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It’s clear from the opening moments why the narrative feature debut of Kavich Neang, finally arriving in the US nearly two years after its 2021 Venice premiere, caught the attention of its co-producer Jia Zhangke. Like much of the Chinese filmmaker’s internationally-lauded work, Neang’s debut dives into the effects of gentrification on a younger population struggling to get by as their country cautiously opens its arms to international developers. But the similarities end there: where Jia’s films can double up as grander state-of-the-nation addresses, Neang doesn’t widen his focus beyond the characters; they’re at risk of displacement from the city they’ve always known, but this critique of gentrification largely remains implicit, visible only allegorically through their daily struggles.

This semi-autobiographical film is set against the backdrop of the titular White Building, an apartment block in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh that was eventually...

A recipient of Sgiff's Sea-shorts Grant in 2020, and backed by a generous support from Angelina Jolie, International Rivers Ngo, and numerous Indiegogo donors to “The River Snail” project,“Further and Further Away” world-premiered at this year's Berlinale.

“Further and Further Away” is screening at Busan International Short Film Festival

A young indigenous Bunong woman and her brother are about to move to Phnom Penh, in order to search for a better life. The brother is excited but the girl seems to be reluctant. Before that, however, they decide to spend one last day in their rural village in northeastern Cambodia, which was lost due to the development of a nearby hydroelectric dam a few years earlier. Eventually, the sister starts roaming in the area.

Unfolding as a kind of tour guide in a village that essentially does not exist anymore, Polen Ly begins his film as a social drama, before...

Can you introduce yourself in a few lines?

Jean-Marc Thérouanne : I am the General Delegate, co-founder and co-artistic director of the Festival International des Cinémas d’Asie de Vesoul. I have a degree in law, a master’s degree in history and the Capes diploma in teaching information.

I was president of the jury of the Silk Road International Film Festival Of Xi’an 2014 (China), of the Art Film Festival Of Kosice 2017 (Slovakia) and of the Festival Fenêtre sur Courts of Dijon 2010 (France), member of international juries in France and abroad: Chungmuro International Film Festival Of Seoul 2009 (Korea), Osian’Cinefan Of New-Delhi 2009 (India), Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival Of Manila 2011 (Philippines), Golden Tulip Film Festival Of Dushanbe 2019 (Tajikistan), Tashkent International Film Festival 2022 (Uzbekistan), . ..

My commitment to culture, especially to cinema, has earned me several awards such as: Korean Cinema Award (2018), Officier des Palmes académiques (2018), Chevalier...

A recipient of Sgiff’s Sea-shorts Grant in 2020, and backed by a generous support from Angelina Jolie, International Rivers Ngo, and numerous Indiegogo donors to “The River Snail” project,“Further and Further Away” world-premiered at this year’s Berlinale.

Further and Further Away is screening at Singapore International Film Festival

A young indigenous Bunong woman and her brother are about to move to Phnom Penh, in order to search for a better life. The brother is excited but the girl seems to be reluctant. Before that, however, they decide to spend one last day in their rural village in northeastern Cambodia, which was lost due to the development of a nearby hydroelectric dam a few years earlier. Eventually, the sister starts roaming in the area.

Unfolding as a kind of tour guide in a village that essentially does not exist anymore, Polen Ly begins his film as a social drama,...

The annual film event in Laos that was for the past 12 years known as the Luang Prabang Film Festival has given up its name in order to go ahead with next month’s edition.

“Organizers have recently acquiesced to a name change in order to continue to produce this year’s event, scheduled for Dec. 8- 11, and will move forward using only the iconic blue chair to identify the festival,” they said in a statement that also unveiled the festival’s film selection.

Contacted by Variety, organizers had no additional comment beyond their published statement.

The festival has been operated on a non-profit basis with the backing of private sector and local government sponsors in the Unesco Heritage town of Luang Prabang. It has supported the Laos local film industry, operated talent development workshops and provided free-of-charge screenings of recent Southeast Asian films to the Laos public.

The 2022 selection includes...

Exclusive: Brooklyn-based arthouse distributor KimStim has acquired all U.S. rights for French director Mikhaël Hers’ fourth feature The Passengers Of The Night, starring Charlotte Gainsbourg as a recently divorced mother battling to keep her family afloat.

The film world premiered in competition in Berlin before playing at Hong Kong and Sydney and is set for sold-out screenings at the BFI London Film Festival this week.

The Passengers Of The Night unfolds against a period of optimism in France in the early 1980s as Francois Mitterrand took the reins of power as the country’s first socialist president in more than two decades.

Gainsbourg stars as a woman whose marriage is coming to an end, leaving her to support her two teenage children on her own. She finds work at a late-night radio show. There, she encounters a troubled teenager, whose free spirit will have a lasting impact on her...

The Luang Prabang Film Festival held annually in Laos’ cultural hub will make an in-person return to action in December.

The festival operated as a virtual event in 2020 under pandemic conditions. But was forced to cancel its 2021 edition.

The town has no permanent movie theater and the festival uses temporary facilities, but previous editions have attracted big crowds. All events are open to the public and are free of charge.

Over four days organizers will put on a mix of some twenty film screenings, public discussions and Q&a sessions with local audiences. This year, the Lpff will add a second night venue.

The additional venue will allow organizers to broaden the selection beyond the Thai and Lao staples. The full lineup will be announced in October.

Laos fully reopened to tourists in May this year and the festival’s comeback was made possible by the return of corporate sponsors in early June.

Cambodian director Kavich Neang has captured the heartbreak of residents evicted from their Phnom Penh flats with tenderness and beauty

This documentary tells a classic story of gentrification: an inner-city housing estate demolished to make way for a luxury development; ordinary people being priced out of the city. The city here is Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where in 2017 a modernist housing block known affectionately as the White Building was pulled down. Director Kavich Neang’s family was among the nearly 500 to be evicted, and this film predates Neang’s fictionalised account of the same events.

In interviews, Neang has spoken about his embarrassment as a kid telling people that he lived in the White Building. It was home to artists, musicians and civil servants, but in later years became run down: it acquired a reputation for prostitution and drug-taking, and was downgraded to a slum.

Arthouse distribution, streaming and production company Mubi has taken all rights for the U.K., Ireland, Italy, Turkey, India and Southeast Asia (excluding the Philippines and theatrical rights in Cambodia) for Davy Chou’s “Return to Seoul,” which plays in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival. MK2 films is handling international sales.

Sony Pictures Classics recently picked up rights in North America, Latin America, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand.

The film centers on 25-year-old Freddie, who on an impulse to reconnect with her origins, returns to South Korea for the first time, where she was born before being adopted and raised in France. The headstrong young woman starts looking for her biological parents in a country she knows so little about, taking her life in new and unexpected directions.

The film stars Park Ji-Min, Oh Kwang-Rok, Guka Han, Kim Sun-Young, Yoann Zimmer and Louis-Do De Lencquesaing.

After originally studying interior design, Cambodian Danech San turned to filmmaking, working with Anti-Archive on “Three Wheels” as production manager, and “Diamond Island” as casting assistant and assistant production manager. Her debut film, “A Million Years”, world premiered at the 2018 Busan International Film Festival. It subsequently was named Best Southeast Asian Short Film at the 2018 Singapore International Film Festival and won the Arte Short Film Award at the 2019 Internationales Kurz film Festival Hamburg. (source: Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival). For her second film, she cooperates again with Davy Chou, who handles the role of producer along Daniel Mattes, while as production designer, we find another Cambodian filmmaker, Sreylin Meas.

“Sunrise in My Mind” is screening at Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival

The story takes place in a beauty salon, where the protagonist, Pich, is washing the hair of a female client under the sound of Boney M’s “Hands...

Celebrating its 10th anniversary the Helsinki Cine Aasia festival will once again present a selection of the latest films from East and South-East Asia. Along with better known film countries like Korea and Japan, the program also includes films from countries like the Philippines and Cambodia. Many of the festival’s films have been seen at international festivals and have received awards. The opening film is Anatomy of Time (2021) from Thailand, and altogether the program includes 20 films from eight different countries.

Familiar filmmakers

Japanese film director Ogigami Naoko’s newest film Riverside Mukolitta comes to Helsinki Cine Aasia in May. Ogigami became well known to the Finnish audiences with her film Kamome shokudō (2006) which was shot in a restaurant at Punavuori, Helsinki where the story was also set. Ogigami has since become known for the unique characters in her stories. Her latest visit to Finland was in 2019 during the retrospective...

Golden Lion winner “Happening” will open the 2022 New Directors/New Films Festival, Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art announced Tuesday.

Now in its 51st year, the New Directors/New Films Festival screens the best films made by young filmmakers, many of which tend to be their debut features. The festival has served as an early showcase for many notable directors, including Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Kelly Reichardt, Pedro Almodóvar, Spike Lee, Lynne Ramsay, Michael Haneke, Wong Kar Wai, Guillermo del Toro and Luca Guadagnino. This year, the festival will screen 26 features and 11 shorts.

“Portraits of individuals and communities navigating uncertain and turbulent circumstances in pursuit of freedom, self-determination, and survival set a remarkably contemplative tone for the lineup,” 2022 Nd/Nf co-chair and MoMa department of film curator La Frances Hui said in a statement. “This year’s new directors look inward and draw on events past and present...

Kavich Neang was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 1987. First, he studied next to Rithy Panh before joining the Busan Film Academy in 2013. In 2014, he co-created Anti-Archive with Davy Chou and Steve Chen. After that, Kavich took part of the Cinéfondation residence in Cannes in 2017-18. In 2011, Fica Vesoul presented 3 of his short films, like “Dancing in the Building” and the documentary “Where I Go ?” co-produced with Bophana and Rithy Panh, was preseted in Vesoul in 2013. “White Building” is his first feature film.

On the occasion of his presence in Fica Vesoul as President of the Marc Haaz Jury, we speak with him about the White Building and his days living there, having a dancer as a protagonist, Cambodia and the local film industry, superstition, and many other topics.

What is your ‘obsession’ with the White Building?

As you know, the White Building is my home, the place where...

Here are all the winners of the 28th Vesoul Iff Asian Cinemas that took place from the 1st to the 8th of February in Vesoul, France.

Honorary Golden Cyclo:

(offered by the Agglomeration Community and the city of Vesoul)

Mrs. Leila Hatami, actress, Iran for her entire career, and Mr. Kôji Fukada, director, Japan for the all of his work.

Cyclo D’Or:

(offered by the Regional Council of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté), International Jury: President: Ms. Leila Hatami, actress (Iran), members: Ms. Suha Arraf, director (Palestine), Ms. Tran Bich Quan, distributor, producer (France), Mr. Zig Dulay, director (Philippines)

Yanagawa by Zhang Lu (China) Beautiful, strong images, based on a powerful and perfectly told story, lead us to the discovery of brotherly relationship and love

Grand Jury Prize:

Along The Sea by Fujimoto Akio (Japan) Exposing a calm, restful nature on the one hand, harsh and merciless on the other, the film confronts...

Line-up includes projects from producers Winnie Tsang and Stanley Kwan and an Israel-Italy co-production.

New projects from producers Winnie Tsang and Stanley Kwan and an Israel-Italy co-production are among the 15 work-in-progress projects selected for the Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum’s (Haf) 20th anniversary edition

Among the selection, Hkiff industry director Jacob Wong highlighted two projects: Borrowed Time and The Sunny Side Of The Street. “They are the first projects to have progressed through the Haf eco-system, from Film Lab to In-development projects, and now onto Wip,” he said.

Both won script consultation service awards at Haf Film Lab in...

France’s Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinemas kicks off Feb. 1 with a gala screening of Iranian auteur Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s 2001 Cannes winner “Kandahar” and will conclude on Feb. 8 with Kazakhstan filmmaker Yerlan Nurmukhambetov’s “The Horse Thieves. Roads of Time.”

The guest of honor at the festival’s 28th edition will be Japanese filmmaker Fukada Koji, who will be presented with an Honorary Cyclo at the opening ceremony. All 10 of Fukada’s features and four shorts will be presented at Vesoul, marking the first complete retrospective for the filmmaker. In all, 20 films from Japan will play at the festival, including Nakano Ryota’s “The Asadas” and Miyazaki Hayao’s “My Neighbor Totoro.”

The festival also pays tribute to Chinese master Xie Fei, whose masterpiece “Woman Sesame Oil Maker” won the Berlin Golden Bear in 1993.

This year, the international competition jury is presided over by Leila Hatami, Berlin Silver...

Leila Hatami, Iranian actress, silver bear in Berlin for A Separation by Ashgar Faradhi, an Iranian film with one million admissions in France, will be the president of the international Jury. The other members are: Suha Arraf, director (Palestine), Zig Dulay, director (Philippines), Yerlan Nurmukhambetov, director (Kazakhstan), Tran Bich Quan, distributor-producer (France).

Koji Fukada, the rising star of Japanese directors, will present all of his films in world premiere.

Both will receive a Cyclo d’or d’honneur for their entire career or their work during the opening ceremony on February 1, 2022.

Moshen Makhmalbaf, multi-award-winning Iranian director, and Atiq Rahimi, Afghan director, Goncourt Prize 2008, signatories of the appeal of July 29, 2021 “let’s save Afghan artists! », will present several films during the Afghan Day.

A tribute will be paid to filmmaker Marc Haaz, technical director of Fica, who died tragically, at the age of 33, on July 30, 2021.

The complete films of Xei Fei,...

Popular project and talent development focused on Arab filmmakers will run virtually for third year running.

The Doha Film Institute’s project and talent development event Qumra will take place virtually for the third year running, from March 18 to 23.

The eighth edition had been set to run as a physical event in and around Doha’s Souq Waqif district for the first time since 2019 but a fresh wave of Covid cases in the Gulf territory in early January has forced the Dfi to move it online again.

Additionally, travel restrictions and quarantining protocols would have also made it difficult for...

The International Jury of the 28th Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinemas will be joint. The President of the Jury will be by Leila Hatami, Iranian Francophone and Francophile actress, winner of Silver Bear in Berlin for “A Separation” by Ashgar Faradhi, Iranian film with million admissions in France.

The other members are, Suha Arraf, screenwriter of The Bride Syrienne and The Lemon Trees, director of Villa Touma (Palestine), Zig Dulay, director, Cyclo d’or Vesoul 2018 for Baggage (Philippines), and Yerlan Nurmukhambetov, director of The Horse Thieves – Road of Time and Walnut Tree awarded at Vesoul 2016, (Kazakhstan). The International Jury awards three prizes: Le Cyclo d´Or (offered by the Regional Council of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté), the Grand Prix du Jury and the Prix du Jury (offered by the Departmental Council of Haute-Saône).

6 other juries will judge the 17 films of the fiction and documentary competitions, presented in international, European or French premieres.

Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s “Drive My Car,” Japan’s entry to the Academy Awards’ international category, looks to be the odds on favorite from Asia to win the category.

The drama with a theater world backdrop follows the trajectory of South Korean four-statuette winner “Parasite” in that it began its winning ways at Cannes and is festooned with awards en route to the Oscars. “Parasite” won the Palme d’Or, which “Drive My Car” did not, with that honor this year going to Julia Ducournau’s “Titane,” which became France’s entry to the category. It also recently won at the New York Film Critics Circle.

Nevertheless, “Drive My Car” won three awards at Cannes and has the added advantage of U.S. distribution, where it is currently on theatrical release.

The 2008 win for Takita Yojiro’s “Departures” remains Japan’s only win since the category was made competitive in 1956.

While...

The eponymous edifice of Cambodia’s International Feature Oscar entry, White Building, is barely white at all by the time we encounter it. A low-rise apartment block in Phnom Penh — the sort of teeming anthill of humanity familiar to anyone who has spent time in a South East Asian city — it is stained with tropical rain, its cement falling off in chunks, its cat’s cradles of improvised electrical wiring truly shocking, in every sense of the word. Director Kavich Neang grew up here.

The building was demolished in 2017 to make way for something more profitable but, before that happened, Neang filmed it from every angle. His film gives it a second, fictional life as the center of a story of a community in quiet crisis. Most of the people living in the white building’s apartments are current or retired government employees and their families; inner urban life is all they know.

The Bangkok Asean Film Festival kicked off on Wednesday evening with the screening of “One Second” Zhang Yimou’s homage to cinema and veiled critique of China’s Cultural Revolution.

The festival runs Dec 8-13 and is one of the first major cultural showcases to take place in person after Thailand has opened its borders to welcome visitors. Fully-vaccinated international visitors to Thailand no longer needs to go through quarantine, though they are required to have a Pcr test upon arrival.

Coincidentally, it is taking place in the week that film trade show and convention CineAsia was to have taken place in the city. CineAsia was canceled due to the uncertainty of Thailand’s Covid response and anticipated travel difficulties.

The non-competitive feature film part of the program includes: the Locarno-winning “Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash” by Indonesian director Edwin; Cambodian Kavich Neang’s Venice entry “White Building...

Screen gets the lowdown on this year’s eight projects.

Eight projects have been pitched to international festival directors, sales agents, distributors and producers during the Coming Soon night at TorinoFilmLab’s (Tfl) 2021 Meeting Event this week.

The films are all at the final stages of production and have either been developed through one of the TorinoFilmLab’s programmes or been the recipients of one of Tfl’s awards.

The event was held in-person at the Scuola Holden school in Turin.

Previous Coming Soon selections of recent years have included Carlo Francisco Manatad’s Whether The Weather Is Fine (Featurelab...

Every year since its creation in 1956, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) invites the film industries of various countries to submit their best film for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. The award is presented annually by the Academy to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United States that contains primarily non-English dialogue and that was released theatrically in their respective countries between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2021. The shortlist of fifteen finalists is scheduled to be announced on 21 December 2021. The final five nominees are scheduled to be announced on 8 February 2022.

Here are the Asian Submissions for Best International Feature Film. There are some excellent movies in this bunch and we have seen and reviewed already some of them.

Armenia

“Should the Wind Drop” by Nora Martirosyan

Azerbaijan

“The Island Within” by Ru Hasanov

Bangladesh

“Rehana” by Abdullah Mohammad Saad

Bhutan

“Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom...

Les Films du Losange has announced the French release of the film White Building, directed by Cambodian Kavich Neang, on December 22. It is co-produced by Davy Chou, himself a Franco-Cambodian director.

White Building tells the story of 20-year-old Samnang, who lives in a historic building in Phnom Penh. He faces the departure of his best friend, the illness of his father and the imminent demolition of his lifelong home; pressures which all arise and intersect at this moment of sudden change. Piseth Chhun, the main actor, won the Orizzonti Award for Best Actor for his role as Samnang at the 78th Venice Film Festival this year.

A sensual and scintillating ode to youth, the film also addresses the issues of the transmission of culture, globalization and the transformation of the Asian continent.

With five short films under his belt since 2011, White Building is director Kavich Neang’s first feature film.

These are the submissions for the international film Oscar by country. The deadline for entries was Nov. 1. A shortlist of 15 films will be announced Dec. 21 and the nominations will come out Feb 8. The 94th Academy Awards will take place on March 27 at the Dolby Theatre. The Academy has not yet released a final list of entries; Variety compiled this list from individual country’s announcements.

Albania

Two Lions Heading to Venice

Dir. Jonid Jorji

Key cast: Vasjan Lami, Alessandra Bonarotta

Logline: A pair of filmmakers heading to the Venice festival are sidetracked from their destination after meeting two adult film actors.

Prodco: Bajo Films

Algeria

Heliopolis

Dir. Djaafar Gacem

Key cast: Souhila Mallem, Mehdi Ramdani, Cesar Duminil

Logline: True story of an uprising in the Algerian town of Guelma that was violently put down by the colonial French rulers.

Prodco: Hewes Pictures

Argentina

The Intruder

Dir. Natalia Meta

Key cast: Guillermo Arengo,...

The Singapore International Film Festival is to be held as an in-person event this year, after operating as an online-offline hybrid in 2020. It will open with Indonesian filmmaker Edwin’s “Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash” and run Nov. 25- Dec. 5, 2021.

With a new program director, Thong Kay Wee the festival will be aligned as five new thematic strands: Foreground, Milestone, Standpoint, Undercurrent and Domain. It will also maintain its Singapore Panorama section dedicated to local works and its familiar Asian feature competition and Southeast Asian short film competition.

The competition includes: Palestinian director Mohamed Diab’s “Amira”; Thai director Jakrawal Nilthamrong’s “Anatomy of Time”; Aizhan Kassymbek’s “Fire”; Panah Panahi’s ”Hit The Road”; Chinese director Qiu Jiongjiong’s “A New Old Play”; Indian Oscar-contender “Pebbles,” by P.S. Vinothraj; Bangladesh’s Oscar contender “Rehana” by Abdullah Mohammad Saad; “Whether the Weather is Fine,” by Filipino director Carlo Francisco Manatad...

China’s Pingyao International Film Festival got under way on Tuesday with the gala screening of Zhang Lu’s new drama film “Yanagawa.” The festival will unspool Oct. 12-19 with a familiar package of competition screenings a work in progress section, a film lab, a project market and a tribute section dedicated to Tsui Hark.

Organizers announced an ambitious twelve-title competition section (“Crouching Tigers”) for first second and third films from around the world.

These include: “Amparo,” directed by Simón Mesa Soto; “As Far As I Can Walk,” directed by Strahinja Banovic; “Feathers,” directed by Omar El Zohairy; “Mama, I’m Home” directed by Vladimir Bitokov (Russia); “Pedro” directed by Natesh Hegde (India); “Playground” (Un Monde) directed by Laura Wandel (Belgium); “Prayers for the Stolen” (Noche de Fuego) directed by Tatiana Huezo; “Rehana” (Rehana Maryam Noor) directed by Abdullah Mohammad Saad; “The Tale of King Crab” (Re Granchio) directed by...

Festival, which opens today, also annouced its Crouching Tigers and Hidden Dragons competition sections.

This year’s Pingyao International Film Festival (Octobner 12-19) will open with Korean-Chinese director Zhang Lu’s Yanagawa and close with Xu Lei’s The Great Director.

Starring Ni Ni, Zhang Luyi and Xin Baiqing, Yanagawa revolves around two brothers who travel to Japan in search of the woman they both loved in their youth. The film, which is receiving its world premiere at Busan in the Icons section, is produced by Midnight Blur Films and sold internationally by Hishow Entertainment. The Great Director is described...

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2022 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2022 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

The 94th Academy Awards will take place on March 27, 2022 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. This is the first time since 2018 that the ceremony will take place in March, having moved to avoid conflicting with the Winter Olympics.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly non-English dialogue...

There is an eerie, otherworldly beauty to the opening shot of Kavich Neang’s “White Building.” Accompanied by the pressure-cooker whine that introduces the more uncanny sections of Jean-Charles Bastion’s score, a drone camera, steady as though it were mounted on tracks in the sky, drifts over the eponymous structure, looking down. Even just the rooftop of this vast, scabbed Phnom Penh .

Seen from this angle, the building — Neang’s childhood home, which recurred in his shorts and documentaries, and of which he amassed quite a bit of footage before it was demolished in 2017 — looks like an intricately scruffy map of an abandoned continent. It’s crazy-paved in cracked concrete and crisscrossed with electrical wires, with drifts of sooty trash gathering in its corners and dirty vents staring into dangerously haphazard fuse boxes, and it is not immediately clear if anyone still lives inside. But as soon as we see it from the side,...

Documentary Exposure from The Babushkas Of Chernobyl director Morris gets its world premiere.

The 57th Chicago International Film Festival has unveiled its international competitions line-up, a roster that includes Venice Silver Lion winner The Power Of The Dog, Tatiana Huezo’s Prayers For The Stolen, and the world premiere of Holly Morris’s documentary Exposure.

The programme includes the international premiere of Franziska Stünkel’s The Last Execution. The festival runs October 13-24 and is the longest running competitive festival in North America.

The International Feature Competition line-up comprises: Péter Kerekes’s 107 Mothers (Slo-Czech-Ukr); Mohammed Diab’s Amira (Egy-Jor-uae-Saud...

by Nathaniel R

I was hoping to catch at least one feature in Venice that would be selected by its home country as an Academy Award submission and I did! Kavich Neang's debut feature (after several shorts) White Building will represent Cambodia for the next Oscar race. I'm already hoping it makes the finals both because the Academy is far too stingy with Asian cinema and because it's very good.

White Building impresses immediately with an aerial shot over a tenement building that looked like a cross between a Rauschenberg and a Pollock, a messy collage of patchwork color and intricate city grime and electrical wiring of the world we’re about to descend into. The building is not white given years of decay but surely once was. We initially have fun with a trio of young men including Samnang (Piseth Chhun) as they share a motorbike around the city,...

The 65th BFI London Film Festival (Lff) in partnership with American Express today announced the full 2021 programme line-up that will be presented both in cinemas and virtually, incorporating some of the most popular elements of the successful 2020 edition into the full large-scale festival model.

Over 12 days from 6 to 17 October, flagship venue BFI Southbank and the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, the Lff gala venue for 2021, will make London’s South Bank one of two London hubs at the heart of the film festival experience. Films will also screen in a number of cinemas in London’s West End, with a selection of films at 10 venues in cities and towns across the UK. Audiences will enjoy a rich and varied programme of fiction, documentary, animation, artists’ moving image, short film, restored classics from the world’s archives as well as programmes of exciting international works made in immersive and episodic forms.

Submissions from Cambodia, Ecuador, Morocco, Poland and Switzerland have been announced so far.

Entries for the 2022 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

Submissions from Cambodia, Ecuador, Morocco, Poland and Switzerland have been announced so far.

The 94th Academy Awards will take place on March 1, 2022 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. This is the first time since 2018 that the ceremony will take place in March, having moved to avoid conflicting with the Winter Olympics.

The eligibility rules remain the same: an international...

The drama is Kavich Neang’s feature debut.

Kavich Neang’s feature debut White Building has been selected to represent Cambodia in the best international feature film category for the 2022 Academy Awards.

Screen can also reveal the first trailer for drama, which is set to premiere in the Horizons strand at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

White Building follows 20-year-old Samnang and his group of friends in a landmark tenement housing block in Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, called White Building. The boys harbour dreams of dancing on television talent contests, while their parents lead more traditional lives. When the White Building faces demolition,...

The drama is Kavich Neang’s feature debut.

Kavich Neang’s feature debut White Building has been selected to represent Cambodia in the best international feature film category for the 2022 Academy Awards.

Screen can also reveal the first trailer for drama, which is set to premiere in the Horizons strand at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

It follows 20-year-old Samnang and his group of friends in a landmark tenement housing block in Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, called White Building. The boys harbour dreams of dancing on television talent contests, while their parents lead more traditional lives. When the White Building faces demolition,...

The 65 British Film Institute (BFI) London Film Festival has unveiled its full program and the headline galas include several films that have been gaining fame recently.

Among the galas are Pablo Larrain’s “Spencer,” with Kristen Stewart; Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog,” with Benedict Cumberbatch; Reinaldo Marcus Green’s “King Richard,” with Will Smith; and Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch,” featuring a host of stars including Timothée Chalamet, Tilda Swinton and Léa Seydoux.

The galas also include Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast,” Paul Verhoeven’s “Benedetta,” Eva Husson’s “Mothering Sunday,” Edgar Wright’s “Last Night in Soho,” Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter,” Joanna Hogg’s “The Souvenir: Part II” and Sarah Smith and Jean Philippe-Vine’s “Ron’s Gone Wrong.”

Special presentations include Clio Barnard’s “Ali & Ava,” Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Drive My Car,” Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Memoria,” Julia Ducournau’s “Titane,” Jacques Audiard’s “Paris, 13th District,...

Emerging Cambodian filmmaker Kavich Neang has a deep personal connection with the White Building, an iconic structure that was demolished in 2017.

Neang’s fiction film “White Building” has its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons strand, and the filmmaker has also explored the subject in the Rotterdam-winning documentary “Last Night I Saw You Smiling” (2019).

The White Building was built in 1963 by Cambodian architect Lu Ban Hap and Russian architect Vladimir Bodiansky, in the middle of Phnom Penh. During the Khmer Rouge regime, it was completely empty as the whole country was forced to leave their homes in the city, and many of them were killed during that period.

Post-Khmer Rouge, many artists, painters, Cambodian classical performers, traditional musicians, singers, circus performers and sculptors returned to their homes, and some were invited to live in the White Building.

“My father was one of the sculptors,” Neang told Variety.

Charles Gillibert, the thriving French producer behind Leos Carax’s Cannes prizewinning “Annette,” spoke to Variety about his recent acquisition of Les Films du Losange, one of France’s oldest and most revered auteur-driven production and distribution companies.

Gillibert teamed up with French financier Alexis Dantec, former managing director of the film financing group Cofinova, to complete the acquisition deal for Les Films du Losange, which is at Venice with Kavich Neang’s “White Building” playing in the Horizons section.

Les Films du Losange was founded by Barbet Schroeder and Eric Rohmer in 1962 and was under the leadership of Margaret Menegoz since 1975. The award-winning banner, which is also involved in international sales, has been producing cult movies by some of Europe’s best known filmmakers, notably Rohmer, Schroeder, Roger Planchon, Jacques Rivette, Michael Haneke, Jacques Doillon, Mia Hansen-Love.

In total, the company has a library of about 100 prestige films many...

The programme for the 2021 Venice Film Festival has been unveiled, and includes new films from Pedro Almodóvar, Jane Campion, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michelangelo Frammartino, Pablo Larraín, Paul Schrader, Ridley Scott, and more.Parallel MothersCOMPETITIONParallel Mothers (Pedro Almodóvar)Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon (Ana Lily Amirpour)Un Autre Monde (Stephane Brize)The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion)America LatinaL’Evenement (Audrey Diwan)Official CompetitionThe Hole (Michelangelo Frammartino)Sundown (Michel Franco)Lost Illusions (Xavier Giannoli)The Lost Daughter (Maggie Gyllenhaal)Spencer (Pablo Larrain)Freaks Out (Gabriele Mainetti)Qui Rido Io (Mario Martone)On The Job: The Missing 8 (Erik Matti)Leave No Traces (Jan P. Matuszyński)Captain Volkonogov EscapedThe Card Counter (Paul Schrader)The Hand of God (Paolo Sorrentino)Reflection (Valentyn Vasyanovych)The Box (Lorenzo Vigas)Out Of COMPETITIONFeaturesDune (Denis Villeneuve)Il Bambino Nascosto (Roberto Andò)Les Choses Humaines (Yvan Attal)Ariaferma (Leonardo Di Costanzo)Halloween Kills (David Gordon Green...

Taking place September 1 through 11, the Venice Film Festival has now unveiled its lineup, after a few teases of what it contains (the opening night selection of Madres Paralelas by Pedro Almodovar and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune). Among the selections are Jane Campion’s The Power of a Dog, Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter, Pablo Larrain’s Spencer, Ana Lily Amirpour’s Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon.

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut The Lost Daughter, Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel, Paolo Sorrentino’s The Hand of God, and Edgar Wright’s The Last Night in Soho will premiere there, along with new shorts by Radu Jude and Tsai Ming-liang.

Check out the line below for the festival that will feature 50% capacity at screenings.

Venezia 78 – Competition

Madres Paralelas, dir: Pedro Almodovar

Mona Lisa And The Blood Moon, dir: Ana Lily Amirpour

Un Autre Monde, dir: Stéphane Brizé

The Power Of The Dog,...

The 2021 Cannes Film Festival brought the international film circuit back to life in roaring fashion earlier this month (French filmmaker Julia Ducournau became the second woman director to win the Palme d’Or thanks to Neon release “Titane”), and next up are the trio of major fall film festivals in September: the Venice Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, and Toronto International Film Festival. Venice is first out of the gate by launching its 78th edition Wednesday, September 1. The lineup for Venice 2021 has now been revealed.

As previously announced, Pedro Almodóvar will kick off the 2021 Venice Film Festival with the world premiere of his new drama “Parallel Mothers.” The film will debut in competition and vie for the festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion. “Parallel Mothers” is written and directed by Almodóvar, and stars both regular and new collaborators, including Penélope Cruz, Milena Smit, Israel Elejalde, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Julieta Serrano,...

This year’s line-up includes five female directors in competition.

The line-up of the 78th Venice Film Festival (September 1-11) has been announced by festival president Roberto Cicutto and artistic director Alberto Barbera.

Scroll down for the full line-up

This year’s selection saw the festival take a backward step for gender balance, with five female directors selected in the main competition, down from last year’s eight. 26% of films in the overall line-up are directed by women, down from 28% in 2020.

The high-profile titles picked for competition this year include Pablo Larrain’s Spencer; Paolo Sorrentino’s The Hand Of God...

The Venice film festival runs September 1-11.

The line-up for the 78th Venice Film Festival (September 1-11) is being unveiled this morning at around 11:00 Cest (10:00 BST) by festival president Roberto Cicutto and artistic director Alberto Barbera.

The press conference will be live-streamed here below, and the story will be updated with the films as they are announced.

As previously announced, Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers will open the festival in competition. Denis Villeneuve’s Dune will also have its world premiere at the festival out of competition on September 3.

Bong Joon Ho will preside over the competition jury that also includes Chloé Zhao,...

The seventh edition will nurture 48 projects by first and second-time directors hailing mainly from the Arab world.

The Doha Film Institute (Dfi) kicked off the online edition of its seventh annual talent and project development meeting Qumra on Friday.

Unfolding from March 12-17, the event will nurture 48 short and feature-length films at different stages of their creation from 41 countries, that have previously received the support of the Dfi grants programme.

They range from in-development projects such as Moroccan director Kamal Lazraq’s Casablanca-set kidnap caper Hounds to projects in post-production including Lebanese filmmaker Mounia Akl’s Costa Brava Lebanon,...

Pia Borg’s ‘Michelle Remembers’ and Lucrecia Martel’s ‘Chocobar’ among those to win awards.

Pia Borg’s “documentary horror” Michelle Remembers was among a raft of winners at TorinoFilmLab’s annual Meeting Event, which shifted entirely online this year due to the pandemic.

The co-production forum, which usually takes place in the Italian city of Turin, virtually awarded its prizes this evening, marking the end of the five-day event that ran November 16-20.

Scroll down for full list of winners

The first of two €50,000 Tfl production awards, funded by Creative Europe, went to Michelle Remembers, a documentary exploring the...

Doha Film Institute (Dfi) supports 39 projects in spring 2020 funding round.

Upcoming films by Palestinian filmmaking duo Tarzan and Arab Nasser, award-winning Cambodian director Kavich Neang and Iraqi filmmaker Shawkat Armin Korki were among the 39 projects that have been granted support by the Doha Film Institute as part of its spring 2020 funding round.

Three-quarters of the selected projects are from the Middle East and Africa.

The Nasser brothers won support for their fiction feature Gaza My Love (previously announced as Apollo) which is in post-production. It revolves around a fisherman who is emboldened to court a market stallholder he has long...

Wip initiative will run simultaneously with the Haf main programme (August 26-28) and Filmart Online (August 26-29).

The Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum (Haf) has announced the 22 projects, including ten narrative features and 12 documentaries, which have been selected for the Work-in-Progress (Wip) section of this year’s Haf.

The Wip initiative will run simultaneously with the Haf main programme (August 26-28) and Filmart Online (August 26-29). Both events were postponed from March due to the Covid-19 pandemic and were recently forced to move online as travel restrictions are still in place across the region and in Hong Kong.

Haf will...

Anti-­Archive is a Cambodian film production company created in January 2014 by Davy Chou, Steve Chen, and Kavich Neang. In 2016, Park Sung-ho joined as a partner, and in 2020, Daniel Mattes joined as a fifth partner. Anti­-Archive produces and co-­produces fiction and documentary films by the emerging, new generation of Cambodian filmmakers, as well as films by international, independent directors shooting in Cambodia. Among the projects the company has completed are “Diamond Island” and “Last Night I Saw You Smiling“, while “California Dreaming” is their last film.

“California Dreaming” is screening at Osaka Asian Film Festival

The 16-minute short revolves around two girls. Sarita is visiting an ocean-front resort to get away from the hectic rhythm of Pnom Penh, where she meets another young woman, Sak, who works in the hotel and used to live in the city before she came to the resort. Sak takes Sarita to visit...