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It’s clear from the opening moments why the narrative feature debut of Kavich Neang, finally arriving in the US nearly two years after its 2021 Venice premiere, caught the attention of its co-producer Jia Zhangke. Like much of the Chinese filmmaker’s internationally-lauded work, Neang’s debut dives into the effects of gentrification on a younger population struggling to get by as their country cautiously opens its arms to international developers. But the similarities end there: where Jia’s films can double up as grander state-of-the-nation addresses, Neang doesn’t widen his focus beyond the characters; they’re at risk of displacement from the city they’ve always known, but this critique of gentrification largely remains implicit, visible only allegorically through their daily struggles.

This semi-autobiographical film is set against the backdrop of the titular White Building, an apartment block in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh that was eventually...

Les Films du Losange has announced the French release of the film White Building, directed by Cambodian Kavich Neang, on December 22. It is co-produced by Davy Chou, himself a Franco-Cambodian director.

White Building tells the story of 20-year-old Samnang, who lives in a historic building in Phnom Penh. He faces the departure of his best friend, the illness of his father and the imminent demolition of his lifelong home; pressures which all arise and intersect at this moment of sudden change. Piseth Chhun, the main actor, won the Orizzonti Award for Best Actor for his role as Samnang at the 78th Venice Film Festival this year.

A sensual and scintillating ode to youth, the film also addresses the issues of the transmission of culture, globalization and the transformation of the Asian continent.

With five short films under his belt since 2011, White Building is director Kavich Neang’s first feature film.

These are the submissions for the international film Oscar by country. The deadline for entries was Nov. 1. A shortlist of 15 films will be announced Dec. 21 and the nominations will come out Feb 8. The 94th Academy Awards will take place on March 27 at the Dolby Theatre. The Academy has not yet released a final list of entries; Variety compiled this list from individual country’s announcements.

Albania

Two Lions Heading to Venice

Dir. Jonid Jorji

Key cast: Vasjan Lami, Alessandra Bonarotta

Logline: A pair of filmmakers heading to the Venice festival are sidetracked from their destination after meeting two adult film actors.

Prodco: Bajo Films

Algeria

Heliopolis

Dir. Djaafar Gacem

Key cast: Souhila Mallem, Mehdi Ramdani, Cesar Duminil

Logline: True story of an uprising in the Algerian town of Guelma that was violently put down by the colonial French rulers.

Prodco: Hewes Pictures

Argentina

The Intruder

Dir. Natalia Meta

Key cast: Guillermo Arengo,...

There is an eerie, otherworldly beauty to the opening shot of Kavich Neang’s “White Building.” Accompanied by the pressure-cooker whine that introduces the more uncanny sections of Jean-Charles Bastion’s score, a drone camera, steady as though it were mounted on tracks in the sky, drifts over the eponymous structure, looking down. Even just the rooftop of this vast, scabbed Phnom Penh .

Seen from this angle, the building — Neang’s childhood home, which recurred in his shorts and documentaries, and of which he amassed quite a bit of footage before it was demolished in 2017 — looks like an intricately scruffy map of an abandoned continent. It’s crazy-paved in cracked concrete and crisscrossed with electrical wires, with drifts of sooty trash gathering in its corners and dirty vents staring into dangerously haphazard fuse boxes, and it is not immediately clear if anyone still lives inside. But as soon as we see it from the side,...

HappeningIn Competition(Jury: Bong Joon-ho, Saverio Costanzo, Virginie Efira, Cynthia Erivo, Sarah Gadon, Alexander Nanau, Chloé Zhao)Golden Lion – Happening (Audrey Diwan) | Read our reviewSilver Lion (Grand Jury Prize) – The Hand of God (Paolo Sorrentino) | Read our reviewSilver Lion (Best Director) – Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog) | Read our reviewCoppa Volpi for Best Actress – Penélope Cruz (Parallel Mothers) | Read our reviewCoppa Volpi for Best Actor – John Arcilla (On The Job: The Missing 8)Best Screenplay – Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Lost Daughter)Special Jury Prize – The Hole (Michelangelo Frammartino) | Read our reviewMarcello Mastroianni Award for Best Young Actor or Actress – Filippo Scotti (The Hand of God)Orizzonti(Jury: Jasmila Žbanić, Mona Fastvold, Shahram Mokri, Josh Siegel, Nadia Terranova)Orizzonti Award for Best Film – Pilgrims (Laurynas Bareisa)Orizzonti Award for Best Director – Éric Gravel (A Plein Temps)Special Orizzonti Jury Prize – El Gran Movimiento (Kiro Russo) | Read our reviewOrizzonti Award for Best Actress...

The Venice Film Festival unveiled its award winners on Saturday night, and Jane Campion, Penélope Cruz and Maggie Gyllenhaal are among the award winners for the top prizes.

“Happening,” a French abortion drama from director Audrey Diwan, won the Golden Lion, and Paolo Sorrentino’s film “The Hand of God” won the second place prize, or the Silver Lion.

In the acting categories, Penélope Cruz won Best Actress for Pedro Almodovar’s “Parallel Mothers,” and John Arcilla won Best Actor for “On the Job: The Missing 8.” Jane Campion won the Silver Lion for Best Director for her film “The Power of the Dog.”

Among some of the other winners, Maggie Gyllenhaal won Best Screenplay for her adaptation of the Elena Ferrante novel “The Lost Daughter.” Gyllenhaal praised Campion and spoke about how watching “The Piano” inspired her as a storyteller. “The Hand of God” star Filippo Scotti also won the...

On a strong night for female filmmakers and Netflix releases, the Venice Film Festival has come to a close with a curveball, as breakout French director Audrey Diwan’s powerful abortion drama “Happening” beat big-name competition to the Golden Lion for best film. Diwan received the award from a jury presided over by Oscar-winning filmmaker Bong Joon-ho.

Also on the jury, significantly, was last year’s Golden Lion champ, “Nomadland” director Chloé Zhao. Diwan is only the sixth woman ever to take the festival’s top award; never before has the prize gone to female directors two years in a row. Coming on the heels of her compatriot Julia Ducournau’s groundbreaking Palme d’Or win at Cannes for “Titane,” Diwan’s triumph further points to an exciting new generation of female auteurs seizing the spotlight.

Among the films Diwan’s film beat to the punch were Netflix’s three big hopefuls from the competition,...

by Nathaniel R

I was hoping to catch at least one feature in Venice that would be selected by its home country as an Academy Award submission and I did! Kavich Neang's debut feature (after several shorts) White Building will represent Cambodia for the next Oscar race. I'm already hoping it makes the finals both because the Academy is far too stingy with Asian cinema and because it's very good.

White Building impresses immediately with an aerial shot over a tenement building that looked like a cross between a Rauschenberg and a Pollock, a messy collage of patchwork color and intricate city grime and electrical wiring of the world we’re about to descend into. The building is not white given years of decay but surely once was. We initially have fun with a trio of young men including Samnang (Piseth Chhun) as they share a motorbike around the city,...