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Fireworks on July 4 are nothing special in the U.S. But the Friday night fireworks over the Czech spa town Karlovy Vary brought an upbeat end to the opening night of the 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff), which proved to be an emotional rollercoaster.

It included stars Peter Sarsgaard and Vicky Krieps, who were both honored during the opening ceremony, sharing political thoughts about a divided U.S. and world, laughs and rare behind-the-scenes insights thanks to the opening film, We’ve Got to Frame It! (A Conversation With Jiří Bartoška in July 2021), and words of thanks in heartfelt tributes to the long-time festival president and legendary Czech actor Bartoška, who died in May at the age of 78.

Big names in attendance for the opening night included members of the jury for the fest’s main Crystal Globe Competition, which includes Roma producer Nicolás Celis,...

On the evening of June 24, the 27th Taipei Film Festival held its International New Directors Competition Award Ceremony, where Jury President Mag Hsu and four jurors unveiled the four major awards. Lithuania’s Drowning Dry took home the Grand Prize and a cash award of Usd 10,000. Two Times João Liberada was honored with the Jury’s Special Prize and received Usd 5,000. Meanwhile, Empire of the Rabbits received the Taiwan Directors Guild Award, and the Taiwanese film Family Matters won the Audience Choice Award.

Check the interview with the director

As one of the festival’s two major competitive sections, the International New Directors Competition concluded with a grand ceremony hosted by Huang Xiang-ting. In his speech, Taipei Film Festival Chair Liao Ching-Song remarked that this year’s selection of finalists spanned across Europe and Asia, with filmmakers transforming personal life experiences into diverse cinematic expressions. “We’re delighted that the...

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival has unveiled the lineup for its 59th edition, including 11 of its 12 films in the Crystal Globe Competition. The title of the 12th, an entry from Iran, has been withheld for the “safety of its makers.”

“It has been decided to postpone its announcement until closer to the festival,” Kviff artistic director Karel Och said in a statement.

Considered the most prestigious film festival in Eastern Europe, the Czech-based Kviff runs July 4-12. Mexican producer Nicolás Celis (“Roma”), filmmaker Babak Jalali (“Radio Dreams”), film critic Jessica Kiang, and Czech actor/director Jiří Mádl (“Waves”) will serve as the Cystal Globe jury.

“Answering exclusively to their artistic integrity, the filmmakers who have accepted the invitation to premiere their brand-new works in Karlovy Vary fearlessly protect the right to challenge expectations, to disrupt stereotypes and to win over hearts and minds with equal intensity,” Och said. “Disregarding budgetary constraints,...

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival has unveiled the official selection for its 59th edition, including new features by Bence Fliegauf, Miro Remo and Ondřej Provazník.

Scroll down for full lineup

The festival, which runs from July 4-July 12 in the Czech spa town, has announced 11 titles for its main Crystal Globe Competition, comprising nine world premieres and two international premieres.

Artistic director Karel Och said that one more title from Iran will be added to the Competition closer to the festival, with the announcement postponed “for the safety of its makers.”

Hungarian director Bence Fliegauf, whose Forest - I See...

The Match Factory has sold Oliver Laxe’s “Sirat” to a slew of international territories following its jury prize win at Cannes Film Festival on Saturday night.

The Match Factory has secured distribution for the film in the United Kingdom and Ireland (Altitude), Latam (Cine Video y TV), BeNeLux (Cineart), Germany and Austria (Pandora Film), Switzerland (Filmcoopi), Japan (Transformer), South Korea (Challan), Taiwan (Andrews Film), Australia and New Zealand (Madman Entertainment), Poland (New Horizons), Sweden (TriArt Film), Norway (Fidalgo), Finland (Cinema Mondo), Greece (Feelgood Entertainment), Portugal (Nitrato Filmes), Former Yugoslavia (McF MegaCom), Romania (Transilvania Film), Czech Republic and Slovakia (Aerofilms), Hungary (Cirko Film) and the Baltics (A-One Films).

Negotiations for additional territories are underway. Earlier this week, Neon acquired rights to release the film in North America, while Mubi will handle Italy, Turkey and India. BTeam Pictures will release the film in Spain on June 6 and Pyramide is distributing in France.

Neon has bought North American rights to Oliver Laxe‘s “Sirât” following its critically acclaimed debut at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It has been a busy festival for the distributor, which acquired North American rights to Kleber Mendonça Filho‘s “The Secret Agent” and Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident,” both of which are in competition.

Neon is riding high, having picked up an Oscar for best picture this year for “Anora,” which debuted at Cannes and won the Palme d’Or. It previously won best picture for 2019’s “Parasite.” At Cannes, Neon is a force, having set a record by releasing the five last Palme d’Or winners. Will it repeat the feat a sixth time? We’ll know this Saturday when Cannes unveils the prize winners.

“Sirât” was co-written by Laxe alongside frequent collaborator Santiago Fillol. It stars Sergi López, Bruno Núñez, Stefania Gadda,...

Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s “A Useful Ghost” has picked up Critics Week’s Grand Prize.

The film has been picking up fans among journalists since the premiere, intrigued by its absurd yet sweet story of a woman who dies from dust pollution and a husband who’s shocked to find out her spirit has been reincarnated – in a vacuum cleaner.

“A ghost-possessed vacuum cleaner might sound like standard horror fare, but in the hands of Thai director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, it transforms into a sly commentary on pollution, power dynamics, and the cost of living crisis in Bangkok,” wrote Variety’s Naman Ramachandran earlier this week, with the director adding:

“Thailand is well known for horror cinema, and we also have a genre that might not travel abroad very much – horror comedy. But with this film, I try not to follow the conventions of both paths. One of my first ideas was...

La primera de las dos candidatas españolas a la Palma de Oro triunfa en el Festival. © Getty Images

Se estrenaron Sound of Falling, Two Prosecutors y Dossier 137, pero ninguna ha sacudido tanto la Competencia Oficial del Festival de Cannes 2025 como la española Sirat, dirigida por Oliver Laxe. Y no, no es chauvinismo nacional: las reacciones hablan por sí solas.

Jessica Kiang, de Variety, ha destacado su potencia emocional y psicológica, asegurando que golpea «de un modo que no podemos predecir», al tiempo que logra «desatar tu instinto de huida y a la vez mantenerte pegado a la butaca». Desde Deadline, Damon Wise la describe como «mitad road movie existencial, mitad ciencia ficción apocalíptica, es una desconcertante mezcla de Zabriskie Point y Fury Road» y apunta a que «posiblemente estaría mejor situada en la sección de medianoche del Festival», de lo loca que es. Jonathan Romney, de Screen Daily, la...

The 27th Taipei Film Festival has unveiled the 10 official selections for its prestigious International New Talent Competition, as well as the international jury lineup. This year, two Taiwanese films—Family Matters directed by Pan Ke-yin and Eel by Chu Chun-teng—stood out from 443 submissions worldwide to represent Taiwan in the competition.

The jury is chaired by Taipei Film Award-winning screenwriter Mag Hsu, joined by twice Golden Horse-nominated actor Mason Lee, Berlinale programmer Jessica Kiang, internationally acclaimed Filipino producer Bianca Balbuena (Viet and Nam), and Japanese director Matsunaga Daishi, whose debut film premiered at the Jeonju Iff. Together, they will select winners for the “Grand Prize” and “Special Jury Prize.”

Additionally, the “Taiwan Directors Guild Award” (Director’s Guild of Taiwan Recommendation) will be decided by three renowned directors: Gilles Yang, Fen Fen Cheng, and Liao Shih Han (The Rope Curse series). The “Audience Choice Award” will also be presented at...

The largest audience award in the world, the Lux Audience Award, sees citizens and members of the democratically elected European Parliament coming together yearly to honor a European film with their coveted prize. This year’s slate of highly-acclaimed nominees include Gints Zibalodis’s history-making “Flow,” which just won Latvia its first ever Oscar for Best Animated Film, and Mati Diop’s “Dahomey,” the first film by a Black filmmaker to win the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.

A joint initiative of the European Parliament and the European Film Academy in collaboration with the European Commission and Europa Cinemas, the Lux Audience Award “fosters dialogue and engagement between politics and the public through the medium of film.” Nominated films address “European values” as well as raising “awareness about some of today’s main social and political issues.” Throughout the competition period, the European Parliament provides subtitles in 24 EU...

Support is mounting across the global film community for Iranian directing duo Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha ahead of their trial over “propaganda against the regime” allegations related to their film “My Favourite Cake.” The two are set to face Iran’s Revolutionary Court on Saturday.

Signatories include Mohammad Rasoulof — the director of the Oscar-nominated feature “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” who in May fled from Iran to avoid prosecution related to that film — as well as Pedro Almodóvar, Juliette Binoche, Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Agnieszka Holland, Hiam Abbas, Isabel Coixet and the directors of the Venice, Berlin, Rotterdam and Sydney film festivals. The petition, launched by the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk (Icfr), has gathered over 3,000 signatures so far.

After months of interrogations and continuous travel bans over the past two years — which prevented them from attending last year’s Berlin Film Festival, where “My Favourite Cake” bowed in...

How far back in the Berlin Film Festival’s 75-year history do you have to go to find an edition as strong as this one? About a quarter-century, I reckon, to 2002, when “Bloody Sunday” and “Spirited Away” tied for the festival’s top prize.

As long as I can remember, Berlin held the distant-third spot in the so-called “Big Three” festivals, far behind Cannes and Venice in both prestige and its power to attract the caliber of movies that shape the conversation. It may never surpass its two older cousins, but for the first time in forever, under the direction of incoming festival chief Tricia Tuttle and her team, I felt a frisson of excitement bubbling up through the slippery ice and sub-zero temperatures.

Berlin has always felt like a slog, between the climate and the scandalously low hit-to-miss ratio in a sprawling lineup of nearly 200 films. Still, I hadn...

Kevin Costner might be on the cusp of making the most divisive western franchise of all-time, as the first reviews for the repeatedly delayed Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2 have just been released. The first Horizon movie was released in theaters last June, and divided critics; holding a 51% score on Rotten Tomatoes. But, the majority of audiences enjoyed Costner's lengthy take on the western genre, as the film holds a much stronger 70% audience score. But, poor box office figures left the future of Costner's 4-part Horizon franchise in turmoil. Although, with the latest reviews, Chapter 2's release could now be a very real possibility.

Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2 held its U.S. premiere at the Santa Barbara Film Festival last Friday (Feb. 7), and the first reviews have just dropped. Somehow, Chapter 2 appears to be even more divisive than the first film, currently sitting at 50% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Kevin Costner presented the U.S. premiere of “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2” at the Santa Barbara Film Festival Friday night, but Costner didn’t give any updates on what’s happening with the Western series. However, the second chapter concludes with a lengthy preview of “Chapter 3.”

Costner explained the inspiration for the series to a packed house, including several cast members and guests like Quentin Tarantino, at the historic Arlington Theatre.

“The people who traveled across the ocean to America were in search of a dream,” he said. “If you were mean enough and tough enough, you could make it yours. And that was a nightmare for the people who had been here for 15,000 years. And this land was contested. It was a bad ending for the Native Americans who existed here and had found some equilibrium. But I’m not embarrassed about that, I’m just...

While 2024 will be remembered by many in the entertainment biz as an uphill battle and a make-or-break transition time, for a number of talents working in international film and TV, it will be considered the year where everything changed — a breakout period when new doors opened, calls were answered and bigger projects started coming their way. Some were catapulted into the limelight from relative obscurity and were soon juggling major awards ceremonies and lucrative studio deals. Others were already rising names at home, but suddenly found themselves on Hollywood’s radar.

Variety‘s crop of international breakouts — actors and filmmakers — includes the creator and stars of one of the most talked about TV shows of the year (and one which could leave Netflix with a tasty legal bill), the writer/director of a wild body-horror that took Cannes by storm and could give a beloved star her first brush with...

Megalopolis.Leaving the Cannes premiere of Megalopolis (2024) earlier this year, I remember a few friends and colleagues asking if I’d liked it. Truth is, I didn’t know; a few months later, I still don’t. There were things that felt outright puzzling—the clunky dialogue, the nonsensical storylines, the campy excess of it all. And yet, much like Joey Shapiro at the Chicago Reader, “I also found myself in awe of it over and over again.”Such an ambivalent response isn’t exactly the most common reaction to Francis Ford Coppola’s latest, which has received a raucous critical drubbing since its release. “Megaflopolis might be a better name for it,” Tara Brady quips at the Irish Times; over at Entertainment Weekly, Maureen Lee Lenker sees it as “a stain on [the director’s] legacy”: aside from “his being the mastermind behind two of cinema's greatest achievements, he's also now...

The Seville European Film Festival kicks off tonight in the Andalusian capital city. So, we’ve scoured this year’s program to pick ten titles that show off the selection’s breadth and quality.

“The Girl With the Needle” Magnus von Horn (Denmark)

Denmark’s submission to the International Feature race unspools in the years after World War II and follows Karoline, an out-of-work young pregnant woman who meets Dagmar, a woman who runs a clandestine adoption agency. Karoline works as a wet nurse for the agency before learning the shocking truth about the organization. An “extraordinary and upsetting film,” according to its glowing Variety review.

“Flow” Gints Zilbalodis (Latvia)

One of the year’s best-received animated features and Latvia’s Oscars submission, “Flow” heads to Seville as one of the strongest indie contenders for an animated feature nomination. In the wordless film, a small group of animals on a...

The 24th edition of the festival kicks off on a spooky note on Halloween with Aislinn Clarke’s Irish horror, Fréwaka.

With 25 premieres and three world premieres the programme also features a mix of classics including The French Connection as part of the Art of Action strand. One of many eagerly anticipated films includes Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain, Rumours and the latest from legendary director Mike Leigh, Hard Truths.

As part of the festival will be a special 40th Anniversary screening of Anne Devlin after which a Q&a with director Pat Murphy and star Brid Brennan. The festival will close with Sam O’Mahony’s The Wise Guy.

In Conversation event this year will see Bff curator Jessica Kiang chat with Radu Jude, Golden Bear winning director of Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World.

With an exciting and varied programme, festival director Michele Devlin...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.NEWSLeviathan.A Russian court has sentenced the Ukrainian-born film producer Alexander Rodnyansky to eight and a half years in prison in absentia for anti-war statements, which the state characterizes as “fakes” motivated by “political hatred.”The documentary Undercover: Exposing the Far Right was pulled on short notice from the BFI London Film Festival due to safety concerns for staff and audience members, though it is not clear if a credible threat was made.Thousands of artists from across the cultural industry have signed a statement to artificial-intelligence companies, which reads in its entirety: “The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.

The Valladolid International Film Festival, Seminci, will take place for the 69th time this fall, running Oct. 18-26.

To prepare, we’ve scanned the festival’s catalog for ten standout titles that attendees won’t want to miss at this year’s event. Below, we explain why each is a must-see proposition at this year’s Semicni.

“They Will Be Dust,” Carlos Marques-Marcet (Spain)

Opening this year’s festival is Carlos Marques-Marcet’s Toronto Platform winner, “They Will Be Dust.” In this tragicomic musical, a woman diagnosed with a terminal illness decides to go to Switzerland to end her life, accompanied by her partner of 40 years, Flavio. Seminci organizers praise the film as “an unexpected celebration of life itself and of the unconditional love of those who accompany us along the way.”

“Vermiglio,” Maura Delpero

Italy’s submission to the upcoming International Feature Oscar race, Maura Delpero’s intimate epic “Vermiglio,...

John Lithgow, Geoffrey Rush and Kristine Froseth won top acting awards at Spain’s prominent Sitges Fantasy Film Festival, which wrapped its 57th edition on Oct. 13.

Making a sweep of the fest with three awards was Austrian Best International Feature Oscar entry “The Devil’s Bath” by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala. Drawn from historical facts, the Austrian-German co-production is described by Variety critic Jessica Kiang as a “story so pitilessly bleak you may want to look away; the filmmaking craft is so compelling that you can’t.” The historical horror drama, which vied for the Berlinale Golden Bear in February, follows Agnes, a depressed newlywed, who instead of committing suicide, considered taboo by her Christian community, commits a crime that would lead to her execution. The “suicide by proxy” practice was said to be common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in German-speaking Central Europe and Scandinavia.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong...

Maura Delpero’s “Vermiglio,” which recently won the Venice Film Festival’s Silver Lion and is Italy’s international Oscars contender, is scoring stellar returns at the local box office and fast becoming the country’s indie darling.

The intimate period drama, which is largely spoken in Northern Italian dialect and is playing with Italian-language subtitles in local cinemas, has been rapidly turning into a surprise local box office sensation, gradually going from a 26 screen micro-release on Sept. 19 via distributor Lucky Red to a much wider 340-screen outing this past weekend.

“Vermiglio,” now in its third frame, this past weekend clocked in second only to “Joker: Folie à Deux,” according to national box office compiler Cinetel.

The film has so far pulled €1.2 million ($1.3 million), which makes it “the top Italian indie film of 2024,” said Lucky Red head of theatrical Gabriele D’Andrea. He noted that “Vermiglio” will wind up outperforming the...

Sometimes, in a closely contested festival competition, it pays to be the one thing that isn’t like the others. A starkly powerful, observational study of contemporary bullfighting, Spanish auteur Albert Serra’s “Afternoons of Solitude” was the only documentary in the main competition at this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival — and this evening won the Golden Shell for best film of the festival, beating some big-name narrative competition.

The award was presented by last year’s Golden Shell winner, Spanish filmmaker Jaione Camborda, heading a jury that also included directors Ulrich Seidl, Christos Nikou and Fran Kranz, producer Carole Scotta and Argentine journalist Leila Guerriero.

Centred on star Peruvian matador Andrés Rey Roca, “Afternoons of Solitude” is candid in its depiction of the violence of the sport, and has already proven controversial on home turf, with Spain’s animal-rights party Pacma calling for the film to be withdrawn from the festival.

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired North American rights to Maura Delpero’s intimate epic “Vermiglio,” which recently won the Venice Film Festival’s Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize.

The drama, which is set at the end of World War II in an Alpine village where the arrival of a soldier causes disruption in the dynamics between three sisters, subsequently had its North American premiere in the special presentations section at Toronto.

Sideshow and Janus Films plan to release “Vermiglio” theatrically in the coming months, they said in a statement.

In her Variety review, critic Jessica Kiang called “Vermiglio” “quietly breathtaking,” going on to note that the film “unfolds from tiny tactile details of furnishings and fabrics and the hide of a dairy cow, into a momentous vision of everyday rural existence in the high Italian Alps.”

Venice jury president Isabelle Huppert praised the Silver Lion winner for being a...

Spirit Media, founded by “Baahubali” star Rana Daggubati, has acquired India distribution rights for Payal Kapadia’s Cannes prizewinner “All We Imagine as Light.”

Written and directed by Kapadia in her narrative directorial debut, the film tells the story of two women in Mumbai — Prabha, a troubled nurse who receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband, and Anu, her young roommate who is seeking a place to be intimate with her boyfriend. A trip to a beach town allows them to find a space for their desires to manifest. The film stars Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam and Hridhu Haroon.

Kapadia said: “This film is about friendship between three different women and oftentimes women are pitted against each other, but for me friendship is a very important relationship because it can lead to greater solidarity, inclusivity and empathy towards each other.”

The film won the Grand Prix at Cannes earlier this year.

The first reviews for Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2 are in! The upcoming second part of Kevin Costner's sprawling four-chapter Western epic had its world premiere at the 81st Venice Film Festival. This occurred after its planned August 16 release date was pulled after the first chapter's poor critical and commercial performance, grossing only $36 million worldwide at the box office against a budget of $100 million. Currently, no new release date has been announced for Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2.

Critics who attended the movie's world premiere in Venice have shared their reviews for Horizon Chapter 2, which are mostly negative. ScreenRant's Alex Harrison believes it could've benefitted as a TV series, stating that "a bit of sculpting wouldnt take away from the expanse" and that "he doesnt go out of his way to make images that take full advantage of the scope available to him." This...

The latest entry in Kevin Costner’s four-part Western, Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2, premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival, and select outlets have weighed in on whether the film is a project of progress or a bumpy ride along a dusty trail. Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 launched to mixed reactions, with many from its Cannes debut saying the over-long film lacked punch despite being a love letter to the Western genre Costner loves so much. After Chapter 1 failed to find its audience in theaters, New Line/WB rushed the film to digital platforms, hoping to recover dollars from an unexpected upset. To Costner’s credit, he’s determined to see his Horizon project through, though the latest reactions to Chapter 2 aren’t likely to convince others to saddle up for the long haul.

In Leslie Felperin’s review for The Hollywood Reporter, Felperin says...

The challenge is on: the industry sidebar of Poland’s American Film Festival, U.S. in Progress, is ready to top its “exceptionally successful” 2023 edition in November.

“U.S. in Progress alumni are taking festivals by storm,” says Aff’s artistic director Ula Śniegowska.

Presented as works-in-progress, India Donaldson’s “Good One” – awarded at the event last year – went on to premiere at Sundance and Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in May. Tyler Taormina’s “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” was also shown at the French fest, described by Variety’s Jessica Kiang as “a sweet, nostalgic love letter to suburban holiday-season rituals.”

“We Strangers” by Anu Vaila and Cutter Hodierne’s “Cold Wallet” screened at SXSW, and “Familiar Touch” was shown in Venice. Monica Sorelle’s “Mountains” and Shane Atkinson’s “Laroy, Texas” were selected for Tribeca, Georden West’s “Playland” for IFFR, while “Falling Stars,” directed by Richard Karpala and Gabriel Bienczycki,...

Janus Films and Sideshow have set the U.S. release date for “All We Imagine as Light,” the critically acclaimed Indian drama that won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, for Nov. 15 in New York and Los Angeles, with a nationwide expansion to follow.

Written and directed by Payal Kapadia in her narrative directorial debut, the film tells the story of two women in Mumbai — Prabha, a troubled nurse who receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband, and Anu, her young roommate who is seeking a place to be intimate with her boyfriend. A trip to a beach town allows them to find a space for their desires to manifest. The film stars Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam and Hridhu Haroon.

Read: You can see all Academy Award predictions in all 23 categories on one page on the Variety Awards Circuit: Oscars.

The co-distributors hope the drama...

Former Jerusalem Film Festival artistic director Elad Samorzik, Berlin-based critic, essayist and programmer Jessica Kiang, Ghana-based festival and art consultant Jacqueline Nsiah, and Festival Scope co-founder and programmer Mathilde Henrot have been appointed to the selection committee of festival director Tricia Tuttle’s first Berlin International Film Festival, taking place from February 13-23, 2025.

The committee chooses the Competition and Berlinale Special titles and contributes to the Perspectives section. It is overseen by Tuttle. with co-directors of film programming Jacqueline Lyanga and Michael Stutz, who were appointed in June.

Tuttle, Lyanga and Stutz have also confirmed a group of advisors and...

Berlinale Festival Director Tricia Tuttle has unveiled the selection committee that will help her shape her inaugural Competition and Berlinale Special line-ups for the 2025 edition.

It comprises former Jerusalem Film Festival artistic director Elad Samorzik, Locarno and Festival Scope co-founder Mathilde Henrot, critic Jessica Kiang and Ghana-based festival, art and culture consultant Jacqueline Nsiah.

The quartet, which will also contribute to the discovery-focused Perspectives section, will work alongside Tuttle and her co-directors of Film Programming Jacqueline Lyanga and Michael Stütz, as well as the heads of the Panorama, Generation, Berlinale Shorts, Forum and Forum Expanded sections.

Tuttle has also appointed a number of advisors spanning: film critic and programmer Jin Park, who will advise on genre films; U.K. programmer Rowan Woods, who brings expertise in curating international series for film festivals; Berlin-based curator and programmer Ana David, Glasgow-based film programmer, festival organiser Kate Taylor, Berlin-based curator Rabih El-Khoury and...

The revamped Berlin International Film Festival continues to take shape, with new festival director Tricia Tuttle on Thursday unveiling a new four-member selection committee and expanding the festival’s network of advisors and delegates.

The new selection committee consists of industry veterans, including festival programmer and producer Mathilde Henrot; film critic and programmer Jessica Kiang; festival and cultural consultant Jacqueline Nsiah; and Elad Samorzik, the former artistic director of the Jerusalem Film Festival.

They join Michael Stütz and Jacqueline Lyanga, appointed in June as the new co-directors of film programming ahead of the 75th anniversary Berlinale next year. This committee will work alongside Tuttle to pick films for the Competition, Berlinale Special, and the new Perspectives section.

To broaden its expertise, the Berlinale has also brought on board several advisors, including Jin Park for genre films; Rowan Woods for television and series programming; Ana David, Kate Taylor, Rabih El-Khoury, and...

Under the new leadership of Tricia Tuttle, the Berlin Film Festival has unveiled the members of its selection committee for different Berlinale sections including the Competition, Berlinale Special and Perspectives. The upcoming edition will mark the first spearheaded by Tuttle, who succeeds to Carlo Chatrian and Mariëtte Rissenbeek.

The four members of the new-look selection board are Mathilde Henrot, programmer, a producer and the co-founder of Festival Scope. She was a member of the selection committee of the Locarno Film Festival from 2018 to 2024 and has been a programmer for the Sarajevo Film Festival since 2012.

Jessica Kiang, a Berlin based film critic, essayist and programmer who regularly writes reviews for Variety. Kiang has been writing about film for almost 15 years. Since 2022 she has been the international programmer of the Belfast Film Festival.

Jacqueline Nsiah is afilm festival, art and culture consultant based in Accra, Ghana. She has served as project manager...

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Jasmila Žbanić is prepping a sequel to her harrowing war drama “Quo Vadis, Aida?,” which competed for best international feature film at the 93rd Academy Awards, Variety can exclusively reveal.

Speaking at the Sarajevo Film Festival, Žbanić said the film will explore the tragic consequences of the 1990s Bosnian War and the brutal massacre at the heart of her critically acclaimed Oscar contender, which follows a Bosnian Un translator (Jasna Đuričić) torn between family and duty in Srebrenica, where more than 8,000 civilians — mostly Muslim men and boys — were slaughtered in the worst act of mass killing on European soil since World War II.

While Žbanić was reluctant to share details about the sequel’s plot, she discussed her inspiration to depict the aftermath of the massacre — which was later deemed to be a genocide — as well as the consequences of the wider war, which left countless Bosnian women without husbands and sons.

Georgian filmmaker Ana Urushadze, whose debut “Scary Mother” won best first feature at the Locarno Film Festival in 2017, is readying her anticipated sophomore feature, “Supporting Role.” The writer-director is presenting the film this week in the works-in-progress section of CineLink Industry Days, the industry arm of the Sarajevo Film Festival.

The film follows a once-famous star of Georgian cinema, who — triggered by a casting session with a young female director — embarks on a bizarre and fatalistic odyssey of self-transformation. Accustomed to playing charming heroic protagonists, he is insulted by the offer of a supporting role. But gradually, without realizing it himself, he starts getting into character and seemingly unconsciously accepts the role he has been offered to play.

Speaking to Variety in Sarajevo, Urushadze explained that the film was inspired by the auditions for her first feature, when she was searching for an elderly man to play the role of the protagonist’s father.

Music Box Films has acquired U.S. distribution rights to Carson Lund’s comedy drama “Eephus,” which premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight. The film was recently announced as an Official Selection of New York Film Festival, where it will have its North American premiere.

Music Box plans for a theatrical release nationwide followed by home entertainment. London- and Paris-based sales and production house Film Constellation handles worldwide sales and negotiated the deal on behalf of the filmmakers.

“Eephus” is set on a small-town New England baseball field called Soldiers Field. As an imminent construction project looms over their beloved baseball field, a pair of Sunday league teams face off for the last time over the course of a day. Tensions flare up and ceremonial laughs are shared as an era of camaraderie and escapism fades into an uncertain future.

Variety highlighted “Eephus” as one of the must-see films of the...

“Caught by the Tides,” the contemporary Chinese epic film directed by Jia Zhangke, has been acquired for U.S. release by Sidehow and Janus Films.

The film appeared in main competition in Cannes in May and is an extended look at the romantic destiny of Jia’s perennial heroine, Qiaoqiao over a period of 21 years. On another level, the film is an examination of a country going through profound transformation, mixing individual experiences and turbulent emotional and social changes.

It uses a mixture of old footage shot by Jia over the past century as well as some new. The main cast are Zhao Tao and Li Zhubin.

Variety’s reviewer Jessica Kiang, called the film: “an epic, lyrical drama that is both Chinese master Jia’s career-retrospective reinvention and a defining portrait of modern China.”

Sideshow and Janus Films will release the picture exclusively in U.S. theaters at an...

Find all of our Cannes 2024 coverage here.Illustrations by Maddie Fischer.This year at Cannes, we invited a number of attendees to share their impressions from the festival across various categories. We had a few ideas for what those categories might be, but they had many more, and the results are somewhere between a critics’ grid and a yearbook superlatives page. We're glad we asked.Mark AschGiovanni Marchini CamiaJordan CronkJon DieringerFlavia DimaLeonardo GoiEric HynesDaniel KasmanJessica KiangElena LazicManuela LazicSavina PetkovaAndréa PicardAdam PironCaitlin QuinlanVadim RizovRafa Sales RossDavid Schwartz (independent programmer)Pedro Segura (independent programmer and critic)Öykü SofuoğluHannah StrongFind all of our Cannes 2024 coverage here.Back to top.Back to top.Back to top.Back to top.Back to top.Back to top.Back to top.Back to top.Back to top.Back to top.

Exactly ten years after the genre-mixing, canine-driven Hungarian thriller “White God” landed the Prix Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival, this year’s ceremony culminated in the same prize going to a somewhat corresponding title: Chinese director Guan Hu’s “Black Dog,” a fusion of western, film noir and offbeat comedy with a highly lovable mutt at its center. The film, about a damaged loner returning to his desert hometown after a spell in prison and finding a kindred spirit in an equally world-weary greyhound, beat 17 other titles to take the top prize in the festival’s second-most prestigious competitive section. (The festival’s Official Competition awards will be handed out tomorrow night.)

Jury president Xavier Dolan, the actor-auteur behind such films as “Mommy” and “Laurence Anyways,” commended Guan’s film for “its breathtaking poetry, its imagination, its precision [and] its masterful direction.” He echoed the enthusiasm of Variety critic Jessica Kiang,...

In a different world, had she not been readying her long-awaited sophomore feature, “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl,” for its Cannes premiere, Rungano Nyoni might have spent the past few weeks preparing her family for its upcoming move to Zambia, the southern African nation where the director was born and spent part of her childhood. Instead, it was a mad dash to get the film across the finish line.

“It’s been long hours, non-stop for weeks,” Nyoni says on the eve of the French fest’s opening night. The frenzy isn’t likely to let up anytime soon: The director and her family plan to move house and fly to Zambia not long after the whirlwind of her Cannes premiere. Even those rare moments of calm on the Croisette between photo calls and press junkets aren’t likely to offer much relief. “I brought my toddler for good measure,...

Korean comedy action film “The Roundup: Punishment” destroyed all competition in local theaters on its Wednesday opening day.

The film earned $4.92 million from 821,000 ticket sales, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). That represented a crushing 97% share of the day’s theatrical market.

Including a smattering of previews over the latest weekend, the film finished Wednesday with a cumulative of $5.26 million earned from 862,000 spectators.

Earlier, it was reported that the film had broken the Korean record for advanced ticket sales. On the eve of its arrival in cinemas, the film had notched up 830,000 pre-sales for Wednesday and other subsequent days. That comfortably exceeded previous record-holder “Along With the Gods: The Last 49 Days,” which pre-sold 646,000 tickets in 2018, and last year’s “The Roundup: No Way Out,” which pre-sold 640,000 before arriving in cinemas.

The film, which sees a tough-guy cop go after gangsters involved in drugs,...

Nearly ten year after the Emmy Award-winning first season, “The Jinx” is remarkably back on HBO. Andrew Jarecki, Marc Smerling, and Zac Stuart-Pontier’s engrossing docuseries about the string of murders connected to Robert Durst built to a now-infamous climax, and will return with more story to tell April 21.

Before that, it’s worth revisiting the 2015 series and decades of headlines it interrogates. “The Jinx” gripped its audience with mounting evidence against Durst and a scintillating narrative structure, but also quickly came under fire for manipulating the timeline and even Durst’s hot mic recordings for dramatic effect. In 2015, IndieWire’s Matt Brennan pointed out that “The Jinx” set an impossible standard for documentary drama — one that the series itself had arguably not cleared in the first place. Jessica Kiang wrote that “This is not Jarecki’s gotcha so much as it is a self-initiated, cloudily motivated performance piece of Durst’s,...

“On Becoming a Guinea Fowl,” the second feature from Zambian-Welsh writer-director Rungano Nyoni, has been picked up by A24 for international sales ahead of its world premiere at Cannes Film Festival next month.

The film, which marks Nyoni’s follow-up to her acclaimed 2017 feature debut “I Am Not a Witch,” was also financed by A24 alongside BBC Film and Fremantle, while it was developed by BBC Film and Element Pictures. It will bow in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard sidebar competition.

While the plot has been kept under wraps, in his lineup announcement Cannes director Thierry Fremaux said the film was a “family drama” set in Africa and also a “comedy,” describing it as “very strong.”

“I Am Not a Witch,” which first landed in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, marked Nyoni as a filmmaker with a unique voice and one to watch. A darkly comic story of a young African girl who...

The Flats, a film about The Troubles in Northern Ireland, won the top award at Cph:dox in Copenhagen at a Friday night, earning a €10,000 prize.

The documentary directed by Alessadra Celisia takes place in “New Lodge in the center of Belfast, a neighborhood still haunted by the nearly 30-year conflict between Catholics and Protestants which officially ended in 1998.”

In their citation, the jury called the film witty, multi-layered, profound and provocative. They wrote, “Our main award recognizes not only creative and conceptual daring, but a filmmaker with the humility to realize when the story outgrows its framework, and the confidence to follow where it, and its fantastically vivid characters lead. We live in a world of divisions, borders and locked gates. Coming like a conversation shouted through one of those locked gates, our winning film is a collective portrait of several proud, funny, resourceful individuals, who would be willing to...

The ongoing war in Gaza was high on the agenda at the awards ceremony of Cph:dox, Copenhagen’s international documentary film festival, with numerous filmmakers calling for a ceasefire in Gaza as they picked up their awards.

Opening the ceremony following a concert by the locally-based Middle East Peace Ensemble, artistic director Niklas Engstrøm told the crowd gathered in Copenhagen’s historic Kunsthal Charlottenborg, which is home to the fest throughout the 10-day event: “It felt right to start with this basic human message of hope and peace.”

On the theme of conflicts past and present, Italian director Alessandra Celesia picked up the top Dox:Award for “The Flats,” a powerful, timely and haunting film about a community living in the shadow of the pain and trauma of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Handing out the award, the jury, made up of Belfast Film Festival programmer and Variety critic Jessica Kiang,...

Superstar Japanese auteur Hamaguchi Ryusuke will unveil “Gift,” a companion piece to his recent “Evil Does Not Exist” as a one-off live performance at next month’s Hong Kong International Film Festival.

Following the success of his breakout “Drive My Car,” which won the Oscar for best international feature film, Hamaguchi initially made “Gift” as a silent film project to accompany the live performance of Ishibashi Eiko, the music composer of both “Drive” and later “Evil.”

From the same project, Hamaguchi also derived “Evil Does Not Exist,” which then went on to win the Grand Jury Prize at last year’s Venice International Film Festival. With a similar narrative, both are eco-political thrillers that revolve around a man and his daughter whose peaceful rural lives are about to be disrupted by the construction of a glamping site.

A piece of highly-controlled filmmaking, “Evil” became a major talking point with its baffling and enigmatic ending.

French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop made history at tonight’s Berlin Film Festival awards ceremony, becoming the first Black director ever to win the Golden Bear, the fest’s top prize, for her inventive, resonant documentary “Dahomey.” She accepted the award from Lupita Nyong’o, in turn the first Black person ever to preside over the festival’s Competition jury — a stark image of progress to cap off a ceremony marked by impassioned statements against war and social discrimination.

Following French docmaker Nicolas Philibert’s Golden Bear triumph last year with his film “On the Adamant,” “Dahomey” is the second consecutive nonfiction feature to take the award. But it’s a radically unorthodox winner nonetheless, beginning with its 67-minute running time. Yet Diop, the actor-turned-director who took the Grand Prix at Cannes 2019 with her fictional debut feature “Atlantics,” packs a world of historical and political perspective into her film’s tight framework,...

Three decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, an emerging generation of filmmakers born and raised in the independent countries of Central Asia is giving an exhilarating charge to the region’s cinema and helping to put their unheralded industries on the map.

Leading Kazakh film critic Gulnara Abikeyeva says these “children of independence” are bringing a “new attitude” to the screen and giving a jolt of energy to emerging industries that for decades were under Moscow’s thumb.

“The production of films is growing very fast in all Central Asian countries,” she says. “There have appeared so many young production studios who can make movies with public or private money.”

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, what Abikeyeva describes as the “euphoria of freedom” caught hold across its former Central Asian republics, which include Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. Filmmakers who previously had to submit their...

Ena Sendijarević’s “Sweet Dreams,” Netherlands’ submission in the Academy Awards international feature category, has secured North American distribution via Dekanalog.

The film had its world premiere at Locarno, where it won the Pardo for best performance for Renée Soutendijk (“Suspiria”) and the second prize of the junior jury. The film debuted in North America in Toronto’s Centrepiece section and won the Silver Hugo new directors award at Chicago. It opened the Nederlands Film Festival, where it won another six awards, including best film, best director and best leading role.

Set on a remote Indonesian island, “Sweet Dreams” explores the final days of European colonialism. It follows Dutch sugar plantation owner Jan and his wife Agathe, who are at the top of the food chain. Jan, upon returning from his nightly visit to his native concubine Siti, suddenly drops dead in front of his wife. Desperate to keep the privileges of her status quo,...

As the yin-yang decal on our yoga teacher’s Subaru Crosstrek reminds us thrice a week, every natural force or entity has its perfect mirror inverse. And so, just as during the summer we escaped to movie theaters in order to cool down from record high temps, the temperature extremes caused by climate collapse now drive us back to those same movie theaters for warmth, nursing our frigid tootsies at the hearth of the annual awards season dump of very exciting Don’t-Miss Indies. But Tldr; Happy Holidays!

Eileen

When You Can Watch: Now

Where You Can Watch: Theaters

Director: William Oldroyd

Cast: Thomasin McKenzie, Anne Hathaway, Shea Whigham, Marin Ireland

Why We’re Excited: Described as “wildly audacious, wondrously twisted” and “deliciously deranged” by Jessica Kiang in her review for Variety, director William Oldroyd’s sophomore feature after 2018’s Lady MacBeth (nominated for a Film Independent Spirit Award for...