with animals as he invites audiences to fall in love with the titular character, a wonderful mother pig.” “Paris Caligrammes” sees Ulrike Ottinger “curate a rich archival history of 1960s Paris,” in which the director features alongside the great artists, thinkers and revolutionaries of the day.

Dieudo Hamadi’s “Downstream to Kinshasa” pays tribute to the survivors of the Six-Day War in Hamadi’s native Congo, “finding poetry in stories of human resilience.

‘Paris Calligrammes’ premiered at the Berlinale 2020. The Berlinale also awarded its filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger with the Camera Award with the attribution that “she has always regarded cinema as a form of art which is created and crafted by meeting other people, objects, books, stories, places, sets in which reality makes itself felt. Her latest film ‘Paris Calligrammes’ is a beautiful autobiography and a captivating journey through time."

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Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSDisney has announced that Barry Jenkins will helm the live-action The Lion King sequel, which reportedly includes "Mufasa's origin story."Speaking of sequels, Chinese authorities have approved the production of a project written by Wong Kar-wai, curiously titled Chungking Express 2020. The synopsis states that at least a portion of the film will take place in 2036, where "young Xiao Qian and May are unwilling to be held back by genetic partnerings, and insist on finding their own ‘destiny’.”Festival season persists: The Cannes Film Festival will be hosting a three-day "Special Cannes" event in October that will feature the screening of four Official Selections, in-competition short films, and the Cinéfondation’s school films. This year's San Sebastian Film Festival concluded with the sweep of Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili’s debut feature Beginning, which received four of seven jury prizes.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Bong Joon-ho's Memories of Murder. This year's Venice Film Festival has come to an end, and you can find the full list of award winners here. Following the success of Parasite, Neon will be bringing Bong Joon-ho's 2003 Memories of Murder to the big screen in the fall! Recommended VIEWINGThe official trailer for the 4K restoration of Wong Kar-wai's classic In the Mood For Love, which turns 20 this year. Ahmad Bahrani's The Wasteland, which won this year's Orizzonti Award for Best Film, follows a dozen workers in a brick factory amid its impending closing. Read Leonardo Goi's review of the film here. Another trailer from Venice: Lav Diaz's Genus Pan, which won the Orrizonti Award for Best Director. Read Michael Guarneri's review of the film here. A first look at Abel Ferrara's new documentary,...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Amulet (Romola Garai)

Trust is earned, not given. Just because you believe you’re a just person who’d do everything in your power to protect the less fortunate doesn’t mean they should blindly provide their allegiance. They need to know for sure that what you say and do is true. They need to know that you aren’t acting one way via deception in order to act another way later out of some warped notion of entitlement. There are too many people in this world who believe that the bare minimum is worth both material spoils and sainthood to want for nothing in this life and the next.