News

Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall continued its prize-winning run on Monday at France’s 29th Lumière Awards clinching Best Film and Best Screenplay, while its German star Sandra Hüller won Best Actress.

The Lumières fete the best films, performances and technical achievements of French cinema across 13 categories.

The French equivalent of the Golden Globes, they are voted on by the Académie des Lumières which is made up of France-based international journalists representing 36 countries.

In other key prizes, Thomas Cailley won Best Director for Cannes 2023 Un Certain Regard opener The Animal Kingdom, while Arieh Worthalter won Best Actor for his performance in Cédric Khan’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight opener The Goldman Case.

Triet’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall, which was nominated in six Lumière categories, is on an award-winning streak.

The movie swept the board at the European Film Awards in Berlin last December...

France’s awards season has officially kicked off with Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” landing six nominations at the Lumières Awards, including best film and director.

The courtroom drama, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, is the season’s frontrunner. The Lumières are voted on by Paris-based correspondents working for foreign outlets across 36 countries.

Sandra Huller, who stars in the film as a German novelist put on trial after her French husband dies mysteriously, is nominated for best actress, while Milo Machado Graner, who plays her astute, low-vision son, is nominated for best male newcomer.

“Anatomy of Fall” has been on a roll, garnering a raft of international prizes at the European Film Awards, Gothams, as well as Los Angeles and the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, along with four Golden Globe nominations for best film, screenplay, actress and foreign film. The movie that was...

Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall is the frontrunner for France’s Lumiere awards, the country’s answer to the Golden Globes, with 6 nominations, including for best film and best director.

The courtroom drama, starring Sandra Hüller as a writer who may have murdered her husband, won the Palme d’Or in Cannes this year and swept the European Film Awards on the weekend, taking 5 trophies, including best film. Anatomy of Fall, a Neon release in the U.S., has been nominated for 4 Golden Globes.

Tran Anh Hung’s foodie period drama The Taste of Things, which was picked over Anatomy of a Fall as France’s country’s official Oscar contender in the best international feature category, received just one Lumiere nom, for best cinematography.

Another French courtroom drama, Cedric Kahn’s The Goldman Case, picked up 5 Lumiere noms, tying with Thomas Cailley’s sci-fi tale The Animal Kingdom.

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Annihilation (Alex Garland)

More terrifying than any creature Hollywood could dream up is the unraveling of one’s mind—the steady loss of a consciousness as defined by the memories, motivations, and knowledge built up from decades of experience and reflection. With Annihilation, Alex Garland’s beautiful, frightening follow-up to Ex Machina, he portrays this paralyzing sensation with a sense of vivid imagination, and also delivers a cadre of horrifying creatures to boot. – Jordan R. (full review)

Where to Stream: Netflix

Barbarian (Zach Cregger)

The kind of horror film that resembles the experience of traveling down the dark recesses of one’s nightmares, Barbarian is also quite funny to boot. While its thin characterization and merely surface-level thrills hold it back from...

The recent films Drive My Car and Burning, two exquisite screen adaptations of Haruki Murakami’s fiction, delve into unsettling enigmas and longings, spun around performances of gripping subtlety. As a work of animation, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman can’t plumb behavioral depths and tics in quite the same way. But animation is an apt medium for exploring another aspect of Murakami’s work, his magic-realist spin on existential angst. Pierre Földes, a composer and visual artist at the helm of his first feature, has made something that mixes the painterly and the stylized, a film that’s lovely, mysterious and also, at times, fittingly odd.

The writer-director finds connective tissue among the various storylines in the idea of an earthquake as a psychic rupture, shaking loose the dissatisfactions and yearnings that are usually under wraps, keeping people shut off and stuck. Földes’ multiple roles here include writing the score,...

As one of the most highly regarded current writers in the world, Haruki Murakami has plenty of fans. His works have often been adapted for film, and even his short stories lend themselves for being adapted into great long films. Hamaguchi Ryusuke's Drive My Car is an excellent recent example, as is Lee Chang-dong's Burning. French animator Pierre Földes, however, does something else: in his debut feature Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman he takes no less than six stories from the Japanese master, and weaves them together into a single, strange narrative. It's an approach which works because Murakami himself often leaves questions unanswered, being more interested in making his readers think than in providing them with a rigid story. Földes uses one story to plug...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

In the 1970s, giant robot cartoons sparked a love affair with French fans (including Emmanuel Macron) – now the country is the world’s largest manga importer, and home to a new Murakami film

You might say that Vincent van Gogh was one of the first Japanese pop-culture otaku (geeks) in Europe. With the 19th-century japonisme craze in full swing, he coveted ukiyo-e woodblock prints like modern-day collectors hoard rare manga. Japanese art deeply influenced his work, from his flattening of perspective to his bold lines. He went to the south of France hoping to encounter the same radiant nature and spiritual freshness that figured in his east-Asian fantasia. Upon seeing Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave Off Kanagawa – a supposed inspiration for his own The Starry Night – he raved to his brother Theo in a letter: “The waves are claws, the boat is caught in them, you can feel it.

The seductively quirky sad-serious tone of the author is evident as a constellation of characters try and save the city – including a lost cat and a giant talkative frog

Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami has inspired some prestigious movies, most recently Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car. Regardless of whether this new Murakami adaptation (based on his short story collection of the same name) comes to be considered the best, I think it might actually capture the elusive essence of Murakami more than any other – something in it being a Rotoscope animation of elegant simplicity. It has the ruminative lightness, almost weightlessness, the watercolour delicacy and reticence of the emotions, the sense of the uncanny, the insistent play of erotic possibility and that Murakami keynote: a cat.

Pierre Földes makes his feature directing debut here, having been long been a composer; his musical credits include Michael Cuesta’s L.I.E.

Mamoru Oshii was jury president of the new prestigious animation event.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman has scooped the grand prize at the inaugural edition of Niigata International Animation Film Festival (Niaff), which ran in the Japanese port city of Niigata from March 17-23.

The animated feature is the directorial debut of US-born French composer Pierre Földes, who also wrote the screenplay and score, and is based on a collection of short stories by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. It ollows the lives of multiple characters as they navigate existence after the 2011 tsunami in Japan.

Sold by The Match Factory, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman...

"Living with you... was like living with a chunk of air." Zeitgeist Films has revealed the official US trailer with English dubbing for an acclaimed indie animated film titled Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, the feature directorial debut of composer Pierre Földes. This premiered at last year's Annecy Film Festival, also stopping by the Toronto & Busan Film Festivals. Based on several short stories by the renowned Japanese author Haruki Murakami. Utilizing a surreal hybrid animation style that incorporates live-action references, 3D modeling, and traditional layouts, the film begins in Tokyo just days after the earthquake of 2011. Aided by a lost cat and a loquacious giant frog, an unambitious salesman, his frustrated wife and a schizophrenic accountant are called upon to save their city from obliteration and find meaning in their lives. "It is sure to appeal to the wide range of Murakami fans and hopefully anyone who wants to take a...

Adaptations of the celebrated Japanese writer Haruki Murakami’s novels and short stories into live-action films, have always generated a mixed bag of outcomes; their success – in my opinion – being often inversely proportional to their adherence to the original source material. To mention some, “Tony Takitani” by Jun Ichikawa, “Hanalei Bay” by Daishi Matsunaga”, “Burning” by Lee Chang-dong and the most recent “Drive My Car” by Ryusuke Hamaguchi. The author’s rich universe, fluctuating between magical realism, mundanity and straight-out surrealism, makes visual representation an arduous enterprise. For his ambitious animated feature film debut, “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman”, composer, screenwriter, and animator Pierre Földes draws inspiration from several Murakami’s short stories, to create his own tale about how trauma can open the doors of perception. The film is an international coproduction that involves France, Holland, Luxemburg and Canada, and, so far, has won the Jury Distinction in the Best...

Exclusive: Zeitgeist Films, in association with Kino Lorber, has acquired all U.S. rights to the animated feature Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman from The Match Factory.

The feature debut of composer Pierre Földes, will open theatrically at Film Forum in New York in April 2023 before expanding nationwide.

Based on several short stories by acclaimed Japanese author Haruki Murakami (Drive My Car), the feature won the Jury Special Mention Award at Annecy and has played at Toronto, Rotterdam, and Busan.

Using a hybrid animation style that incorporates live-action references, 3D modeling, and traditional layouts, the movie begins in Tokyo just days after the earthquake and tsunami of 2011. Aided by a lost cat and a loquacious giant frog, an unambitious salesman, his frustrated wife and a schizophrenic accountant are called upon to save their city from obliteration and find meaning in their lives.

Zeitgeist Co-Presidents Nancy Gerstman and Emily Russo negotiated the...

Event ran December 10-17.

Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel’s Austrian Vera has won the Crystal Arrow award at the 14th Les Arcs Film Festival which wrapped on Friday night in the French mountain resort.

A jury presided over by prolific French actor-director Roschdy Zem gave its great jury prize to Teona Strugar Mitevska’s The Happiest Man In The World. Acting prizes went to Yothin Clavenzani for Ghost Night and Annabelle Lengronne for Léonor Serraille’s Mother And Son, which also won a prize for best photography for Helene Louvart. The film is distributed by Diaphana in France and sold by MK2 Films.

"No matter what you wish for, you can never be anything but yourself." The Match Factory has revealed an official promo trailer for an indie animated film titled Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, marking the feature directorial debut of composer Pierre Földes. This premiered at the Annecy Film Festival and at TIFF this year, and has been released in France and Canada already, but nowhere else just yet. A lost cat, a giant talkative frog, and a tsunami help an unambitious bank employee, his frustrated wife, and a schizophrenic accountant to save Tokyo from an earthquake and find a meaning to their lives. It's based on the Haruki Murakami book of the same name. This sounds like a fascinating animated existential tale of identity and philosophy. The film's initial voice cast includes Marcello Arroyo, Michael Czyz, Zag Dorison, Pierre Földes, Jesse Noah Gruman, Katharine King So, John Vamvas, Nadia Verrucci, and Shoshana Wilder.

An early 2023 UK-Ireland release is planned.

UK distributor Modern Films has picked up Annecy premiere Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman for the UK and Ireland from German sales agent The Match Factory.

It is the directorial debut of US-born French composer Pierre Földes, who also wrote the screenplay and score, and is based on a collection of short stories by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. Modern Films released Cannes premiere Drive My Car in the UK and Ireland in November 2021, also a Murakami adaptation.

The animation follows the lives of multiple characters as they navigate existence after the 2011 tsunami in Japan, including a bank employee without ambition,...

The Les Arcs Film Festival will launch a new sidebar showcasing this year’s European entries to the Best International Feature Film Oscar category at its 14th edition, running December 10 to 17 in its namesake French Alps skiing resort home of Les Arcs.

The dates of the European cinema-focused festival overlap with voting for the Oscar Shortlists, running December 12 to 15 ahead of the Shortlists announcement on December 21.

Eight submissions will screen in the new section entitled “Oscar Au Ski”: Cristèle Alves Meira’s Alma Viva (Portugal), Viesturs Kairišs’s January (Latvia), Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson’s BeautifuInt’l Critics Line: Iceland’s Oscar Entry Beautiful Beings (Iceland), Maryna Er Gorbach’s Klondike (Ukraine), Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage (Austria), Colm Bairéad’s The Quiet Girl (Ireland), Alli Haapasalo’s Girl Picture (Finland) and Carla Simón’s Alcarràs (Spain).

“The festival takes place in a period when the Oscar race is in full swing.

Bright Future and Limelight titles first to be announced.

International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) and industry platform CineMart are set to fully return in-person in 2023, with its first wave of titles announced today.

The 52nd edition of the festival is scheduled to take place from January 25 to February 5 and organisers said it plans to welcome back audiences with a complete programme of features, shorts, focus programmes, installations and performances.

The 40th edition of IFFR’s co-production market CineMart is also set to run from January 29 to February 1, with one-to-one meetings and informal networking taking place in person for the first time in three years.

The Egyptian festival runs November 13-22.

The Cairo International Film Festival has unveiled the line-up for its 44th edition.

Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans will open the festival following its world premiere at Toronto where it picked up the people’s choice award.

Scroll down for full line-up

Ciff’s international competition section contains 14 titles, including five world premieres.

Egyptian director Ahmad Abdalla’s 19B is one of the world premieres competing for the Golden Pyramid for best film. It follows an old guard whose peaceful job of watching over an abandoned villa is threatened when a young park attendant turns up.

.

After inspiring two of the most stunning features in recent years with “Burning” and “Drive My Car,” it should come as no surprise that the work of author Haruki Murakami is ripe for adaptation. His short stories are truly special, texts that are as dense as they are accessible, and filmmaker Pierre Földes knows this well. Földes’s first feature, “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman,” takes its title from a Murakami collection and anthologizes a number of the author’s short stories — “Super Frog Saves Tokyo,” “Birthday Girl,” “Dabchick,” “The Wind-Up Bird & Tuesday’s Women,” “Blind Willow Sleeping Woman,” and “UFO in Kushiro” — to create an intimate and playful study of characters looking for meaning in their lives.

Weaving together these stories — and their wide-ranging subject matter that includes break-ups, office-job monotony, strange wishes, and secret assassins — is a special endeavor of its own. And while the film stays true to Murakami’s sensibilities,...

The Toronto International Film Festival returns in September 2022 for its 47th edition — 11 days of international and Canadian cinema, special events featuring some of the biggest names in film, and TIFF’s Industry Conference, offering diverse and innovative perspectives on the art and business of film. The full programme can be found Here.

Here is a selection of Asian titles:

Features A Gaza Weekend

A Gaza Weekend

Basil Khalil ­- Palestine, United Kingdom, 2022

A Long Break

Davit Pirtskhalava – Georgia, 2022

A Man of Reason

Jung Woo-sung – South Korea, 2022

Alam

Firas Khoury – France, Tunisia, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, 2022

Autobiography

Makbul Mubarak – Indonesia, France, Singapore, Poland, Philippines, Germany, Qatar, 2022

Beyond the Wall

Beyond the Wall

Shab, Dkheli, Divar – Iran, 2022

Broker

Hirokazu Kore-eda – South Korea, 2022

Decision to Leave

Park Chan-wook – South Korea, 2022

Hunt

Lee Jung-jae – South Korea, 2022

In Her Hands

Tamana Ayazi, Marcel Mettelsiefen – United States of America, Afghanistan, 2022

Joyland

Joyland

Saim Sadiq – Pakistan, 2022

Kacchey Limbu

Shubham Yogi – India,...

The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has announced the international arm of its festival. Taking place September 8 through 18, TIFF previously unveiled Sally El Hosaini’s opening night film “The Swimmers” as well as Special Presentations including the world premieres of Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical “The Fabelmans,” Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” and Nicholas Stoller’s “Bros.”

“The Woman King,” “Catherine Called Birdy,” “The Menu,” “Moonage Daydream,” and “My Policeman” additionally debut at the festival.

Now, the Contemporary World Cinema slate has been announced for 2022 TIFF. The lineup includes features from more than 50 countries spanning the globe. The respective world premieres for “Bones of Crows” and “The Swearing Jar” are among programming highlights, as well as the North American premieres for Koji Fukada’s “Love Life” and Jerzy Skolimowski’s “Eo.”

“We are so proud of the TIFF Docs and Contemporary World Cinema programs,” Anita Lee, chief programming officer,...

New films from Werner Herzog, Laura Poitras, Cristian Mungiu and Jerzy Skolimowski have been added to the lineup of the 2022 Toronto International film Festival, TIFF organizers announced on Wednesday.

The new films are in the TIFF Docs and Contemporary World Cinema sections and together will make up almost 75 additions to the lineup of the festival, which will run from Sept. 8-18.

The TIFF Docs section will open with the world premiere of Sacha Jenkins’ “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues.” Other films in the section include Herzog’s “Theatre of Thought,” which examines new research into the brain; Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” about artist Nan Goldin and her campaign to get museums to reject the patronage of the Purdue Pharma-owning Sackler family; and “In Her Hands,” Tamana Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen’s film about Zarifa Ghafari, the youngest woman mayor in Afghanistan as the Taliban returned to power in that country.

Alain Ughetto’s ‘Interdit aux chiens et aux italiens’ scoops two awards.

Amandine Fredon and Benjamin Massoubre’s French-Luxembourgish 2D animation Little Nicholas – Happy As Can Be won the Cristal for a Feature Film at Annecy International Animation Festival, which held its awards on Saturday, June 18.

Produced by France’s Foliascope and Luxembourg’s Bidibul Productions, the film follows the adventures of a mischievous boy and his schoolmates, teacher and parents in 1960s Paris.

Scroll down for the full list of winners

The story is by Anne Goscinny, Michel Fessler and Massoubre, with Julien Maret leading the animation. France’s Charades is handling world sales,...

Directors Amandine Fredon and Benjamin Massoubre take home the top prize for their animated film Little Nicholas–Happy as Can Be at the annual Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France.

Co-produced French/Luxembourg film takes place towards the end of the1950s in Paris, René Goscinny (voiced by Alain Chabat) and Jean-Jacques Sempé (voiced by Laurent Lafitte) invented the character Nicholas, a small boy and prankster with a smile on his face whose days are punctuated by games with his band of friends, fights, joking around, and learning. When the fictional character is invited into the workshop of his “dads,” the roles are reversed, and it’s the creators who recount their childhoods, their careers, and their friendship to Little Nicholas.

In 2021, Flee won top prize at the Annecy festival and then went on to grab three Oscar nominations, with one being for best animated film. Will Little Nicholas follow in the same path?...

Click here to read the full article.

Little Nicholas – Happy as Can Be, helmed by Amandine Fredon and Benjamin Massoubre, received the top Cristal for a feature film at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, which concluded on Saturday.

Written by Massoubre, the France/Luxembourg co-production follows a mischievous boy named Nicholas and is based on a series of illustrated children’s books created by Rene Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempe. It had its world premiere last month at Cannes.

A year ago, Flee won top Cristal, en route to three Academy Award nominations, including one for animated feature. In 2019, I Lost My Body additionally claimed Annecy’s Cristal for a feature before earning an Academy Award nomination for best animated feature. Little Nicholas helmer Massoubre edited I Lost My Body.

The list of winners follows, and special prizes awarded on Friday can be found here.

Cristal For A Feature Film:...

Two of the most awaited European animation films of the year – Alberto Vázquez’s “Unicorn Wars” and Pierre Foldes’ “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman” – look set to world premiere in competition at France’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival, the biggest animation festival in the world.

Sneak peeks at Annecy’s Work in Progress strand, its industry cornerstone, include Apple Original and Skydance title “Luck,” from Peggy Holmes, Cartoon Network’s “Unicorn: Warriors Eternal,” from legendary U.S. director Genndy Tartakovsky (“Samurai Jack”) and the latest works from directors whose prior animated features have scored Oscar nominations: Spain’s Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal and France’s Alain Gagnol.

Announced Monday evening in Paris’ Cnc state film agency by Annecy director Mickaël Marin and artistic director Michel Jean, this year’s festival is deigned as fully-fledged return to the on-site encounters and in-person discovery which is the soul of Annecy, Marin emphasized,...

Speaking before a rapt audience at the Annecy Film Festival on Friday, director Pierre Földes, producers Tanguy Olivier and Emmanuel-Alain Raynal, and artists from France’s Miyu Productions premiered work in progress footage from Földes’ “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman,” a 2D animated adaptation of a handful of Haruki Murakami stories that looks to translate the Japanese author’s idiosyncratic style as no feature has to date.

Murakami’s is a world of sex, surrealism and cigarettes, a liminal space where flights of fancy are never more than a sleepless and jazz-filled night away. Such is the world that Földes looks to recreate with his debut feature, a €6 million ($7.1 million) Franco-Canadian-Benelux coproduction that received the Eurimages Award at the 2016 Berlinale.

Per the synopsis on the website of Cinéma Defacto, which produces alongside Miyu: “A lost cat, a giant talkative frog and a tsunami help a bank employee without ambition, his frustrated...

In a departure, Japan’s Shin-Ei Animation, the studio behind two of the biggest anime TV franchises ever, “Doraemon” and “Crayon Shin-chan,” is teaming with France’s Miyu Productions to co-produce “Ghost Cat Anzu,” an auteurist animated feature film.

Directed by Japan’s Nobuhiro Yamashita and Yoko Kuno, “Ghost Cat Anzu” also marks the latest expansive move by Miyu, a major French force for years in graduate and professional short film production and distribution – “Inés” was a standout at last year’s Annecy – which is moving ever more forcefully into feature films, as a producer and sales agent.

Adapting the manga by Takashi Imashiro, “Ghost Cat Anzu” turns on Karin, 11, left by her father at the home of her grandpa, a small town monk living in the Japanese countryside. Her grandfather asks Anza, his ghost cat, to look after her.

The feature draws on the Japanese folklore that cats that...

France’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival, the leading global get-together for all things animation, has unveiled the lineup for this year’s Work in Progress section, among the most highly anticipated events of the world’s animation calendar. When a physical event is possible, lines begin to form early in the morning as fans of the high-profile projects hope to get into the limited seating available at the Salle Pierre Lamy.

A barometer for future standout awards and/or box office success, recent high-profile projects featured at Annecy’s Work in Progress include Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Oscar-winner “Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse” and Oscar nominees in Netflix’s “Klaus” and “Over the Moon,” Cartoon Saloon’s “Wolfwalkers,” Claude Barras’ “My Life as a Zucchini,” Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar’s “Ernest & Celestine,” Michael Dudok de Wit’s “The Red Turtle” and Dean DeBlois’ “How to Train Your Dragon 2.

Following Lee Chang-dong’s masterful Haruki Murakami adaptation Burning, the next work adapting the celebrated Japanese author is taking a form rare when it comes to translating his works: an animated feature. Murakami’s Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, which contains 25 years of short stories from the author, was first published in 2006 and now a selection of stories from the collection are the basis for this new animation.

A French production, the film is helmed by Pierre Földes in his feature debut, with backing from Cinéma Defacto and Miyu Productions. Created with live-action cinema as a major influence, here’s the synopsis: “A lost cat, a voluble giant toad and a tsunami help an unambitious and schizophrenic accountant and his frustrated wife to save Tokyo from an earthquake and find meaning in their lives.”

Having been in development for much of the last decade, a beautiful new trailer has now arrived courtesy of Cartoon Brew.

Claude Barras’ “Savages!,” Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli’s “Tales of the Hedgehog” and Peter Dodd’s “King of the Swamp” are among the sixty-six projects –a 10% increase from last year– to be pitched at the 21st Cartoon Movie, Europe’s leading animated movie co-production event, which will take place in the French port city of Bordeaux, kicking off March 5.

Projects will be offered to buyers and potential partners in different stages: 28 in concept, 24 in development, seven in production and seven sneak previews.

“Savages!” is the much-awaited sophomore project from Switzerland’s Barras, following his multi-awarded and foreign-language Oscar nominated “My Life as a Zucchini.” A stop-motion feature, “Savages!” is produced by France’s Prélude in co-production with Switzerland’s Helium Films. It tells the story of the friendship between 11-year-old Kéria and a Bornean orangutan baby. They will be forced to flee from Kéria’s father who wants to...