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Times are hard, and most of the time so is Frank (Arieh Worthalter). In Nadège Trebal’s Twelve Thousand, this charismatic French grifter sees sex less as commodity than a natural byproduct of being constantly turned on by the world itself. Every conversation, glance, act of thievery, and vaudevillian dance number present an opportunity for organic desire to flourish, even with complete strangers.

Mostly though, Frank has reserved his wild passion for girlfriend Maroussia (Trebal). The two share a small flat with her mother, young daughter, and two foster infants they have brought in to make extra cash. Daily life is a hustle for this family, but one that seems mostly enjoyable if it weren’t for glaring financial stresses. After getting busted by the owners of a local junkyard for fleecing customers, Frank decides to travel north hundreds of miles and take temp work as an oil refinery worker.

Film at Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art Thursday announced a virtual return of the 49th annual New Directors/New Films festival rescheduled from last March to December 9-20.

The 50-year old fest’s 2020 lineup of 24 features and 10 shorts will be available to audiences nationwide for the first time, screening exclusively in the Flc Virtual Cinema.

The lineup, drawing heavily from the international film festival circuit with award-winners from Sundance, Venice, Rotterdam and Locarno, was initially announced in February before Covid-19 hit. Amanda McBain and Jesse Moss’ Boys State (Sundance U.S. Grand Jury Prize for documentary), Maite Alberdi’s The Mole Agent, and Collective by Romanian filmmaker Alexander Nanau will have opened before the festival’s new dates and be presented as special screenings with details to be announced. Babyteeth, Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, and Surge were part of the original Nd/Nf lineup but are...

The 21st European Film Festival also awarded trophies to Disco, Scandinavian Silence, Sister and Lara, while the Cineuropa Prize went to Open Door. The French title Twelve Thousand has been crowned Best Film at the 21st Lecce European Film Festival, an event which unfolded entirely online this year, between 31 October and 7 November, in full compliance with anti-Covid health regulations. Awarding the Golden Olive Tree to Nadège Trebal’s film, the jury presided over by Katriel Schory and composed of Beatrice Fiorentino, Mathilde Henrot, Antonio Saura and Mira Staleva also honoured Disco by Jorunn Myklebust Syversen for its screenplay and Scandinavian Silence by Martti Helde for its photography. Meanwhile, Svetla Tsotsorkova’s Sister and Jan-Ole Gerster’s Lara found themselves joint winners of the Special Jury Prize. The latter also claimed the Sngci Award for Best European Actor, courtesy of Corinna Harfouch. For its part, the Mario Verdone Award, which is now.

"Find better than me, you little bastard." Shellac has debuted a festival promo trailer for the indie drama Twelve Thousand, originally titled Douze Mille in French (which just translates to the same). The film is premiering at the Locarn Film Festival coming up in a few weeks, and is seeking international distribution to go along with the initial unveiling. From French filmmaker Nadège Trebal, the film is about a man and a woman. After he loses his illegal job, Frank thinks his wife Maroussia won’t love him anymore. In a bid for equality, he decides to leave in order to make as much money as she does: 12,000, before he returns. "Will Frank succeed in collecting this sum? Will he come back?" Starring Arieh Worthalter, Nadège Trebal, Liv Henneguier, Françoise Lebrun, and Florence Thomassin. Looks quite good - check it out below. Here's the first festival promo trailer for Nadège Trebal's Twelve Thousand,...

The new film by the French filmmaker is set to world-premiere in Competition at the Locarno Film Festival. Frank (Arieh Worthalter) is fired from a car repair workshop where he works illegally. The area where he lives is the slum belt. Although very attached to his life with Maroussia, Frank must leave to find work elsewhere, far from home. Twelve thousand euros is the sum on which they both agree - the amount he must earn before returning. Will Frank succeed in collecting this sum? Will he come back? Will he just come back like that? This is the synopsis for Twelve Thousand, the new film by French filmmaker Nadège Trebal, set to world-premiere in Competition at the 72nd Locarno Film Festival. Produced by Maïa Productions and Mezzanine Films, the film is sold internationally by Shellac. Check out our exclusive trailer below:...

Celebrating its 72nd edition this year, the Locarno Film Festival has been the birthplace for the finest in international arthouse cinema and this year’s lineup looks to continue the tradition. Ahead of the festival, running August 7-17, the full slate has been announced.

Top highlights include the world premieres of Pedro Costa’s Vitalina Varela (pictured above), Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s To the Ends of the Earth, Ben Rivers & Anocha Suwichakornpong’s Krabi, 2562, Ben Russell’s Color-blind, Denis Côté’s Wilcox, Fabrice Du Welz’s Adoration, as well as a new 12-minute short film from Yorgos Lanthimos titled Nimic and starring Matt Dillon. Other titles that have caught out eye are Echo, from Sparrows director Rúnar Rúnarsson, and A Girl Missing, from Harmonium director Koji Fukada.

The festival will also kick off with some star power as Patrick Vollrath’s 7500, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, will premiere. Check out the lineup below,...

This year’s Locarno Film Festival (Aug 7 -17) lineup includes Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and Joseph Gordon-Levitt plane thriller 7500, which gets its world premiere at the Swiss showcase. Scroll down for major category lineups.

The 72nd edition of the festival marks the first for incoming artistic director Lili Hinstein who has taken over from Carlo Chatrian. As ever, there is a strong contingent of European and Asian arthouse movies and the Piazza Grande section includes a handful of titles with more mainstream appeal, such as Tarantino’s Cannes pic Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, which rolls out globally in August.

Alongside Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, the open air Piazza Grande screenings will include the world premieres of German-produced hijack thriller-drama 7500, Carice Van Houten starrer Instinct, UK comedy actor Simon Bird’s directorial debut Days Of The Bagnold Summer, French director Stéphane Demoustier...

Italian director Ginevra Elkann’s directorial debut, “If Only,” about kids with divorced parents, will open the 72nd Locarno Film Festival, its first edition under new artistic director Lili Hinstin, who has assembled an edgy mix of promising titles from young auteurs and more established names.

“If Only” and the fest closer, iconic Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Uzbekistan-set “To the Ends of the Earth” will both premiere in Locarno’s 8,000-seat Piazza Grande.

Also set for a launch from the Piazza Grande is Amazon’s terrorist drama “7500,” directed by Patrick Vollrath, with star Joseph Gordon-Levitt in tow; Valerie Donzelli’s comedy “Notre Dame”; and fellow French director Stephane Demoustier’s “The Girl With a Bracelet,” in which a teenager stands trial for murdering her best friend.

Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” which premiered in Cannes, will also screen on the Piazza (without talent in...

Below you will find our total coverage of the 64th Berlinale by our three attending critics. As our last couple pieces are published, they will be added to this index.

By Adam Cook

Impressions Parts I-iv:

Personal Programming

On Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, Dominik Graf's Beloved Sisters, Bong Joon-ho's Snowpiercer

Journeys

On Tsai Ming-liang's Journey to the West, Richard Linklater's Boyhood

Time as Depth and Cinema-Space

On Ken Jacobs' The Guests, Nadège Trébal's Scrap Yard, Veiko Õunpuu's Free Range, Corneliu Porumboiu's The Second Game

On the Periphery

On Fruit Chan's The Midnight After, Diao Yinan's Black Coal, Thin Ice

New Spaces: A Conversation with Denis Lavant

By Yaron Dahan

The Fantastical Heart of the Old Continent That Was But Was-Not: Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel

Sleepers, Robbers, and Superegos: An Interview with Benjamin Heisenberg

Baal, Resurrected

By Michael Pattison

Essayist,...

Ken Jacobs' The Guests, a 3D-remix of an 1896 Lumière brothers' film of a group of people walking towards the camera into a church wedding (and, in a sense, into the audience of the cinema), exploits an optical phenomenon in which the lateral movement within the image can be used to create 3D by putting two frames, slightly apart temporally, together. It's a process Jacobs himself gleefully described at the screening, making a point of distinguishing this method from his previous approaches to 3D. Essentially, in this case, it is a temporal dis-alignment which controls and creates this illusion of depth. Time creates the space.

It's an imperfect film, and an imperfect application of 3D, but within the space of The Guests (who are the real guests?), these imperfections point to a strange alternate dimension of images. How far can we stretch an image to find more within in it?...