News

Aiming to optimize and streamline the development and production of films and series in the international marketplace, Maquina, a new production entity comprising three companies, has launched at the 72nd San Sebastian Festival.

Formed by three firms led by seasoned Chilean producers – Augusto Matte’s London-based Deptford Film, Úrsula Budnik’s Horamágica in Valdivia and Fernando Bascuñán’s Santiago-based Planta – Maquina has been established to leverage the combined strengths of its founding partners, all of whom are attending the prominent Spanish festival.

“We’ve always wanted to work together, Maquina provides us with a more flexible structure that allows us to be more agile and practical,” Matte told Variety, explaining: “It is conceptually inspired by the idea of machinic assemblages, which refers to a fluid and dynamic system where different elements come together to create a functional whole without a fixed center.”

Added Budnik: “This means that the structure operates...

Making good on a recent slew of awards at Venice for Chilean films, Chile will be the Venice Production Bridge’s Focus Country in 2025.

The announcement will be made Thursday from the Venice Film Festival by Carolina Arredondo, Chile’s Minister of Culture, Arts, and Heritage as Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s “María,” starring Angelina Jolie as the legendary opera singer Maria Callas, world premieres on Venice’s Lido.

“This is a significant achievement for our creators, who have found in Venice a crucial platform to internationalize their projects,” Arredondo underscored. “Being the Focus Country will allow us to strengthen Chile’s audiovisual industry and attract new opportunities for co-production and global promotion.”

The honor comes after a decade or more, broadly dating back to Larraín’s 2012 “No,” starring Gael García Bernal, when Chile has punched way above its weight as an international film force. Chilean films’ Academy Award tally...

Based out of Chile and Los Angeles, Quijote Films, behind Cannes 2023 Un Certain Regard Fipresci Prize winner “The Settlers,” and France’s Les Valseurs, behind Oscar-nominated “,” have tied down a powerful alliance of international partners on “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,” the first feature of 2018 Cannes Cinéfondation top winner Diego Céspedes.

Quijote Films’ biggest budgeted title to date, said its head Giancarlo Nasi, “The Mysterious Gaze” goes into production on May 20.

An LGBTQ-themed drama, “The Mysterious Gaze” is set in a mining town where a strange illness is said to be transmitted between men who fall in love with each other.

Produced by Quijote Films and France’s Les Valseurs, “The Mysterious Gaze” has now added new partners in Germany’s Weydemann Bros Film and Wrong Men in Belgium. Further partners, Arte France Cinema and Irusoin, have already been announced.

Weydemann Bros has secured French-German mini traité funding to co-produce the film.

In this episode, we discuss cinematic images as both matter and spectra. Alberto Gracia is a Spanish director, writer, and artist. He is one of the most outstanding names of the New Galician Cinema, although he has distanced himself from the rural world that it usually portrays.He has directed the feature films The Fifth Gospel of Gaspar Hauser, La estrella errante and La Parra, which premiered in the official selection of the Rotterdam Festival, where he won the Fipresci Critics' Prize for his debut feature. He wrote the book "Microfugas, teoría y juego de la profanación", an essay that questions the representation of reality in contemporary art. On the other hand, Theó Court is a Chilean director with Spanish roots. His short film El espino was selected for the Cinéfondation at the Cannes Film Festival and his debut feature, El ocaso, premiered in 2011 at the Rotterdam Festival.Court has...

Three women live a quiet life amongst the luscious trees of the Canary Islands in the first trailer for Macu Machín’s Berlinale Forum entry “The Undergrowth.” Croatia’s Splitscreen is handling sales on the title.

The title also represents the latest from Tenerife-based El Viaje Films, quickly building as one of the Canary Islands top fiction producers, having co-produced Theo Court’s Chilean Oscar entry “White on White.”

It was also recently behind titles such as Venice-selected “They Carry Death” and Locarno prize-winning “Dead Slow Ahead.”

Machín’s feature debut is a personal affair, with the filmmaker chronicling the routine of her mother and two aunts as they finally try to settle the distribution of their family inheritance after years of debate. In the background to the family dispute, nature seeps in, the documentary juxtaposing the lulling rhythms of the island with the eruption of long-held grievances between the sisters.

Alejandra Villaba García’s “Hyperballad,” Sophia Mocorrea’s “Marriage by Abduction” and Theo Court’s “Three Dark Nights” feature in a 15-title lineup of Ventana Sur’s Proyecta project lineup which is emerging as Ventana’s industry centerpiece as international co-production becomes vital to more ambitious arthouse filmmaking.

Organised by Cannes Marché du Film and the San Sebastian Film Festival, Proyecta received 200 submissions this year, up from 170 in 2022.

There is also good word on a broad range of projects from “The Heart is an Erratic Muscle” to “Moa,” “The Devil’s Well,” “Malena Once Again” and “Water Never Hurt.”

“Hyperballad” has what rates as one of the most potent mixtures in Latin American filmmaking: Genre; an ambitious first feature; and a female director, building on Alejandra Villaba García’s short “Microcastillo,” seen at Cannes’ 2017 Critics’ Week Morelia showcase.

From German-Argentine Sophia Mocorrea, “Marriage by Abduction” scooped the 2021 Les Arcs Talent Village Award,...

Buenos Aires market runs in person and online November 27-December 1.

Female directors account for 60% of selections at 2023 Ventana Sur Proyecta, the sidebar of projects looking to secure additional funding and partners in a bid to foster stronger co-production ties between Latin America and Europe.

This year’s line-up organised by Ventana Sur, Marché du Film, and San Sebastian Film Festival comprises 11 projects from Latin America and four from Europe.

The 15th edition of the market in Buenos Aires will take place in person and online and kicks off with a pitching session by the producers on November 29 and in-person one-on-one...

Rojas Valencia’s third film following ‘Roots’ and ‘A Place Called Dignity’ is based on the 1960 novel by Chilean writer Carlos Droguett

Chilean star Alfredo Castro will play the lead role in the third film by Rojas Valencia, Patas de Perro (which translates to ‘dogs legs’)

The project is a co-production between Chile’s Horamágica and A Simple Vista Producciones and Brazil’s Centauro. Horamágica’s Úrsula Budnik also produced Sebastian Lelio’s early works The Sacred Family (2005) and Christmas (2009).

The film is an adaptation of the 1960 novel by prominent Chilean writer Carlos Droguett. Droguett was a member of the...

The Europe-Latin American Co-Production Forum and Wip Latam industry events are showcasing a wealth of new projects.

The Europe-Latin American Co-Production Forum and Wip Latam industry events are showcasing a selection of upcoming projects from Latin America to potential international partners at San Sebastian this month. Regional trends and financing models will also be in the spotlight.

Fifteen titles are in the Forum - from 222 submissions - and six films will showing a first cut in the Wip section. Both sections will take place from September 25-27.

There is a strong showing from Argentina in the Forum, despite the country’s long-running instability,...

Alfredo Castro, an absolute lead or co-star in seven Pablo Larraín films and one of the highest-regarded of actors in Latin America, is set to head the choral cast of “Three Dark Nights” (“Tres noches negras”), the third feature from Spanish-Chilean Theo Court.

“Three Dark Nights” follows up Court’s “White on White,” also starring Castro, an actor described by Variety as “reliably superb,” which won a best director and Fipresci Prize at 2019’s Venice Horizons. It went on to become Chile’s submission for the international feature Oscar, establishing Court as a talent to track.

In further news, Samuel M. Delgado, co-writer and co-director of “They Carry Death” and a writer with Court of “White on White,” has been brought on board as script consultant.

“Three Dark Nights” is one of the highest-profile of 15 projects which will be brought to market at September’s Europe-Latin American Co-Production Forum.

Like “White on White,...

Fifteen projects have been selected for the forum, seven from first or second-time directors.

Juan Pablo González and Sergio Castro San Martín are among the filmmakers returning for San Sebastian’s Europe-Latin America Co-Production forum, which runs from September 25-27.

Mexican filmmaker González is back with Agua Caliente after his first work Dos Estaciones went on to win the best acting award for lead actor Teresa Sánchez in the world cinema dramatic competition at Sundance, following its participation in the forum in 2019 and Wip Latam in 2022. Agua Caliente is co-directed with Ana Isabel Fernández de Alba.

Scroll down for the...

Multi-prized Latin American directors Federico Veiroj, Theo Court, Alicia Scherson and Daniel Hendler head a muscular project lineup at September’s San Sebastian Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum, the Spanish festival’s industry centerpiece which underscores this year a welling sea-change in the region’s filmmaking.

“The Moneychanger,” the latest film from Uruguay’s Veiroj, was selected for Toronto’s 2019 Platform; “White on White,” from Chile’s Court, won a best director Silver Lion at 2019’s Venice Horizons; Chile’s Alicia Scherson’s debut “Play” snagged new narrative director at Tribeca in 2005: multi-hyphenate Hendler, from Uruguay, scooped best director at Miami for “The Candidate” in 2017.

Also making the cut are Mexico’s Juan Pablo González and Ana Isabel Fernández, director and co-writer of 2022 Sundance Special Jury Prize winner “Dos Estaciones.” Ezequiel Yanco’s “La vida en común” took best documentary at the Biarritz Latin American Festival in 2019.

Mixing top cineasts...

Chile’s Quijote Films, run by Giancarlo Nasi, has reteamed with former partners El Viaje Films of Spain and Argentina’s Gema Films on two separate projects.

Attending the Berlin Film Festival’s European Film Market, Nasi said: “This market has been very good for us because as one of the outfits selected in the company matching program of the Co-Production Market, we have met with a lot of new firms from different countries. At the same time, we’ve been able to advance and confirm our collaboration with past partners.”

Quijote Films and El Viaje Films, partners on Theo Court’s “White on White,” which garnered the Venice Horizons Best Director and Fipresci awards and was Chile’s entry to the best international feature film Oscar race last year, are reteaming on Court’s latest film, “Tres noches negras” (“Three Dark Nights”).

“Our previous collaboration on Theo’s “White...

In a groundbreaking move, Constanza Arena, the former executive director of CinemaChile, has established Agencia La Luz, an agency and project incubator that will represent in international markets many of Chile’s foremost writing, directing and acting talents.

Many writers are connected to Chile’s fast-growing premium drama/audio scene. Julio Rojas, one Agencia La Luz client, created and wrote “Case 63,” Spotify’s most-listened-to scripted original podcast in Latin America, with an English-language version I the works starring Julianne Moore and Oscar Isaac, and co-wrote Pablo Fendrik’s Latino sci-fi series ‘The Shelter,’ from Starzplay, Pantaya, Fabula, Fremantle.

Enrique Videla and Paula del Fierro co-wrote Lucia Puenzo’s “La Jauría” for Fabula and Fremantle, while Videla, one of Chile’s biggest go-to scribes, co-wrote “Dignity” for Germany’s Joyn, “42 Days of Darkness” for Fabula and Netflix, “The Shelter” and “The Cliff” for The Mediapro Studio.

Agencia La Luz’s director...

In-person and virtual meetings set for September.

New work from Venice Horizons 2019 best director Théo Court and Australian filmmaker Darlene Johnson are among 142 international and US titles selected for the 2022 Gotham Week Project Market.

In-person Project Market industry meetings with distributors, financiers, production companies, festival programmers, sales and talent agents and other potential collaborators are set for September 19-21, while virtual meetings take place from September 22-23.

The Gotham Week Conference exploring the art and business of film and media returns and programming highlights include the inaugural Gotham Week Expo, which will bring together partners from The Gotham’s Expanding Communities,...

In-person and virtual meetings set for September.

New work from Venice Horizons 2019 best director Théo Court and Australian filmmaker Darlene Johnson are among 142 international and US titles selected for the 2022 Gotham Week Project Market.

In-person Project Market industry meetings with distributors, financiers, production companies, festival programmers, sales and talent agents and other potential collaborators are set for September 19-21, while virtual meetings take place from September 22-23.

The Gotham Week Conference exploring the art and business of film and media returns and programming highlights include the inaugural Gotham Week Expo, which will bring together partners from The Gotham’s Expanding Communities,...

Independent film sales and distribution firm Outsider Pictures has acquired the international sales rights to Peruvian director V. Checa’s neo-noir film “Tiempos Futuros” (“The Shape of Things to Come”) and will lead sales to potential buyers at this March’s Málaga Film Festival.

Playing Zonazine, which focuses on bolder plays by up-and-coming cineastes, “Tiempos Futuros” serves as Checa’s debut feature film. It follows the relationship between an obsessive father, Luiz, and his resourceful son, Teo (Lorenzo Molina), as they build a weather-controlling machine in a dystopian Lima, Peru.

To ease financial troubles, Teo joins a gang of teenage spies who lend him money to support him and his father but strain the relationship between the two.

To Checa, the film “was nourished by the context we live in,” referencing the silence brought by the Covid-19 pandemic and the authoritarian nature of governments and parents, with the smile of...

Chilean filmmaker Roberto Doveris’ “Phantom Project” vies for the top Tiger prize at the Rotterdam film festival’s online edition this year and leads a robust Chilean delegation in other sections of the festival. Co-produced by Doveris’ Niña Niño Films and Aura Sinclair’s Agencia Rekia (“La Isla de las Gaviotas”), “Phantom Project” (previously titled “Ghost Project”) has world premiered at the fest, which began Jan. 26 and wraps on Feb. 6. Variety has snagged an exclusive first look at its teaser. Patra Spanou Film is handling international sales rights.

Filmed in early 2021 when pandemic restrictions were still in full force in Chile, “Phantom Project” pivots on Pablo, an aspiring 30-year-old actor who works as a simulated patient and in alternative therapy sessions to make ends meet. His situation gets even more precarious when his flat mate moves out without paying two months’ rent. On top of that, the guy who used...

Spanish-Chilean filmmaker Théo Court is prepping the follow-up to his Venice prize-winner “White on White,” which won the Silver Lion for best director in the festival’s Horizons strand in 2019, and was Chile’s submission in the best international feature film Oscar race this year.

Court spoke exclusively to Variety about “Tres Noches Negras,” which he’ll be presenting during the Rotterdam Film Festival’s CineMart co-production market this week.

Set in the Chilean countryside, the film tells the story of a peasant who asks the devil to grant him a wish beneath a full moon. A young Haitian man soon appears dead on the grounds of the mansion that looms over the peasant’s feudal, rural community, setting off an investigation that will unravel the complex social and human fabric of modern-day Chile.

“Tres Noches Negras” is deeply inspired by the central Chilean region where Court was raised after...

New feature films from Japanese auteur Koji Fukada, Spanish-Chilean filmmaker Théo Court, and rising Georgian director Elene Naveriani are among the 28 projects selected for this year’s CineMart co-production market, which takes place online Jan. 30-Feb. 2, alongside the Rotterdam Film Festival.

One of Europe’s leading confabs for new and established filmmakers, CineMart will host a virtual 2022 edition after a dramatic rise in Covid-19 cases in the Netherlands in December forced organizers to scrap plans for a physical event. The Rotterdam Film Festival, which was planning to hold screenings in Dutch cinemas, also announced it was going virtual after concerns about the fast-spreading Omicron variant shuttered the country’s movie theaters.

Though the last-minute reversal came as a disappointment to organizers, IFFR Pro, CineMart and Rotterdam Lab manager Inke van Loocke remains upbeat about this year’s edition of the market, which in previous years has offered a launching pad...

Traveling photographer Pedro is a drawn, taciturn type, who prefers to let his camera do the talking. Whether he’s shooting a coy bride or a gang of white huntsmen posing with their Indigenous human kill, his mien is impassive, his brow furrowed, seeking composed perfection in the most rattling of images. “White on White” likewise conjures ravishing beauty from hellish historical ugliness, though it’s mindful throughout of the camera’s conspiratorial capacity for violence. As cold and quiet and witchily mesmerizing as a nighttime snowfall, Spanish-Chilean director Théo Court’s formidable second feature considers a devastating chapter of South America’s colonialist history through the eyes of someone at once a perpetrator and an observer — tacitly asking, at a certain point, what the difference even is.

An arresting and subtly challenging Chilean submission for the international feature Oscar, “White on White” first popped on the festival circuit in...

“Spencer” director Pablo Larraín has thrown his weight behind Chilean Oscar entry “White on White” (“Blanco en Blanco”), hailing it as a “really interesting, strange and highly violent film.”

“White on White” also addresses issues that are “highly unsettling and complex and which haven’t been resolved or at least discussed at sufficient length,” Larraín adds.

His words come from a conversation, which he moderates, with “White on White’s” director Théo Court and star Alfredo Castro that forms the latest Academy Awards Edition of CinemaChile Talks.

Some sort of sympathy for “White and White” may be inevitable.

Larraín was once a student of Castro’s, a notable theater director who has acted in six of Larraín’s nine films, starring in four: “Tony Manero,” Larrain’s 2008 breakout; 2010’s “Post Mortem”; 2012’s Oscar-nominated “No,” playing opposite Gael García Bernal; and 2015 Berlin Grand Jury Prize winner “The Club,” which persuaded Natalie Portman...

The U.K. has submitted Chloë Fairweather’s “Dying to Divorce” as its official entry into the Academy Awards’ Best International Feature Film category.

Filmed over five years, the feature-length documentary examines the issues of femicide and domestic violence in Turkey, where one in three women have experienced domestic violence, the highest proportion amid the world’s economically developed countries.

The feature follows lawyer Ipek Bozkurt and fellow activists whose mission is to put abusive men behind bars against the backdrop of a biased legal system and increasingly oppressive government. Survivors of domestic violence are also included in the film, such as Arzu, whose husband shot her seven times when she asked for a divorce, causing her to lose her legs and the use of her arms, and Kubra, who was attacked by her husband two days after giving birth, causing a brain haemorrhage which has impacted her ability to speak and walk.

First they conquered Hollywood film shoots, now they’re aiming to drive up local production, adding a new local edge to one of Europe’s most popular big shoot locales.

A decade ago, Spain’s Canary Islands started to become a top shoot destination for big international films, offering wide-ranging landscapes and unique tax advantages.

An influx of international film and TV shoots served to establish an industrial base, nurturing high-profile crew talent and sparking the creation of competitive production services companies.

Now in second stage growth, the Atlantic Ocean islands are raising the ante, boosting local industry’s production subsidies and their international exposure.

Early fruit of new ambitious measures, the Canary Islands Audiovisual Cluster is introducing at next week’s virtual Berlin European Film Market an 80-minute promo reel dubbed Canarias Unleashed which offers a sneak preview of six upcoming features produced on the Islands by local companies tapping into local talent.

Santiago Segura’s Father There Is Only One sequel is a major new opener in Spain.

South Korea, opening Wednesday July 29

In South Korea, where theatrical releases open on Wednesdays and Thursdays, the new films in cinemas this weekend with top ticket reservation rates, according to the Korean Film Council (Kofic), are led by Lotte Cultureworks’ Jung Woo-sung-starrer Steel Rain 2: Summit - director Yang Woo-suk’s sequel to his North-South Korea political action thriller.

The film opened Wednesday, July 29 and as of Thursday has clocked up $1.2m atop the box office chart.

Further new titles include Chinese shark...

Following our top 50 films of 2019, we’re sharing personal top 10 lists from our contributors. Check out the latest below and see our complete year-end coverage here.

Arguably the defining film discourse this year was ignited when Martin Scorsese compared Marvel movies to theme parks. Fans got defensive, which is understandable given the passionate, apparently inexhaustible love for Iron Man & Co. But when you take a look at the box office receipts of 2019, you realize it’s the moviegoers of this world who seem to have decided (with their wallets) that everything else they find at the cinemas are not movies.

This is not to suggest that no non-Marvel films did well financially. But that is becoming more and more the exception and the general consumer preference has gotten so lopsided it’s hard not to read it as a categorical rejection of anything original, unfamiliar, not based on pre-existing IP.

San Sebastian — In San Sebastian with two high-profile films, Jorunn Myklebust Syversen’s “Disco” and Mariko Bobrik’s “The Taste of Pho,” Polish sales agent New Europe Film Sales has announced the acquisition of world sales rights on upcoming Chile-Poland co-production “Blanquita,” from director Fernando Guzzoni (“Jesus”).

It’s the first time that Chile and Poland have exclusively co-produced a feature together.

Having previously participated at the Berlinale’s Co-Production Market and Venice’s Financing Gap Market and backed by support from Hubert Bals and the Chilean National Production Fund, the buzzed-up production will shoot in Chile, Spring 2020.

Giancarlo Nasi at Rampante Films, one of Chile’s foremost film producers, produces out of Chile with Klaudia Smieja’s Madants from Poland. Rampante comes to San Sebastian hot off the success of its Venice Orizzonti Award-winning “Blanco en blanco” from director Théo Court. Madants recently backed Claire Denis’ 2018 science fiction hit “High Life.

Toby Wallace.

Toby Wallace’s turn as a small-time drug dealer in Shannon Murphy’s debut feature Babyteeth has won him the Venice Film Festival’s Marcello Mastroianni Award for best young actor.

It is the second year in a row that the prize has been won by an Australian, with last year’s gong going to Baykali Ganambarr for his debut performance in Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale.

In Babyteeth, Wallace stars as Moses, the love interest of Eliza Scanlen’s Milla, a terminally ill teenager. Their relationship is a nightmare for Milla’s parents, played by Ben Mendelsohn and Essie Davis, but Milla teaches those in her orbit how to live like there is nothing to lose.

Produced by Alex White and based on Rita Kalnejais’ Belvoir Theatre play of the same name, the film was critically lauded after its debut in competition at Venice last week.

Variety...

The 2019 Venice International Film Festival has wrapped, and this year’s edition has announced its award winners. The Golden Lion, the festival’s top laureate, went to “Joker,” which is a strong statement from this year’s competition jury led by Lucrecia Martel. See the complete list of this year’s winners below.

In recent years, the Venice Golden Lion has gone to films that went on to have legs in the awards-season conversation stateside. Last year’s Lion went to Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma,” which won three Academy Awards for Netflix but lost Best Picture to “Green Book.” The year prior, the Golden Lion went to Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water,” which won Best Picture at the Oscars in 2018.

In a surprise upset over Joaquin Phoenix in hot competition title “Joker” (until it carried off with the Golden Lion), Best Actor went to Luca Marinelli for...

Roman Polanski wins the Silver Lion grand jury prize for An Officer And A Spy.

Todd Phillips’ Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix as the DC Comics villain, cemented its Oscar credentials after winning the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

At tonight’s award ceremony (September 7) the Silver Lion grand jury prize went to Roman Polanski’s An Officer And A Spy. Despite the controversy following the director, the film also picked up the Fipresci prize yesterday.

Swedish veteran Roy Andersson won the best director award for comedy About Endlessness.

The Lucrecia Martel-led jury awarded best screenplay to Hong Kong animation No.

Who will win the Golden Lion?

The winners of the 2019 Venice Film Festival are being announced this evening (Saturday, September 7).

Screen will update this story with all they winners as they happen. Refresh for latest updates.

Lion of the Future (Luigi De Laurentiis Award for a Debut Film)

You Will Die At 20, dir. Amjad Abu Alala

Horizon Awards

Best Film

Atlantis, dir. Valentyn Vasyanovych

Best Director

Théo Court, White On White

Special Jury Prize

Verdict, dir. Raymund Ribay Gutierrez

Best Actress

Marta Nieto, Madre

Best Actor

Sami Bouajila, A Son

Best Screenplay

Jessica Palud, Philippe Lioret, Diastème, Revinir

Best Short

Darling,...

Projects selected from across South America and Europe.

Scroll down for full list of projects

San Sebastian’s Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum (Sept 21-23) has revealed the 15 projects selected from 173 submissions.

The majority of titles, spanning 17 countries, have yet to be seen at international co-production gatherings

Furthermore, in the framework of the Festival’s collaboration with the Ibermedia Programme, one project, selected at the Workshop to develop film projects from Central America and the Caribbean, will participate in the Co-production Forum, not in competition - Patricia Ramos’s El sueco.

The final selection includes projects by established directors such as Nicolás Rincón and Israel Adrián Caetano alongside emerging filmmakers such as including Larissa Figueiredo and Théo Court.

Projects presented at previous editions of the Forum have been selected for a major festivals including Carlos Moreno’s Que Viva la Música!, which played at Sundance in January; David Pablos’s Las Elegidas, which screened...

Fifteen projects have been selected for San Sebastian Film Festival's IV Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum, chosen from 173 submissions from 21 countries.

An additional project, in collaboration with the Ibermedia Programme, has ben selected at the Workshop to develop film projects from Central America and the Caribbean, and will participate in the Co-production Forum, not in competition.

Among the projects chosen, are films with established directors such as Nicolás Rincón and Israel Adrián Caetano alongside newer voices including Larissa Figueiredo and Théo Court.

The Egeda Award for Best Project at the Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum 2015 will be announced at the Forum closing gala, on Wednesday September 23. The Award comes with €10,000 and is sponsored by Egeda, the Audiovisual Producers’ Rights Management Association.

As a continuation of the San Sebastian Forum and under its collaboration with the Marché du Film at the Cannes and with the Argentine Film and...

Established as a platform for the fringe successes and overlooked treasures of the European festival scene, the Museum of the Moving Image’s new First Look festival in New York acts as a much-needed bright spot amid the winter doldrums. It’s also the perfect antidote to an awards season hangover, offering resolutely small movies colored with a strong avant-garde streak. From the mind-bending, color-coded world of Raya Martin’s Buenos noches, España to the abundant familial milieu of Papirosen, the inaugural edition of this new event proves consistently engrossing. Below is a concise guide to some of films showing, all but one of which are NYC premieres.

Papirosen (Gastón Solnicki, Argentina)

Like a bustling inter-generational novel without a beginning or end, Gastón Solnicki’s Papirosen is a scrambled collection of anecdotes, floating about in search of a story arc. It’s a presentation that seems frazzled at first, until...

2012, the year in cinema, will be starting early, even before the Sundance-Rotterdam-Berlin marathon. The Museum of the Moving Image is launching a new series, First Look, showcasing 13 features and seven shorts, all of which — with the exception of Mark Jackson's Without and two shorts by Artavazd Peleshian — are New York premieres. Curated by Dennis Lim, Rachael Rakes and David Schwartz, First Look opens on January 6 with Chantal Akerman on hand to present Almayer's Folly and closes on January 15 with Raya Martin's presentation of his Buenas Noches, España.

The lineup in full (more or less in order of presentation):

Chantal Akerman's Almayer's Folly, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's first novel. See Dan Sallitt's review, the Venice/Toronto roundup and Darren Hughes's interview with Akerman.

Philippe Garrel's That Summer (Un Eté brulant), which has just made Cahiers du Cinéma's top ten of 2011. See, too, Daniel...

The Los Angeles Film Festival has announced the world premiere of Richard Linklater's Bernie as the opening night film for the 2011 festival.

The film will kick off the festival on June 16 at Regal Cinemas Stadium 14 at L.A. Live. It is written by Skip Hollandsworth and director Linklater and stars Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, and Matthew McConaughey.

The film follows a beloved mortician (Black) from a small Texas town, even winning over the town's richest, meanest widow (MacLaine). Even after Bernie commits a horrible crime, people still will not utter a bad word against him.

"We're thrilled to be opening the Festival with the world premiere of this delicious black comedy - a treat from one of the most original and exciting voices in independent film, Richard Linklater," said Festival director Rebecca Yeldham. "With its fabulous all-star cast, Bernie is a perfect stage setter for the incredible line-up of...

Holding court downtown from June 16-26, 2011, the Los Angeles Film Festival comprehensively curates the cinematic landscape across a variety of media. Produced by Film Independent, the festival has continued to grow in recent years, and now boasts many of the best independent films of the year.

With the departure of the organization’s CEO, Dawn Hudson, to run the Academy, it will be interesting to see whether the festival’s director Rebecca Yeldham will stay on board past 2011. In the meantime, they’ve announced their line-up for the 2011 festival, and it includes some much buzzed about Sundance and SxSW titles (“Project Nim,” “The Future,” “Crime After Crime,” “The Salesman,” “Terri,” “Another Earth,” “The Guard,” “Natural Selection,” “Tyrannosaur,” “Where Soldiers Come From” and “Higher Ground,” to name a few), as well as 27 world, North American and U.S. premieres.

For the official list of competition and other films, as well as...

Holding court downtown from June 16-26, 2011, the Los Angeles Film Festival comprehensively curates the cinematic landscape across a variety of media. Produced by Film Independent, the festival has continued to grow in recent years, and now boasts many of the best independent films of the year.

With the departure of the organization’s CEO, Dawn Hudson, to run the Academy, it will be interesting to see whether the festival’s director Rebecca Yeldham will stay on board past 2011. In the meantime, they’ve announced their line-up for the 2011 festival, and it includes some much buzzed about Sundance and SxSW titles (“Project Nim,” “The Future,” “Crime After Crime,” “The Salesman,” “Terri,” “Another Earth,” “The Guard,” “Natural Selection,” “Tyrannosaur,” “Where Soldiers Come From” and “Higher Ground,” to name a few), as well as 27 world, North American and U.S. premieres.

For the official list of competition and other films, as well as...

Film Independent Announces First Round Of Us & International

Film Selections For 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival,

Presented By The Los Angeles Times - 19 Films Chosen for Narrative & Documentary Competition - - International Spotlight to Focus on Cuba -

Los Angeles (May 3, 2011) . Today the Los Angeles Film Festival, presented by the Los Angeles Times, announced the first round of official Us and international selections. The 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival is produced by Film Independent . the non-profit arts organization that also produces the Spirit Awards . and will screen over 200 feature films, shorts, and music videos, representing more than 30 countries. Opening and Closing Night films, Galas, Conversations, Artists in Residence, Lafca.s Films That Got Away, along with additional special guests and programming for the Festival Talks will be announced at later dates.

Returning to downtown Los Angeles, with its central hub at L.A. Live, the Festival will run from Thursday, June 16 to Sunday,...