Notícias

Those unacquainted with Kleber Mendonça Filho’s particular tonal register may find themselves bewildered that a film titled “The Secret Agent” The Secret Agent may be anything other than a conventional, tightly wound political thriller. Those of us familiar with his languid, context-dependent Brazilian works, meanwhile, can only be left to smirk at just how far the critic-turned-filmmaker is willing to take his alienating tactics in service of a greater framework that yields, up to now, his most challenging and rewarding results yet.

As the Brazilian public continues to reckon with the reverberating traumas of a military dictatorship that lasted a grueling 21 years, the nation’s cinema continues to reflect the passion of a people whose widespread pride in their endurance has only proven more and more poignant in a global landscape so willing to backslide into conservative chaos. “The Secret Agent,” on that front, proves a potent examination of just how unassuming—and,...

Illustration by Franz Lang.The last time a Tom Cruise blockbuster premiered in Cannes, the year was 2022, and among the 21 Palme d’Or hopefuls was Albert Serra’s Pacifiction, the kind of work that, in my book at least, exemplifies the electrifying cinema the festival’s Official Competition was designed to showcase. I’ve been chasing an equivalent high at all the editions I attended since, with very mixed results. This year, the festival’s top program promises another cinematic cornucopia, but the menu feels almost conspicuously familiar. A good number of the titles announced so far were directed by Cannes regulars and/or Official Competition habitués; even the few exceptions, like Ari Aster’s Eddington, aren’t exactly debut features. And yet, naïve as this will sound, I like to think that the tidal forces that keep pulling us back to this overpriced stretch of the French Riviera have...

Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent, one of the more buzzy features to debut in Competition this year in Cannes, has been acquired by Mubi.

The streamer has picked up the film for the UK, Ireland, India, and Latin America, excluding Brazil.

The Secret Agent is led by Wagner Moura and also stars Maria Fernanda Cândido, Gabriel Leon, Carlos Francisco, Alice Carvalho, and Hermila Guedes. The film was produced by Emilie Lesclaux. Co-producers include Nathanaël Karmitz, Elisha Karmitz, Fionnuala Jamison, Olivier Barbier, Leontine Petit, Erik Glijnis, Fred Burke, and Sol Bondy.

The film’s synopsis reads: Brazil, 1977. Marcelo, a technology expert in his early 40s, is on the run. He arrives in Recife during carnival week, hoping to reunite with his son, but soon realizes that the city is far from being the non-violent refuge he seeks.

Filho is best known for his last fiction feature, Bacurau, which debuted...

Art house streamer and distributor Mubi has acquired The Secret Agent, from writer and director Kleber Mendonça Filho (Ghost Portrait, Bacurau, Aquarius), for the U.K., Ireland, India and Latin America, except for Brazil. The political thriller has been a standout in the Cannes Film Festival competition.

The Portuguese-language movie, about a technology expert returning to his hometown in 1977 to reunite with his young son and flee the country, premiered at Cannes on Sunday. The Secret Agent stars Wagner Moura, Maria Fernanda Cândido, Gabriel Leon, Carlos Francisco, Alice Carvalho and Hermila Guedes.

Mubi will unveil release plans for the various territories in the near future. It struck the deal with MK2, which is handling international sales on the movie. Neon has acquired the film for North America.

The Secret Agent is set in Brazil in 1977. “Marcelo, a technology expert in his early 40s, is on the run,” reads a synopsis.

Neon has acquired the North American rights to Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent.”

The film premiered in competition at Cannes on Sunday. Wagner Moura, Maria Fernanda Cândido, Gabriel Leone, Carlos Francisco, Alice Carvalho, and Hermila Guedes star.

Neon plans for a North American theatrical release later this year.

“The Secret Agent” is set in Recife, Brazil, in 1977 and follows Marcelo (Moura), a technology expert in his early 40s, who is on the run. He arrives in Recife during carnival week, hoping to reunite with his son but soon realizes that the city is far from being the non-violent refuge he seeks.

Variety chief film critic Peter Debruge said, “Mendonça began his career as a reporter and critic, and that sensibility infuses every frame, striking an enticing balance between originality and homage.”

The film was produced by Emilie Lesclaux. Co-producers include Nathanaël Karmitz, Elisha Karmitz, Fionnuala Jamison, Olivier Barbier,...

When Armando (Wagner Moura) finally resolves to seek a fake passport and one-way ticket out of Brazil for himself and his young son, he asks his father-in-law to suggest a spot where he could meet a fixer. The old man recommends a room inside his place of work: a cinema. This choice (a movie theatre standing as the only safe refuge from death) is both hopelessly romantic and in keeping with the infectious cinephilia of Kleber Mendonça Filho, director of The Secret Agent, an unsettling and rousing thriller into which Armando staggers as a tragic hero. Anyone familiar with the Brazilian’s filmography will recognize these tributes as a recurring motif, but even neophytes will appreciate the affection he reserves for the movies––those who make them and the places that house them. A critic-turned-filmmaker, Mendonça Filho is the rare cineaste who can make his love palpable and contagious. When...

An inspired streak of absurdism runs through The Secret Agent (O Agente Secreto) connected to an urban legend about a “hairy leg” that moves autonomously, causing trouble in the northeastern Brazilian capital of Recife in 1977, when the country remained under military dictatorship. The leg turns up or is mentioned various times — being pulled from the messy guts of a large shark carcass; stolen from the morgue and disposed of by evidence-tampering police; tagged as the culprit in sensational tabloid crime stories; and literally kicking asses in a gay cruising ground, where men are getting it on under trees or on park benches.

The rogue limb is a clever metaphor for the regime’s persecution of the queer community, among other groups, including dope-smokers, longhairs and anyone else who might be automatically branded as a communist. The entire scene is a brilliant comic set-piece, starting with the gorgeous sight of chonky...

In his 2023 essay film “Pictures of Ghosts,” a haunted cine-memoir that uses Recife’s once-glorious movie palaces as a lens through which to examine — and to mourn — the cultural amnesia of a country so determined to forget itself, Brazilian auteur Kleber Mendonça Filho somewhat counterintuitively observes that “Fiction films are the best documentaries.” If Mendonça had to make a documentary in order to illustrate that idea, the sober but gripping thriller that it inspired him to shoot next proves the point with gusto.

Born from the process of researching “Pictures of Ghosts” (a fact that becomes rewardingly self-evident over the course of its 158-minute runtime), “The Secret Agent” recreates 1977 Recife with even more vivid detail than Mendonça’s documentary was able to restore his childhood vision of the city through archival video and photographs alone. Focused but sprawling, the director’s first true period piece is absolutely teeming with the music,...

The opening credits to director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent” set the scene as Brazil, 1977, and then add, “a period of great mischief.” And that might be an appropriate capsule description of the film itself, a mischievous romp that includes secret identities, corrupt cops, intricate schemes, Carnaval frivolity, a severed leg inside a shark’s stomach, some very bloody and brutal action, a deliberately garish ’70s cinema style and a bit of thoughtfulness and emotion spread out over almost two and a half hours.

Does it all hold together? Nope. “The Secret Agent” is all over the place – not literally, since like almost all of Filho’s films, it takes place in the Brazilian city of Recife, his hometown – and cohesiveness or coherence are not high on its list of attributes. But its messiness is part of its charm and part of the point; a film that took...

With the 2025 Cannes Film Festival kicking off on Tuesday, one key question is what movies not to miss on the Croisette.

From competition veterans like the Dardenne brothers, Kelly Reichardt and Joachim Trier to newly promoted auteurs like Ari Aster, Oliver Hermanus, Carla Simón and Oliver Laxe, THR’s chief film critic rounds up 10 essential premieres

Die, My Love

Lynne Ramsey first turned heads in Cannes with her stunning 1999 feature debut Ratcatcher, about a 12-year-old boy growing up in poverty in the Glasgow housing projects. The Scottish director returned to the Croisette three years later with Morvern Callar, graduating to the official competition with We Need to Talk About Kevin in 2011 and You Were Never Really Here in 2017. Admirers have had a long wait for Ramsey’s fifth feature, a thriller with a vein of comedy she describes as “dark and fucked-up,” starring Jennifer Lawrence as a new mother walloped by postpartum depression,...

Cinema Tropical, the premier presenter of Latin American cinema in the United States, has announced its annual list of the Best Latin American and U.S. Latinx Films of 2024. This year’s prestigious selection showcases 32 exceptional films—26 from across Latin America and six from U.S. Latinx filmmakers—representing a vibrant spectrum of contemporary storytelling. These films will compete for the 15th Annual Cinema Tropical Awards, with winners to be revealed on January 14, 2025, at a ceremony at Film at Lincoln Center in New York City.

The selected films span diverse genres, themes, and countries, highlighting the creative and cultural richness of Latin American cinema. Festival favorites such as La Cocina by Alonso Ruizpalacios, The Delinquents by Rodrigo Moreno, Pepe by Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias, and Sujo by Fernanda Valadez and Astrid Rondero are among the contenders for top honors. The winners will be recognized in categories including Best Film,...

Early in Pictures of Ghosts, writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho cuts to a television interview with his late mother, Joselice Jucá, a historian and a key figure in the film. The interviewer asks why she’s chosen an oral history as the medium for a project on Brazilian abolitionist leader Joaquim Nabuco. As she explains her process, Mendonça Filho’s voice enters to note that “it may seem like I’m discussing methodology, but I’m talking about love.” The filmmaker seems to have taken his mother’s emotional investment in her subject matter to heart, as the methodology in Pictures of Ghosts—a historical document of his hometown of Recife, with a particular focus on its movie theaters—is ultimately in service of the filmmaker’s own personal relationship to the people, places, and images that he captures.

It’s hardly the first time that Mendonça Filho’s relationship with...

The Criterion Channel has unveiled its streaming lineup for August 2024, which features an eclectic mix of independent films showcasing the work of auteurs from around the world.

The boutique service will become the exclusive streaming home of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2021 comedy “Licorice Pizza,” and will celebrate the occasion by adding four more of his films to the channel: “The Master,” “There Will Be Blood,” “Punch-Drunk Love,” and “Magnolia.” Anderson’s frequent collaborator Philip Seymour Hoffman will additionally be celebrated on the streaming service as part of a larger retrospective. Many of the late actor’s most iconic roles, including “Capote” and “Synecdoche, New York,” will be included, along with his sole directorial outing “Jack Goes Boating.”

The channel will also highlight several other prominent filmmakers including Preston Sturges, who helped pioneer the modern rom-com through films like “The Lady Eve” and “The Palm Beach Story,” and prolific Egyptian auteur Youssef Chahine.

The Criterion Channel’s August lineup pays tribute to auteurs of all kinds: directors, actors, and photographers, fictional or otherwise. In a notable act of preservation and advocacy, they’ll stream 20 titles by the Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine, here introduced by the great Richard Peña. More known (but fun all the same) is a five-title Paul Thomas Anderson series including the exclusive stream of Licorice Pizza, as well as a Philip Seymour Hoffman series that overlaps with Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love (a Criterion Edition this month), and The Master, plus 25th Hour, Love Liza, and his own directing effort Jack Goes Boating. Preston Sturges gets five movies, with Sullivan’s Travels arriving in October.

Theme-wise, a photographer series includes Rear Window, Peeping Tom, Blow-up, Close-Up, and Clouzot’s La prisonnière; “Vacation Noir” features The Lady from Shanghai, Brighton Rock, Kansas City Confidential, Purple Noon, and La piscine. Alongside the aforementioned PTA and Antonioni pictures,...

Filmmakers James Gray, Andrew Haigh and Agnieszka Holland have joined the main competition jury of the 81st Venice Film Festival (August 28-September 7).

They are joined by Brazilian director and screenwriter Kleber Mendonça Filho; Mauritanian director, screenwriter and producer Abderrahmane Sissako; Italian director and screenwriter Giuseppe Tornatore; German director and screenwriter Julia von Heinz; and Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi.

As previously announced, the jury will be chaired by Isabelle Huppert, and award the Golden Lion for best film and the other official awards.

Gray’s Ad Astra screened in competition at Venice in 2019, and his directorial debut Little Odessa received the...

Everything is ready for the 14th edition of the Festival Internacional de Cine Unam (Ficunam), which will take place from June 13 to 20 in Mexico City. As part of the Atlas section, we will finally be able to see Harmony Korine’s new experimental film in Cdmx: Aggro Dr1ft, starring rapper Travis Scott and notorious for having been “shot entirely through termal lens.” This section, dedicated to international auteur cinema, also includes recent works by Wang Bing (Youth (Spring)), Mati Diop (the documentary Dahomey), Tsai Ming-liang (Abiding Nowhere), Kleber Mendoça Filho (Pictures of Ghosts), Pedro Costa (The Daughters of Fire), and Hong Sang-soo (A Traveler’s Needs). Straight from Cannes comes Payal Kapadia’s Grand Prix-winning drama All We Imagine as Light. This Mumbai-set film is part...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Brazilian auteur Kleber Mendonça Filho (“Bacurau”) is set to direct “The Secret Agent,” a gripping political thriller headlined by “Civil War” star Wagner Moura. The film is set in the late 1970s during the final years of Brazil’s military dictatorship.

MK2 Films, the sales banner behind the Oscar-winning “Anatomy of a Fall,” will introduce the project to buyers at the Cannes Film Market. Now in pre-production, “The Secret Agent” is being produced by Brazil’s Cinemascopio and Mk Productions, whose credits include Oscar-nominated films such as Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World” and Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Cold War.”

Moura, who broke through internationally with his Golden Globe-nominated performance as Pablo Escobar in the Netflix series “Narcos,” will star as Marcelo, a university professor in his 40s who is on the run. He travels from São Paulo to the seaside city of Recife during Carnival week, hoping to reunite with his son.

Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any individual contender. As other formal (and informal) polls suggest, competitions are fluid and subject to change based on buzz and events. Predictions are updated every Thursday.

Visit the prediction pages for the respective ceremonies via the links below:

Oscars | Emmys | Grammys | Tonys

2024 Oscars Predictions:

Best International Feature Wim Wenders’ ‘Perfect Days’

Weekly Commentary: The United Kingdom is poised to win its first Academy Award with Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest” and what a deserved win it will be.

But while I have the floor: it’s time for the...

Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any individual contender. As other formal (and informal) polls suggest, competitions are fluid and subject to change based on buzz and events. Predictions are updated every Thursday.

Visit the prediction pages for the respective ceremonies via the links below:

Oscars | Emmys | Grammys | Tonys

2024 Oscars Predictions:

Best Documentary Feature

Weekly Commentary: With the Directors Guild of America and BAFTA Awards in hand, in addition to the tragic news of the death of Alexei Navalny, the subject of the Oscar-winning “Navalny” last year, “20 Days in Mariupol” is too important to ignore.

Will Win:...

Kleber Mendonça Filho followed his epic Bacurau with a lower-key reflection on his personal cinematic life. A hit at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Pictures of Ghosts distills a lifetime of the Brazilian’s cinephilia through archival documentary, mystery, film clips, and personal memories to bring back to life downtown Recife’s classic movie palaces from the 20th century, many of which are mostly gone. Ahead of Grasshopper Film’s January 26 release, there’s a new trailer.

As David Katz said in his review, “If the death of cinema is imminent, at least Kleber Mendonça Filho can play it out with some vintage Tropicália. It’s becoming a nice leitmotif of the Brazilian director’s career, whose ultraviolent Bacurau curtain-raised with Gal Costa’s ‘Não Identificado,’ and latest effort Pictures of Ghosts, which premiered as a Special Screening at Cannes, eases in with Tom Zé’s deceptively jaunty ‘Happy End.

Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho is best known for ambitious narrative swings like Palme d’Or contenders “Bacurau” and “Aquarius.” But with his latest film, which exuberantly melds documentary and narrative filmmaking techniques, Mendonça Filho turns the camera back on his native country and toward his medium. “Pictures of Ghosts,” which represented Brazil in the race for the 2024 Best International Feature Film Academy Award, immortalizes the lost movie houses of Brazil, specifically in Recife (the capital of Brazil’s state of Pernambuco). Watch the trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below.

Here’s the official synopsis: “Pictures of Ghosts” “is a multidimensional journey through time, sound, architecture and filmmaking, set in the urban landscape of Recife, Brazilian coastal capital of Pernambuco: a historical and human territory, examined through the great movie theatres that served as spaces of conviviality during the 20th century. Having hosted dreams and progress, these places have also embodied...

As an internationally renowned director, Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho is, in a manner of speaking, a citizen of the world: Regularly premiering films at Cannes, frequently traveling to festivals elsewhere in Europe, Australia, and the United States.

But anyone who knows Filho understands his heart is and always will be in Recife, in the northeastern state of Pernambuco. He was born there; he grew up in the city center and his love of cinema was nurtured in Recife’s old movie palaces. His attachment to the place emerges in Filho’s documentary Pictures of Ghosts (Retratos Fantasmas), Brazil’s official entry for Best International Film at the Academy Awards. In addition to that Oscar category, it’s in contention for Best Documentary Feature.

Director Kleber Mendonça Filho

Filho says Portraits of Ghosts “was not planned, but films work in strange ways.” The spark, as much as anything, was his...

Shortlist of 15 films to be announced December 21, nominations out on January 23, 2024.

The Academy has announced eligible features in the categories of international feature film, animation, and documentary for the 96th Academy Awards on March 10, 2024.

The shortlist of 15 films will be announced on December 21, and the nominations announcement is January 23, 2024.

International

Eighty-eight countries or regions have submitted films eligible for consideration in the international feature film category. An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (more than 40 minutes long) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track. Namibia is a first-time entrant.

Academy members...

Brazilian talents to track Enock Carvalho and Matheus Farias, selected for 2021’s Sundance with short “Unliveable,” are teaming with Janaina Bernardes, a co-producer of Karim Ainouz’s “Nardjes A.” and Argentina’s Frutacine, behind Tribeca player “Initials S.G.,” to produce “Burning Land” (“Terra de Fuego”), Carvalho and Farias’ awaited feature debut.

“Unliveable” was voted by Brazil’s Abraccine critics’ assn. as the best short of the year.

Part of Pernambuco’s building film scene, Carvalho and Farias will produce “Burning Land” via their Recife-based Gatopardo Filmes. Frutacine is headed by Iván Eibuszyc, whose credits also include Santiago Loza’s “La Paz” and Alejandro Fadel’s “Murder Me, Monster.”

It forms part of Pitching Paradiso, a six feature project showcase which will unspool on Nov. 30 at Buenos Aires’ Ventana Sur.

Written by Carvalho and Farias, “Burning Land” is set at a sugar cane mill in Brazil’s North-East, which is hit by financial crisis,...

Festival has programmed 75 films from 36 countries.

The Marrakech International Film Festival has unveiled the full line-up for its 20th edition, which runs from November 24-December 2.

The festival is opening with Richard Linklater’s action comedy Hit Man, starring Glen Powell, and is screening 75 films in total from 36 countries.

Marrakech’s official competition, which comprises first and second feature films, includes Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s Cannes Competition title Banel & Adama, Lina Soualem’s Venice Giornate degli Autori documentary Bye Bye Tiberias and Moroccan director Kamal Lazraq’s feature debut Hounds, which premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes.

Scroll down for full line-up

Johnny Barrington,...

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...

Early in the documentary Pictures of Ghosts, writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho cuts to a television interview with his late mother, Joselice Jucá, a historian and a key figure in the film. The interviewer asks why she’s chosen an oral history as the medium for a project on Brazilian abolitionist leader Joaquim Nabuco. As she explains her process, Mendonça Filho’s voice enters to note that “it may seem like I’m discussing methodology, but I’m talking about love.” The filmmaker seems to have taken his mother’s emotional investment in her subject matter to heart, as the methodology in Pictures of Ghosts—a historical document of his hometown of Recife, with a particular focus on its movie theaters—is ultimately in service of the filmmaker’s own personal relationship to the people, places, and images that he captures.

It’s hardly the first time that Mendonça Filho’s...

China’s Pingyao International Film Festival has announced the line-up for its seventh edition (October 11-18), which will open with Wei Shujun’s Only The River Flows and close with the world premiere of Fei Yu’s Football On The Roof.

Wei’s 1990s-set noir thriller, which premiered in Un Certain Regard at this year’s Cannes film festival, is also one of 11 titles competing in Pingyao’s Hidden Dragons competition for emerging Chinese filmmakers. Football On The Roof tells the story of a female soccer team fighting against the odds in the remote mountains of Yunnan province.

The Hidden Dragons line-up also includes Geng Zihan’s A Song Sung Blue, which premiered in Cannes Directors Fortnight, along with world premieres including Hao Feihuan’s Records Without Words, Li Binbin’s The Night Rain South Township and Yang Pingdao’s A Romantic Fragment (see full line-up below).

Pingyao has also...

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

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

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

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

Predicting the eventual five Oscar nominees for Best International Feature is made difficult by the three-step process that begins after the October 2, 2023 deadline for countries to submit entries. To be part of the selection process for this category, which was called Best Foreign Language Film before 2020, requires a great deal of dedication. (Scroll down for the most up-to-date 2024 Oscars Best International Feature predictions.)

In the days following the deadline for submissions, the academy determines each film’s eligibility. Then the several hundred academy members who serve on the International Feature screening committee are divided into groups and required to watch all their submissions over a six-week period that ends in early December. Their top 15 vote-getters will make it to the next round. That list of semi-finalists will be revealed on December 21, 2023.

These 15 films will be made available to the entire academy membership who can cast ballots for the final five...

The Oscars Best International Feature Film race landed two major frontrunners on the same day on Thursday, with the United Kingdom submitting Jonathan Glazer’s chilling World War II drama “The Zone of Interest” and France following with Tran Anh Hung’s rapturous “The Taste of Things” in the one-film-per-country competition.

“The Zone of Interest,” set among German families who live on the outskirts of Auschwitz, won the Grand Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and won raves as one of the most original and unnerving films to deal with the Holocaust since “Son of Saul,” which won the Oscar in this category eight years ago. It was considered the obvious choice for the U.K. to submit.

France, on the other hand, had an extremely difficult choice between Palme d’Or winner “Anatomy of a Fall,” starring Sandra Huller as a woman on trial for murdering her husband,...

Prior selections Close, Drive My Car, The Worst Person In The World all garnered international feature film Oscar submissions.

Aki Kaurismäki’s Cannes jury prize winner Fallen Leaves and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses starring Cannes best actress winner Merve Dizdar – both Oscar submissions this year – are among the international line-up at the upcoming 59th Chicago International Film Festival (October 11–22).

Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Pictures Of Ghosts are two other Cannes selections to feature in the roster, while Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist and Lina Soualem’s Bye Bye Tiberias both launched in Venice.

Brazil has selected Kleber Mendonça Filho’s documentary Pictures of Ghosts as its entry for Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards.

Mixing archive and contemporary footage, the deeply personal work revisits the director’s hometown of Recife through the cinemas he once frequented.

The film world premiered as a Special Screening at Cannes in May and had its North American premiere September 9 in Toronto, before heading to New York.

Grasshopper Films acquired U.S. rights this summer. Paris-based Urban sales handles international sales.

The Brazilian Cinema Academy selected the film on Tuesday from a shortlist which also included Guto Parente’s A Strange Path, Sergio de Carvalho’s Alien Nights, Eduardo Albergaria’s Nosso Sonho, Carolina Markowicz’s Toll and Claudio Borrelli’s Vultures.

The selection was made by a 23-member committee, chaired by distributor and exhibitor Ilda Santiago.

Mendonça Filho thanked the academy for selecting the film in a media post,...

If you went to Cinema São Luiz today, instead of finding the most celebrated theater in Recife (the capital of Brazil’s state of Pernambuco), you would find closed doors and a now-iconic sign that reads, “We’ll see each other again soon.” Because of the pandemic and a seemingly endless renovation job on the government’s part, this hallowed ground has been sealed for all but three months since March 2020.

For locals such as myself, that’s partly why seeing it through the lens of Kleber Mendonça Filho’s incredibly personal new documentary “Pictures of Ghosts” feels so poignant. Through a mix of archival footage and new recordings, “Pictures of Ghosts” sees its director — whose filmography is already rich with deep, complex portraits of his hometown, such as “Neighboring Sounds” and “Aquarius” — revisiting the places that made him. Recife’s movie theaters are chief among them.

Once surrounded by screens of all sizes,...

Following his epic Bacurau, Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho returned to Cannes Film Festival this year with Pictures of Ghosts, a bittersweet, fascinating look at his personal cinematic life. Utilizing archive documentary, mystery, film clips, and personal memories to bring back to life downtown Recife’s classic movie palaces from the 20th century, many of which are mostly gone, the film will stop by TIFF and NYFF followed by a release from Grasshopper Film and now the first trailer has arrived.

David Katz said in his review, “If the death of cinema is imminent, at least Kleber Mendonça Filho can play it out with some vintage Tropicália. It’s becoming a nice leitmotif of the Brazilian director’s career, whose ultraviolent Bacurau curtain-raised with Gal Costa’s “Não Identificado,” and latest effort Pictures of Ghosts, which premiered as a Special Screening at Cannes, eases in with Tom Zé’s deceptively jaunty “Happy End.

"A cinema can be a place of kindness." A festival promo trailer has debuted for a compelling documentary film from Brazil titled Pictures of Ghosts, exploring the disappearing cinemas of the city of Recife, Brazil. This premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival earlier in the summer, and is stopping by the Toronto and New York Film Festivals next. Downtown Recife's classic movie palaces from the 20th century are mostly gone. That city area is now an archaeological site of sorts that reveals aspects of life in society which have been lost. And that's just part of the story... A journey back into Brazil's history. The film is "described as a multidimensional journey through time, sound, architecture and filmmaking, Pictures of Ghosts is set in the urban landscape of Recife, located in the Brazilian coastal capital of Pernambuco. Having hosted dreams & progress, these places have also embodied a major transformation on social practices.

Paris-based outfit Urban Sales has locked several deals on “Pictures of Ghosts,” the latest film by celebrated Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho ahead of its North American premieres at Toronto and New York film festivals. The movie world premiered at Cannes in the Special Screenings section.

Weaving archive documentary, mystery, film clips and personal memories, the film has sold to the U.S. (Grasshopper Film and Gratitude Films), Portugal (Nitrato Filmes) and France (Urban Distribution and Dean Media). “Pictures of Ghosts” will be released simultaneously in Portugal and Brazil on Aug. 24.

Described as a multidimensional journey through time, sound, architecture and filmmaking, “Pictures of Ghosts” is set in the urban landscape of Recife, located in the Brazilian coastal capital of Pernambuco. Having hosted dreams and progress, these places have also embodied a major transformation on social practices.

The film was produced by Emilie Lesclaux at CinemaScópio Produções and co-produced by...

The Toronto Film Festival has unveiled its Wavelengths program for artist-driven experimental work that includes films by avant garde directors Denis Côté, Radu Jude, the late Chantal Akerman and Wang Bing.

There’s selections for Isiah Medina’s He Thought He Died, an experimental heist film; Angela Schanelec’s Music, a retelling of the Oedipus myth; and Denis Côté’s Mademoiselle Kenopsia, which stars Larissa Corriveau and will first bow at the Locarno Film Festival.

Wavelengths also booked fiction debuts with Rosine Mbakam’s Mambar Pierrette, a portrait of a Cameroonian seamstress; and Phạm Thiên Ân’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, the Vietnamese director’s hypnotic first feature about a man haunted by past memories when returning to his hometown that picked up the Caméra d’Or in Cannes.

“The increasing necessity to support artists willing to take risks, break rules and challenge the status quo — especially in our over-saturated media landscape — bears repeating,...

The Toronto International Film Festival has announced this year’s Wavelengths and Classics sidebars, the former section known for its politically charged, geographically diverse fare with a wide range of work drawn from the worlds of documentary, contemporary art, and international art-house cinema.

Wavelengths this year counts 12 feature films and 19 shorts, as well as a suite of four restored early films by the singular Chantal Akerman.

Of note in the Wavelengths short section, North American audiences will finally get to see Jean-Luc Godard’s swan song short, Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars, which played Cannes this past spring.

Another highlight in the Classics sidebar is the 4K uncut restoration of Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine, the only movie from China to win the Palme d’Or. The original film had 20 minutes cut by then Miramax Boss Harvey Weinstein much to the chagrin of jury...

The Toronto International Film Festival has added an additional 17 films to its 2023 lineup, with the new entries the work of a variety of bold international directors, from Radu Jude and Kleber Mendonca Filho to the late Jean-Luc Godard and Chantal Akerman.

The Wavelength section contains 12 features, two films paired in a single program and 19 shorts grouped in three separate programs. It is devoted to “artist-driven experimental films,” in the words of TIFF Chief Programming Officer Anita Lee. “Wavelengths continues to be a celebration of subversion, personal expression, and the vast, inexhaustible capabilities of cinema to enlighten, inspire, awe, resist, disrupt, and propose new ways of seeing and being in the world.”

Films in the section include “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World” from the fiery Romanian satirist Radu Jude, “Here” from Belgian director Bas Devos,” the “Oedipus” retelling “Music” from Angela Schanelec, Brazilian Kleber Mendonca...

Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera with Alba Rohrwacher is a highlight of the 61st New York Film Festival Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Film at Lincoln Center has announced that Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall; Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone Of Interest; Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days; Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses, and Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves (all Cannes Film Festival award winners) will be among the Main Slate selections of the 61st New York Film Festival. Angela Schanelec’s Music (Berlin International Film Festival Silver Bear for Best Screenplay) and Bas Devos’s Here (Best Film in the Encounters section and the Fipresci prize) are also in.

Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days, starring Kôji Yakusho (Cannes Best Actor), is another highlight Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer; Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera; Marco Bellocchio’s Kidnapped; Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Pictures Of Ghosts; Andrew Haigh...

The Zone Of Interest, Poor Things and Last Summer among the new additions.

The New York Film Festival (NYFF) has unveiled another 29 films – including new projects from Catherine Breillat, Jonathan Glazer and Andrew Haigh – for the main slate of its sixty-first edition, set to run from September 29 to October 15.

In all, the main slate will comprise 32 features from 18 countries.

A special addition to this year’s main slate is the North American premiere of a newly unearthed and restored short directed by Agnès Varda and featuring Pier Paolo Pasolini while both were in New York for the 1966 NYFF.

The new...

The New York Film Festival’s Main Slate of films will consists of almost three dozen films from a lineup of international directors that includes Justine Triet, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Alice Rohrwacher, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Aki Kaurismaki, Wim Wenders, Yorgos Lathimos and Jonathan Glazer. Film at Lincoln Center announced the lineup on Tuesday morning.

Among the 32 films are three special presentations that NYFF had already announced. The opening-night film will be Todd Haynes’ “May December,” its centerpiece screening will be Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla” and its closing-night movie will be Michael Mann’s “Ferrari.”

The rest of the Main Slate lineup includes 12 films that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this year, including the prize winners “Anatomy of a Fall” from Triet, “The Zone of Interest” from Glazer, “About Dry Grasses” from Ceylan, “Perfect Days” from Wenders and “Fallen Leaves” from Kaurismaki.

Others films include “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World...

Film at Lincoln Center has set the 32 features from 18 countries making up the Main Slate of the New York Film Festival, from Cannes prize-winners Anatomy Of A Fall by Justine Triet (Palme d’Or) and Zone Of Interest by Jonathan Glazer (Grand Prix), to the latest by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Wim Wenders, Agnieszka Holland, Hong Sangsoo, Radu Jude, Yorgos Lanthimos and Alice Rohrwacher.

Wenders’ Perfect Days saw a Best Actor for Kōji Yakusho in Cannes, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses a Best Actress for Merve Dizdar. Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves received the Grand Jury Prize. Hailing from Berlin, Angela Schanelec’s Music, Silver Bear winner for Best Screenplay.

The lineup includes films from Lisandro Alonso, Marco Bellocchio, Bertrand Bonello, Catherine Breillat, Bas Devos, Víctor Erice, Kleber Mendonça Filho and Martín Rejtman. Appearing in the Main Slate for the first time: Annie Baker, Devos, Felipe Gálvez, Glazer, Andrew Haigh,...

The 2023 New York Film Festival Main Slate lineup has officially been revealed.

Presented by Film at Lincoln Center, this year’s NYFF Main Slate boasts the latest films from Wim Wenders, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Jonathan Glazer. As previously announced, the festival will open September 29 with Todd Haynes’ “May December,” followed by Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla” as the Centerpiece screening. The festival will conclude with Closing Night selection “Ferrari” by Michael Mann, debuting October 15.

The 61st NYFF includes Cannes winners “The Zone of Interest,” helmed by Glazer, “Anatomy of a Fall” directed by Justine Triet, and Wenders’ “Perfect Days,” as well as Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “About Dry Grasses” and Aki Kaurismäki’s “Fallen Leaves.” Berlinale Silver Bear winner “Music” will also screen.

“The unsettled state of the industry is an unavoidable talking point these days, but my hope is that our festival, as it has done through its 61-year history,...

“I love downtown Recife,” narrates Kleber Mendonça Filho over self-shot footage of his hometown’s dilapidated center, its once-promising clusters of midcentury high-rises now graying and under-occupied. He admits that he considered cutting that line from his voiceover, deeming it redundant, before letting it stand: “You should say when you like someone.” In “Pictures of Ghosts,” a stirring, idiosyncratic ode to the city — and cinemas — that raised him, the Brazilian filmmaker duly wears his heart on his sleeve, raking through the domestic and public spaces that made him the artist he is today, and making his affection and gratitude for them known. In so doing, he remembers the larger communities sustained and abandoned by an evolving national cinema culture, making for a documentary that feels acutely, even eccentrically, personal, but never navel-gazing.

You can see why Mendonça Filho might have felt he didn’t need to restate his feelings for...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSHam on Rye.Tyler Taormina, director of the idiosyncratic Ham on Rye (2019) and Happer's Comet (2022), has wrapped production on his next feature. Filmed on Long Island, Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point is a Christmas comedy that stars Michael Cera, Elsie Fisher, and Gregg Turkington, plus the progeny of two prominent filmmakers in Francesca Scorsese and Sawyer Spielberg.The Guardian reports that filmmaker Brian Rose is attempting to “recreate” the lost version of Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), which was altered significantly by Rko prior to its release. Using “the latest technology to reconstruct lost material and animate charcoal sketches,” Rose has reportedly spent four years recreating “around 30,000 frames” of Welles’s original rough cut in order that viewers can visualize what Welles intended in lieu of seeing the director’s original cut,...

The 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival has now concluded, with Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall taking home the top honors. While our coverage will continue with a few more reviews this week––and far beyond as we provide updates on the journey of these selections––we’ve asked our contributors on the ground to share favorites.

See their picks below, and explore all of our coverage here.

Leonardo Goi (@LeonardoGoi)

The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer) Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki) Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Pham Thien An) Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese) The Sweet East (Sean Price Williams) Eureka (Lisandro Alonso) About Dry Grasses (Nuri Bilge Ceylan) Close Your Eyes (Víctor Erice) Un Prince (Pierre Creton) Kubi (Takeshi Kitano)

Luke Hicks (@lou_hicks)

The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer) The Pot-au-Feu (Tran Anh Hung) Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet) Killers of the Flower Moon...

In 2008, Kléber Mendonça Filho released “Crítico,” a documentary building upon his years of experience as a film critic to weave a rich chronicling of cinephilia that gathered over 70 critics and filmmakers to discuss cinema in all of its joys and contradictions. Fifteen years later and following great acclaim as a fiction feature director, Filho returns to documentary to investigate some of the themes he first prodded upon in his debut with “Pictures of Ghosts.”

Read More: 2023 Cannes Film Festival: 21 Must-See Movies To Watch

As with Godard and Paris, Fellini and Rome, Scorsese, and New York, Filho is a filmmaker whose craft is deeply intertwined with his love of a city, in this case, the Pernambuco capital of Recife, in the north-east of Brazil.

Continue reading ‘Pictures Of Ghosts’ Review: Kléber Mendonça Filho’s Triumphant Return To Documentaries Is A Loving Ode To Cinemas at The Playlist.

If the death of cinema is imminent, at least Kleber Mendonça Filho can play it out with some vintage Tropicália. It’s becoming a nice leitmotif of the Brazilian director’s career, whose ultraviolent Bacurau curtain-raised with Gal Costa’s “Não Identificado,” and latest effort Pictures of Ghosts, which premiered as a Special Screening at Cannes, eases in with Tom Zé’s deceptively jaunty “Happy End.” This is a first-person, arguably selfish movie––in that associated genre, the docu-essay––where Mendonça Filho seems to be waving a teary-eyed goodbye to valuable associations and possessions, perhaps only those of individual sentimental resonance. Yet it’s “selfish” in a productive manner, almost as a function of self-care, like a sunny afternoon lounging on the settee revisiting one’s favorite LPs.

The title Pictures of Ghosts has been oddly overlapping in my mind with British theorist Mark Fisher’s posthumous hit essay collection Ghosts of My Life.