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This episode reflects on how Brazilian and Portuguese cinemas serve as a bridge between Latin America and Europe.Rui Poças is an acclaimed Portuguese cinematographer best known for his long-standing collaborations with two key figures of contemporary Portuguese cinema: Miguel Gomes and João Pedro Rodrigues. Since working on their respective debuts—The Face You Deserve (2004) and O Fantasma (2000)—Poças has lensed such acclaimed films as Our Beloved Month of August (2008), Tabu (2012), The Ornithologist (2016), Will-o’-the-Wisp (2022), and most recently Grand Tour (2024), which won Best Director at Cannes Film Festival.His distinctive visual style has also shaped important works by leading voices in Latin America, Europe, and the US, including Zama (2017) by Lucrecia Martel, Good Manners (2017) by Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra, Frankie (2019) by Ira Sachs, and The Rye Horn (2023) by Jaione Camborda.Rachel Daisy Ellis is a producer originally from England who relocated to Brazil in 2004. For over a decade, she has...

As São Paulo State and Brazil at large gears up its funding for film, TV, vid games and beyond, there is a distinct possibility that Brazil’s Congress will approve this year a global streamer investment quota for Brazilian films and series. If that happens, it could see R$700 million-r$800 million ($122 million-$140 million) being invested in independent Brazilian production, producer Fabiano Gullane (“Senna”) estimates.

Already Brazil is Latin America’s comeback story and its players, thanks to “I’m Still Here” and “Senna” walk the world stage. Following, the often remarkable São Paulo companies known to be at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, often aided in their attendance by São Paulo State. As often frequent international co-producers, they are well worth knowing. A drill-down on companies at Berlin, with some more to come.

44 Toons, Ale McHaddo

An animation studio and, from 2016, live action producer behind toon series “Osmar” and Netflix...

Marco Dutra’s latest film, Bury Your Dead, is set to make its way to North American audiences thanks to a recent acquisition by Dark Star Pictures. The distribution deal was finalized by Berlin-based sales agent M-Appeal. Alongside the announcement, a teaser for the movie has also been unveiled.

This Brazilian production first premiered at the 2024 Sitges Film Festival and has been making rounds at notable festivals, including those in London, Tokyo, and Rio de Janeiro. The film is expected to continue its festival journey in the U.S. before hitting theaters this fall.

Michael Repsch, president of Dark Star Pictures, shared his excitement about the project. “Bury Your Dead is a postapocalyptic journey through many different genres of film, culminating in a unique cinematic world,” he said. “We are ecstatic to be working with such a great talent in Marco Dutra. His vision for this film is the kind...

Marco Dutra’s “Bury Your Dead” has been acquired by Dark Star Pictures for North American distribution. The deal was closed by Berlin-based sales agent M-Appeal. A teaser is debuted below.

The Brazilian production, which premiered at the 2024 Sitges Film Festival and has since screened at several festivals including London, Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro, is slated for a festival tour in the U.S. ahead of a theatrical release this fall.

Dark Star Pictures’ recent titles include “Baby” (also represented by M-Appeal), “Zenithal” and “Kidnapping Inc.”

“’Bury Your Dead’ is a postapocalyptic journey through many different genres of film, culminating in a unique cinematic world,” said Michael Repsch, president of Dark Star Pictures. “We are ecstatic to be working with such a great talent in Marco Dutra. His vision for this film is the kind of project Dark Star strives to find and bring to audiences.”

The film follows...

As the biggest festival in one of the world’s biggest film markets, the Tokyo International Film Festival has always been held under the glare of painfully high expectations. But taking place towards the end of Asia’s crowded autumn festival season, then struggling through the brutal years of the pandemic, it hasn’t been easy for the event to create a global footprint.

Ando Hiroyasu, who came on board as chairman in 2019, was determined to change all that and started to restructure the festival during the pandemic. In 2021, Shozo Ichiyama, a veteran producer (Caught By the Tides) and former Tokyo Filmex director, joined TIFF as Programming Director and helped to reorganize and streamline the program. Under Ando’s management, the festival also moved from Roppongi to the Ginza-Hibiya district, which has more cinemas, leisure and cultural venues, and introduced a series of high-profile filmmaker talks, known as the TIFF Lounge Talk Sessions.

The 37th Tokyo International Film Festival, taking place from October 28 to November 6, has announced a lineup opening with Shiraishi Kazuya’s 11 Rebels and closing with Christophe Honoré’s Marcello Mio, in-between featuring new Asian directors, an animation sidebar, restored Japanese classics, and Akira Kurosawa’s favorite films (among them Breathless and Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A Time to Live and a Time to Die). Complementing these will be masterclasses from Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Sammo Hung, as well as a Béla Tarr-led symposium. I’ll be traveling there from October 28 to November 2, with coverage to follow.

The main competition’s jury is spearheaded by Tony Leung and features Johnnie To, Chiara Mastroianni, Ildikó Enyedi, and Ai Hashimoto, while the 15-film lineup comprises an eclectic mix: nine world premieres of predominantly Asian titles, five Asian premieres, one international debut, and only a handful of European features among them.

See the competition lineup below...

The Tokyo International Film Festival revealed its full 2024 lineup on Wednesday, including its main competition program and the Asian Future section for emerging regional filmmakers, as well as the all-new Women’s Empowerment section, which highlights nine films directed by women or involving female-focussed stories.

Tokyo’s 15-title main competition reveals a preference for securing world premieres over previously shown titles by established festival names. There are eight world premieres in the section — including Big World and My Friend An Delie by China’s Yang Lina and Dong Zijian, respectively; Papa from Hong Kong’s Philip Yung; The Englishman’s Papers from Portugal’s Sergio Graciano; and three Japanese features, among others (see full lineup below). Additional highlights include the international premiere of Midi Z’s The Unseen Sister and Huang Xi’s recent Toronto Film Festival entry Daughter’s Daughter, starring Sylvia Chang.

As previously announced, the competition titles will...

Tokyo International Film Festival has announced its full line-up including its main international and Asian Future competitions, as well as the nine films selected for its Women’s Empowerment Section.

The new female-focused section will screen Iranian drama My Favourite Cake, directed by Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha, who are banned from travelling by the Iranian authorities and were unable to attend the film’s premiere in Berlin.

Other titles in the Women’s Empowerment Section include Turkish director Ceylan Ozgun Ozcelik’s In Ten Seconds; Hong Kong filmmaker Oliver Chan’s Montages Of A Motherhood; Memories Of A Burning Body, from Costa Rica’s Antonella Sudasassi Furniss; and the world premiere of Japanese director Naoki Tamura’s Doctor-x The Movie, among other titles.

Co-hosted with Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the Women’s Empowerment Section is programmed by Andrijana Cvetkovikj and focuses on films directed by female filmmakers and/or with female-focused narratives.

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,...

Berlin-based sales agency M-Appeal has boarded elevated genre title “Bury Your Dead,” which world premieres at the Sitges Film Festival in the competition section. The director is Brazilian filmmaker Marco Dutra.

Dutra’s previous feature “All the Dead Ones” premiered in Berlinale competition in 2020, while his gory werewolf tale “Good Manners,” co-directed with Juliana Rojas, won the Silver Leopard at Locarno in 2017. The directing duo’s debut horror film “Hard Labor” premiered in Cannes Un Certain Regard in 2011.

After the screening at Sitges next week, the film will play at BFI London Film Festival. Further fall festival selections will be announced shortly.

The film follows Edgar Wilson, a roadkill collector in rural Brazil, who dreams of escaping his small-town existence with Nete, the love of his life. When Nete decides to join her family in an apocalyptic cult, Edgar finds himself at a crossroads. With the world on the brink of destruction,...

Close Encounter

The 68th BFI London Film Festival has unveiled additional titles for its 2024 program. The new slate includes one world premiere, one international premiere, one European premiere, and four U.K. premieres.

Charlie McDowell’s “The Summer Book,” starring Glenn Close, Emily Matthews and Anders Danielsen Lie, will have its world premiere as a special presentation. The film adapts Tove Jansson’s novel about a family’s summer on a Finnish island.

Justin Kurzel’s documentary “Ellis Park,” focusing on musician Warren Ellis, is set for its international premiere. The European premiere goes to Fleur Fortuné’s sci-fi feature debut “The Assessment,” with Elizabeth Olsen, Alicia Vikander and Himesh Patel.

U.K. premieres include Joshua Oppenheimer’s post-apocalyptic drama “The End,” featuring Tilda Swinton, George MacKay, Moses Ingram and Michael Shannon; Marco Dutra’s genre-bending “Bury Your Dead,” starring Selton Mello, Marjorie Estiano and Danilo Grangheia; Giovanni Tortorici’s coming-of-age tale “Dicianovve,...

The world premiere of Charlie McDowell’s The Summer Book, starring Glenn Close, has joined the line-up at the BFI London Film Festival, along with six other additional films.

US filmmaker McDowell’s feature is an English-language adaptation of Moomins creator Tove Jansson’s novel Sommarboken, also starring The Worst Person In The World actor Anders Danielsen Lie and newcomer Emily Matthews. In the wake of her mother’s death, a family spend a summer on an island off the Gulf of Finland. It will play as a Special Presentation.

Also joining the line-up is the international premiere of Macbeth...

The London Film Festival has added multiple titles to this year’s lineup including Charlie McDowell’s The Summer Book, which will screen as a world premiere. Scroll down for the full list.

The Summer Book is an adaptation of Moomins creator Tove Jansson’s classic novel and stars Glenn Close and Anders Danielsen Lie. Also joining today is Joshua Oppenheimer’s narrative feature debut The End. Set in a post-apocalyptic world where a family and their companions live in harmony until the arrival of a stranger cracks their strictly organized world wide open, starring Tilda Swinton, George MacKay, Moses Ingram, and Michael Shannon. The film travels to London after debuting in Telluride.

Other titles include Justin Kurzel’s first non-fiction film, Ellis Park, and Fleur Fortuné’s feature debut The Assessment, a sci-fi chamber piece featuring Elizabeth Olsen, Himesh Patel, and Alicia Vikander.

This year’s London Film Festival...

Yesterday we tossed filmmaker names like Ala Eddine Slim, Alexandre Koberidze, Marco Dutra and the tandem of Fabio Grassadonia & Antonio Piazza into the prognostication Un Certain Regard mix. Today we present another ten options and make sure to tune in on Monday for 25 firm Palme d’Or competition guesses. The official line-up will be revealed on April 11th.

Maria –...

Italy’s The Open Reel has taken on international sales for Juliana Rojas’ Berlinale Encounters title Cidade; Campo.

Cidade; Campo tells two stories of migration between city and countryside. In the first part, after a dam disaster floods her hometown, rural worker Joana moves to São Paulo but struggles to thrive in the city. In the second part, after the death of her estranged father, Flavia moves to his farm with her wife Mara. In both stories, nature forces the two women to face frustrations and cope with old memories and ghosts.

A Brazilian, German and French co-production, Cidade; Campo...

Enterre Seus Mortos

We’ve been big fans of the filmmaker since he broke out with Locarno preemed Hard Labor (2011) and Un Certain Regard selected Good Manners (2017) – both co-directed with Juliana Rojas. He hit Berlinale with 2020’s All the Dead Ones (read review) and could return to the Golden Bear comp with his latest work – the book to film adaptation of Ana Paula Maia’s Enterre Seus Mortos. Marco Dutra moved into production back in February of last year in Rio de Janerio with players Selton Mello, Marjorie Estiano and Betty Faria grabbing top billing. Dutra reteamed with his Good Manners cinematographer Rui Poças.…...

One of Brazil’s biggest film-tv stars, Marjorie Estiano – an International Emmy nominee for her performance in Globo’s “Under Pressure” and star of Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas’ Locarno winner “Good Manners” – is attached to take the lead in one of the most awaited Latin American genre films of 2023, Brazilian horror feature “A Mother’s Embrace.”

The sophomore feature from Argentina’s Cristian Ponce, director of Argentine genre breakout “History of the Occult,” the highest-rated horror title on Letterboxd’s 2021 Year in Review.

“A Mother’s Embrace” is scheduled to go into production next March.

It is written by Ponce and pic’s producer André Pereira, who has Carrión at Ventana Sur’s Blood Window and whose company, Lupa Filmes, produced “The Trace We Leave Behind,” which broke 30-year-old box-office records for a Brazilian horror movie.

“A Mother¡s Embrace” proved a highlight a the Sanfic Morbido Lab 2022, where it won the pitching prize.

Paris-based Urban Sales has swooped on international sales rights to Brazilian writer-director Carolina Markowicz’s awaited debut feature film “Charcoal” (“Carvão”), which is set for its world premiere at at Toronto’s prestigious Platform showcase before heading to San Sebastian for a Europe bow as part of its just-revealed Horizontes Latinos lineup.

Urban Sales has also shared with Variety a first look still from the film.

Distribution in Brazil is handled by Pandora Filmes, founded by André Sturm, which launched the country’s first classic film streaming platform Belas Artes in 2019, bringing big-name, cult, and regional classics to audiences nationwide.

Markowicz has written and directed six short films that have been selected by 400 festivals including Locarno, SXSW, Toronto and AFI. Her short film,“The Orphan,” a gritty tale about a young queer boy who tries to navigate his most recent adoption after being placed with a well-off conservative family, premiered...

Tinnitus Trailer — Gregorio Graziosi‘s Tinnitus (2022) movie trailer has been released by Screen International. The Tinnitus trailer stars Joana de Verona, Indira Nascimento, Alli Willow, and Antonio Pitanga. Crew The screenplay is written by Gregorio Graziosi, Marco Dutra, and Andres Julian Vera. Plot Synopsis Tinnitus‘s plot synopsis: “A sports drama and fanciful ‘body thriller’ in one, the [...]

Continue reading: Tinnitus (2022) Movie Trailer: A Former Synchronized Swimmer is Tormented by Amplified Senses in Gregorio Graziosi’s Film...

The film will debut in the new Karlovy Vary Proxima section.

Paris-based sales firm Loco Films has boarded world sales rights on Gregorio Graziosi’s Tinnitus, a Brazilian thriller which has its world premiere in Karlovy Vary’s new Proxima strand this afternoon (July 7).

Screen can reveal a first trailer for the film, above.

Tinnitus follows a former diver suffering from the eponymous hearing condition, typically a ringing or buzzing coming from within the ears. After an accident in the last Olympics, she puts her life at risk by returning to competition.

It is a second feature from Brazilian filmmaker Graziosi,...

Brazilian Gregorio Graziosi’s “Tinnitus” is co-written by Andrés Julian Vera and Marco Dutra, a Locarno best director winner for “Good Manners”; its Dp is Rui Poças, whose credits include Lucrecia Martel’s “Zama” and upcoming “Tabu.”

Its score is from David Boulter, who played keyboard on Claire Denis’ “Bastards,” collaborated on the score of her “High Life.”

Such credentials will make, almost inevitably, for one of the most polished of entries at Copia Final, Ventana Sur’s pix-in-post competition, where it screens on-site at the Cinemark Puerto Madero on Wednesday.

Developed at the Cannes Festival’s Résidence, “Tinnitus” looks set to weigh in as high art in the service of what on paper may seem a classic sports comeback narrative involving Marina, a high-board synchronized diver, who suffers a serious diving accident caused by tinnitus. She is encouraged by her substitute Teresa, she stages a comeback, though still terrorized...

New films from Oscar laureate Vanessa Ragone (“The Secret in Their Eyes”) and Camera d’Or winners Edher Campos (“Leap Year”) and Juan Pablo Miller (“Las Acacias”) are among attractions at this year’s Ventana Sur’s Primer Corte and Copia Final, the pix-in-post industry centerpieces at Latin America’s biggest film-tv market.

Ragone co-produces “The Face of the Jellyfish,” from Argentina’s Rotterdam-prized Melisa Liebenthal. Campos unveils “Journey to the Land of the Tarahumara,” Mexican Federico Cecchetti’s follow-up to the multi-prized “Mara’akame’s Dream.”

Miller introduces “Sublime,” one of the section’s buzz titles, along with “Diogenes,” from Peru’s Leonardo Barbuy, and two titles from Brazil: Gregorio Graziosi’s “Tinnitus” and Gabriel Martin’s “Mars One,” winner of Ventana Sur’s prestigious Paradiso Wip Award.

Titles brim with talent, observes Eva Morsch-Kihn, curator of Primer Corte and Copia Final along with Mercedes Abarca and Maria Nuñez.

Uruguay-based Cimarrón is in development on Argentine Paula Hernandez’s new feature “El Viento Que Arrasa” and Brazilian Marco Dutra’s series “Las Moscas,” as it aims to become an Ott-age South American powerhouse.

The new productions come on top of Cimarron’s thriving business as a service company. It services more than 10 series from global platforms a year. This allows it to develop an adventurous line in feature film production while creating premium series with movie auteurs such as Dutra.

“El Viento Que Arrasa” is produced by Cimarrón and Argentina’s Rizoma and Tarea Fina (“Incident Light”).

Based on the novella by young Argentine writer Selva Almada, it turns on Reverend Pearson, who travels across the desert of north Argentina with reluctant adolescent daughter Leni in tow. When Pearson’s car breaks down, he seeks a repair at a remote car workshop and sets out to save its owner...

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.

About Endlessness (Roy Andersson)

Watch an exclusive clip for the film, which is also now in theaters.

“What should I do now that I have lost my faith?” is the question that animates About Endlessness; this being the new film by Roy Andersson, it is delivered in a doctor’s waiting room, over and over again, in a creaky voice, by a dumpy man in late middle age who continues his plaint even after the doctor and his receptionist gruntingly force him outside into the hallway, from whence they can hear him scratching at the door like a zombie. About Endlessness is Roy Andersson’s fourth film of this...

Cidade;Campo

Juliana Rojas embarks on her second solo feature as director with Cidade;Campo, a project initially scheduled to go into production last May but halted by the pandemic. Produced by Sara Silveira of Dezenove Som e Imagens, who has financed several of Rojas’ projects. Rojas is perhaps best known for a series of projects she co-directed with Marco Dutra. She shared the Cannes Discovery award with Dutra for their 2007 short “A Stem,” an award she’d also receive for her 2012 short “Doppelganger.” Their 2011 feature Hard Labor was selected for Un Certain Regard at Cannes, and their 2017 feature Good Manners won the Special Jury Prize at the 2017 Locarno Film Festival.…...

Whether a viewer in 1896 or 2020, cinema has always been a dynamic and variable experience. Cinema as an event—as a manifestation of a meeting point between the art of moving images and an audience, big or small—has never fit any one definition, and this last year, so severely disrupted by a global pandemic, has deeply underscored the versatility and resilience of our great love.Our viewing this year, like that of so many, has been strange: compromised, confrontational, escapist, euphoric, painful, revelatory—encompassing all of the reactions one can have to film. How we encountered our favorite movies and most meaningful cinematic experiences of the year was hardly new: A by-now-normal mix of festivals, theatres, various subscription and transactional streaming services, as well as private screener links and gems buried on over-stuffed hard drives. But for most of the year, the communal experience shrunk to living rooms and glowing screens.

Ancient myths, religious otherworldliness, and culturally tailored re-imaginings of classic tropes or creatures populate the landscape of Latino horror. Although genre films have been present in Latin American cinema since the 1930s, over the last two decades — with the advent of digital filmmaking and increased government investment in the art form — they have exponentially flourished in the region.

Meanwhile, in the United States, Latinx audiences are known to be enthusiastic (and paying) fans of all things horror, even if Hollywood projects rarely include Latinos on screen. There are still few genre features by or about American Latinos out there, but up-and-coming storytellers are striving to change that. As streamers and studios vow to support emerging voices in entertainment, this is a space ripe for growth.

A thematically compelling quality in many of the most prominent Latino horror films is that genre often serves as a vehicle to create discourse around...

Yulene Olaizola’s “Tragic Jungle,” Natalia Meta’s “The Intruder” and Clarisa Navas’ “One in a Thousand” will compete in the San Sebastian Film Festival’s Latinos Horizontes, a showcase of standout recent movies from Latin America that this year underscores the emergence or consolidation of a new generation of female filmmakers in Latin America.

In all, women direct or co-direct seven of the nine features in Horizontes Latinos, a section which also features two world premieres: “La Verónica,” from Chile’s Leonardo Medel; and “Unlimited Edition,” co-directed by Virginia Cosín, Edgardo Cozarinsky, Santiago Loza and Romina Paula.

Certainly, this year’s San Sebastian makes no claim via its selection to women having suddenly taken over the Latin American industry: Four of the five titles from the region in other sections, including main competition (Argentine Eduardo Crespo’s “Nosotros Nunca Moriremos”) and New Directors (Brazilian João Paulo Miranda’s “Memory House”) are made by men.

With streaming dominating the industry — and suddenly becoming the “new normal” in a changing world — IndieWire is taking a closer look at the news cycle, breaking down what really matters to provide a clear picture of what companies are winning the streaming wars, and how they’re pulling ahead.

By looking at trends and the latest developments, Streaming Wars Report: Indie Edition offers a snapshot of what’s happening overall and day-to-day in streaming for the indie set. Check out the latest Streaming Wars Report for updates to the bigger players in the industry.

Despite an increasingly crowded marketplace, it’s not a bad time to be an independent or boutique streaming outfit. As more cinephiles and entertainment junkies have stayed close to home — rightly — for their movie-loving needs and the majority of traditional domestic theaters have remained closed, streamers of all sizes have reported a steady uptick in membership and views.

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.

Clemency (Chinonye Chukwu)

From Escape from Alcatraz to Cool Hand Luke to The Shawshank Redemption, cinema is rich with not only prison films focused on the plight of the prisoner, but also depicting wardens in an evil light. Clemency, winner of the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival, flips the script in both ways, both turning the spotlight on a warden and painting her in an empathetic, complicated light. Led by Alfre Woodard, she gives a riveting, emotional performance as the Bernadine Williams, a woman who is stuck between the demands of her grueling job and a disintegrating marriage, and can’t give her all to both.

Mubi's series New Brazilian Cinema is showing June - September, 2020.Above: LandlessAs I write about current Brazilian cinema, Brazilian Cinemateca, the preeminent institution for preservation of the country’s film history, is in danger of collapsing. Its employees haven’t been paid for months and the reels in its archives aren’t properly protected. The country's film industry launches strikes and petitions against the government’s plan to close the organization, which would damn the cultural heritage it shelters. How to consider the urgency of contemporary Brazilian film in this dire context? Perhaps by framing it as narratives of crises and resilience. No image inscribes itself as well into this allegory as one at the end of Landless, a documentary by Camila Freitas that premiered at Berlinale: Gusts of relentless wind punish arid earth, covering a settlement of scattered humble tents in a vicious swirl of red dust. This...

The cult film VOD platform Spamflix has launched a new worldwide app, available now for mobile and smart TV compatible. Via the app users can browse, rent and stream from the full catalog, which includes a wide range of feature and short films from around the globe.

Visit spamflix.com/app.do for more information, or available directly on Google Play and the Apple Store.

Spamflix was founded in 2018 by Markus Duffner, a project manager at the Locarno Film Festival and Julia Duarte, former producer of São Paulo International Film Festival. Called ‘Netflix for Cult Film Fans’ by Geek Spin the bulk of Spamflix’s library consists of hard to find and lesser-seen genre titles, many of which garnered acclaim on the festival circuit only to land without significant distribution.

A treasure trove for cult film enthusiasts that has a specialty focus on black comedy and adult animation, the new...

Portuguese event could be one of the first film festivals to take place physically in Europe as lockdowns ease.

Portuguese film festival IndieLisboa, which had to abandon its original April 30 to May 10 dates, is pushing on with plans to hold its 17th edition at the end of August, if an easing of the global Covid-19 health crisis allows.

The event took the usual step of unveiling most of its 2020 selection on April 30 to mark what would have been the opening day.

“We wanted to do something symbolic,” festival director Miguel Valverde told Screen. “In a normal year, we tie up...

If Brazil’s film industry faces unprecedented threats under far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, let’s hope this kind of adventurous filmmaking–which ruminates on the country’s unaddressed injustices that shaped the country of today–isn’t in the populist administration’s sights. All the Dead Ones is an accomplished film by directing duo Caetano Gotardo and Marco Dutra, rich in the nation’s poetry and music, daring in highlighting women’s voices while commenting on Brazil’s history of inequality of wealth, class, and race.

The film hinges on the white, middle-class Soares family in São Paulo at the turn of the twentieth century, a decade after Brazil banned slavery and when the nascent republic was lurching from coup to dictatorship. Before abolition, the Soares were wealthy coffee-plantation owners, but their diminished place in social strata has meant the women of the family shelter in relative obscurity in Brazil’s largest city.

Turn and Face the Strange: Caetano & Gotardo Navigate Displacement in Stellar Period Piece

The tagline for George Cukor’s 1939 classic The Women read “It’s all about men!” which is a potential (one of many) assertions one could make of Marco Dutra & Caetano Gotardo’s simmering, intelligent All the Dead Ones. Set in 1899 Sao Paolo, wherein Brazil’s national identity enters the twentieth century whilst still grappling with the seismic social changes which transpired a decade before with the abolishment of slavery (a snippet of dialogue sums it up best wherein a teacher tells her students the country has gone from an Empire to a Republic), the principal cast of characters are mostly women, each navigating a precarious future in a world where the recent social hierarchy has become abolished.…...

‘All The Dead Ones’ lands mid-pack.

Christian Petzold’s Undine took the lead on Screen’s Competition jury grid on day three of the Berlinale, recording three top score fours (excellent).

Those top marks came from Helena Lindblad of Dagens Nyheter, Paolo Bertolin of Segnocinema, and Wang Muyan of The Paper. It also took three scores of three (good), with only a one (poor) from The Morning Star’s Rita Di Santo pulling its average down to 3.1.

Berlinale regular Petzold’s film sees him reunite Transit stars Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski for a modern-day retelling of a myth relating to the titular water nymph.

There are a host of important, even vital ideas behind “All the Dead Ones,” a hybrid period piece addressing Brazil’s unresolved legacy of slavery and the imprint it’s had on an all-too-often downplayed contemporary racism of malignant toxicity. Set largely in 1899, 11 years after the abolition of slavery but designed so modern São Paulo increasingly bleeds into the picture, : Having a character express her colonialist guilt by seeing the ghosts of dead slaves feels far too stale when presented with such Freudian hysteria. Caetano Gotardo and Marco Dutra, collaborating as directors for the first time, channel the artificiality of late Manoel de Oliveira but without the enticing mystery, hampered by an understandable earnestness that yearns for a more subtle approach. International prospects are uncertain at best.

It doesn’t help that the character one instantly bonds with dies after the first few minutes. Josefina (Alaíde Costa) is an...

Sometimes, as a critic, you really love the film that the filmmakers were trying to make — even though they failed, perhaps even spectacularly, to actually make it. Brazilian Berlinale competition title All the Dead Ones (Todos os mortos) is one such film.

Directors Caetano Gotardo and Marco Dutra — the latter a co-director on the fascinating genre hybrid Good Manners that premiered in Locarno in 2017 — spin a story set in 1899 and 1900, a decade after slavery was abolished in Brazil. They mainly follow the women of the Soares family, whose men used to run a ...

Sometimes, as a critic, you really love the film that the filmmakers were trying to make — even though they failed, perhaps even spectacularly, to actually make it. Brazilian Berlinale competition title All the Dead Ones (Todos os mortos) is one such film.

Directors Caetano Gotardo and Marco Dutra — the latter a co-director on the fascinating genre hybrid Good Manners that premiered in Locarno in 2017 — spin a story set in 1899 and 1900, a decade after slavery was abolished in Brazil. They mainly follow the women of the Soares family, whose men used to run a ...

Philippe Garrel’s ‘The Salt Of Tears’ split opinion amongst our critics.

Kelly Reichardt has hit the front in the early stages of Screen’s Berlin 2020 Competition jury grid with her latest film First Cow.

It received consistent scores from all seven critics, with nothing lower than a two (average) and this year’s first score of four (excellent) from Screen’s own critic, culminating in a 2.7 average.

The film, which premiered at Telluride last year, centres on a cook who signs on to serve a party of fur trappers in the Pacific Northwest, forming a friendship with a Chinese immigrant.

Directed by Caetano Gotardo and Marco Dutra, Brazilian Berlin competition entry “All the Dead Ones” kicks off in Belle Epoque 1899 São Paulo. Ana, the daughter of a plantation owner and her nun sister attempt persuade a reluctant Ina, a former slave, to perform an ancient African ritual to cure their mother. A time warp at the hour mark moves part of the drama to contemporary high-rise São Paulo, as Ana in 1899 becomes obsessed by ghosts of dead black slaves.

“‘All the Dead Ones’ talks about how Brazil is much richer than we maybe think. Although a period film, it talks in a very original way about something still happening today,” says Carlo Chatrian, Berlin artistic director. The directors talked to Variety about the film.

The film uses an arresting time warp to ask how much Brazil has really changed.

Gotardo: The way that Brazilian society was organized after the end...

Competition

“All the Dead Ones”

Caetano Godardo, Marco Dutra

Following up on their Locarno-prized “Good Manners,” genre auteur Dutra and Gotardo deliver a lushly turned-out family drama that converts ghostliness into political metaphor, conflating 1899 Sao Paulo with its high-rise present, asking if the uneasy relationship between Brazil’s white elite and black majority has essentially changed.

Sales: Indie Sales

Encounters

“Los Conductos”

Camilo Restrepo

Pinky, on the run from a sect, takes to squatting, making T-shirts for a living, taking drugs and spinning images of the Apocalypse, damnation, revenge. A spectral, crazed allegory of Colombian post-civil conflict reinsertion that won Mar del Plata’s 2019 Works in Progress.

Sales: Best Friend Forever

Panorama

“A Common Crime”

Francisco Márquez

Set in class-riven Argentina and packing, reportedly, a great finale and commanding performance from lead Elisa Carricajo as an Argentine university teacher who fails to help her maid’s son, with literally haunting consequences.

The French sales agent is pinning its hopes on the Berlin competition title by Brazil’s Caetano Gotardo and Marco Dutra as well as on the Panorama-screened documentary Days of Cannibalism. French international sales agent Indie Sales will be able to boast a jam-packed line-up of 12 titles at the European Film Market of the 70th Berlinale (20 February-1 March). Standing out in particular is a feature that will be vying for the Golden Bear: All the Dead Ones by Brazilian duo Caetano Gotardo and Marco Dutra (Special Jury Prize at Locarno in 2017 for Good Manners). The movie, which has been produced by Brazilian outfit Dezenove Som e Imagens together with France’s Good Fortune Films (Clément Duboin and Florence Cohen), will have its official world premiere on Sunday 23 February. The story, written by the pair of directors, kicks off in 1899, shortly after slavery has been abolished in Brazil....

The new co-heads of the Berlin Film Festival have had an eventful build up to their first edition, which gets underway in two weeks. The festival program has been greeted with cautious optimism but there have also been bumps in the road, including last week’s suspension of the Alfred Bauer Silver Bear Prize and some questions over the choice of Jeremy Irons as jury head in light of comments the actor once made about women and same sex marriage.

We spoke to artistic director Carlo Chatrian (formerly of Locarno) and executive director Mariette Rissenbeek (formerly of German Films) about this year’s lineup, the festival’s direction and some of the noise being made away from the films. The duo declined to answer additional questions about the Alfred Bauer situation but we have covered that here.

Deadline: How are you feeling about this year’s festival?

Carlo Chatrian: We both feel very excited.

French outfit is handling a trio of Berlinale titles including Golden Bear contender All The Dead Ones.

Paris-based Indie Sales has acquired world sales rights to Teboho Edkins’ documentary Days Of Cannibalism ahead of its premiere in the Berlinale’s Panorama Dokumente section.

Shot in the southern African country of Lesotho, the work explores the impact of the arrival of a wave of Chinese entrepreneurs on its rural communities, which traditionally made their living from cattle farming.

Edkins, who describes the feature as a “contemporary documentary western”, captures the simmering tensions as forces of capitalism challenge the old order and traditions.

DaysThe titles for the 70th Berlin International Film Festival are being announced in anticipation of the event running February 20 - March 2, 2020. We will update the program as new films are revealed.COMPETITIONBerlin Alexanderplatz (Burhan Qurbani): Francis has survived his escape from Africa. In Berlin he gets to know Hasenheide park, the city’s clubs and its streets. His pal Reinhold becomes an adversary. Mieze brings both happiness and tragedy. Dau. Natasha (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy and Jekaterina Oertel): Natasha works in the canteen of a secret Soviet research institute. She drinks a lot, likes to talk about love and embarks on an affair. State security intervenes. A tale of violence that is as radical as it is provocative.The Woman Who Ran (Hong Sangsoo): While her husband is on a business trip, Gamhee meets three of her friends on the outskirts of Seoul. They make friendly conversation, as always,...

The Berlinale lineup already includes films from Jia Zhangke, Matías Piñeiro, and more, but now the competition slate has arrived and it’s an incredibly promising selection. Headed by Carlo Chatrian, it includes many of our most-anticipated films of the year with Christian Petzold’s Undine, Hong Sang-soo’s The Woman Who Ran, Tsai Ming-Liang’s Days, Philippe Garrel’s The Salt of Tears, Abel Ferrara’s Siberia, and Caetano Gotardo & Marco Dutra’s All the Dead Ones, plus recent festival favorites: Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow and Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always.

Check out the lineup below and return for our coverage.

Competition

Berlin Alexanderplatz

Germany / Netherlands

by Burhan Qurbani

with Welket Bungué, Jella Haase, Albrecht Schuch, Joachim Król, Annabelle Mandeng, Nils Verkooijen, Richard Fouofié Djimeli

World premiere

Dau. Natasha

Germany / Ukraine / United Kingdom / Russian Federation

by Ilya Khrzhanovskiy, Jekaterina Oertel

with Natalia Berezhnaya, Olga Shkabarnya, Vladimir Azhippo,...

The Berlin International Film Festival on Wednesday morning revealed the main competition lineup and gala selections for festival’s 70th edition.

The festival, which begins February 20, will screen 18 films in competition, including movies from Sally Potter, Kelly Reichardt, and Eliza Hittman. Six are from female directors.

Among the gala presentations is Pixar’s” Onward.” The Dan Scanlon-helmed urban fantasy includes the voices of Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Julia-Louis Dreyfus, Octavia Spencer, Mel Rodriguez, Kyle Bornheimer, Lena Waithe, and Ali Wong.

Here is the complete list:

Competition

“Berlin Alexanderplatz” (Germany/Netherlands)

Director: Burhan Qurbani

Cast: Welket Bungué, Jella Haase, Albrecht Schuch, Joachim Król, Annabelle Mandeng, Nils Verkooijen, and Richard Fouofié Djimeli

“Dau. Natasha” (Germany/Ukraine/United Kingdom/Russia)

Directors: Ilya Khrzhanovskiy and Jekaterina Oertel

Cast: Natalia Berezhnaya, Olga Shkabarnya, Vladimir Azhippo, Alexei Blinov, and Luc Bigé

“Domangchin yeoja” (“The Woman Who Ran”) (South Korea)

Director: Hong Sangsoo

Cast: Kim Minhee,...

The Berlin International Film Festival has unveiled its 2020 line-up, with 18 films playing in competition from directors such as Abel Ferrara, Sally Potter, Christian Petzold, Hong Sangsoo, Kelly Reichardt and Eliza Hittman.

Abel Ferrara’s Willem Dafoe starrer “Siberia” is a world premiere in competition, as is Sally Potter’s “The Roads Not Taken.”

Among the U.S. films at the Berlinale, Reichardt’s “First Cow” is an international premiere, and so too is Hittman’s “Never Rarely Sometimes Always.”

Pixar’s latest animation, “Onward”, also has its international premiere out of competition in the Special Galas section.

Previous Berlin Silver Bear winner Christian Petzold’s latest, “Undine”, world premieres, while Iranian director Mohammed Rasoulof, who is not allowed to travel outside his home country, world premieres his latest, “There is No Evil.”

Six out of the 18 films in competition are helmed by female directors.

The 70th edition of the festival...

Julia Ducournau’s Titane has joined the ranks of Wild Bunch, Filippo Meneghetti’s Two Of Us smiles favourably on Doc & Film, Marco Dutra goes to Indie Sales and Pulsar Content takes flight. With just two days to go until the close of the 44th Toronto International Film Festival and its intense, informal market (which a great number of professionals travelled to straight after the 76th Venice Film Festival), French international sales agents are slowly returning to Paris for a brief interval, before the 67th San Sebastian Film Festival (running 20-28 September) kicks off, leaving time to take stock of the major announcements made during the past two weeks. For starters, Wild Bunch International (the new entity launched at the beginning of July by Vincent Maraval) announced the sensational arrival of Titane in its line-up, which will be young French filmmaker Julia Ducournau’s second feature film after Raw (the star attraction.