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Another vital writer’s retreat on the film festival circuit unveiled their invites today – Italy’s TorinoFilmLab (Tfl) selected a sweet sixteen film project for its 2025 edition of ScriptLab and among the notables we find Anna Hints moving into fiction with Black Hairy Beast after Estonian Smoke Sauna and Costa Brava Lebanon‘s Mounia Akl returns to directing cinema with Hold Me (If You Want) – this after having worked on various television series and we will see her in front of the camera in Cyril Aris’ It’s a Sad and Beautiful World. And finally, American indie filmmaker Matthew Puccini moves beyond the short form with what might be his debut feature in Hearth.…...

Projects written by Estonian Smoke Sauna Sisterhoodfilmmaker Anna Hints and Mounia Akl, the Lebanese director of Costa Brava Lebanon, are among the 16 selected by Italy’sTorinoFilmLab (Tfl) for the 2025 edition of ScriptLab, the programme that supports fiction features through early stages of development.

Smoke Sauna Sisterhood won best European documentary at the 2023 European Film Awards whileCosta Brava Lebanonpremiered in Venice in 2021 and went on to win the audience award at the BFI London Film Festival.

Feature projects by US writer/director Micah Magee, whose first fiction feature Petting Zoo premiered in Berlin Panorama in 2015, and US filmmaker Matthew Puccini, whose...

Projects written by Estonian Smoke Sauna Sisterhoodfilmmaker Anna Hints and Mounia Aki, the Lebanese director of Costa Brava Lebanon, are among the 16 selected by Italy’sTorinoFilmLab (Tfl) for the 2025 edition of ScriptLab, the programme that supports fiction features through early stages of development.

Smoke Sauna Sisterhood won best European documentary at the 2023 European Film Awards whileCosta Brava Lebanonpremiered Venice in 2021 and went on to win the audience award at the BFI London Film Festival.

Feature projects by US writer/director Micha Magee, whose first fiction feature Petting Zoo premiered in Berlin Panorama in 2015, and US filmmaker Matthew Puccini, whose shortsDirtyandLavenderhave...

Over the past week, Dn have been immersing ourselves in the 47th edition of the mighty Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival and I instantly fell in love. Queues of thousands of people, not only filmmakers and industry professionals, but actual passionate filmgoers more than willing to wait for over an hour to fill every seat in the festival’s dauntingly huge venues. These eager individuals flock to see films and masterclasses from distributors and buyers alongside ‘meet and greet’ events put on in Clermont-Ferrand’s Short Film Market where stations of internationally acclaimed festivals buzz with excitement. Among the films selected for their filmmaking prowess regardless of premiere status, it was a joy to see so many Dn alum films in the programme including Bunnyhood, Milk, The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent, Yuck!, A Move, and our recent Best of Fest picks from Sundance and Annecy A Round of Applause for Death and Hurikán.

There’s an unexpected implication when Antonella Sudasassi Furniss exposes the parameters of her film set at the start of “Memories of a Burning Body,” following lead Sol Carabello into one room to have her makeup done and a gaffer in another arranging the lights for a scene. It isn’t to accept the artifice of the film or to set up a premise, but rather to plant the idea that there may be certain limitations to what a particular life can be, with Sudasassi Furniss’ refusal to leave the room for the rest of the film reflecting something that might be too on the nose to ever say directly. The film centers on a trio of wisened women, all around the age of 70, who are asked to recall how they developed their individual sexual consciousness in a culture where to even speak of the subject was considered shameful.

Even now,...

Concluding its 20th year, the Zurich Film Festival has named the winners this year’s Golden Eye.

As the festival wrapped up this weekend in Switzerland, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl and Black Box Diaries took home the Zff’s Golden Eye awards in the Feature Film and Documentary Competitions.

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl was selected by jury president Lee Daniels and members Souheila Yacoub, Jo Willems, Ewa Puszczyńska and Sophie Deraspe, with Jianjie Lin’s Brief History of a Family earning special mention.

Black Box Diaries was chosen by jury president Kevin Macdonald and members Franziska Sonder, Vincent Kelner, Anna Hints and Ben Bernhard, with Sandi DuBowski’s Sabbath Queen and Kinshuk Surjan’s Marching in the Dark recieving special mention.

Other winners include Les Courageux, Leeuwin and Die Heinzels 2: Neue Mützen, Neue Mission, with the latter two competing in Zff for Kids. Also honored at the festival were Kate Winslet,...

“On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” has been awarded the Golden Eye at Zurich Film Festival.

Jury president Lee Daniels – joined by Souheila Yacoub, Jo Willems, Sophie Deraspe and Ewa Puszczyńska – praised director Rungano Nyoni and her “miraculous” second film about past traumas finally coming to the surface when a family prepares for a funeral of an uncle: “We believe she’ll take over Hollywood,” he said.

“From the first shot of this film, we are thrust into a world that is spectacularly shot, filled with incredible music, exquisite sound design and acting that left us all breathless,” he added, calling it a surreal, dramatic comedy full of surprises about the lies we tell ourselves.”

Following the film’s Cannes premiere, Variety’s Guy Lodge called Nyoni’s film “darkly transfixing” and “at once intrepidly daring and rigorously poised.”

Festival director Christian Jungen told Variety: “It’s a very original and...

The 12 feature documentaries in the running for the 2023 European Film Awards (EFAs) have been revealed.

Scroll down for full list of titles

They include Mati Diop’s Dahomey, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in February. The film tracks the journey of 26 plundered royal treasures from the former West African kingdom of Dahomey exhibited in Paris, now being returned to Benin. French filmmaker Diop was previously nominated for a European Discovery Award at the EFAs with her Cannes 2019 award-winner Atlantics.

Titles that premiered at Berlin make up nearly half the total selection and also include At Averroes & Rosa...

Paris- and Berlin-based sales house Salaud Morisset has picked up international sales for “Under the Volcano,” which is set to world premiere in the Centrepiece section at Toronto Film Festival next month.

“Under the Volcano,” Polish director Damian Kocur’s second feature, tells the story of a Ukrainian family spending the last day of their holiday on the island of Tenerife, Spain. Once at the airport, their flight is canceled: Russia has invaded Ukraine. Trapped on the island, the tourists become refugees.

“The world has never been as close to a ‘volcanic eruption’ as we are now, although we all fall asleep with the certainty that the eruption will not happen in our lifetime,” Kocur said. “Unresolved social conflicts or climate change are left to be dealt with by the next generation. My film is about how apparent our security is, and how quickly, overnight, we can go from being tourists to refugees,...

The series adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s Faithless from Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson will debut in competition as part of the Primetime & Short Cuts line up at this year’s Toronto Film Festival. Scroll down for the full list.

The series will screen on Wednesday 11th September at TIFF before hitting Svt and Arte France in 2025. Fremantle is handling international sales on the series. We shared the first look at the project and interviewed Alfredson back in February. You can check that out here.

Billed as a “searing tale of love and betrayal,” the project is a six-part TV series based on the 2000 feature Faithless, which Ingmar Bergman penned for his former partner Liv Ullmann. The original film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival and starred Lena Endre and Erland Josephson. The entire series is directed by Alfredson from scripts adapted by Norwegian writer Sara Johnsen.

New episodic series from Alfonso Cuarón, Thomas Vinterberg, Joe Wright and Janicza Bravo will screen in the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival’s Primetime program, TIFF organizers announced Friday.

Cuarón will be at the festival with his Apple TV+ psychological thriller series “Disclaimer,” starring Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline; Vinterberg with “Families Like Ours,” a six-episode series set in a future when Denmark must be evacuated because of rising sea level; Wright with “M: Son of the Century,” a limited series about the rise of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini; and “Zola” director Bravo with “The Listeners,” starring Rebecca Hall.

Other projects in Primetime include “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” director Tomas Alfredson’s “Faithless,” an adaptation of the semi-autobiographical 2000 film written by Ingmar Bergman and directed by Liv Ullman; Australian director Dylan River’s “Thou Shalt Not Steal”; and two projects from Canadian filmmakers, Courtney Montour and Tanya Talaga’s “The Knowing...

The TIFF 2024 TV lineup is full of buzzy world premieres and screenings from beloved auteurs venturing into the episodic space.

The Primetime lineup includes eight new series, with five world premieres. For one, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” director Tomas Alfredson reimagines Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullman’s iconic 2000 film “Faithless” as a six-part limited series.

The show’s synopsis reads: “In the present day, renowned director David Howard, 73, is reunited with his former great love, actress Marianne Vogler, 75 (Lena Endre). Their encounter forces them to confront the painful repercussions of their past relationship, not only for themselves but also for their families. 40 years prior, a young David (Gustav Lindh) and Marianne (Frida Gustavsson) find themselves entwined in a passionate love affair which they must keep a secret, as Marianne is married to David’s best friend, Markus (August Wittgenstein).”

Other highlights include the world premiere of Janicza Bravo’s sci-fi series “The Listeners,...

Anna Hints on Sauna Day: 'The intimacy is not vocalised, there is like the fragility of male intimacy, the fragility of masculinity, they speak, but not through vocalising their feelings or their thoughts' Anna Hints’ debut feature documentary Smoke Sauna Sisterhood - about the shared intimacy between women sharing an Estonian tradition - garnered award after award as it travelled the world. And she was in Cannes with a companion piece, of sorts. Fictional short Sauna Day, which is co-written and co-directed by Hints’ creative and life partner Tushar Prakash, shows a secret unfold between two men in the safe space of the sauna.

Hints says: “Listening to the sisterhood talking and sharing, also naturally gave this impulse to also observe what are the men doing in the smoke sauna.” But she says that she was also driven by questioning ideas surrounding expectations of men and women.

“I think the...

Anna Hints, now co-directing with Tushar Prakash (The Karma Killings), returns to the elemental environment of a southern Estonian smoke sauna for her latest short. Swapping the female-centric documentary setting for a male-focused fictional one, while her feature was all about the secrets that are revealed in the shared communal space, this concerns those that might be concealed there.

Shot like a Caravaggio painting by Smoke Sauna Sisterhood cinematographer Ants Tammik - who has perfected the technique of shooting within the challenging environment that a working sauna presents - light shafts in as a group of men relax after coming together to raise a roof. Initially, this could be another documentary, not that the men are in the business of doing much chatting, focused instead on the sauna itself and the job they have just completed. Soon the camera moves, its focus as much on reaction shots as who is doing.

When I last interviewed Estonian filmmaker Anna Hints it was to discuss her Sundance 2023-premiering Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, which would go on to win the World Cinema Documentary Competition Directing Award. (It also nabbed Best Documentary at the 36th European Film Awards on its way to becoming Estonia’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars.) The film offers quite a unique peek into a Unesco-designated tradition that for centuries has allowed women like those the director (and contemporary artist and experimental folk musician) respectfully lenses to bond, heal and reveal in a safe space of smoke and sweat. And […]

The post “In Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, the Women are Voicing Out Their Deepest Feelings and Thoughts, But Here in Sauna Day the Focus is On the Unsaid”: Anna Hints and Tushar Prakash on their Cannes-Debuting short Sauna Day first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

When I last interviewed Estonian filmmaker Anna Hints it was to discuss her Sundance 2023-premiering Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, which would go on to win the World Cinema Documentary Competition Directing Award. (It also nabbed Best Documentary at the 36th European Film Awards on its way to becoming Estonia’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars.) The film offers quite a unique peek into a Unesco-designated tradition that for centuries has allowed women like those the director (and contemporary artist and experimental folk musician) respectfully lenses to bond, heal and reveal in a safe space of smoke and sweat. And […]

The post “In Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, the Women are Voicing Out Their Deepest Feelings and Thoughts, But Here in Sauna Day the Focus is On the Unsaid”: Anna Hints and Tushar Prakash on their Cannes-Debuting short Sauna Day first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

“No Other Land,” a documentary about the resistance of Palestinian activists against forced displacement and settler expansion in the West Bank community of Masafer Yatta, won the Millennium Docs Against Gravity grand prize in the main competition. The jury, comprised of the writer of this article Variety critic Murtada Elfadl, Anna Hints, director of “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood,” and Lauren Greenfield, director of “The Queen of Versailles,” cited its “power in crystallizing grave injustice into a story of friendship and how hope can thrive only when everyone has freedom.”

The filmmakers – the Palestinian and Israeli collective of Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor – could not attend the closing ceremony because of the political situation and the award was accepted on their behalf by the ambassador of the Palestinian Authority in Poland. The jury awarded two special mentions, citing the strength of the 12 films in competition. The first to “Sugarcane,...

And the winner is: “Simon of the Mountain.”

The film, directed by Federico Luis – and marking his feature debut – was awarded Cannes’ Critics Week Grand Prix.

Sold by Luxbox, the Argentina-Chile-Uruguay production stars Lorenzo “Toto” Ferro, the lead in breakout “El Angel,” as Simon, 21, a lonely only son who falls in with a group of discapacitated kids, feigning a discapacity. Thanks to their friendship he flowers, discovering love, sex and a sense of belonging.

“I am thinking not only about what it means to us, but also about what it means to the people in Argentina who, over the course of the next four years, will struggle, trying to make local films,” said Luis, accepting the award.

“At home, there are people who still think we make films no one wants to see. I hope this will change it and that Argentinian people – and then the whole world – will watch Argentinian cinema.

Record Intake

The European Film Academy has added a record 709 new members in its 2024 annual intake. New members include Cate Blanchett (Australia/U.K.), Jovan Marjanović (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Maria Bakalova (Bulgaria), Juraj Lerotić (Croatia), Anna Hints (Estonia), Ariane Toscan du Plantier (France), Stéphan Castang (France), David Thion (France), Marie-Ange Luciani (France), Latifa Saïd (France), Rebecca Houzel (France), Thomas Hakim (France), Sami Mustafa (France/Kosovo), Mohamed Siam (France), Hanna Bergholm (Finland), Hamze Bytyçi (Germany) and Christian M. Goldbeck (Germany).

The intake also includes Behrooz Karamizade (Germany), Jerry Hoffmann (Germany), Aylin Tezel (Germany), Jasmin Tabatabai (Germany), Sofia Exarchou (Greece), Phedon Papamichael (Greece), Kate McCullough (Ireland), Matteo Garrone (Italy), Enzo d’Alò (Italy), Francesco Montagner (Italy), Uljana Kim (Lithuania), Cindy Jansen (Netherlands), Fatih Rağbet (Netherlands), Cristi Puiu (Romania), Anca Puiu (Romania), Elene Naveriani (Switzerland), Selahattin Paşalı (Turkey), Molly Manning Walker (U.K.), Melanie Hoyes (U.K.), Lizzie Francke (U.K.), Charles Newland (UK), Jad Salfiti (U.

Film Bridge After Dark Sets ‘Helloween’ As First Film On Genre Slate With Shogun Films

Exclusive: Film Bridge After Dark and Shogun have set British horror pic Helloween as the first title on their joint slate of genre pics. The film is written and directed by Phil Claydon (Lesbian Vampire Killers) and stars Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott (Renegades), Michael Paré (Streets of Fire), and Ronan Summers (Code Of Silence) It’s currently in post-production. Film Bridge will be selling the movie worldwide at Cannes. Set during the sinister “killer clown” craze of 2016, Doctor Ellen Marks (Sothcott), aided by investigative journalist John Parker (Paré), traces the source of the phenomena to one of her patients – incarcerated, charismatic serial killer Carl Cane (Summers) who is using the insidious clown symbolism to recruit an army of the disenfranchised and launched a murderous anarchist movement from London across the globe.

European Film Academy Adds Record...

Cannes Competition titles Bird by Andrea Arnold and Emila Perez by Jacques Audiard are among the films eligible for the Queer Palm at this year’s festival.

Any title playing in Cannes which deals in anyway with Lgbtqiaa+ themes is eligible for the Queer Palm, whose jury this year will be presided over by Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont. Competing films are drawn from all Cannes selections: Official Selection, Un Certain Regard, Critics’ Week, Directors’ Fortnight and Acid.

Bird centres on a 12-year-old who lives with her single father and brother in a squat and seeks attention and adventure elsewhere; among...

The Millennium Docs Against Gravity Festival, taking place in seven cities in Poland from Friday to May 19 and then online from May 21 to July 3, has grown exponentially in the last few years. In fact it is now, as the people behind it proclaim, the largest film festival in Poland.

Artistic director Karol Piekarczyk explains, “There is a culture of watching films and of watching films with subtitles in Poland. There are a lot of arthouse cinemas, in comparison to the U.K. for example. Even in small cities.”

Piekarczyk has worked for the festival for the past seven years and this edition will be his fourth as artistic director. He sees his job as “reminding everyone that our priority is and has always been the audience. However, we are a documentary festival, and whether we like it or not, audiences mainly choose films based on topic. We as programmers focus more on the quality.

Mubi’s May 2024 (streaming) lineup embraces their latest (theatrical) coup with a Radu Jude program. In addition to Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World arriving May 3, the Romanian director is highlighted with a six-film program launching on May 10. Lee Chang-dong and Bertrand Bonello are each given two-title highlights. While most of us can’t be at Cannes (I guess that’s a pun), the festival’s greatest tradition, booing, is celebrated with Jodie Foster’s The Beaver, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives, and Olivier Dahan’s Grace of Monaco. Among new releases, Al Warren’s Dogleg and the Ross brothers’ Gasoline Rainbow are notable selections.

As Lee Chang-dong recently told us in an extended interview, “Experiences in my life are what shaped me as a filmmaker, as obvious as that sounds. My artistic taste was shaped by the mountains and fields of my childhood village,...

After unveiling their feature film line-up on Monday, now the spotlight is on the shorts this morning. La Semaine de la Critique aka Critics’ Week have a set of ten competition films (those filmmakers can workshop their eventual feature in their Next Step Programme) and a trio of shorts by established filmmakers make up the Special Screening triple bill. Smoke Sauna Sisterhood‘s Anna Hints teamed with Tushar Prakash for “Sauna Day” which flips the focus on the gender and looks at Southern Estonian men. Feature filmmaker Lucie Borleteau arrives with the teen tale about wanting a first kiss in “1996 ou les Malheurs de Solveig.”…...

Pope Francis, Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Un chief Ban Ki-Moon will be honored at the upcoming Cinema for Peace gala in Berlin on February 19.

The long-running gala run by the Cinema for Peace Foundation will be accompanied by the inaugural World Forum on the Future Of Democracy, Tech and Humankind.

The latter event will run from February 18 to 19 at the Allianz Forum next to the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin with the aim of promoting the renewal of democracy and freedom at a time when both are under threat.

The Cinema for Peace Foundation was created in 2008 as an international non-profit organization with the goal to foster change through film. Over the years it has worked with a host of stars including Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and George Clooney.

Clinton and Ban will attend the February 19 gala in person while Pope Francis will be shown receiving his award in a recorded video.

Co-Production Market will support 34 feature film projects from around the world.

The 2024 Berlinale has selected 34 feature film projects for its Co-Production Market, including Sally Potter’s Alma.

The festival has also chosen 202 Berlinale Talents, and 14 titles for its Forum Special strand.

Scroll down for the full list of Co-Production Market projects

The 34 feature projects in the Co-Production Market hail from 27 countries, and were selected from 318 submissions – a slight increase on 2023.

Potter’s Alma follows a family battling survivor guilt and sibling rivalries while on an expedition to scatter the ashes of an archaeologist. It will be produced by Christopher Sheppard...

One of the favorites to make the Oscar documentary feature shortlist this year takes viewers to a remote area of Estonia, within the healing space of the smoke sauna. It is an ancient tradition in that part of the world, a way of “connecting family and friends to cleanse body and soul inside a place of peace and contemplation.”

Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, directed by Anna Hints and produced by Marianne Ostrat, won Best Documentary at the European Film Awards last weekend, and on Tuesday earned a PGA Award nomination for Outstanding Producer of a Documentary Motion Picture. Hints shot the film across different seasons, in winter and summer, with a group of women taking part in the smoke sauna ritual: hours in the hot space, naked in the semi-darkness, releasing physical and emotional toxins.

‘Smoke Sauna Sisterhood’

Hints traces her roots to the Southeast Estonian culture of Võromaa and Setomaa...

By Glenn Charlie Dunks

The Academy has announced the long list for this year’s Best Documentary Feature category. 168 titles have qualified for members of the doc branch to whittle down to a 15-wide shortlist and then a nominated five. That figure is higher than last year, which had 144 eligible titles and which culminated in a win for Daniel Roher’s Navalny.

If you were to ask me right now what titles I expect to find on this year’s shortlist, I might say the following: Against the Tide (Sarvnik Kaur), American Symphony (Matthew Heineman), Anonymous Sister (Jamie Boyle), The Eternal Memory (Maite Alberdi), Four Daughters (Kaouther Ben Hania), Lakota Nation vs United States, Little Richard: I Am Everything (Lisa Cortés), The Mission, Occupied City (Steve McQueen), Silver Dollar Road (Raoul Peck), Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (Anna Hints), A Still Small Voice (Luke Lorentzen), Still: A Michael J Fox Movie (Davis Guggenheim...

French director Justine Triet’s Cannes Palme d’Or winning film Anatomy Of A Fall swept the awards at 36th European Film Awards in Berlin this evening, winning Best European Film, Director, Screenplay (with Arthur Harari) and actress for Sandra Hüller.

There was a strong selection this year with other films and directors leading the nominations including Aki Kaurismäki with Fallen Leaves, Agnieszka Holland with Green Border, Matteo Garrone with Me Captain, Jonathan Glazer with The Zone Of Interest.

The European Films Awards haul for Anatomy Of A Fall will likely ramp up growing Academy Awards buzz around the film and its star Sandra Hüller.

“I can’t say whether it will happen or not but yes… now we are in the race and we will continue the campaign in the U.S. and we’re totally involved, let’s see,” Triet said in an press conference after the ceremony.

Justine Triet’s courtroom drama “Anatomy of a Fall” triumphed at the 36th European Film Awards, taking statuettes for best film, director, screenwriter and actress at the ceremony, which took place Saturday in Berlin. It had been previously announced that it had won the best editing prize as well.

“Anatomy of a Fall” won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and recently took the screenplay and international feature awards at the Gothams, but was not selected to represent France in the international feature film category of the Oscars. Despite that setback, Triet said the film would still compete for other categories at the Oscars. “Now we are in the race, of course. We continue down that road,” she said at a press conference following the ceremony in Berlin.

Triet, who co-wrote the screenplay with Arthur Harari, said that they had written it for Sandra Hüller, winner of the best actress award.

Justine Triet’s acclaimed French courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall has won best film at the 2023 European Film Awards, held Saturday evening, Dec. 9 in Berlin.

Sandra Hüller, a double nominee in the best actress category, won for her barnstorming turn in Anatomy of a Fall as a writer who may have killed her husband.

Accepting her prize, Hüller, speaking to the various conflicts raging in and around Europe at the moment, called for a moment of silence from the audience to “silently, strongly, vividly, imagine peace.”

Justine Triet took the best directing honor for Anatomy and shared the best screenplay honor with Arthur Harari for their joint script to the twisty murder mystery. A couple in real life, Triet and Harari said writing the script, which is a piercing dissection of a marriage in crisis, “put our relationship to the test but thankfully we survived.”

Anatomy of a Fall...

The ceremony kicks off live from Berlin today (December 9) at 19:30 Cet.

The European Film Awards is taking place in Berlin tonight (December 9), and Screen will be revealing the winners live from the ceremony, kicking off at 19:30 Cet.

German actor Britta Steffenhagen is hosting the awards, which will take place at the Arena Berlin.

Screen will be live-streaming the ceremony below, or you can refresh the page and scroll down to read the winners as they are announced.

Three of the best European film nominees world premiered at Cannes. Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winner Anatomy Of A Fall...

The smoke sauna practices of southern Estonia will likely be unfamiliar to most viewers entering the cloistered world of Anna Hints’s Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, and it’s to the film’s credit that any pedagogy it does offer comes only in allusive, piecemeal ways. Some research will reveal that there’s a metaphysical dimension that separates the Estonian spa tradition from that of other cultures, but Hints’s documentary is in no hurry to dispel secrets.

Throughout the immersive Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, Hints centers the experiential qualities of women gathering in a smoke sauna deep in the woods over what appears to be a year of screen time. It focuses particularly on therapeutic sessions of soul-baring conversation undertaken at length in blistering heat. Such epiphanies are the implied intent of the Estonian nature spas, and Hints’s candid presentation of these moments is testament to both her technical commitment...

At the Award Ceremony of the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF), awards were presented to the winners of the festival’s five competition programmes and PÖFF’s youth and children’s film sub-festival Just Film.

The jury of the Official Selection Competition, headed by Trine Dyrholm, selected Emma Dante’s drama Misericordia as their favourite, handing the film the Grand Prix for Best Film.

Dante adapted her own play of the same name, telling the story of three prostitutes who live in the wasteland by the sea, where a village of outcasts has emerged. Its star Simone Zambelli also scooped the Best Actor Award.

The jury commented on the film with the following statement: “A powerful film about how to stay supportive and, above all, exhibit humanity in a marginalised environment. Beautifully directed, shot and acted, the Best Film Award goes to Misericordia.”

The Best Director Award went toManuel Martín CuencaforAndrea’s Love.

At the Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn, Estonia, the Baltic Film sidebar has showcased an impressive range of work from the Baltic states – Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia – including the post-Soviet documentary “The Last Relic” and the 3D fable “Twittering Soul,” the hand-painted animation “The Peasants” and the Estonian oddity of “Spit in My Face.”

A palpable urgency can be felt as these former Soviet countries find themselves once more quite literally on the frontline between Europe and Russia and seek to affirm more keenly their own identity.

Leading the way this year has been “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood,” an intimate documentary of women ridding themselves of their demons in the smoke sauna of the title. Having picked up prizes in Sundance and now Tallinn, the film is heading into the Oscar race as Estonia’s nominee and is in the running in the documentary category also.

Speaking with Variety, director...

Emma Dante’s film took the Grand Prix, plus best actor for Simone Zambelli.

Emma Dante’s Italian drama Misericordia won the award for best film in Official Selection Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, at the awards ceremony held tonight.

Adapted from Dante’s own play of the same name, the film follows three sex workers living in a wasteland by the sea, where the only light in their lives is the young man they care for together.

Scroll down for the full list of winners

Simone Zambelli also received the best actor award in the section.

Italian writer-director Emma Dante’s “Misericordia” has won the top prize at the Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn, Estonia. Adapted from her own play, her third feature tells the story of a young man (Simone Zambelli) with learning difficulties, cared for by a group of sex workers on an island, protecting him from the cruelty of his abusive father. It’s a raw portrait of a marginalized group of people, mixing natural beauty of the locations with the grime of everyday existence.

Zambelli also took the award for best actor, for his role as the man-child at the center of the drama. The best actress prize was shared by Lubna Azabal, who plays a teacher in Jawad Rhalib’s “Amal,” and Kim Higelin, who stars in the controversial French drama “Consent,” directed by Vanessa Filho, as a teenager having an affair with a manipulative and exploitative 50-year-old writer.

The...

Cinema Eye Honors, a group the recognizes excellence in the artistry and craft of nonfiction filmmaking, announced the nominees for its 17th annual awards on Thursday, November 16th. The seven films nominated for Outstanding Nonfiction Feature are “20 Days in Mariupol,” “32 Sounds,” “The Eternal Memory,” “Four Daughters,” “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project,” “Kokomo City,” and “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie.” Ceh will present the winners at the annual awards ceremony to be held on January 12, 2024.

Leading the pack with six overall nominations is “Kokomo City,” a debut film from director D. Smith about the lives of four black trans sex workers. Smith was nominated for Outstanding Debut and Outstanding Direction. The film’s other three nominations were for Cinematography and Sound Design, as well as among The Unforgettables selection.

See Key dates for Best Documentary Feature contenders

Also earning nominations for their debut film was Mstyslav Chernov...

The Cinema Eye Honors for achievement in nonfiction and documentary films and series has announced nominees for the 17th awards ceremony. “Kokomo City” from D. Smith led the nominees with six. “20 Days in Mariupol,” “32 Sounds” and “The Eternal Memory” each received five nominations. The nominees for outstanding fiction feature also include “Four Daughters,” “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project” and “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie.”

Outstanding direction nominees include Maite Alberdi for “The Eternal Memory,” Sam Green for “32 Sounds,” Kaouther Ben Hania for “Four Daughters,” Smith for “Kokomo City,” Claire Simon for “Our Body” and Wim Wenders for “Anselm.”

The Cinema Eye 2024 Awards Ceremony takes place on Jan. 12 at the New York Academy of Medicine in East Harlem.

Full list of nominees follows.

2024 Cinema Eye Honors Nominations

Outstanding Nonfiction Feature

20 Days in Mariupol

Directed by Mstyslav Chernov

Produced by Mstyslav Chernov, Michelle Mizner, Raney Aronson Rath...

The submissions for this year’s Oscar for best international feature include some of the best of world cinema. Below is a rundown of the entries for the 96th Academy Awards. The 15-title shortlist is slated to arrive on Dec. 21, prior to the nominations announcement on Jan. 23 and the ceremony itself, which is dated for March 10.

Albania

Alexander

Director: Ardit Sadiku

Logline: A documentary about an engineer who, after being fired by the navy for dissidence, hijacked a warship to get himself an dhis family to freedom.

Prodco: Ardit Sadiku Film

Argentina

The Delinquents

Director: Rodrigo Moreno

Logline: A ticklish, gently surreal saga following two colleagues who collude in robbing the bank where they work.

U.S. distribution: Mubi

Armenia

Amerikatsi

Director: Michael A. Goorjian

Logline: An Armenian-American relocates to Armenia after WWII and ends up in a Soviet prison for the crime of wearing a tie.

U.S.

Five European films dominate the nominations.

The European Film Academy has revealed the nominees for the main categories of the European Film Awards which take place in Berlin on December 9.

The Academy has shortlisted five of the highest profile films to come out of Europe this year for its best European film category, with the directors of the five films also all nominated in the best European director category. The five films also dominate the acting and screenwriting categories.

Three of the best European film nominees world premiered at Cannes. Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winner Anatomy Of A Fall...

Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves and UK director Jonathan Glazer The Zone Of Interest lead the nominations in the main categories of the 36th European Film Awards which will take place in Berlin on December 9.

The dramas are nominated in all five key categories of Best European Film, Director, Screenwriter as well as Best Actress and Actor. (Click on film titles for Deadline reviews and interviews)

Both films world premiered in Competition at Cannes this year, with The Zone Of Interest winning the Grand Prix and Fallen Leaves clinching the Jury Prize. They are representing the UK and Finland respectively in the Best International Feature Film Oscar race.

French director Justine Triet’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anatomy Of A Fall follows with four nominations in all the categories except for best actor, while Poland’s Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border, which won the Venice Special Jury Prize,...

Five European films dominate the nominations for this year’s Awards

The European Film Academy has revealed the nominees for the main categories of the European Film Awards which take place in Berlin on November 9.

The Academy has shortlisted five of the highest profile films to come out of European this year for its best European film category, with the directors of the five films also all nominated in the best European director category. The five films also dominate the acting and screenwriting categories.

Three of the best European film nominees world premiered at Cannes. Justine Triet’s Palme d...

Jonathan Glazer’s harrowing Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest leads the nominations for this year’s European Film Awards (EFAs), picking up five nominations, including for best film and best director, in nominations announced via video on Tuesday.

Zone of Interest, the U.K. official entry for the 2024 Oscars in the best international feature category, also scored Efa nominations for best screenwriter, for Glazer, and best actress and best actor noms for leads Sandra Hüller and Christian Friedel.

Hüller will be competing against herself in the best actress category, having picked up a second Efa nom for her starring role in Justine Triet’s courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall. The Palme d’Or winner recieved four Efa noms, including for best European Film, best director for Triet and best screenplay for Triet and co-writer Arthur Harari.

Other best European film nominees include Matteo Garrone’s refugee drama Io Capitano from Italy,...

Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest” and Aki Kaurismäki’s “Fallen Leaves” led the European Film Awards race after nominations for the major categories were revealed Tuesday.

The films were nominated in all five major categories – European film, director, screenwriter, actor and actress.

Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” was close behind with four nominations – film, director, screenwriter and actress.

All three films were prizewinners at Cannes: “The Zone of Interest” took the festival’s Grand Prize, “Fallen Leaves” won the Jury Prize, and “Anatomy of a Fall” was the Palme d’Or winner.

Agnieszka Holland’s “Green Border,” the Special Jury Prize winner at Venice, took three nominations – film, director and screenwriter.

“Me Captain,” Venice’s best director winner, and “The Teachers’ Lounge” each nabbed two nominations.

“Afire,” “Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry,” “How to Have Sex,” “La Chimera” and “The Promised Land” took one nomination each in major categories.

Oscar voters in the Best International Feature Film category have received their group assignments for this year’s initial round of voting, with 89 films included on the seven lists that the Academy has sent to members.

The lists, which were obtained by TheWrap, include presumed favorites “The Zone of Interest” (United Kingdom), “The Taste of Things” (France), “The Promised Land” (Denmark) and “Perfect Days” (Japan), along with a number of documentaries, among them Estonia’s “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood,” Brazil’s “Pictures of Ghosts” and Ukraine’s “20 Days in Mariupol.”

The 89 films are four short of the record of 93 qualifying films in the category. The list of group assignments does not make up the Academy’s official list of eligible films; it’s possible that assigned films might still fail to qualify before first-round voting begins on Dec. 18. For the most part, though, films that are included in the group...

The 2023 Cinema Eye Honors have unveiled the 20 titles for its Audience Choice Prize Long List, with voting now open.

The 17th annual awards ceremony also recognized the best nonfiction and documentary films and series across five Broadcast categories and a Shorts List with 10 of the year’s top documentary short films, as well as the 20 films in the running for the Audience Choice Prize Long List.

This year’s list includes films from Cinema Eye Honors alumni including “The Eternal Memory,” “American Symphony,” “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie,” “Stamped from the Beginning,” “32 Sounds,” “A Compassionate Spy,” “Confessions of a Good Samaritan,” “The Mission,” “The Pigeon Tunnel,” and “Stephen Curry: Underrated.”

Hulu series “The 1619 Project” and Showtime’s “Nothing Lasts Forever” lead the Broadcast Film and Series nominations with three nods each. The “1619 Project,” adapted from Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones’s work with The New...

Final five nominations to be announced on November 2.

Steve McQueen’s Occupied City, Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall and Todd Haynes’ May December are among the titles on the latest British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) longlists, for Best Feature Documentary and Best International Independent Film.

15 films are on the documentary longlist, with five of them by first-time directors; with 17 films on the international list.

Scroll down for the longlists

Alongside McQueen’s film combining analysis of Amsterdam during the Second World War with the present day, documentary titles include Kevin MacDonald’s High & Low: John Galliano about the...

Matthew Heineman’s “American Symphony” leads all films with six nominations for the 8th annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards, the Critics Choice Association announced on Monday.

The film, a Netflix doc that follows musician Jon Batiste and his wife, writer Suleika Jaouad, as Batiste prepares a composition for Carnegie Hall and Jaouad battles the return of her cancer, was nominated in the Best Documentary Feature, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Score and Best Music Documentary categories. Mstyslav Chernov’s “20 Days in Mariupol,” D. Smith’s “Kokomo City” and Davis Guggenhein’s “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie” received five nominations each.

Apart from “American Symphony,” “20 Days in Mariupol,” “Kokomo City” and “Still,” films nominated in the Best Documentary Feature category were “Beyond Utopia,” “The Deepest Breath,” “The Eternal Memory,” “Judy Blume Forever,” “The Mission” and “Stamped From the Beginning.”

All of those films received nominations in multiple categories,...

There were no clear Oscar signals coming out of the 31st Hamptons International Film Festival. Still, there were some admirable stats for the eastern Long Island event that’s a favorite with filmmakers and locals. This year Hiff screened a lineup of films that were 49% female-directed and represented 42 countries from around the world. The festival had a record number of submissions this year and screened 72 features and 46 shorts with eight world premieres, three North American premieres, 12 US premieres, 13 East Coast premieres, and seven New York premieres.

SEEJennifer Esposito (‘Fresh Kills’): First-time director brings feminist mob movie to 31st Hamptons Film Festival

Best Narrative Film went to “20,000 Species Of Bees,” directed by Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren (watch the trailer above). “Tell Them You Love Me,” directed by Nick August-Perna, nabbed the Award for Best Documentary Feature. Hiff audiences selected narrative feature “Fresh Kills,” by first time director Jennifer Esposito, and documentary feature “Angel Applicant,...