News

With the rise of avant-garde filmmakers in the 1960s, Iran’s New Wave emerged, marked by the works of pioneers like Ebrahim Golestan, Farrokh Ghaffari, Hajir Darioush, and Forough Farrokhzad.

Later, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the cinematic contributions of Dariush Mehrjui, Sohrab Shahid-Saless, Arby Ovanessian, and Nasser Taghvai breathed new life into Iranian cinema. These filmmakers rejected the commercial, formulaic productions of the mainstream industry, instead embracing a more authentic portrayal of social realities.

At a time when Iran was on the brink of revolution and political tensions were high, the New Wave stood in stark contrast to the escapist, dreamlike narratives of studio films, which were often inspired by Indian, Turkish, and Egyptian cinema, paying little attention to the country’s sociopolitical landscape. Key to the New Wave were two elements: modernist narrative structures influenced by European cinema and a focus on social issues, informed by socialist realism and leftist ideologies.

After a relatively slow August, studios are finally starting to gear up for fall and winter, the more awards-focused seasons. Preparing for its theatrical run following its Cannes premiere this past May, Canadian filmmaker Matthew Rankin's weird and wonderful-looking Universal Language fits squarely into that latter category.

This film's...

International auteurs Miguel Gomes, Wang Bing and Roberto Minervini will be part of the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival’s Wavelengths program, TIFF organizers announced on Thursday.

The festival will present the North American premieres of “Grand Tour,” a period piece for which Gomes won the Best Director award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival; Minervini’s “The Damned,” a Civil War-era drama that screened in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section; and two films by Chinese documentarian Wang Bing, “Youth (Hard Times)” and “Youth (Homecoming).”

The Wavelengths section, which is devoted to daring cinema and contemporary art, will also include “exergue – on documenta 14,” a 14-hour documentary by Greek director Dimitris Athiridis that will be presented over three separate screenings.

Wavelengths is divided into different sections – one consisting of 11 feature films, another with a special presentation of Egyptian director Wael Shawky’s “Drama 1882” and another showcasing 13 different short and medium-length films grouped into thematic programs.

Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has announced its Wavelengths programme highlighting visionary work including Dimitris Athiridis’s 14-hour documentary exergue - on documenta 14, and a Classics line-up featuring work from Atom Egoyan and Frederick Wiseman.

The Wavelengths programme comprises 11 features, three shorts programmes, and an in-cinema looped presentation of Egyptian artist Wael Shawky’s Drama 1882.

The features selections includes Cannes entries Viêt And Nam by Trương Minh Quý, Grand Tour by Miguel Gomes and The Damned by Roberto Minervini, and Berlin selection Pepe by Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias.

exergue - on documenta 14 receives its North American premiere after...

The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival continues to update its robust programming lineup. This year’s Wavelengths and Classics programs boast various hits, now including the North-American premiere of buzzy Cannes title “Viêt and Nam,” directed by Trương Minh Quý.

The Wavelengths lineup tallies 11 features, three shorts programs, and a special in-cinema looped presentation. Wavelengths alums Miguel Gomes (“Grand Tour”), Roberto Minervini (“The Damned”), and Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias (“Pepe”) return with their respective North-American premieres. Jessica Sarah Rinland is also back to the program with “Collective Monologue.”

There is also the 14-hour documentary “exergue – on documenta 14” from Greek filmmaker Dimitris Athiridi, which will be presented over the course of three screenings.

The program is curated by Senior Curator Andréa Picard and Associate Curator Jesse Cumming, with contributions by Giovanna Fulvi, Nataleah Hunter-Young, and June Kim.

For the shorts selections, the late auteur Jean-Luc Godard’s final film “Scénarios...

Time of Maturity.How does one determine the success of a film festival? There is no single definition of success, but rather a range of competing interests. An event as large as the Berlin International Film Festival, or Berlinale—with a roughly €29 million budget, over 200 films in its program, public attendance in the hundreds of thousands, and a substantial “commercial component” in the form of the European Film Market (EFM), held simultaneously—is unfairly required to satisfy multiple, often contradictory needs.The majority of attendees are simply hoping that their €15 public admission will be a rewarding cinematic experience, rather than a waste of time and money. Filmmakers and talent are seeking to show their art at an event that ideally provides remuneration in the form of prestige, exposure, artist fees, an avid audience, and industry professionals who may shepherd their films to viewers in other countries. Distributors with a wide...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSStranger by the Lake.Production has begun on Alain Guiraudie’s next noir-esque feature, Miséricorde, with Dp Claire Mathon—their third collaboration after Stranger by the Lake (2013) and Staying Vertical (2016). The plot centers on a 30-year-old man named Jérémie who returns to a village in southern France, his prior home, for an old friend’s funeral, only to find himself at the center of a police investigation.Recommended VIEWINGJanus Films have shared a trailer for a new 4K restoration of Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil (1964). A virtuosic, formally experimental work of militant cinema, it tells the story of Manoel, a cowherd who, after murdering a ranch owner, flees to join a religious cult headed by a self-proclaimed saint, only to find himself back among violence. A landmark of Brazil’s Cinema Novo...

After successful US screenings at Sundance and SXSW, Fremont has its international premiere at Karlovy Vary.

After world premiering at this year’s Sundance in the Next section, and also screening at SXSW, Babak Jalali’s fourth film Fremont has its international premiere at Karlovy Vary, where it it is vying for a Crystal Globe.

Born in Iran and raised in London, Jalali first came to prominence when his 2005 short film Heydar, An Afghan In Tehran garnered a Bafta nomination. His debut feature Frontier Blues premiered in Locarno’s official competition in 2009 while his sophomore effort Radio Dreams won the...

The Berlin Film Festival today announced eight titles that have been added to its Berlinale Special program. The new crop of films includes Golda, starring Helen Mirren, Camille Cottin, and Liev Schreiber.

Directed by Guy Nattiv from a screenplay by Nicholas Martin, the pic follows the intensely dramatic and high-stakes responsibilities and decisions that Golda Meir, former Israeli prime minister, faced during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Mirren stars as Meir. Jane Hooks and Michael Kuhn are producers on the pic. Embankment is handling sales.

Other titles added to the program include Netflix’s Kill Boksoon. Jeon Do-Yeon, who won the best actress award at Cannes in 2007 for Secret Sunshine, stars in the pic, which follows a single mother and renowned hired killer who struggles to find a balance between her personal and work life.

Also selected is Andrea Di Stefano’s Last Night of Amore, starring Pierfrancesco Favino, Linda Caridi,...

Revisiting last year's introduction when putting together 2021's favorites, it is with a shock to realize how little has changed in the wildly disrupted world of cinema under the shroud of the pandemic. The urge to copy-and-paste the whole shebang is quite tempting indeed.What can we say about this year, 2021? We got a little more used to long-term instability. Cinemas and festivals re-opened, only for some to close again. We, like many, ventured carefully out into the world to finally see films again with audiences, all kinds: nervous ones, uproarious ones, spartan ones, and delighted ones. It was an experience both anxious and joyous. We also doubled down on the challenges, but also the pleasures, of home viewing: of virtual cinemas and virtual festivals, of straight to streaming premieres, of trying to capture a social joy in semi-isolation by connecting with others over experiences shared and disparate.The long...

As the I for Iran series has taken the Tiff Lightbox by storm, with several sold out screenings and great press coverage, Sound on Sight has taken a moment to ask some questions on what has brought the series to Toronto and the greater impacts of Iranian cinema are within an increasingly globalized world.

Brad Deane, who is the Senior Manager, Film Programmes at Tiff, and the programmer for the series at Tiff Cinematheque.

Amir Soltani, a Toronto-based film critic and contributor to The Film Experience and Movie Mezzanine, who also writes and co-hosts a podcast about Iranian films at Hello Cinema. Amir Soltani will be introducing Hamoun, Dariush Mehrjui’s incisive, ironic, and finally dreamlike study of middle-class Iranian life, on Saturday, March 28 at 3:45pm.

Check out the rest of the series schedule Here

What has brought the I for Iran series from Fribourg International Film Festival to Toronto?...

The fifth entry in an on-going series of audiovisual essays by Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin.

***

Inside every narrative film is a non-narrative film struggling to get out. A film of details, of in-betweens, of atmospheres; of nothing-much-happening and everyday banality. A film of redundant repetition and obligatory scene-setting. A film where glances fall into the void rather than guiding a drama; where gestures and actions happen for their own sakes rather than for the symbolic or thematic meaning they project. A film where the background surges forward and becomes the foreground; where rooms and objects for once really do become (as that lousy reviewing cliché loves to say) ‘characters in their own right.’

A film without intrigue. Or, at any rate, only the most minimal filigree of intrigue, perhaps a single turning point or shock. In their great and too-little-known 1998 book To Dress a Nude: Exercises in Imagination,...

Das Gespenst (1982)

“I always have a simple story, but I tell it so fanatically and wildly and tenderly and cursingly and on fire and in need of being loved that you’ll find a slice of life in front of you.”

The first time I saw Herbert Achternbusch he was hypnotizing a chicken in Werner Herzog’s The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. Anybody who has seen the film might recall the chicken, but who is Herbert Achternbusch? It is a question that cannot be simply answered. Achternbusch captions his entire artistic output with a paradox: ‘You don't have a chance, but use it’. Trying to make sense of his work, this epigram sounds appropriate.

Matters are not helped by the unavailability of most of his films on DVD. In Germany, a boxset devoted to Achternbusch is now out of print, although two key works—Heilt Hitler (1986) and Das Gespenst (1982)—remain in circulation.

At the Edinburgh International Film Festival this year among the rarest offerings were Iranian films from the earliest days of that country's film industry. Drama The Cow (1969) and short documentary The House is Black (1962) have acquired some fame recently, partially in thanks to the efforts of Mark Cousins in A Story of Film, but other entries have scarcely been seen outside of their native land.

Still Life (1974) seemed to stretch the concept of “slow cinema” to snapping point at times, but some moments broke through the boredom barrier and achieved a meditative stillness or a surprising durational comedy through offscreen sound, deadpan performance (from what I take to be a non-professional cast) and sheer dogged persistence. Director Sohrab Shahid Saless, an important early figure in Iranian film, likes to linger and never moves the camera, and thus has won comparisons with Ozu and Bresson which don’t make much sense...