News

The New Year That Never Came, a drama about the Romanian revolution of 1989, written and directed by Bogdan Muresanu, won the Grand Prix, the top prize, at the 15th edition of the Luxembourg City Film Festival (LuxFilmFest) on Saturday.

“December 20, 1989. Romania is on the brink of revolution. The authorities are preparing New Year’s festivities as if nothing – or almost nothing – is happening, but the official façade begins to crack,” reads a synopsis for the film, which world premiered at Venice 2024. “Amid the fervor of the uprising, six lives will intersect over the course of an extraordinary day, which leads to the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu and his regime.”

The fest jury, led by Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, also included Danish actress Trine Dyrholm (The Girl With the Needle, Poison), VFX expert Jeff Desom (Everything Everywhere All at Once), Austrian actress Valerie Pachner (Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, A Hidden Life...

Romanian director Alexander Nana’s Collective won the international documentary film prize.

Darius Marder’s Sound Of Metal won the Golden Eye for best international feature film as this year’s Zurich Film Festival, which concluded on Sunday (October 6).

The film stars Riz Ahmed as a drummer whose life is thrown into turmoil when he begins to lose his hearing and co-stars Olivia Cooke and Mathieu Amalric. The drama premiered in Tiff’s Platform section, with Amazon acquiring Us rights. Protagonist Pictures handles international sales.

Romanian director Alexander Nanau’s Collective won the international documentary film prize. The film follows...

For Jakob and Jonas Weydemann, “Systemsprenger” (“System Crasher”), a social drama about a troubled young girl caught in the revolving door of Germany’s child welfare services, is exactly the kind of film the sibling producer duo is keen to make.

Nora Fingscheidt’s feature film debut, which screens in competition in Berlin, explores the difficult and timely social issue of children who fall through the system while at the same telling a human story about a little girl seeking only to be with her mother.

Since launching their company, Weydemann Bros., in 2012, the team has striven to make films that are socially relevant. While their works often deal with societal issues, they are not necessarily front and center.

Sarah Winkenstette’s forthcoming “Zu weit weg,” for example, is a children’s film about the friendship between a German boy who has to leave his village because it’s being...