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The John Wick spinoff Ballerina will open the 71st Taormina Film Festival, which kicks off in Sicily next week and announced its lineup Thursday.

Star Ana de Armas will not be in attendance, with the film represented instead by director Len Wiseman and actor Norman Reedus.

It is among eight features that will play as special events in Taormina’s Ancient Theatre.

Another 10 titles will play in the International Feature Film Competition including Iraq War U.S. Navy Seal drama Warfare; The Rule of Jenny Pen with John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush; and David Mamet’s Henry Johnson with Shia Labeouf, Evan Jonigkeit and Chris Bauer. (Scroll down for the full lineup.)

Ballerina is among 13 Out of Competition titles which also include Billy Zane’s Int. Hallway / Night and Tyler Perry’s The Six Triple Eight.

A number of high-profile stars will attend to receive honorary awards including Martin Scorsese,...

Italy’s Taormina Film Festival is set for a standout 71st edition with a rich mix of genres – including some potential discoveries – on display, plus a generous dose of star power within a new format that attempts to revive the storied Sicilian event and put it back on the international map.

Marketing guru Tiziana Rocca, who has close Hollywood ties and is a festivals specialist, is back at the helm eight years after she was forced to step down due to political infighting in 2017 following a five-year stint. Rocca’s first move has been to reintroduce a competitive section comprising 10 titles. They will be judged by a jury that, as previously announced, is headed by Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who won an Oscar for her role in “The Holdovers.”

The Taormina competition, unveiled on Thursday, comprises the world premieres of Whoopi Goldberg and Jeremy Irvine comedy “Leopardi & Co” by Italian director...

The festival’s 14th edition opens with Durga Chew-Bose’s Bonjour Tristesse and closes with Giovanni Tortorici’s Diciannove, framing a lineup of 38 premieres, including 20 features, representing 21 countries

Museum of the Moving Image is pleased to announce the complete lineup for the 14th edition of First Look, the Museum’s festival of new and innovative international cinema, which will take place in person March 12–16, 2025. Each year, First Look offers a diverse slate of major New York premieres, work-in-progress screenings and sessions, and fresh perspectives on the art and process of filmmaking.

The 2025 lineup will present 38 films, of which 20 are features, including 4 world premieres and 23 U.S. or North American premieres, from 21 countries. Each day will be anchored by a Showcase screening. The festival will open and close with the U.S. premieres of two scintillating debut features from the 2024 Toronto and Venice Film Festivals, Durga Chew-Bose’s lush, heart-wrenching Bonjour Tristesse...

Kazik Radwanski’s Matt and Mara is now streaming exclusively on Mubi in many countries.Deragh Campbell in Trinity Bellwoods Park, Toronto. Styled by Mara Zigler. Photograph by the author.To the horror and delight of Toronto filmgoers, there is a moment in Kazik Radwanski’s Matt and Mara (2024) when the lead actress cups a palmful of water from the outdoor fountains at Yonge-Dundas Square and splashes her face, her mouth slightly agape. One does not do this (locals will note a vague air of urine around the intersection). The action is especially baffling for this previously reserved character, who then jetés over the spurting jets. It’s a moment of modest physical comedy that reveals the protean mannerisms of both the character and the actress, Canadian indie stalwart Deragh Campbell.There was a certain hum around this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, with the double-barrelled Canadian premieres of...

Goteborg Film Festival has unveiled the programme for its 48th edition, with 22 feature world premieres and four feature competition sections.

World premiere titles include Asier Urbieta’s Spanish thriller Pheasant Island in the international competition section. The debut feature from Spanish filmmaker Urbieta sees a young Basque couple’s relationship put to the test when a dead body is found on the mysterious titular island.

Scroll down for the feature competition sections

It is one of 18 films in the international competition, alongside 2024 festival favourites Santosh, To A Land Unknown and All We Imagine As Light.

The nine-strong Nordic competition includes three world premieres.

The Göteborg Film Festival, Sweden’s leading film fest, has unveiled its 2025 lineup, which features several award season contenders, including Brady Corbet’s Golden Globe winner The Brutalist, Magnus von Horn’s The Girl with the Needle, and Luca Guadagnino’s Queer.

The Brutalist picked up three Golden Globes this Sunday, including for best picture, drama, best director for Corbet and best actor, drama for star Brody. In the historical epic, Brody plays László Tóth, a Jewish architect who arrives in America from Budapest after surviving World War II. The film co-stars Felicity Jones as László’s wife and Guy Pearce as billionaire Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr.

Daniel Craig scored a best actor, drama nomination at the Globes for his starring role in Queer as William Lee, based on William S. Burroughs’ alter ego, following his journey through Mexico and South America with Drew Starkey as Gene. The Girl with the Needle,...

While there’s a few more fall film festivals popping up in the next month, the major ones are behind us, which means we have a strong sense of the films to have on your radar in the coming months and even through 2025. We’ve asked our writers from across the globe to weigh in on their favorite world premieres from Locarno Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and BFI London Film Festival.

Our coverage will continue with a few more reviews this week, and far beyond as we provide updates on the journey of these selections, so continue to explore all of our festival coverage here. In the meantime, check out top picks from our writers below and return soon for our extensive year-end coverage.

Soham Gadre (@SohamGadre)

1. April (Dea Kulumbegashvili)

2 and 3. Youth (Homecoming and Hard Times) (Wang Bing...

Around a decade ago, Sofia Bohdanowicz began what would become a cycle of films, encompassing the features Never Eat Alone, Ms Slavic 7 and A Woman Escaped (co-directed by Blake Williams and Burak Çevik) and the shorts Veslemøy’s Song and Point and Line to Plane, starring Deragh Campbell (who is often credited as cowriter or codirector) as Audrey Benac, a sort of fictional alter-ego who has encounters with art, and in particular with the artistic legacy of Bohdanowicz’s forbears. In Veslemøy’s Song, Audrey travels to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts to listen to a haunting vintage […]

The post Resurrecting Kathleen Parlow: Sofia Bohdanowicz on Her TIFF-Premiering Measures for a Funeral first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Around a decade ago, Sofia Bohdanowicz began what would become a cycle of films, encompassing the features Never Eat Alone, Ms Slavic 7 and A Woman Escaped (co-directed by Blake Williams and Burak Çevik) and the shorts Veslemøy’s Song and Point and Line to Plane, starring Deragh Campbell (who is often credited as cowriter or codirector) as Audrey Benac, a sort of fictional alter-ego who has encounters with art, and in particular with the artistic legacy of Bohdanowicz’s forbears. In Veslemøy’s Song, Audrey travels to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts to listen to a haunting vintage […]

The post Resurrecting Kathleen Parlow: Sofia Bohdanowicz on Her TIFF-Premiering Measures for a Funeral first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

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.NEWSChicken Run.After earlier claims that they were “not in jeopardy,” the 29-location Landmark Theatre chain now faces foreclosure, though IndieWire reports that may not be such a bad thing.After releasing a trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis that included phony, apparently AI-generated pull quotes attributed to real film critics, Lionsgate has issued an apology and ceremonially fired a marketing consultant.The fast-food chain Chick-Fil-a plans to launch a streaming service, which will apparently include game shows and reality programming.FESTIVALSAhead of its premiere this weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival, we are pleased to share the first poster for Sofia Bohdanowicz's Measures for a Funeral (2024), designed by Charlotte Gosch of studio other types.

Paris-based Totem Films has acquired world sales rights, excluding Canada, to Canadian filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowicz’s “Measures for a Funeral” in advance of the film’s world premiere in the Toronto Film Festival’s Centrepiece program.

Margot Hervée, Totem’s head of sales and acquisitions, first encountered Bohdanowicz’s work a few years ago. “It immediately resonated with me,” she told Variety. “We’re thrilled to now have her as part of the Totem family and to represent her latest film.”

Vortex Media is the film’s Canadian distributor.

As part of today’s announcement, Totem has shared with Variety a first teaser for “Measures,” which stars Deragh Campbell as Audrey Benac — a “family detective” character she has played in previous Bohdanowicz films, including the feature “Ms Slavic 7,” which premiered in Berlin in 2019 and also screened in Toronto.

Filmed in Canada, the U.K. and Norway, “Measures”— which won the...

IndieWire can exclusively unveil the official 2024 Doc NYC 40 Under 40 list of rising filmmakers.

The annual honor celebrates young creatives that are making an impact in the field of documentary, ranging from documentarians to editors and sound designers. This year, the seventh annual season for the list, celebrates emerging documentary talent from filmmakers based in the U.S., Canada, and/or Mexico. The 2024 cohort will be honored during the November festival at a private cocktail reception, with the 15th edition of Doc NYC taking place in theaters in New York and online November 13 through 21.

“Doc NYC is proud to honor the accomplishments of these exceptional artists in the documentary field,” Doc NYC Artistic Director Jaie Laplante said. “We’re also excited to highlight for our industry and audiences powerful work and diverse voices that are worthy of close attention.” The honorees include “Measures for a Funeral” director Sofia Bohdanowicz, whose feature...

The 49th edition of the Toronto Film Festival continues to announce more movies, with the festival on Tuesday unveiled its 2024 Centrepiece lineup that features 43 titles from filmmakers representing 41 countries. TIFF runs September 5-15 under its new sponsorship with Rogers.

In total, the list includes 18 world premieres from Algeria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Nigeria, Panama, Philippines, Poland, Singapore, Spain and the U.S..

The section is a reflection of TIFF’s spirit of providing an elevated platform for international cinema, acclaimed titles from festivals around the globe, premieres from Canadian and international talents, and the latest work from influential filmmakers.

Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, who made it to Cannes this past year with The Seed of the Sacred Fig after fleeing his home country, is at TIFF with not one but two movies. He’ll have The Seed of the Sacred Fig, but also a title he wrote,...

Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has unveiled the 43 features selection for the Centrepiece programme including world premieres for Algerian director Merzak Allouache’s feuding matriarchs comedy Front Row and Laura Piani’s romantic comedy Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.

Taking their place in the global cinema showcase alongside the latest work from 41 countries are features that have already impressed at festivals, such as Mohammad Rasoulof’s Cannes award winner The Seed Of The Sacred Fig, and Steven Soderbergh’s Sundance selection Presence.

The 18 world premieres include Iranian filmmaker Ali Samadi Ahadi’s human rights drama Seven Days written by Rasoulof,...

A drama about an Iranian human rights activist and a documentary about the hacking of queer indie pop duo Tegan and Sara are among the films that have been added to the lineup of the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, which unveiled its Centrepiece section on Tuesday to kick off a second week of programming announcements.

The 43 films come from filmmakers representing 41 countries, with 18 of the titles receiving their world premieres at TIFF. Those premieres include “Seven Days,” a film about an imprisoned Iranian activist directed by Ali Samadi Ahadi and written by Mohammad Rasoulof, a filmmaker who was himself sentenced to flogging and prison by Iranian authorities; “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,” a romantic comedy from French writer-director Laura Piani; “The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos,” a debut from the Nigerian filmmaking group known as the Agbajowo Collective; and Erin Lee Carr’s “Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara,...

The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival has revealed its Centrepiece program lineup, with 43 films from 41 countries. The selections include 18 world premieres plus an array of festival favorites and winners from Cannes (“The Seed of the Sacred Fig“), Sundance (“Presence“), and more recently the 2024 Venice Film Festival (“April”). This year’s festival runs Thursday, September 5 through Sunday, September 15.

Per TIFF, Centrepiece honors “and celebrates global cinematic achievements, inviting audiences to immerse themselves in a dynamic array of contemporary films. The programme is a reflection of TIFF’s commitment to providing an elevated platform for international cinema, acclaimed titles from festivals around the globe, highly anticipated premieres from Canadian and international talents, and the latest work of influential filmmaking luminaries.”

The 2024 Centrepiece selection has been programmed by Jason Anderson, Kelly Boutsalis, Diana Cadavid, Robyn Citizen, Giovanna Fulvi, Nataleah Hunter-Young, June Kim, Dorota Lech, Jason Ryle, and Norm Wilner.

Per the festival, “Notable world premieres include ‘Front Row,...

Steven Soderbergh’s spooky ghost story Presence — starring Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan and newcomer Callina Liang — will receive its international premiere as part of the Centerpiece sidebar at the 2024 Toronto Film Festival.

Soderbergh first screened Presence at Sundance earlier this year, some 35 years after the debut of his breakout film, Sex, Lies and Videotape, in Park City. In all, TIFF’s Centerpiece section, previously known as Contemporary World Cinema, unveiled 43 films from 41 countries on Tuesday.

There’s world premieres for Marcelle Lunam’s rom com Addition, starring Teresa Palmer and Joe Dempsie; Erin Lee Carr’s documentary Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara, a Hulu title about the Canadian pop duo falling victim to identity theft; French director Laura Piani’s Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, with a Frederick Wiseman cameo; Sofia Bohdanowicz’s Measures for a Funeral, written by actor Derah Campbell; and Algerian director Merzak Allouache’s Front Row,...

UK cinema distributor the Institute of Contemporary Arts (Ica) has launched a screening programme for independent films that have not managed to secure UK distribution.

The programme, named Off-Circuit, “intends to address a shared frustration from audiences and industry alike around the fact that so many significant works acclaimed internationally never reach UK screens,” according to Ica Cinema curator Nicolas Raffin.

“Off-Circuit’s main purpose is to contribute to filling that gap, by bringing a selection of these works to our screens, on a week-long run.”

The programme, which launches today (October 5), has selected four films for its inaugural run:...

Uruguayan filmmaker Lucía Garibaldi (who premiered The Sharks at Sundance in 2019), Abinash Bikram Shah (short film winner in Cannes 2022), Burak Cevik (one third of the filmmaking team with Sofia Bohdanowicz and Blake Williams in A Woman Escapes) and the tandem of Nara Normande and Tião who are heading to Venice with Sem Coração are some of the filmmakers who’ll receive some coin via the Berlinale World Cinema Fund (Wcf). Projects selected come from a bit everywhere on the globe: Bhutan, Brazil, Indonesia, Israel, Madagascar, Nepal, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Turkey, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Wcf Production Funding

A Bright Future (Uru-Ger)

Dir Lucía Garibaldi

Prods Montelona, Francisco Magnou Arnabal; Achtung Panda!,…...

Since Sofia Bohdanowicz introduced Deragh Campbell’s Audrey Brenac in Never Eat Alone, the eye-gravitating protagonist has always been on some inquiry, not unlike a non-criminal investigator. In A Woman Escapes, Audrey ventures into new territory for her fifth film, where she heals from losing her friend Juliane in Paris at her grandmother’s home. Along the path, Williams and Çevik play fictional versions of Audrey to help her in her grief through filmmaking while separated during the pandemic.

Containing dialogue and imagery recalling Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped, this explicit homage to the French auteur allows the three filmmakers to expand what experimental film could be. Throughout her work, Bohdanowicz seeds a bridge between fact and fiction to evoke the audience’s connection with their existing reality. She, Williams, and Çevik emit a patient, inquisitive approach to gazing at the world: Williams’ 3D layering of subtitles and physical...

Following a number of disappointing blockbusters in May, there are a few promising ones this month (as glimpsed in our honorable mentions below), but it feels like we’ll have to wait until July for a trio of heavy hitters. In the meantime, June brings an eclectic mix of sturdy debuts, auteur-driven offerings, and accomplished documentaries.

15. Shadow Kingdom (Alma Har’el; June 6)

Technically released in limited capacity a couple years ago, the Bob Dylan concert film Shadow Kingdom is now getting proper distribution. As Nick Newman said in our summer movie preview, “Your local Bob Dylan obsessive has surely mentioned Shadow Kingdom, the 2021 concert film that saw him rework an assortment of earlier songs––some established, some deeper in the back catalogue. One case (‘To Be Alone with You’) marked an almost-total rewrite, and courtesy the end credits (which we now know is called ‘Sierra’s Theme’) an entirely new track.

The folks at Sodec (Société de Développement des Entreprises Culturelles) the Quebec government agency that promotes culture an hands out some major coin have given some funds to eight co-productions and seven productions in post with notable items in Xavier Legrand‘s sophomore feature Le successeur (with thesp Marc-André Grondin), Canuck filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowicz‘s Opus 28 and Denis Côté‘s (now fifteen feature) Mademoiselle Kenopsia with actress Larissa Corriveau toplining. Here is the complete list of projects below:

Fanon /...

As various critics groups and awards bodies dole out their top films of the year, it can be hard to parse which ones are actually worth paying attention to. One such list has arrived today with Film Comment’s annual end-of-year survey. Revealed at a special live talk last night, in an unexpected but welcome surprise, David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future topped the list, which also included Jerzy Skolimowski’s Eo, Charlotte Wells’s Aftersun, two by Hong Sangsoo, and more. They also revealed their top undistributed films list, which included David Easteal’s The Plains, Bertrand Bonello’s Coma, and Laura Citarella’s Trenque Lauquen.

“That the winner of this year’s poll is a strange, gory, apocalyptic film about a future where art and humanity are both on the precipice of extinction is a striking reflection of what we’re seeking from cinema in 2022,” said Film...

Cinematography retrospectives are the way to go—more than a thorough display of talent, it exposes the vast expanse a Dp will travel, like an education in form and business all the same. Accordingly I’m happy to see the Criterion Channel give a 25-film tribute to James Wong Howe, whose career spanned silent cinema to the ’70s, populated with work by Howard Hawks, Michael Curtz, Samuel Fuller, Alexander Mackendrick, Sydney Pollack, John Frankenheimer, and Raoul Walsh.

Further retrospectives are granted to Romy Schneider (recent repertory sensation La piscine among them), Carlos Saura (finally a chance to see Peppermint frappe!), the British New Wave, and groundbreaking distributor Cinema 5, who brought to U.S. shores everything from The Man Who Fell to Earth and Putney Swope to Pumping Iron and Scenes from a Marriage.

September also yields streaming premieres for the recently restored Bronco Bullfrog, Ang Lee’s Pushing Hands,...

An unclassifiable filmic object that sprang out of a long-distance creative partnership, A Woman Escapes brings directors Sofia Bohdanowicz, Burak Çevik, and Blake Williams together in an intimate and playful collaboration that mingles different formats, aesthetics, and experiences. In a nod to Robert Bresson’s classic A Man Escaped (1956), the film accounts the flight of a young woman—Bohdanowicz’s regular persona Audrey Benac, played by Deragh Campbell—from an emotionally paralyzing grieving process. We witness Audrey’s life being deeply impacted by the death of her elderly friend Juliane, whose apartment, along with its souvenirs, shared memories, and some images, are left behind to the devastated young woman. In the minuscule kitchen of this time-worn Parisian apartment, Audrey sits and vainly ruminates on the past while feeling speechless, lethargic, and trapped in an eternal stagnation. When Audrey’s friends Burak and Blake—also fictional personas of Çevik and Williams...

Easily the best summer camp for auteur filmmakers seeking guidance on what will be their first or second feature film projects, we have now learned the identity of lucky thirteen projects and fellows selected for the 2022 Oxbelly Screenwriters and Directors Labs. Among them we find several Rotterdam Labs participants and filmmakers who’ve for the most part, established a short film filmography that have wowed A-grade film fest programmers. Recent folk that participated include Soudade Kaadan, Payal Kapadia and Sofia Bohdanowicz.

Established by Faliro House’s Christos V. Konstantakopoulos and under the artistic direction of a person who needs no introduction on this site in Athina Rachel Tsangari.…...

Turkey-Canada co-production directed by Sofia Bohdanowicz, Burak Cevik and Blake Williams.

Vienna-based sales agent Square Eyes has acquired world rights to A Woman Escapes, directed by Sofia Bohdanowicz, Burak Cevik and Blake Williams, ahead of its world premiere at France’s FIDMarseille (July 5-11).

The Turkish-Canadian co-production will play in the international competition of the festival.

The feature was shot in a variety of formats by the three directors with Canada’s Bohdanowicz filming in 16mm, fellow Torontonian Williams shooting in 3D and Turkey’s Cevik using 4K video.

The story centres on a woman who moves to Paris to...

The film festival is taking place July 5-11.

Lav Diaz’s A Tale Of Filipino Violence will make its world premiere as part of the international competition line-up of the FIDMarseille international film festival taking place in France from July 5-11.

Further world premieres in the selection include Sofia Bohdanowicz, Burak Çevik and Blake Williams’ A Woman Escapes and Spanish film Aftersun by Lluís Galter.

Scroll down for the full selection

Atlantics director Mati Diop is the president of this year’s international jury which includes João Pedro Rodrigues.

FIDMarseille’s 33rd edition will screen 123 films, including 49 world premieres, of which 40 are by female filmmakers.

Colombian-Canadian director Lina Rodríguez’s third feature, “My Two Voices”, a 68 min documentary that through its short runtime artfully orchestrates a polyphony of emotions, colors, textures and voices in its portrayal of three immigrant women.

Produced by Canada’s Rayon Verde, the same production company behind her previous film “This Time Tomorrow,” Rodríguez’s meticulous approach interweaves the voices of Claudia Montoya, Marinela Piedrahita and Ana Garay Kostic as they share their experiences of immigrating to Canada. Energized by a rich soundscape, the film achieves a deep intimacy, while refusing to draw borders, between spaces, between voices, between there and here, who I was and who I am, between I and Us.

Rodríguez is currently finishing her latest film “So Much Tenderness”.

Variety talked with her as her documentary debuted in Berlinale.

The film has a very set dynamic in its form, it restraint: It often decides not to show...

A Woman Escapes

Cinema birthed a new Antoine Doinel and her name is…Audrey Benac. Voyage to the center of Audrey via actress Deragh Campbell includes Never Eat Alone (2016), Veslemøy’s Song (2018), Ms Slavic 7 (2019), and 2020’s Point and Line to Plane and it would appear that filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowicz (who also has a new feature called A Portrait in the works) has has moved the process out of its container with limitless dimensions, surfaces, film stocks and two new creative collaborators. Entering the fray we have Burak Çevik and (a former contributor here on the site) in Prototype filmmaker Blake Williams.…...

Event ran September 12-13 concurrent Toronto International Film Festival.

The virtual 2021 Ontario Creates International Financing Forum (iff) that took place this month brought together feature producers on projects at various stages of development with industry executives and hosted more than 550 meetings.

Iff, which took place from September 12-13 concurrent with Toronto International Film Festival, invited 42 industry executives from the likes of Netflix, Neon, Voltage Pictures, The Match Factory and Protagonist Pictures. Charlotte Mickie, vice-president of Celluloid Dreams, said: “Iff is awesome. The offering is diverse and rich, and the conversations with the producers are so stimulating and provocative, in a good way.

FuturaBefore Wavelengths, and the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in general, were so rudely interrupted by a global pandemic, the section was known for reliably presenting some of the most innovative filmmaking happening around the world. 2020, as you may recall, featured a considerably scaled-back TIFF. Only three films that year carried the Wavelengths designation, but they were good ones: Sofia Bohdanowicz’s lovely short film Point and Line to Plane, and two feature films, Ephraim Asili’s The Inheritance and Nicolás Pereda’s Fauna.Now Wavelengths is getting back up to full-tilt, although still with a smaller-than-usual slate of films. The 2021 edition contains six feature films and only seven experimental shorts. The decision to ease back into the presentation of complicated film and media work is understandable on some level. Covid is still a concern, and the festival has to balance a number of considerations, including the exposure of festival staff during live screenings,...

Her riveting and revelatory performance in Kazik Radwanski’s Anne At 13,000 Ft. is the latest in a run of risky work by the Canadian indie phenom Deragh Campbell. In this hour, she talks about the process of sinking into Anne as the production went on and the great benefits and humorous backfires of immersing with non-professional actors in some scenes. Blending non-fiction into her performances is something she does often, particularly in collaboration with director Sofia Bohdanowicz. She talks about the character they created together, Audrey Benac, and the interesting ways performing as her has evolved over five projects. Plus […]

The post Back To One Episode 167: Deragh Campbell first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Her riveting and revelatory performance in Kazik Radwanski’s Anne At 13,000 Ft. is the latest in a run of risky work by the Canadian indie phenom Deragh Campbell. In this hour, she talks about the process of sinking into Anne as the production went on and the great benefits and humorous backfires of immersing with non-professional actors in some scenes. Blending non-fiction into her performances is something she does often, particularly in collaboration with director Sofia Bohdanowicz. She talks about the character they created together, Audrey Benac, and the interesting ways performing as her has evolved over five projects. Plus […]

The post Back To One Episode 167: Deragh Campbell first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Mexican virtual lab offers Usd 30,000 in cash prizes.

Spanish multiple Cannes award winner Olivier Laxe and Argentina’s Lisandro Alonso are among participants in the expanded third Mexican project lab Catapulta set to run as an entirely virtual event from March 24-27.

Scroll to bottom to see all lab participants

Laxe, whose Fire Will Come won the Cannes Un Certain Regard jury prize in 2019 and followed a 2016 Critics’ Week grand prize for Mimosas and the 2010 Fipresci award for Directors’ Fortnight selection You Are All Captains, takes part in the new development programme.

His project After (France) follows a man and...

Mexican virtual lab offers Usd 30,000 in cash prizes.

Spanish multiple Cannes award winner Olivier Laxe, US auteur Rick Alverson and Argentina’s Lisandro Alonso are among participants in the expanded third Mexican project lab Catapulta set to run as an entirely virtual event from March 24-27.

Scroll to bottom to see all lab participants

Laxe, whose Fire Will Come won the Cannes Un Certain Regard jury prize in 2019 and followed a 2016 Critics’ Week grand prize for Mimosas and the 2010 Fipresci award for Directors’ Fortnight selection You Are All Captains, takes part in the new development programme.

His project After (France...

Exclusive: This year’s Oxbelly Labs has set creative advisors including directors Maren Ade (Toni Erdmann), Mati Diop (Atlantics), Ulrich Köhler (In My Room) and Lulu Wang (The Farewell), as well as producer-seller Michael Weber, founder of The Match Factory.

The Lab is designer to offer promising international filmmakers the opportunity to work on their first or second feature script, as well as workshop and direct one scene from it, with guidance from industry mentors.

Led by Oxbelly’s artistic director and Greek filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari (Attenberg), the Lab is being hosted online this year.

Returning creative advisors include Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread), Michael Almereyda (Tesla), Ritesh Batra (Photograph), Lisa Cholodenko (Olive Kitteridge), Willem Dafoe (Tommaso), Naomi Foner (Running On Empty), Nick Kroll (Big Mouth), Jeff Nichols (Loving), Olivier Père and Eva Stefani (Manuscript).

The Labs were established...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Madeleine Lim's Sambal Belacan (1997)After two decades of censorship by the Singapore government, Madeleine Lim's 1997 film Sambal Belacan will be screened in Singapore. The film, "a personal, intertextual, and poetic document about three Southeast Asian lesbians who discuss the social and political climate of Singapore," has previously only been shown in underground viewings. Meanwhile, The Meg 2 has found its director: Ben Wheatley, whose adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca recently debuted on Netflix. Recommended VIEWINGThe official trailer for Carlo Mirabella-Davis's thriller Swallow, which follows a pregnant housewife's stomach-churning struggle for bodily autonomy. This Halloween, watch the film on Mubi. Béla Tarr's 1988 film Damnation has been restored in 4K from the original 35mm camera negative by the Hungarian National Film Institute. Co-written by frequent collaborator László Krasznahorkai, the film...

With the coronavirus pandemic causing TIFF to go online and reduce their line-up, this year’s Short Cuts programme has been whittled down to 35 films across 5 programmes, a reduction of more than a third compared to last year’s 55 films and 8 programmes. Despite these limitations, programmers Jason Anderson and Lisa Haller have put together a strong lineup for 2020 that should hold more than a few surprises for those willing to check out this year’s lineup.

Having seen most of what this year has to offer, here are 10 films that stand out in a slim but competitive field of short filmmaking. For more coverage from the festival, check out our preview of the most-anticipated features and read our forthcoming reviews here.

4 North A (Jordan Canning, Howie Shia)

(Screening in TIFF Short Cuts Programme 01)

A collaboration between filmmakers Jordan Canning and Howie Shia, 4 North A shows a woman consumed by memories...

This year, the New York Film Festival will look different than the past fifty-seven years––and it’s not just the shift from in-theater screenings to outdoor and virtual, but also with its programming. With the new leadership of NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez and NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim, one of the major changes in Film at Lincoln Center’s yearly showcase of the best in world cinema is the addition of a new section titled Currents.

A nod to previous programs featured in the festival––including Views From the Avant-Garde, Explorations, and Projections––Currents provides an expansive overview of the filmmakers that are among the boldest and most innovative working today. With a lineup including 14 features and 46 short films, representing 28 countries, Currents takes a comprehensive look at both the future of filmmaking from emerging directors as well as new offerings from established filmmakers.

Opening Night of Currents is...

Online edition reportedly generated 280 one-on-one meetings.

FIDLab, the project development platform of France’s International Film Festival FIDMarseille, has unveiled the winners of its online edition which took place July 6-10.

The jury was comprised of Fiorella Moretti, founding co-chief of Paris-based sales company LuxBox; Matthijs Wouter Knol, the outgoing director of the European Film Market and Cannes Directors’ Fortnight delegate general Paolo Moretti. They awarded nine different in-kind prizes provided by 11 FIDlab partners to the mostly hybrid projects.

Us artist Sharon Lockhart won the Air France award (of two long-haul flights) for her documentary project Baumettes, capturing the life...

Sofia Bohdanowicz and Deragh Campbell's Ms Slavic 7, which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing from June 4 - July 4, 2020 in Mubi's The New Auteurs series.Above: The above image and those throughout this article are a selection of pages from the notebook Deragh Campbell kept as the character Audrey Benac, toward the creation of the monologues in Ms Slavic 7.Considering Sharon Lockhart’s collaboration with Noa Eshkol, in which she retranslates the deceased artist’s elaborate system of choreographic notation into movement, Daniela Zyman negates the perception of a filmed subject as a singular identity and defines it instead as a figure of two, an encounter between the artist and the protagonist. She applies this to Lockhart’s greater body of work, describing Lockhart’s particular ability to allow the coexistence of the subject’s inherent right to self-representation and the artist’s formal impositions,...

Sheffield Doc/Fest, the U.K.’s leading documentary festival, has unveiled its 2020 selection, with a line-up of 115 films, including 31 world premieres.

Due to coronavirus, this year’s festival is largely taking place online. The June event is also extending its activities throughout the rest of the year both in Sheffield and virtually.

The festival is launching a VOD platform, Sheffield Doc/Fest Selects, on June 10 with pay-per-view and subscription options for U.K.-based public audiences including Q&As with filmmakers.

The Doc/Player, a film industry-oriented video library, is also being made available to festival passholders globally from today to August 31.

The festival is also organising weekend screenings in Sheffield cinemas in October – November.

In addition, Doc/Fest has partnered with BFI Player, Doc Alliance Films, The Guardian, and Mubi which will host its curated programmes at various points between July and November.

As announced previously, Sheffield Doc...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Sofia Bohdanowicz and Deragh Campbell's Ms Slavic 7, which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing from June 4 - July 4, 2020 in Mubi's The New Auteurs series.It’s odd, the places we find the dead. Audrey Benac (Deragh Campbell) is at the Harvard archives looking for letters written by her great-grandmother, the poet Zofia Bohdanowiczowa. Having become the literary executor of the great-grandmother’s estate, Audrey’s quest to put her family’s affairs in order ends up more complicated than anticipated. Ms Slavic 7, the third collaboration of Sofia Bohdanowicz and Deragh Campbell (though the first where they’re credited as co-directors), is a kind of archival detective film, looking for one’s family among the fragments.Through shorts and features Bohdanowicz has created a body of work which is well aware that no letter is ever just a letter.

Sofia Bohdanowicz’s account of her great-grandmother’s correspondence with another Polish writer is bafflingly dull

The high-mindedness, unworldliness and pure strangeness of this inert docu-fiction essay give it some interest – but frankly not much. Director Sofia Bohdanowicz has created an odd semi-fictionalised account of her researches into her Polish great-grandmother, Zofia Bohdanowiczowa, a poet who in the early 60s had a passionate correspondence with another Polish writer, Józef Wittlin, author of the first world war novel The Salt of the Earth. At the time, Bohdanowiczowa was in Toronto and Wittlin in New York.

Actor and co-director Deragh Campbell plays a bafflingly dull fictional version of Sofia called Audrey, and she is shown going through the letters in Harvard’s Houghton Library, this manuscript collection being labelled Ms Slavic 7. Minute after after uneventful minute drag by as she placidly reads these documents. Sometimes the pages themselves are flashed up on screen.

In work like her narrative feature Ms Slavic 7 (titled after a library call number) and nonfiction short Veslemoy’s Song, Toronto-based filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowicz has dived into archives, examining their possibilities as a path to various revelations and/or frustrations. Both are encountered in this short film, in which Bohdanowicz adapts Dan Sallitt’s essay “The Hardest Work Cat in Show Biz,” expanding the text with illustrations of feline actor Orangey in action across his career. It begins with Sallitt and his cat Jasper at home before diving into the main line of argument, connecting many dots along the way while finding an entirely […]...

In work like her narrative feature Ms Slavic 7 (titled after a library call number) and nonfiction short Veslemoy’s Song, Toronto-based filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowicz has dived into archives, examining their possibilities as a path to various revelations and/or frustrations. Both are encountered in this short film, in which Bohdanowicz adapts Dan Sallitt’s essay “The Hardest Work Cat in Show Biz,” expanding the text with illustrations of feline actor Orangey in action across his career. It begins with Sallitt and his cat Jasper at home before diving into the main line of argument, connecting many dots along the way while finding an entirely […]...

Young Deragh Campbell is a hard actress to forget, even in offbeat roles like an obsessed researcher of family history in Ms Slavic 7 or its docudrama precursor Never Eat Alone, both by filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowicz. Kazik Radwanski’s Anne at 13,000 Ft. gives Campbell's talents breadth and scope in the much more demanding part of a dangerously fragile young woman who gingerly manages latent mental health issues while she navigates a job, an anxious mother, a new apartment and a relationship. The character she creates, Anne, won Campbell the nod as best Canadian actress last year from the ...

Young Deragh Campbell is a hard actress to forget, even in offbeat roles like an obsessed researcher of family history in Ms Slavic 7 or its docudrama precursor Never Eat Alone, both by filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowicz. Kazik Radwanski’s Anne at 13,000 Ft. gives Campbell's talents breadth and scope in the much more demanding part of a dangerously fragile young woman who gingerly manages latent mental health issues while she navigates a job, an anxious mother, a new apartment and a relationship. The character she creates, Anne, won Campbell the nod as best Canadian actress last year from the ...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSHong Sang-soo directing on the set of a new production.Above: We don't know the backstory behind this, but we're nonetheless glad to see Hong Sang-soo back in the director's chair after a year with no new Hong Sang-soo movie. (via @lil_coincoin)Yorgos Lanthimos is set to direct and produce a limited series adapted from Mark Seal's The Man in the Rockefeller Suit. The non-fiction book traces the various lies and grifts of Clark Rockefeller, who claims to be a member of the Rockefeller clan. Recommended VIEWINGAbel Ferrara's Tommaso now has an international trailer, which offers a deeper glimpse into the life of an ex-pat filmmaker (Willem Dafoe) in Rome, who struggles to balance his artistic passion and familial commitments. Read our Cannes interview with Ferrara here.An official trailer for Jennifer Reeder...