News

Not unlike the Sundance labs or Cannes residencies, Le Groupe Ouest’s is another high profile support programme for writers and as per usual they’ve lassoed eight projects that will receive screenwriting coaching almost for an entire year in the backdrop of Brittany. The French trades (including the Cineuropa folks) have unveiled the eight films/filmmakers who’ll take part of – we have six first time filmmakers and two sophomore projects from Céline Rouzet and Yaonan Liu. Rouzet was featured in the Venice Film Festival’s Orizzonti section for For Night Will Come (2023) (read review). and Liu was showcased at the Berlinale’s Generation section for The Great Phuket (2024).…...

Sarajevo Film Festival has selected 18 titles for its Kinoscope strand and seven for its In Focus section, including a range of 2024 festival hits from Berlin and Cannes.

The Kinoscope selection consists of 12 Kinoscope films, and six titles in genre strand Kinoscope Surreal.

Scroll down for the full list of titles

Titles include Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light, which won the Grand Prix in Cannes Competition this year; and Santosh, the debut feature of 2023 Screen Star of Tomorrow Sandhya Suri, which debuted in Un Certain Regard.

Guan Hu’s Black Dog, winner of the Un Certain Regard prize,...

Continuing its quest to promote and center women in genre cinema, Sitges will hold its annual networking, scholarship, and conference strand, WomanInFan, which head of the industry department, Patricia Salvatierra declared “is growing by leaps and bounds.”

The events take place over Oct. 6-8, as part of the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia, unspooling Oct. 5-15.

Labs, A Book Launch and Residency

This year marked the second call for the WomanInFan FanLab Short-Film Teaser Contest, won by director Samantha Aldana, for “Little Lying Wild,” billed as a story of female empowerment rooted in Mayan folklore.

Sitges also celebrates the official release of the WomanInFan imprint’s second book, “Mistress of Fan: Monsters, Creatures and Nightmares Engendered by Them,” teased last year.

The ambitious collection of essays, a joint approach at boosting women who’ve contributed fiercely to the genre, muses on cult classics and blockbuster fare while centering...

French director Edouard Bergeon, whose Cesar-nominated debut feature “In the Name of the Land” was a box office hit in 2019, has penned another eco-thriller, “The Green Deal.”

The movie, which is partly set in the Indonesian forest, has been boarded by Playtime and will be pitched to buyers at the Toronto Film Festival.

“The Green Deal” explores crimes and colliding interests in the exploitation of a palm oil and the production of biofuels. The movie is produced by Christophe Rossignon and Philip Böeffard at Nord-Ouest Films, the well-established banner behind “Merry Christmas” and more recently Thomas Cailley’s “The Animal Kingdom,” which was produced by Pierre Guyard.

“The Green Deal” stars Alexandra Lamy as Carole, an English professor leading a tranquil life in rural France. Her world crumbles when she learns that her son, Martin, conducting research for his Ph.D. in Indonesia, has been arrested in Borneo on drug...

Among the four (at last count) vampire-related titles to surface on the Lido this year we find the Orizzonti selected En attendant la nuit (For Night Will Come) — the sophomore feature by Céline Rouzet stars Mathias Legoût-Hammond, Elodie Bouchez, Jean-Charles Clichet, Céleste Brunnquell and Laly Mercier. We’ve got a quartet of clips to debut here and it gives us a sense of one family’s balancing act to contain the secret from infancy but also the pains of growing up with the need to quench one’s thirst.…...

La BêteCOMPETITIONComandante (Edoardo De Angelis)The Promised Land (Nikolaj Arcel)Dogman (Luc Besson) La Bête (Bertrand Bonello) Hors-Saison (Stéphane Brizé) Enea (Pietro Castellitto) Maestro (Bradley Cooper)Priscilla (Sofia Coppola)Finalmente L’Alba (Saverio Costanzo)Lubo (Giorgio Diritti) Origin (Ava DuVernay) The Killer (David Fincher)Memory (Michel Franco)Io capitano (Matteo Garrone)Evil Does Not Exist (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi)The Green Border (Agnieszka Holland)The Theory of Everything (Timm Kröger)Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos)El conde (Pablo Larrain)Ferrari (Michael Mann)Adagio (Stefano Sollima)Woman OfHolly (Fien Troch)Out Of COMPETITIONFictionSociety of the Snow (J.A. Bayona)Coup de Chance (Woody Allen)The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (Wes Anderson)The Penitent (Luca Barbareschi)L’Ordine Del Tempo (Liliana Cavani)Vivants (Alix Delaporte)Welcome to Paradise (Leonardo di Constanzo)Daaaaaali! (Quentin Dupieux)The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (William Friedkin)Making of (Cedric Kahn)Aggro Dr1ft (Harmony Korine)Hitman (Richard Linklater)The Palace (Roman Polanski...

On the heels of yesterday’s TIFF announcement, the first major fall festival of the season––Venice International Film Festival––is unveiling its lineup. Taking place August 30-September 9, the competition jury this year is chaired by Damien Chazelle.

Highlights include new films from David Fincher, Michael Mann, Wes Anderson, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Sofia Coppola, Bradley Cooper, Bertrand Bonello, Frederick Wiseman, Roman Polanski, William Friedkin, Ava DuVernay, Harmony Korine, Richard Linklater, Woody Allen, and more.

Competition

Adagio; dir. Stefano Sollima

The Beast; dir. Bertrand Bonello

Io Capitano; dir. Matteo Garrone

Comandante; dir. Edoardo de Angelis

El Conde; dir. Pablo Larraín

Die Theorie von Allem; dir. Timm Kröger

Dogman; dir. Luc Besson

Enea; dir. Pietro Castellitto

Evil Does Not Exist; dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Ferrari; dir. Michael Mann

Finalmente L’Alba; dir. Saverio Costanzo

Green Border; dir. Agnieszka Holland

Holly; dir. Fien Troch

Hors-Saison; dir. Stéphane Brizé

The Killer; dir. David Fincher

Lubo; dir. Giorgio Diritti

The Promised Land; dir.

Includes films from David Fincher, Sofia Coppola, Ava DuVernay, Yorgos Lanthimos, Bradley Cooper and Ryusuke Hamaguchi.

Venice Film Festival announced the programme for its 80th edition, including a 23-strong Competition with new films from David Fincher, Sofia Coppola, Ava DuVernay, Yorgos Lanthimos, Bradley Cooper and Ryusuke Hamaguchi.

Scroll down for full line-up

The selection was announced by festival president Roberto Cicutto and artistic director Alberto Barbera. The SAG-AFTRA strike in the US has had a “quite modest” impact on the selection according to Barbera, who was forced to pull Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers as the opening film over the weekend due to the strike.

This year’s selection will be announced at 11:00 Cest (10:00 BST) by Roberto Cicutto and Alberto Barbera.

The line-up for the 80th Venice International Film Festival (August 30-September 9) will be revealed this morning at 11:00 Cest (10:00 BST) by festival president Roberto Cicutto and artistic director Alberto Barbera

The press conference will be live-streamed below, and this page will be updated with the films as they are announced.

Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers was originally set to open the festival but was pulled by MGM amid the actors’ strike. It was replaced by Edoardo De Angelis’ Comandante.

The closing film...

Paris-based Playtime has unveiled a strong Cannes film market sales slate, which includes competition titles “About Dry Grasses” and “Homecoming.”

“About Dry Grasses” is by Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who won the Palme d’Or in 2014 for “Winter Sleep.” The film follows Samet, a young art teacher, who is finishing his fourth year of compulsory service in a remote village in Anatolia. After a turn of events he can hardly make sense of, he loses his hopes of escaping the grim life he seems to be stuck in, and hopes that his encounter with fellow teacher Nuray will help him overcome his angst. Deniz Celiloğlu, Merve Dizdar and Musab Ekici are among the cast.

“Homecoming,” by French director Catherine Corsini who won the 2021 Queer Palm for “The Divide,” follows Khédidja, who minds a wealthy Parisian family’s children for a summer in Corsica. She brings along her own two...