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Michelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte, starring Monica Vitti, Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau screens in Cinecittà and Film at Lincoln Center’s Monica Vitti: La Modernista

Before the Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà’s 24th edition of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema luncheon at Leopard at des Artistes, I asked Fabrizio Gifuni, star of the Opening Night film, Francesca Comencini’s The Time It Takes (Il Tempo Che Ci Vuole with Anna Mangiocavallo) and directors Andrea Segre of The Great Ambition (Berlinguer. La Grande Ambizione with Elio Germano as Enrico Berlinguer), Sara Fgaier of Weightless (Sulla Terra Leggeri with Andrea Renzi and Sara Serraiocco), Alissa Jung of Paternal Leave, and Ferzan Özpetek of Diamonds (Diamanti with Luisa Ranieri and Jasmine Trinca) to name their favourite Monica Vitti films.

Monica Vitti: La Modernista

Michelangelo Antonioni’s masterpieces L’Avventura (4K Restoration); L’Eclisse opposite Alain Delon, La Notte with Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau,...

This past weekend saw the unusual coincidence of two major classics being re-released theatrically at the same time. Akira Kurosawa's final masterpiece, Ran, was re-issued in 15 locations in honor of its 40th anniversary, while the Italian maestro Federico Fellini's semi-autobiographical classic 8½ was re-released in just one location. That's all it needed to deliver the third-best per-theater average of any movie currently in release. Remember, we're talking about the lucrative Memorial Day weekend, which witnessed total business hit the $330 million mark.

Thousands of theaters were booked out for Disney's Lilo & Stitch remake and Paramount's Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning. While Lilo & Stitch delivered a Memorial Day record $180 million-plus in its first four days of release, The Final Reckoning earned a franchise-record $79 million in the same frame. Both movies also claimed the top two spots on the weekend box office charts, in terms of revenue and per-theater average.

Subhash K Jha turns the spotlight on noted actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui, known for completely transforming into his character in films like New York, Gangs of Wasseypur and so many more in this special focus at his varied and storied career.

There was something extraordinary about Nawazuddin Siddiqui when I saw him for the first time in Kabir Khan’s New York. He played a victim of cultural targeting. In a monologue that rips a hole in your soul, Nawaz’s character comes on camera to tell us what was done to him and his family by the cops on suspicion of terror activities.

Nawaz never gave a better performance.

The voice, the eyes, brimming with unspeakable pain, looked like a video recording of a real-life victim, like a Jew or a Kashmiri Pandit telling us what he has gone through during the holocaust. When I asked Kabir where he had got that documentary footage,...

Netflix’s Nobody Wants This, streaming on Netflix, is the most pitch-perfect serialized romcom I’ve seen in years. It is smart, funny, impish, and wise, without making any visible effort to be any of these. The dialogues are unerringly bang-on and unfailingly amusing.

You can’t afford to skip a beat in this one, no Sirreee! Not without wondering why everyone else in the room is laughing. Ah, that is another thing about Nobody Wants This: you have to watch it with those whom you love. There is a sense of community joy in the way the characters address their own problems, without seeming self-centred. They aren’t telling us how to live our lives. But they aren’t ruling out any tips either.

So what is all the fuss about? It all begins when Joanne (Kristen Bell) meets a “hot rabbi” Noah (Adam Brody). Sparks fly, especially...

Iconic Italian star Monica Vitti is a stateside tribute with the posthumous festival “Monica Vitti: La Modernista,” presented by Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà. The actress, who died in 2022, was immortalized onscreen with her famed collaborations with auteurs Michelangelo Antonioni and Luis Buñuel. Now, the 14-film series at Flc will be the first North American retrospective dedicated to Vitti’s career. The series will feature new restorations of her classic films including “Red Desert” and “La supertestimone.”

“We are pleased to partner with Cinecittà to celebrate one of Italy’s most revered actresses,” Florence Almozini, Vice President of Programming at Film at Lincoln Center, said in a press statement. “It is a privilege to have the opportunity to present decades worth of films from Monica Vitti’s illustrious and prolific career, especially with many restored versions of her legendary work.”

Vitti most famously starred in Antonioni’s “L’avventura,” which...

Alexander Payne has been announced as Jury President for the 82nd Venice Film Festival, running from August 27 to September 6.

The director follows in the footsteps of recent jury presidents Isabelle Huppert (2024), Damien Chazelle (2023), Julianne Moore (2022), Bong Joon-ho (2021) and Cate Blanchett (2020).

The decision was made by the Board of Directors of La Biennale di Venezia, who confirmed the recommendation of the Director of the Venice Film Festival, Alberto Barbera.

In accepting the proposal, Alexander Payne said: “It’s an enormous honor and joy to serve on the jury at Venice. Although I share a filmmaker’s ambivalence about comparing films against one another, I revere the Venice Film Festival’s nearly 100-year history of loudly celebrating film as an art form. I couldn’t be more excited.”

Payne’s films have been nominated for a total of 24 Oscars, including four times for Best Picture and three times for Best Director.

He...

"Do you even have a script? A few pages, an idea?" Janus Films has unveiled a brand new trailer for the all-timer classic Federico Fellini's 8 1/2, originally released in 1963. Considered by many as one of the greatest films ever made, and one of the most spectacular looks at the life of filmmakers, this Italian classic has been re-released many times before. It was already re-released on Criterion Collection Blu-ray in 2006, and also on 4K Br last year. Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a director whose new project is falling apart, along with his entire life. One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini's 8½ (aka Otto e mezzo) turns one man's artistic crisis into a grand epic of the cinema. An early working title was The Beautiful Confusion, and Fellini's masterpiece is exactly that: a shimmering dream, a circus, and a magic act. Also featured is Fellini's...

The Italian director Ettore Scola is renowned for his ability to explore themes that might initially seem simple or mundane, yet he transforms them into deeply human and emotionally resonant narratives. His unique talent lies in portraying the emotions of his characters with such authenticity that audiences can easily relate to them and see reflections of their own lives. Scola achieves this by choosing to tell straightforward yet profoundly real and tangible stories.

Examples of this storytelling approach can be seen throughout his filmography, such as “The Family”(1987), where he chronicles the life of a family over three generations, or “We All Loved Each Other So Much” (1974), which follows the friendship of three friends over thirty years. These films share a common trait: they are simple in premise but rich in emotional depth. “Che ora è” (translated as “What Time Is It?”) is perhaps the clearest embodiment of this concept.

Fans already know Sergio Leone is the father of the "Spaghetti Western" and has had a significant impact on cinema. There will truly be no greater masterpiece in the sub-genre than The Good, The Bad and the Ugly or a more masterful body of work than the Dollars Trilogy. Leone shaped the direction of Westerns worldwide in the '60s and then continued to prove he was one of the greatest auteurs of all time throughout the rest of his career. He's usually the only Sergio fans think of when they think of Spaghetti Westerns. However, there was another Sergio who had just as big an impact on the sub-genre. In fact, Sergio Corbucci made more Spaghetti Westerns in his career than Sergio Leone.

Perhaps his most iconic film is the 1966 film Django, which got mainstream publicity after Quentin Tarantino's 2012 film Django Unchained. However, Corbucci made several great Spaghetti...

Genre-hopping maverick Elio Petri’s half-mod, half-madcap ’60s mindbender is set in a dystopian society obsessed with a government-sponsored game known as “The Big Hunt” that pits volunteer hunters against victims in mortal combat. Based on a Robert Sheckley sci-fi short story, Elio Petri’s social satire, co-written by the director and frequent Michelangelo Antonioni collaborator Tonino Guerra, takes aim at consumer capitalism and the “society of the spectacle,” five years before Guy Debord popularized the term in his Situationist manifesto.

Among its targets, the film draws a bead on ageism, with Marcello Poletti (Marcello Mastroianni) having to hide his elderly parents from government search and seizure. It spoofs corporate-media domination through the machinations of Marcello and Caroline Meredith (Ursula Andress), the wily American trying to track him down, arranging to have their kills broadcast on live TV. And The 10th Victim takes on New Age cultism, with Marcello serving...

98% of interviews follow the same pleasantries-exchange / question-and-answer / pleasantries-exchange format, yet there are those rare times an incredible opportunity arrives. Which is to say that when I interviewed Paulo Branco at last year’s Tokyo International Film Festival I couldn’t have anticipated he––maybe the greatest producer in film history––would ask me to screen Manoel de Oliveira films that, per him, were receiving no notice from United States programmers. Just five months later I’m delighted to unveil Mirror of Life: Manoel de Oliveira 1996—2004, comprising ten features (and nine restorations debuting in North America) that will screen at Bam from March 28 to April 3.

Featuring John Malkovich, Michel Piccoli, Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni, and (of course) Ricardo Trêpa, the program finds Oliveira, who turned 90 during this time, in a period both decadent and reflective––note the Word and Utopia / Porto of My Childhood double-feature or 2001’s I’m Going Home...

Subhash K Jha revisits Vinod Pande’s controversial film, Sins, as it clocks 20 years.

Vinod Pande’s Sins is certainly not a sinful pretext for gratuitous sex and nudity. Ripping a cruel page out of the newspapers, writer-director Vinod Pande has reconstructed a dramatic and often shocking tale of forbidden love between a Catholic priest and a junior disciple.

Pande is never a stranger to the dark side of love and relationships. In Sins, too, he doesn’t stop at the bedroom door but manages to build an intimidating pyramid of desperate passion between Father Williams (Shiny Ahuja) and Rosemary (Seema Rahmani).

One recalls the old 1960 film The Priest’s Wife in which Italian director Carlo Ponti cast Sophia Loren as the seductress humorously hankering the priest Marcello Mastroianni. In Sins, Vinod Pande denudes the theme of all its inherent humour – what we see is a luminously lit, starkly shot film,...

No Other Land, Academy Award-nominated for Best Documentary Feature, opens today in New York at Film Forum from mTuckman Media/Cinetic Media with a limited theatrical expansion next weekend.

The doc is written, directed, produced and edited by a collective of Palestinian and Israeli activists and filmmakers — Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. It premiered at Berlin, winning Best Documentary, followed by a widely decorated festival sweep. It sits at 100% with Critics on Rotten Tomatoes (57 reviews). Deadline’s Matthew Carey interviews the filmmakers here.

The release started circulating against the backdrop of the brutal Israel-Hamas war, currently in a period of ceasefire. It predates the war but explores root causes of enmity as the filmmakers chronicle the Israeli military’s incremental expulsion of the West Bank community of Masafer Yatta — home to 20 ancient Palestinian villages.

Over a period of five years (2019–23), Masafer Yatta resident and Palestinian...

In the Name of the Father: Honore Pays Homage via Identity Crisis

“I only exist when I am working on a film,” Marcello Mastroianni once said, who is, of course, resurrected through the prism of his daughter Chiara Mastorianni in Marcello Mio, the latest feature from Christophe Honoré. Having passed away in 1996, well before the daughter he had with Catherine Deneuve found her own success as an actor, (thanks in part to being a muse for Honoré during the early part of his career in the 2000s), this approach provides a novel experience for the whole family to be together, in a sense.…...

The infamous cover of New York Magazine’s December 2022 issue declared that Hollywood is in the middle of a “Nepo Baby Boom,” but this is hardly restricted to the American film industry. Case in point is Christophe Honoré’s laugh-free inside-baseball satire Marcello Mio, a movie which could have been reverse-engineered from that article’s headline––“She Has Her Mother’s Eyes… and Her Agent!”––before any actor willing to play a caricature of themselves had even agreed to sign on. That thankless task is handed to Chiara Mastroianni, a prior collaborator of Honoré who you’d be forgiven for assuming, based on the overall toothlessness of the script, hadn’t met him prior to filming due to how the pair approach the subject of celebrity culture with kid gloves on each side of the camera.

This fictionalized version of Chiara is a failure who has been unable to escape the shadow of her parents,...

Although the extent to which the iconically dark-shaded and silver-streaked Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) can truly be accepted as a Federico Fellini surrogate is a source of endlessly inconsequential debate, we tend to take the lightly fictive director at his word when he dismally claims that he had planned to make a truly honest and direct film this time around. 8½ represents the most unceremonious and abrupt transition in the development of Fellini’s cinema from putatively neorealist ideologies to unabashedly oneiric claptraps about the onus of an overly imaginative but waning masculinity—and it is, for all its Freudian bitchery and post-libidinous angst, one of the few personal statements in film utterly unhindered by stretches for social or cosmic relevance.

There are some aphoristic generalizations related to living the creative life, most of them articulated by Guidio’s lean script advisor and logos personification Daumier (Jean Rougeul)—“Destroying is better...

Is that a chill in the air? Perhaps your boots are starting to feel colder and damper with each passing day. Maybe your cheeks are turning pink every time you step outside. Whether we like it or not, winter is here, which means it’s the perfect time to avoid the cold and hurry to your nice, warm movie house. With the holidays right around the corner, repertory theaters are stocking up on Christmas classics and seasonal favorites. For those looking for something more traditional than Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” and Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu,” which release December 20 and December 25, respectively, cinemas in New York and Los Angeles have plenty of options for the whole family, as well as more festive adult fare for those looking to spice things up.

Selections this month come from the Metrograph located on the Lower East Side in New York City and Village East by Angelika,...

The Japanese and Italian film industries are set to enter a new era of collaboration, after the Japan-Italy film co-production agreement officially came into effect on August 9.

At the Tokyo International Film Festival, Italy featured as the key country in focus, with numerous events organized to foster networking opportunities between Japanese and Italian film professionals and promote projects under development.

Connecting Japanese and Italian film professionals

Roberto Stabile, Head of Special Projects, Directorate General for Cinema and Audiovisual of the Ministry of Culture at Cinecittà, told Deadline that the priority now is to create many opportunities for meetings between Italian and Japanese film professionals so that projects can get off the ground.

“Politically speaking, it is very important to have a co-production agreement, but now in a practical way, we must create many occasions for meetings between Italian and Japanese producers and creatives,” said Stabile. “They must know each other,...

Yoshida Daihachi’s black and white drama Teki Cometh dominated the awards ceremony of the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF)today (November 6), winning the grand prix and the prizes for best director,and best actor.

Based on a novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui, the film centres around a retired and widowed college professor who receives a sudden and unsettling message telling him that the enemy is coming.The film marks the latest in a string of literary adaptations from Daihachi including Pale Moon, The Kirishima Thing, and Funuke Show Some Love, You Losers! which premiered at Cannes Critic Week in 2007.

Teki Cometh,...

Yoshida Daihachi’s black and white drama Teki Cometh dominated the awards ceremony of the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF)today (November 6), winning the grand prix and the prizes for best director,and best actor.

Based on a novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui, the film centres around a retired and widowed college professor who receives a sudden and unsettling message telling him that the enemy is coming.The film marks the latest in a string of literary adaptations from Daihachi including Pale Moon, The Kirishima Thing, and Funuke Show Some Love, You Losers! which premiered at Cannes Critic Week in 2007.

Teki Cometh,...

The new co-production treaty signed between Japan and Italy is being touted as a significant step towards reintegrating Japan’s film production industry with those overseas countries.

The agreement – signed in June and activated in August – was directly referenced on Monday by Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru and has colored the programming of this week’s Tokyo International Film Festival, which includes a Nanni Moretti retrospective, closes with Marcello Mastroianni tribute film “Marcello Mio” and sees his daughter Chiara Mastroianni set as a member of the festival’s main competition jury. The treaty’s ratification also gave rise to a reception Tuesday at the Italian embassy in Tokyo’s Tamachi district.

“Tonight’s reception is more than a celebration — it is a call to action. Our creative industries can come together to build narratives that reset borders,” said Italian ambassador Gianluigi Benedetti at the event.

“Blending Italian and Japanese art creativity and innovation.

I’ve been late to some events in my life but today’s was the first where Tony Leung locked eyes while I opened the door. This, sadly, was not a one-on-one encounter or beginning of a Hong Kong co-production but the jury press conference for the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival at Toho Cinema Chanter, which the legendary production company manages, owns, and marks as their own with a Godzilla stationed outside the premises. Watching even one such event on YouTube––there’s, conservative estimate, 9,000 you can choose from across the span of the international fest circuit––you know how intimate these things get: almost everybody is a little jetlagged, hungover, under-caffeinated, and / or coasting on the energy of a hotel breakfast, the questions are not very good, and answers often their equal; not so much for lack of trying as it is means of reading the room, a...

In a year in which two of world cinema’s oldest industries, Japan and Italy, have signed a long-awaited co-production treaty, jury members at this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) were talking up the importance of both film history and the theatrical experience on the first full day of the festival.

After praising TIFF for its selection of established and emerging Asian filmmakers, Hong Kong actor and jury president Tony Leung Chiu-wai also pointed to the festival’s in-depth programmes of classic movies observing that they play an important role in “introducing Italian directors like [Federico] Fellini and Japanese filmmakers like [Akira] Kurosawa to younger audiences.

“They are not only introducing what is current, but also the vast history of cinema, which is a wonderful opportunity for audiences to learn about the past,” the star of In The Mood For Love and Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings said.

The Tokyo International Film Festival got underway Monday, just hours after a general election delivered a reduced parliamentary mandate for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. But if Japanese voters once again demonstrated their political apathy, there are signs that Japanese audiences have maintained their appetite for the entertainment industry – and further signals that the Japanese screen industry is coping well with sector disruption.

After a strong recovery in 2023, moderate further growth of the theatrical box office is predicted for this year. One forecast put the year end total at $1.88 billion, cementing Japan as the world’s third largest cinema market.

More importantly for the overall health of the industry, local films continue to dominate. So far this year, Japanese movies account for nine of the top ten titles, headed by the $103 million-grossing “Detective Conan: The Billion Dollar Pentagram.” But what is good for Japanese producers has become a tougher market for Hollywood to penetrate.

“Marcello Mastroianni was known, all around the world, as the Latin lover, the Italian seducer, especially after he starred in La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini’s masterpiece,” says Fabrizio Corallo, the director of the new documentary Ciao Marcello, Mastroianni l’antidivo. “Mastroianni did not like this image. He didn’t want to be seen as an icon, as a sex symbol. He didn’t care much about his public persona; what did matter to him was his personal life. So, I tried to build an intimate portrait of this unique actor.”

Corallo is a journalist and an expert on the history of Italian cinema. For state broadcaster Rai he has made a number of documentaries about the great personalities of Italian cinema: Dino Risi, Vittorio Gassman, Virna Lisi, Ennio Flaiano and Giuliano Montaldo, among others.

Ciao Marcello, which was co-written with Silvia Scola, the daughter of Italian filmmaker Ettore Scola,...

Andrea Segre’s The Great Ambition, the opening film of the Rome Film Festival, tells the story of how the Italian Communist Party came close to governing Italy.

It focuses on Italian politician Enrico Berlinguer, who ran the Communist Party when it reached its peak of popularity in the 1970s. His great ambition was to achieve a democratic path to communism, which meant severing his Party’s ties with Moscow.

Leading the film as Berlinguer is Elio Germano, winner of the best actor prize at the 2020 Berlinale for Hidden Away and at Cannes in 2010 for Our Life. The Great Ambition...

Paola Malanga is the artistic director of the Rome Film Festival which kicks off tomorrow (October 16) with the world premiere of Andrea Segre’s political drama The Great Ambition.

It is Malanga’s third edition at the helm of the festival, having joined in 2022 from Rai Cinema where she was deputy director of its product division spanning production and acquisition. She has also been a journalist, film critic and author throughout her career.

Among the world premieres in Rome’s main Progressive Cinema competition are dark comedy The Trainer by American History X director Tony Kaye and Eran Ricklis’ Reading Lolita In Tehran.

The Rome Film Festival has revealed its meetings programme for its 2024 edition, which will include masterclasses with actor and director Viggo Mortensen, writer Dennis Lehane and actress Chiara Mastroianni.

Mortensen is in Rome to present his second film as a director, The Dead Don’t Hurt, and will talk about the experience of making it and also about his career.

Lehane has written many novels adapted for the screen, among them Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River, Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, and Ben Affleck’s Gone, Baby, Gone and Live by Night.

Chiara Mastroianni is a guest of the festival for...

One of the most common questions film critics receive is "What's your favorite movie?" And any critic will tell you that it's a difficult question to answer. Since critics speak to their taste, and gauge a film's quality based on their reaction to it, shouldn't the film they consider the best of all time be their favorite? In a 2012 essay on his website, Ebert rolled the question around in his mind, musing that his old reviewing partner, Gene Siskel, used to say that "Citizen Kane" is the "official" answer to that question. After all, many critics consider it to be the best movie ever made, so surely that means it is their favorite, right?

Of course, we all know that taste doesn't operate that way. A film can be your favorite for any number of reasons. You might consider, say, "Ikiru" to be the best movie ever made, but it...

The Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) today revealed the lineup for its 37th edition, which includes world premieres of features from China, Japan and Hong Kong among its competition strands.

The festival, which is set to run from October 28 to November 6, will include 120 films and three series across the 10 main sections. The selection was made from 2,023 entries, up from 1,942 last year.

Scroll down for full competition lists

The majority of the 15-strong Competition strand hails from Asia with three films from Japan and three from China as well as titles from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Kazakhstan.

The films from Japan...

The Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) today revealed the lineup for its 37th edition, which includes world premieres of features from China, Japan and Hong Kong among its competition strands.

The festival, which is set to run from October 28 to November 6, will include 120 films and three series across the 10 main sections. The selection was made from 2,023 entries, up from 1,942 last year.

Scroll down for full competition lists

The majority of the 15-strong Competition strand hails from Asia with three films from Japan and three from China as well as titles from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Kazakhstan.

The films from Japan...

The Tokyo International Film Festival has unveiled a competition section with as many Chinese titles as Japanese for its 37th edition.

Announced on Wednesday the festival’s full lineup runs to a compact 110 films, culled from a huge 2,023 applications, and functions partly as discovery event, partly as a Japanese showcase and also as best-of the year international art house compendium.

The 15-title competition includes Midi Z’s “The Unseen Sister,” “Big World,” by Yang Lina and “My Friend An Delie,” by Dong Zijian from China. Adding rising star Hong Kong director Philip Yung’s “Papa” and Huang Xi’s Sylvia Chang-starring “Daughter’s Daughter,” fresh from Toronto, and the competition will resound to Chinese accents. From Japan comes “She taught Me Serendipity,” by Ohku Akiko, “Teki Cometh,” by Yoshida Daihachi and “Lust in the Rain,” which is a Japan-Taiwan coproduction directed by Katayama Shinzo.

Other competition selections include “The Englishman’s Papers,...

The 2009 film "Nine" — not to be confused with the 2009 film "9" — was an Oscar darling in the most frustrating possible way. It was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Supporting Actress (Penélope Cruz), Best Art Direction, Best Costumes, and Best Original Song. That was just enough nominations for mad Oscar completists to have to see "Nine," a movie that, many agreed, looked dull and baffling. The critics seemed to think so, anyway, as "Nine" only has a 39% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It's the lowest approval rating of any film to star Daniel Day-Lewis.

"Nine" requires some explanation. Firstly, the film was based on a Broadway musical that debuted in 1982. The original production starred Raul Julia, playing a character that was very similar to, but legally distinct from, real-life Italian master Federico Fellini. The character, named Guido Contini, found both his marriage and his creative spirit flagging in the face of a midlife crisis.

The stars are descending on Tuscany. Ethan Hawke, Paul Schrader, Matthew Modine and Swedish auteur Ruben Östlund will walk the red carpet at the Lucca Film Festival, the annual event held in the picturesque Tuscan town, home to old-fashioned merchants, tailors, jewelers and some of the best olive oil on the planet.

The Hollywood Reporter Roma will become the official International Media Partner of Lff this year, providing daily coverage throughout.

The Llff, which kicks off on Saturday and concludes on Sunday, Sept. 29, is the vision of fest director Nicola Borrelli, who places an emphasis on uncompromising, unconventional cinema.

Also attending is Italian cinema legend Pupi Avati, fresh from premiering his gothic horror film The American Backyard in Venice. Francesco Costabile, the writer of of Familia, will also be in Lucca, along with the film’s lead actor, Francesco Gheghi, who recently won best actor in the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Fest.

The screen icon shows her range in roles ranging from Italian sirens to an Oscar-winning turn as a mother fleeing wartime horrors

Loren’s 14th and final collaboration with her frequent co-star Marcello Mastroianni provides one of the few bright spots in Robert Altman’s dog’s dinner of a satire. They play ex-lovers reuniting during Paris fashion week, during which she re-enacts her famous striptease from Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.

Kazuya Shiraishi’s 11 Rebels is set to world premiere as the opening film of the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival, which has also set Christophe Honoré’s Marcello Mio as its closing feature.

Based on a previously-unproduced script by late screenwriter Kazuo Kasahara, 11 Rebels is a thriller set in the 19th century and centres on 11 prisoners who are ordered to defend a fortress from the government’s army so their past crimes will be forgiven.

Starring Takayuki Yamada and Taiga Nakano , the screenplay was written by Junya Ikegami based on an original story by Kasahara, known for writing 1970s yakuza...

Kazuya Shiraichi’s 11 Rebels is set to world premiere as the opening film of the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival, which has also set Christophe Honoré’s Marcello Mio as its closing feature.

Based on a previously-unproduced script by late screenwriter Kazuo Kasahara, 11 Rebels is a thriller set in the 19th century and centres on 11 prisoners who are ordered to defend a fortress from the government’s army so their past crimes will be forgiven.

Starring Yamada Takayuki and Nakano Taiga, the screenplay was written by Ikegami Junya based on an original story by Kasahara, known for writing 1970s yakuza...

The Tokyo International Film Festival has selected the samurai action thriller 11 Rebels as the opening movie of its upcoming 37th edition. The film is directed by Shiraishi Kazuya from a decades-old screenplay by the late, great scriptwriter Kasahara Kazuo (Japanese Yakuza, Battles Without Honor and Humanity). The festival will close with a screening of the French-Italian comedy Marcello Mio, directed by Christophe Honoré and starring European screen royalty Chiara Mastroianni, also serving on Tokyo’s main competition jury this year.

Produced by Japanese studio heavyweight Toei, 11 Rebels has already secured theatrical distribution in North America, where it will look to tap into the resurgent interest in samurai action cinema following the smash success of FX’s Shogun. It stars popular local actors Takayuki Yamada and Taiga Nakano.

“We expect this powerful film to mark a spectacular opening to the festival,” the event’s organizers said in a statement released Thursday.

Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore in ‘The Room Next Door’ (Photo Credit: Sony Classics)

The 2024 Venice Film Festival winners were announced on September 7th, with Oscar-winner Pedro Almodóvar (Talk to Her) earning the Golden Lion for Best Film for The Room Next Door. Almodóvar took home the coveted prize for this first English-language film, and he dedicated the win to his family. “It is my first movie in English but the spirit is Spanish,” said the acclaimed filmmaker.

Academy Award-winner Nicole Kidman was named Best Actress for her starring role in director Halina Reijn’s Babygirl. Kidman wasn’t able to attend the ceremony, and Reijn read a statement accepting the award. “Today, I arrived in Venice to find out shortly after that my brave and beautiful mother Janelle Ann Kidman has just passed. I’m in shock and I have to go to my family. But this award is for her.

Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door won the Golden Lion for best film at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.

Almodóvar’s first English-language feature marks the first time he has won the top award at one of the three major film festivals. Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore star in the story of a woman who makes the decision to end her life, and the friend who re-enters her world around this time.

Scroll down for the full list of winners

Sony Pictures Classics will release the film in the US on December 20, with Warner Bros handling multiple international territories including UK-Ireland.

While last year’s strikes created a somewhat subdued energy on the Lido with very few talent able to be present, this year’s 2024 Venice Film Festival proved to hot and steamy. And we’re not just talking about the excessive heat movie stars and fan alike were subjected to. Films like Halina Reijn’s erotic thriller “Babygirl” and Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of William S. Burrough’s short novel “Queer” aroused audience interest with career-best performances from Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig and highly revealing sexual interplay. However it was Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door” that took home the coveted Golden Lion, marking the first time the filmmaker has won a top prize at any major festival throughout his career.

Brady Corbet returned to the Palazzo del Cinema with his four-hour post-wwii epic “The Brutalist,” which screened to rave reception and earned the director the Silver Lion,...

September marks Marcello Mastroianni’s centennial, and the Criterion Channel pays respect with a retrospective that puts the expected alongside some lesser-knowns: Monicelli’s The Organizer, Jacques Demy’s A Slightly Pregnant Man, and two by Ettore Scola. There’s also the welcome return of “Adventures In Moviegoing” with Rachel Kushner’s formidable selections, among them Fassbinder’s Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven, Pialat’s L’enfance nue, and Jean Eustache’s Le cochon. In the lead-up to His Three Daughters, a four-film Azazel Jacobs program arrives.

Theme-wise, a set of courtroom dramas runs from 12 Angry Men and Anatomy of a Murder to My Cousin Vinny and Philadelphia; a look at ’30s female screenwriters includes Fritz Lang’s You and Me, McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow, and Cukor’s What Price Hollywood? There’s also a giallo series if you want to watch an Argento movie and ask yourself,...

“King Khan” ruled the Piazza Grande, the iconic big square in the center of picturesque Swiss town Locarno, on Saturday night. Bollywood icon Shah Rukh Khan brought his global star power to the 77th edition of the Locarno Film Festival as he was honored with a lifetime achievement award, the so-called Pardo alla Carriera, or Career Leopard.

The fans, including those in the 8,000 seats on the square and more in various spots around it, gave the star of films like Panthaan, Don 2 and Om Shanti Om a rousing ovation and thunderous applause. Even when the big movie screen in the square first showed him arriving on the red carpet around 9:20 p.m. local time and shaking hands with Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro, a roar went through the crowd.

Just before 10 p.m., the screen showed a highlight video of many of Khan’s films, which drew...

“I don’t want to sound like a fanboy,” Giona A. Nazzaro, artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival says sheepishly, “but Shah Rukh Khan is the quintessential power of cinema. There is no cynicism, there is no manipulation. Just this basic faith that you can tell a story through your persona and touch on the very profound building blocks of emotions.”

Nazzaro, it is fair to say, is a Khan fanboy. Discussing the Bollywood superstar — winner of Locarno’s 2024 lifetime achievement award, the Pardo alla Carriera Ascona-Locarno Tourism — he compares Khan to the “popular glamor of a hero of the working class, like Marcello Mastroianni” combined with the “elegance, the arrogant elegance, of someone like Alain Delon…. In Shah Ruhk Khan, I can see the trajectory from Rudolph Valentino to Tom Cruise, and it’s all there in one person. And this guy doesn’t even seem to break...

Tokyo International Film Festival has unveiled the international competition jury for its 37th edition.

Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To, French actress Chiara Mastroianni, Hungarian writer/director Ildiko Enyedi and Japanese actress Ai Hashimoto will join Hong Kong star Tony Leung, who was previously named this year’s jury president.

The full line-up of this year’s programme will be announced in late September ahead of the festival, which is set to run October 28 to November 6.

To is the acclaimed director of films such as Breaking News and Drug War and sat on the Berlinale international competition jury in 2023. He is also a regular at Cannes,...

The full competition jury for the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival has been revealed.

On Friday, festival organizers announced that Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To, Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi, Japanese actress Ai Hashimoto and French actress Chiara Mastroianni will be members of the 2024 main competition jury alongside previously announced jury president Tony Leung.

To, like Leung a legend of Hong Kong cinema, is famed the world over for his action and crime films. The veteran and prolific filmmaker’s credits include Breaking News, Exiled, Mad Detective, Drug War and the Election films (Election, Election 2 (a.k.a. Triad Election). To, a regular feature of the international film festival circuit, has had six films screen at the Cannes Film Festival, two in competition, as well as had four films selected to compete at the Venice Film Festival.

Enyedi is best known for writing and directing the Hungarian drama On Body and Soul,...

Yvonne Furneaux, the glamorous actress who had memorable performances in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Le Amiche, Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, has died. She was 98.

Furneaux died July 5 at her home in North Hampton, New Hampshire, of complications from a stroke, her son, Nicholas Natteau, told The Hollywood Reporter.

She also was the female lead in the Hammer horror film The Mummy (1959), starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Though she considered the project less than ideal, she said she ultimately learned from those actors that “if you don’t take a film like The Mummy seriously and put your heart and soul into it, then you can bring it down,” she explained in Mark A. Miller’s 2010 book, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and Horror Cinema.

She starred in Italian, French, German and Spanish films during her career.

In Le Amiche (1955), a hit at the...

While its often the world premieres that get the most buzz out of any major film festival, look to their restorations lineup (if they are smart enough to have one), and a treasure trove of classics sure to be better than most premieres await. Ahead of their official lineup being unveiled on July 23, the Venice Classics slate is here, featuring films by Michelangelo Antonioni, Fritz Lang, Frederick Wiseman, Howard Hawks, Nagisa Ōshima, Anthony Mann, Lina Wertmüller, and many more.

“The programme of Venice Classics includes the commemoration of several important anniversaries.” said Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera. “First and foremost, the centennial of the birth of Marcello Mastroianni, the most beloved and celebrated Italian actor in the world, whom we will see in The Night (La notte), one of Michelangelo Antonioni’s finest films. It has been fifty years since the death of Vittorio De Sica, who in The Gold of Naples...

Spirited AwayImage: Gkids

Now that we’re used to HBO Max shedding the best part of its name to become just Max, we can concentrate on what really matters: the movies. Max’s impressive library includes most films released by Warner Bros., along with HBO original movies, plus titles from...

Anouk Aimee, the French actress who received a best actress Oscar nomination in 1967 for A Man And A Woman, has died aged 92.

Aimee died at her home in Paris. Her death was confirmed by an Instagram post from her daughter Manuela Papatakis, which read, “With my daughter, Galaad, and my granddaughter, Mila, we have great sadness to announce the departure of my mother Anouk Aimée.”

Born Nicole Francoise Florence Dreyfus in Paris in 1932, she made her film debut aged 14 in the role of Anouk in Henri Calef’s The House Under The Sea. She kept the name for her career,...