News

Exclusive: Poe adaptation will be handled by London-based company.

Parkland Pictures has picked-up worldwide sales rights to Steven Berkoff’s Tell Tale Heart.

The film is based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same name and was performed by Berkoff on stage at Hammersmith Riverside Studios for a one-man show in 2011.

It follows a servant who tries to convince the audience of his sanity while describing a murder he committed, and co-stars Hugh Skinner and Henry Goodman.

Tell Tale Heart is directed by Stephen Cookson (Shakespeare’s Heroes And Villains, Stanley A Man Of Variety), who also co-wrote alongside Berkoff. It is produced by Ck Films.

Parkland’s roster also includes Joe Martin’s Us And Them.

Joe Martin’s Us And Them is less a dangerous class-warfare battle and more a steamy soapbox rant. It’s positioned as “a deadly game of chance,” but don’t expect some Saw-like torture chamber. Anti-establishment angst fuels a fire that rages in the name of social responsibility, through tirades that attack fat-cat bankers who “don’t understand” a working man’s struggle. You can see where Martin draws influence from Guy Ritchie (narrative choices) and Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, yet Us And Them‘s bark is worse than its bite. This is a human story about people who look for answers in all the wrong places, and the chaos that ensues. Blowhard, ill-conceived chaos that goes up or down in flames, depending on your personal outlook.

Jack Roth stars as an underprivileged youth named Danny. For years he’s squeaked by with minimal compensation, stuck in an economic...

For his feature film debut, UK director Joe Martin brazenly takes on the class divide of Britain in Us and Them, his crime thriller that follows a frustrated young man named Danny, played by Jack Roth, who takes out his anger on the wealthy and elite members of society by kidnapping a well-to-do family, which doesn’t go exactly as he planned.

While at the 2017 SXSW Film Festival, Daily Dead took a deep dive into the political and economical focus of Us and Them with both Martin and Roth, resulting in a fascinating discussion on the problems that have caused a great division both in the UK and the world at large.

Fantastic job on the film, guys. It has a lot to say and you put a lot of energy into some really serious issues we can all relate to.

Joe Martin: In this film, the one thing...

The most that any of us can hope for is just surviving. Isn’t it time we started living? Us and Them squarely takes on economic pressures that are building in the UK (and frankly, issues that are affecting nearly every other country on the map these days), as Danny (Jack Roth), a member of the lower class who recently lost his father to suicide, decides to take his frustrations out on a wealthy banker and his family to inspire others in his predicament to start fighting back against the elite. But when his plan goes south, that’s when all hell breaks loose, and we see just how much of a motivator money can be, especially when it comes to murder.

Us and Them begins with Phillipa (Sophie Colquhoun) taking her boyfriend, Glen (Paul Westwood), home to meet her affluent parents. On their travels to the family estate, the...

In Us and Them, three blue-collar Brits torment a family of one-percenters in order to exact some willful class revenge and possibly, a bit of pocket change. It’s a decent concept for any sort of movie – a thriller, a horror flick, a comedy – but the problem here is that writer-director Joe Martin never quite decides which one he wants to make.

The result is part Tarantino and Guy Richie, part Michael Haneke and A Clockwork Orange, with a bit of Alan Clarke tossed into the mix. That makes for a lot to reckon with in such a short...

Keep up with the wild and wooly world of indie film acquisitions with our weekly Rundown of everything that’s been picked up around the globe. Check out last week’s Rundown here.

– Miramax have acquired U.S. distribution rights to “I, Tonya” by Steven Rogers, the incredible true life story of controversial figure skater Tonya Harding with Margot Robbie starring as Harding and Craig Gillespie directing.

The edgy comedy will be produced by Bryan Unkeless for Clubhouse Pictures, Margot Robbie and Tom Ackerley for LuckyChap Entertainment and Steven Rogers, who also wrote the screenplay. Len Blavatnik and Aviv Giladi will executive produce for AI Film, which is financing the project. Rosanne Korenberg will oversee the project for Miramax.

The film will reportedly “peel back the layers of Tonya Harding’s sensationalized involvement in the 1994 attack on rival figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, exposing the absurd, tragic and hilarious story-behind-the-story of...

A role reversal so outrageous it could only be a work of nonfiction, the story of Csanad Szegedi, an infamous member of Hungary’s conservative Jobbik party, is as preposterously true as they come. A former Holocaust denier and anti-Semite, Szegedi now lives as a practicing Orthodox Jew determined to honor his familial past (his grandparents were Jewish). Fascinated by this turnaround, filmmakers Joseph Martin and Sam Blair created Keep Quiet, an in-depth study of the new life of Szegedi and co-lead Rabbi Boruch Oberlande, as a portrait of internal religious tension and the endless trying struggle to right one’s wrongs. As Keep […]...

Keep Quiet is a chilling and comprehensive documentary following the path to redemption – or a calculated political act – for Csanad Szegedi, a right-wing anti-Semite who rose to become the vice president of Hungary’s Jobbik party. The Jobbik are a conservative radical nationalist group that fashioned itself after the Nazi while calling for self-deportation, global isolationism, and an enhanced police state. Embroiled in a scandal when it’s revealed Szegedi is actually Jewish with a grandmother who survived Auschwitz, questions about his upbringing are at the forefront for much of the film’s first act. Did Szegedi sell out his own family history, including his grandmother, for populist appeal or did he really not know he was playing with fire?

Presenting the early part of his career in archival materials, including appearances, rallies and candid talking head interviews, Keep Quiet quietly builds an ambiguous character study that’s as calculated as the man.

Keep Quiet Ajh Films/ Passion Pictures Reviewed by: Harvey Karten, Shockya Grade: A- Director: Sam Blair, Joseph Martin Written by: Sam Blair, Joseph Martin Cast: Csanád Szegedi, Anne Applebaum, András Dezso, Zoltán Ambrus, Rabbi Boruch Oberlander, Katalin Molnár, Eva ‘Bobby’ Neumann Screened at: Tribeca, NYC, 3/24/16 Opens: April 14, 2016 at the Tribeca Film Festival in NY I had a dream, a dream that Donald Trump found out that both of his parents are Muslims. They kept this a secret from him, but gossip was beginning to stir, enough that Mr. Trump did some research on his own. By this time, the country had found out his roots. Trump is [ Read More ]

The post Keep Quiet Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

What if everything you once believed, that you thought was the truth and that guided your moral principles, turned out to be completely wrong? That's the entry point for the documentary "Keep Quiet," which premieres today at the Tribeca Film Festival. Read More: The 22 Most Anticipated Films Of The 2016 Tribeca Film Festival Directed by Joseph Martin and Sam Blair, the film tells the story of Csanad Szegedi, vice president of Hungary's far-right extremist party Jobbik, who fervently espoused antisemitic rhetoric and was a vocal supporter of the Holocaust denial movement. However, his life changed when he discovered his maternal grandparents were Jewish (his grandmother survived Auschwitz), which set him on a journey to learn about his faith. And as you'll see in the clip below, it's not an easy process for a man who spent so much time spewing hate. "Keep Quiet" will have its first screening at the Tribeca...

New York-based president Andrew Herwitz heads to the Tribeca Film Festival with two world premieres and one international premiere on his sales slate.

Documentary All This Panic (pictured) from Jenny Gage and Tom Betterton chronicles the lives of a group of sisters over four years as they grow from teenagers to young women in Brooklyn

Hungarian-uk selection Keep Quiet asks what happens when the leader of an anti-semitic political party learns that he is Jewish.

Sam Blair and Joseph Martin direct the documentary and Nicole Stott and John Battsek of Passion Pictures produce with Alex Holder and Danielle Clark.

Eastern European crime drama Mother receives its international premiere and follows one woman’s quest to uncover who shot her son in a small town.

Director Kadri Kõusaar’s previous film Magnus premiered in Un Certain Regard in Cannes 2007 and Herwitz is in talks with buyers for English remake rights.

Top brass at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival presented by At&T have announced selections in the Us Narrative, International Narrative and Documentary Competition strands.

The films comprise 55 out of 110 features that will play during the 15th edition of the New York festival from April 13-24. The festival will present features films in the Spotlight, Midnight, and Special Sections on March 8.

Also included in Wednesday’s announcement are the out-of-competition Viewpoints titles.

The world premiere of Bill Ross and Turner Ross’ Contemporary Color will open the World Documentary competition on April 14, while the world premiere of Kicks by Justin Tipping will open the Us Narrative competition.

The world premiere of Madly directed by Gael García Bernal, Mia Wasikowska, Sebastian Silva, Anurag Kashyap, Sion Sono, and Natasha Khan will open the International Narrative Competition. Viewpoints will open with the world premiere of Nerdland directed by Chris Prynoski.

One third of the festival’s feature films are directed by women...