News

Projects from Greece and Ukraine lead co-production awards.

Ukrainian drama Cherry Blossoms from director Marysia Nikitiuk has picked up one of the top prizes at Sarajevo Film Festival’s industry platform CineLink, which handed out its awards last night (August 18).

See below for full list of winners

The project was among 12 presented at the CineLink Co-Production Market and won the Eurimages Special Co-Production Development Award of €20,000.

Cherry Blossoms centres on a man and girl who escape territories in Ukraine occupied by Russia and meet a Bosnian woman who survived the Balkan wars as a child. Nikitiuk’s first feature, When The Trees Fall,...

San Sebastian — As many people talk the talk, some companies are walking the walk – acquiring and selling women’s films as part of a growing business.

In the latest move, announced Sunday at San Sebastian as the festival, the biggest in the Spanish-speaking world, signed a gender parity charter, Latido Films has acquired international rights to films by two first-time Latin American women filmmakers: Camila Urrutia’s “Polvora en el corazón,” and “La Casa de los Conejos,” from Valeria Selinger.

That’s not charity. Rather, it reflects Latido’s conviction there’s really a market for movies by striking new women directors, following on what it describes as “a string of successes,” headed by Chilean Pepa San Martín’s “Rara” and Colombian Laura Mora’s “Killing Jesús.”

“We do not look at the gender of a talented director, we look for talent,” said Latido director Antonio Saura.

But it’s no coincidence,...

A March 2019 release date has been set; Sentsov working on film in prison.

A March 2019 release date has been set for the adaptation of the imprisoned Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov’s dystopian play Numbers.

Ukrainian filmmaker Sentsov was arrested in May 2014 in connection with alleged activities opposing the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia, and sentenced by Russian court in August 2015 to 20 years imprisonment. He is currently serving out his sentence in Russia’s northernmost prison in Labytnangi, Yamalo-Nemets, and began an indefinite hunger strike on May 14, 2018.

Presenting the Numbers project “out of competition” at this year’s Film...

The first wave of programming for Fantastic Fest 2018 includes Overlord, produced by J.J. Abrams; Apostle, directed by Gareth Evans; and The Night Comes For Us, directed by Timo Tjahjanto and starring Joe Taslim and Iko Uwais. (The official poster features artwork by Chris Bilheimer.) Also in this first wave are several titles our team has seen and reviewed this year, including the Sundance-premiering thriller The Guilty, which I saw and quite enjoyed, and Holiday, which Kwenton Bellette just saw in Melbourne, expressing his mixed feelings. Quentin Dupieux returns to the fest with his latest, Keep an Eye Out, while female genre filmmakers will also be represented with films such as When the Trees Fall, House of Sweat and Tears and Ladyworld. Retrospective films are...

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

The 14th annual Fantastic Fest unveiled the first wave of programming for their genre-driven film festival — and it is filled with thrills, chills, and in some cases, a large bloody body count. The fest runs Sept. 20-27 in Austin.

The festival pulls from all over the globe to bring audiences the best in horror, sci-fi, cultish, and bizarre when it comes to film. Right out of the gate, the first wave of films impresses with the J.J. Abrams-produced World War II horror thriller Overlord. Directed by Julius Avery and starring Jovan Adepo, the film will make its World Premiere at Fantastic Fest. Avery and Adepo will be in attendance along with castmembers Wyatt Russell, Pilou Asbaek, John Magaro and Mathilde Ollivier in attendance.

The Raid director will bring his folk horror pic Apostle starring Dan Stevens will also screen at the festival. The film follows a mysterious man who...

Overlord and Apostle will be among world premieres at the Austin, Texas event.

World premieres of J J Abrams-produced horror mystery Overlord and Welsh writer-director Gareth Evens thriller Apostle will feature in the line-up of this year’s Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas.

The fourteenth edition of Fantastic Fest, which claims to be the largest genre festival in the Us, will run September 20-27 at Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.

Also set for the event are the world premieres of Timo Tjahjanto’s thriller The Night Comes For Us, from Indonesia, and Swedish feature The Unthinkable.

Getting their North American...

A debut feature bursting with audacity, flair and energetic promise, When the Trees Fall (Koly padayut dereva) propels 31-year-old Ukrainian writer-director Marysia Nikitiuk into the leading ranks of younger filmmakers from eastern/central Europe. Straddling several genres with aplomb — only the odd wobble here and there betrays her greenhorn status — Nikitiuk socks over a full-blooded enterprise punctuated with steamy sex, brutal violence and flights of enigmatic, extravagant fantasy. In terms of established art house names, it could be possibly positioned as Carlos Reygadas crossed with Andrei Zvyagintsev.

Somewhat overlooked in a Berlinale notable for spotlighting new female talents from the continent's eastern fringe — most notably Romania's Golden Bear winner Adina Pintilie (Touch...

Summer 1993 and My Happy Family also take home prizes from Ukrainian festival.

Peter Brosen and Jessica Woodworth’s fourth feature King Of The Belgians received the Golden Duke Grand Prix - based on voting by festival-goers - at the eighth Odesa International Film Festival (Oiff, July 14 - 22), which came to a close on Saturday evening.

The International Competition jury, headed up by German director Christian Petzold and including actress Sibel Kekilli and Romanian producer-director-festival organiser Tudor Giurgiu, awarded the prize for best international feature film to Catalan director Carla Simón’s autobiographical film Summer 1993.

Handled internationally by New Europe Film Sales, Simón’s film had its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Generation Kplus sidebar where it won the international jury’s grand prix and the Gwff best first feature award.

Meanwhile, My Happy Family by the directorial duo Nana & Simon continued its successful international festival career by picking up the jury’s awards for best director...