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Michael Douglas Set As Guest Of Honor Of 50th Deauville Film Festival

Michael Douglas will be guest of honor at the 50th Deauville American Film Festival. It will be the actor’s fifth trip to the fall festival unfolding in the swanky northern French beach resort. The organisers suggested Douglas has a special connection with the festival as the place where he met now wife Catherine Zeta Jones. “Everyone says that the Deauville Festival is special, but few people say like me that it changed their lives,” the announcement release quoted him as saying. The actor was last at the festival in 2013 with My Life with Liberace. His late father Kirk Douglas was also an honorary guest at Deauville and was feted with a posthumous retrospective in 2020. Douglas is a regular visitor to France and has previously been honored by Cannes and the César awards. The Deauville Film Festival runs...

Denmark’s Oscar© 2023 Entry for Best International Feature: ‘Holy Spider’ directed by Ali AbbasiThis crime genre drama labeled “Persian Noir” is based on a 20 year old case but is shockingly relevant, as is noted in this interview with producer Sol Bondy conducted by Marina Dallarosa.

US Theatrical Release October 28, 2022.

Producer Sol Bondy’s explanation of Holy Spider’s genesis and progress through the Covid infected era details the difficulties this film met at every step. However, once finished, it premiered in Cannes Competition and went on to play in the Jerusalem Film Festival, and in Toronto International Film Festival. He noted that the audience in Toronto; was 30–40% Iranians. Their ability to understand nuances and “code words” brought an element of laughter to an otherwise bloody crime film, labeled “Persian noir”.

The filmmaker Ali Abbasi is Iranian and lives in Denmark, the country submitting the film to the Motion Picture Academy for Oscar nomination. It could never have been shot in Iran due to its subject matter, though they did try, as they did in Turkey as well before shooting in Jordan. The production faced years of Covid‑19 surges, shooting delays, location changes and government resistance.

Holy Spider is based upon a true story of the infamous “spider killings” which took place while the director, Ali Abbasi, was living in the country between 2000 and 2001. It is produced by Germany’s Sol Bondy whose previous film Persian Lessons was also based on a provocative story and was Belarus’ 2020 submission for Oscars. Abbasi’s film Border was a Cannes winner of Un Certain Regard and 2018 Oscar nominated film.

A coproduction of Denmark, Germany, France, and Sweden, Holy Spider tells the story of Saeed Hanaei, a family man who embarks on his own religious quest to “cleanse” the holy Iranian city of Mashhad of immoral and corrupt street prostitutes. After murdering several women, he grows ever more desperate about the lack of public interest in his divine mission. In all, he murdered 16 women.

This genre film, with misogyny being the core theme, comes at a time where massive protests in Iran, following the death of Jina Mahsa Amini have unified the country in an unprecedented manner. While more and more protesters, many underage, are being killed by the regime, Holy Spider has met Iranian diaspora audiences with cheers.

During Cannes, film and TV funder Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburgcelebrated the six films that it funded running in the official program of the Cannes Film Festival. These were Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider in Competition, Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness in Competition, Emily Atef’s More Than Ever in Un Certain Regard, Mia Hansen-Løve’s Un beau matin in Directors’ Fortnight, Sergei Loznitsa’s The Natural History of Destruction in Special Screenings, and Mantas Kvedaravicius’ Mariupolis 2, in Special Screenings. Commenting on the role Medienboard played in funding these films in Cannes, the organization’s chief Kirsten Niehuus said: “Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and other film funds play an important role in sustaining high quality cinema in Europe and in international co-productions around the world.”

At their celebration, I spoke with one of the most outstanding young actresses who played Zinab, a sex worker in the Holy Spider. German-based, Iran-born Sara Fazilat is also German Film’s Face To Face ambassador 2022. She is also the lead cast in Nico by Eline Gehring that was shown almost worldwide at numerous film festivals. Unfortunately Nico is not available online in the U.S…yet. It is about Nico who is enjoying the summer in Berlin with her best friend Rosa until a racist attack pulls her out of her carefree everyday life. Traumatized by the crime, the geriatric nurse decides never to be a victim again and begins to train with a karate world champion.

I also saw Sol Bondy of One Two Films, one of the lead producers of Holy Spider. Produced along with Jacob Jarek of Denmark’s Profile Pictures, coproducers were Nordisk Film Production, Wild Bunch International, Film i Väst, Why Not Productions, Zdf/Arte and Arte France Cinéma.

Sol Bondy and Jacob Jarek also stand out as alumni of Berlinale Talents. They both co-produced Icelandic films The County and Under The Tree previously.

Jarek, who went to the National Film School of Denmark with Abbasi and was one of the producers of his debut feature Shelley, says the director “had this story in his mind for a long time but we officially started developing it in 2016”. After Abbasi’s second feature Border was an international success at Cannes and beyond in 2018, the filmmaker was in demand. He told Jarek, “Now’s our chance to make Holy Spider,” a project always close to his heart.

An Interview with Sol Bondy by Marina Dalarossa

Marina: So the first question is just about you and the producer Jakob Jarek. Could you talk a bit about how you actually came to work together?

Sol: We didn’t do the Berlinale Talents the same year. I did it relatively late in my career, and truthfully, mainly because of the woman who runs the program, she urged me to do it. I had worked for the talents for many, many years and quite a few of my friends had done it during film school and by the time I did it, I’d been out of film school running my company for 6 years already.

But we didn’t meet there. Jakob and I were both minor coproducers on an Icelandic film called Under the Tree. That’s how we met. And then we also were both minor coproducers on another Icelandic film called The County.

We knew of each other before, I knew some people that he worked with and thought they were doing really interesting films. And then in Cannes 2018, Border had just premiered a couple of days before, everybody was talking about it and Jakob asked me if I wanted to join the next film of Ali? I didn’t read a script or ask any questions; I also didn’t know what I was getting myself into but I said yes immediately. I sensed this could be a great opportunity.

And that instinct was right. The film was financed relatively quickly and within a year we had most of the budget together. But then Covid came. I’m sure we’ll get into that later!

Marina: Yes thanks. I want to know if you think being in Talents helped your career at all?

Sol: Well, given the very specific timing of it, I think it would have helped my career much more if I had done it earlier. But there are also other great intiatives out there, postgraduate training for producers. Before Talents, I did a program called Transatlantic Partners in 2013. That was really helpful and actually generated two big projects for me. One was Angry Indian Goddessesand the other was The Tale.

A couple of years later I did a program called Inside Pictures. It was also extremely valuable and really helped me make some really important business decisions going forward. Jacob also did this program but again, in another year. There are many great initiatives. Also I’ve always loved going to festivals. They make your network bigger and stronger.

Marina: You talked about how you came on board to produce Holy Spider, but what do you think made Jakob decide you should come in at that point?

Sol: He had a hard task producing and financing a film set in the Middle East without any Middle Eastern money. Also, with this topic it was clear you can’t just roll into Iran and make a film there.

On top of that, there had been a shift in the Danish government. Suddenly, to reach a certain amount of financing from the Danish Film Institute, the film had to be culturally relevant to Denmark. So I believe that halved the financing opportunities for Jacob in Denmark. He needed money from outside Denmark to make this film; he needed coproducers.

He’s well versed in international coproductions, so he knew when is a good time to attach coproducing partners and also how much time it can take. For instance, we often get approached with projects and they tell us they will be shooting in three months. We have to tell them that when we coproduce in Germany, we have deadlines and a lot of bureaucracy, so while we can do a lot — we’re very lucky with that — it still takes time.

To get back to the first question: We were ready to go, we had the budget we thought we needed to make the film and when Covid came and then Jakob found himself in a situation where two of his projects, a series and a feature film, were hit by Covid. And it was unclear how these massive losses were going to be covered. The world was in turmoil and Jakob’s projects in limbo.

It became clear, he could currently not commit to the project — such a challenging production by a very demanding director. Ali (the director) on the other hand, who could have chosen any project after his widely successful and much loved Border, was saying, “Guys, I get it, but I don’t care about circumstances. If you guys can’t figure out how we can make this film now, then it’s over, I’m out.”

And that put me under maximum pressure because making films is squarey our only source of income. I had three employees to pay, was expecting my second child, and at that pont, we didn’t know that the German government would be helping out companies like ours. Without this film, it seemed I would have to close my shop. So Jacob and I looked at what options we had and decided I would go for it. I didn’t know how, I didn’t know when, but I said, Ok, I’ll do it.

What was unfortunate at that time is that Jordan, during the first wave, basically closed the borders and would not let anyone in. So the country that we had scouted and wanted to shoot in was essentially shut down. We couldn’t really plan a production there because nobody knew when the borders would open again or if they might close again at some point.

So it was decided to go to Turkey. It didn’t look like Erdogan was going to close Turkey. So we went into Turkey and we scouted for weeks with a big crew, the cinematographer, the production designer, the line producers from Germany, the Turkish line producer who we hired to service the production. There was a big gang scouting different cities in Turkey. And although it was harder to match Iran, we found the right locations a couple of weeks later.

The crew was growing; we were exploring how to bring period cars over the border. Pre-production was basically in full swing, at the same time, we were waiting for a shooting permit, and this shooting permit never came. So I decided to do some more digging because this was making me very uncomfortable. I knew I couldn’t shoot without the permit. I was about to spend a significant amount of more money and I’d already spent around €50,000. Not being able to shoot the film in Turkey would mean that money would just be down the drain. Plus the entire production plan. You can imagine, with everything there, where we came from, the delays that we had already encountered, it was nerve-wracking.

We then basically found out behind the scenes that our application had gone from the Ministry of Culture to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Turkish Ambassador and he got the feedback that this film should not be supported.

I then took Ali and my two line producers and we flew to Ankara to meet with the Ministry of Culture. And they told us to speak to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The next day, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told us that to get shooting permits we hd to speak with the Ministry of Culture. They basically used us like a pinball. We realiaed that we had been censored in Turkey. And it was a huge blow. I fet so hepless. Everyone was upset. Ali was furious.

It took some time to get the whole demoralized team back into the mental state to give it another go back in Jordan, where the borders had re-opened but which was logistically much more complicated.

And we went for it. We found new locations, hired local crews, got visas for our Iranian players and even managed to import Iranian cars to Jordan. You could make a documentary feature about just this aspect of the production of importing these cars. They arrived after a huge delay, when we were already shooting, but we managed to make it work.

Marina: This sounds intense. Were there other significant issues?

One of the most challenging aspects of the film was the casting, which was very complex, as we were mainly looking for Iranians who didn’t live in Iran. We knew participating in this film would be challenging for their future in the country. But Ali was adamant that his two main roles needed to be perfect in terms of their body language and the dialect. So we essentially needed people from Iran. We had found two who were willing to take the risk with all the consequences even potentially relocating after the shoot. The lead actress finally came for the makeup and hair test about 10 days before shooting. Couple days later she came to my hotel room crying and said, “I can’t do it. It’s too much.”

So we were a week before shooting and we didn’t have a lead actress. It was another massive blow. And this is when it was decided after bit of back and forth and deliberation that our casting director Zar Amir-Ebrahimi would step in and play the role. And she was rewarded in Cannes with the Best Actress Golden Palm. It’s a pretty crazy story.

And then, just two days before we were Finally going to shoot the film, Covid hit us in a way where couldn’t start shooting. I felt like I didn’t know if I was making a film or if I was in “Lost in La Mancha — Part 2”. My wife for months kept telling me I should have a documentary crew filming all this madness. I told her I was going to murder someone if I had a documentary crew around.

Marina: Wow! And after the film was completed, Denmark’s decided to submit your film to the Academy Awards. Do you know what went into their decision?

Sol: Well, the Danes may have one of the best track records in recent years when it comes to choosing the film and then being nominated or even winning. I think in the last 11 years they won twice. They got 7 nominations and I think 9 made the shortlist.

So this speaks to two things: First of all, the quality of the films they make in this small country. And then, they really look carefully at which films has the biggest chances. In our case: no other Danish film had been to Cannes competition. No other film had US distribution and played Telluride and TIFF. And already in Cannes, we had the fantastic PR of past successes like Drive My Car and Flee, so it made a lot of sense for them to choose Holy Spider. It’s still a very brave choice because it’s not a very Danish film on the outside. On the inside it looks different, you know the composer is Danish, the editor is Danish, the production designer, ok she’s Swedish, but Ali also has a Danish passport. Jakob is like me, a delegate producer and is Danish. So it has a strong Danish footprint.

Many outlets, like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter included the film in their predictions to get the nomination. So I guess all this helped the Danes come to this decision.

Marina: How does it feel to be chosen by the Danes and also to be chosen for Cannes and have gotten so many prizes already?

Sol: What can I say? It feels great! At the same time, it’s also a lot of hard work. And it’s something that we always had our eyes upon, also because Border won the Un Certain Regard. So after that, the next step is to be in Cannes Competition. Now I’ve seen this go both ways, The Icelandic film where Jacob and I were minority producers together: the filmmaker had previously done the film Rams, which had also won Un Certain Regard. We all hoped to go to Cannes Competition with this new film, The County. But we didn’t get into Cannes at all. We premiered in Toronto, which is good, but it’s not the same So looking coldly at that, you could say we failed.

Another example would be a finished film, that I was happy to be a coproducer on, called The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki . It won Un Certain Regard the year after Rams did. And so the director wanted his next film, Compartment No. 6, to go to Cannes Competition — and it did. It even won the Jury Prize! Sadly, I wasn’t involved in that production.

This is something we were discussing throughout this entire production. We were always saying the film was our chance to show the world Ali was not a one-hit wonder. You know, many people refer to Border as Ali’s first film, which it’s not. It’s his second film, his first film Shelley did well, but it wasn’t a massive breakout hit like Border was. It’s hard to follow up on a success like that.

So that fact that we succeeded in following up the Certain Regard win with getting into Competition was very exciting and rewarding. I also have to give credit to our French co-producers Wild Bunch and Why Not Productions. While they didn’t really have a lot to do with the physical production, they really helped in securing the world premiere. They gave us invaluable advice in the last stretch.

I can say that until now, we have achieved every goal that we had, and there are a few exciting steps ahead. The US release had a great limited opening weekend, the nominations at the European Film Awards are coming up and then there’s of course the Oscar shortlist of 15 films just before Christmas. We’re crossing our fingers!

Marina: I also have to ask, with the recent events in Iran, was this something you were thinking of making the film?

Sol: Well no, of course not! But the fact that our film is based on a 20 year old case — and has become so shockingly timely is incredible. Showing the film at festivals where many Iranians attend has been such an intense experience. People have thanked us for our courage to finally make a film that shows a (big) portion of their reality, one they don’t get to see in Iranian cinema. And of course the film’s main theme, misogyny, is squarely what is firing up this revolution in Iran. It really feels like the days of the Islamic Republic will be over, the different groups withing the Iranian society are more united then ever before, men are supporting women on the street and the next generation isn’t willing to give up. It’s insane what is happening there and honestly, more people should be talking about this. They are killing teenagers in the street.

Marina: The next couple questions I want to ask you are more general about your career. What did you think when you chose your career?

Sol: My parents are both filmmakers, but I never really cared too much about their work. I was quite oblivious to what was what was going on right in front of me.

But through my parents connections, I was cast as a child actor and did quite a bit of acting, so I always thought that after high school I would become an actor. But then I realized maybe I should also look for something behind the camera, because I remembered as a child actor, people were so nice and the jobs seemed fun and interesting and so I did an internship. And it became clear to me that I needed to become a director! I thought this would be the perfect way to combine all my talents.

It took three or four years and a lot of failed applications for directing to realize that I would not be studying film directing at any film school. But Reinhad Hauff, the head of the dffb, the Berlin Film School, said at some point after my second failed application that he thought I might be good for his producing class. And that’s how I got into producing after never having given it a thought before.

And I really came to terms with my profession the end of my second year while working with this one director, Grzegorz Muskala, I realized if I could find people like him, with an exceptional level of talent and tenacity and foresight I could be the right person to support them. I just needed to be very picky about who I chose to work with.

On the other hand, I also realized I have a real knack for distribution, because many producing students in my film school would just produce a film and then they would just produce the next film. And this was always crazy for me, because when the film is finished, finding distribution for your film is the most exciting moment. Like now we can do something, even for shorts! We can take the film to festivals, we can sell it to TV, this is the fun part. Of course you need to have the right film.

But I quickly earned a reputation of being somebody who took very good care of his films. All my films went to many festivals and won awards and did well. So at the end of my studies I graduated with a 1.2 million feature, which was a big achievement at that time, this was 2010. I also launched my company more or less at the same time. Since then we’ve produced or coproduced 16 films.

Marina: What do you think drives you now to continue?

Sol: There was a moment, a couple of years ago where I realized I needed to shift gears. I separated from my previous business partner with whom I had had set up the company. We built the company together, but I realized our visions weren’t really aligned anymore. I had this urge to do slightly bigger films and my little family was growing and I simply needed to make more money — while staying true to the films that I love.

So rather than diversifying with many small projects, I wanted to make fewer films but larger ones. That is also a bigger risk in a way. I wanted to take it a bit slower than the previous 10 years. Maybe also because my wife is a filmmaker. We’ve had two kids, and now it’s also her turn to go to the forefront and make more films.

Marina: And so now I guess one could say you’ve kind of made it to the top or at least you’ve checked off all those goals that you wanted to reach.

Sol: Everything that has happened with Holy Spider is really great. And having a film in Cannes Competition is quite special — who knows if it’s going to happen again? So maybe, maybe this is the top.

Marina: Do you have different kinds of goals now?

Sol: No I think I have similar goals. I like to aim high. I’m ambitious. But I also know what’s within reach. I wouldn’t set goals that are completely unrealistic in that sense.

Marina: And can you talk about what you are working on right now, so that we can start tracking it?

Sol: Yeah, so Northern Comfort is a is a fear of flying comedy by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurdsson, the same Icelandic director of Under the Tree. And this is his English language debut because his previous films have been remade in the US. We thought, why not just shoot in English language in the first place?

A diverse group of people with a chronic fear of flying are stranded in the wintry north. That film is a lot of fun for a change! And I know there’s appetite in the market for comedies. We’re in the final stages of postproduction and hoping to show the film sometime early next year.

Köln 75 is our real passion project. It’s set in Germany. The story came to us through Oren Moverman who approached us because we had worked on The Tale together. He felt that we would be the right people to be producing this. It’s a beautiful and inspiring great true story about a 17 year old school girl who organizes one of the the world’s most famous concerts on German soil, the Cologne concert from Keith Jarrett in 1975 which is widely regarded as his masterpiece and sold nearly 5 mil. copies worldwide. It really was the soundtrack of an entire generation. So it’s really exciting. An uplifting and fun story with a fantastic script by Ido Fluk. We already have amazing partners to work on this film.

Marina: Is it different now working on German soil?

Sol: Well it’s not the first time, but it’s the first time in a couple years and it is different, yes. Production has exploded across the world with the arrival of the streamers. In Germany we really feel it. All the actors, all the crews, everybody is just like working like crazy. So you could say of course it’s a great time to be a producer. But for us it’s always hard to make a film. Always has been, always will be, there are really no free rides if you’re producing independent films.

Marina: And last question, what advice do you have for young filmmakers?

Sol: The most simple and striking advice that I received myself at some point, though at first I nearly missed it, was from Katriel Schory who ran the film fund in Israel for a long time.

Sydney knows him well I’m sure.

He gave this one inspirational speech at the Thessaloniki Film Festival in 2006, when I was a film student. He said the most important thing for a producer is you always have to be nice, open and friendly. And I was like, well yeah… But the way that he explained it got to me. He said that everybody who’s in a certain position of power has a free choice who he wants to work with.

And these people are always going to choose to work with the people who are nice, open and friendly and if you are that person and if you are nice, open and friendly all the time, then you’re just more likely to climb the steps of your career. And at the same time you will make this industry a better place to work in.

I found it very compelling and striking and I’ve realized that that really is what brings you forward. And so I always tried to be that person. I haven’t thought about it in a long time, so I wonder if maybe I’ve lost it a little bit on the way. Producing Holy Spider was the hardest thing I’ve ever done and has surely made me very cynical at times, but that is definitely a good piece of advice for young filmmaker, I think.

Holy Spider, 115 minutes

Germany, Denmark, France, Sweden

Directed by: Ali Abbasi

Screenplay: Ali Abbasi, Afshin Kamran Bahrami

Cast: Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Mehdi Bajestani, Arash Ashtiani, Forouzan Jamshidnejad, Nima Akbarpour, Sara Fazilat, Sina Parvaneh, Alice Rahimi, Mesbah Taleb

Cinematography by: Nadim Carlsen

Film Editing: Olivia Neergaard-Holm

Production Designer: Lina Nordqvist

Costumes Cesigner: Hanadi Khurma

Music: Martin Dirkov

Produced by: Sol Bondy, Jacob Jarek

Co-producers: Fred Burle, Eva Åkergren, Vincent Maraval, Calle Marthin, Peter Possne, Olivier Père, Rémi Burah

Production Cos: Profile Pictures, One Two Films, Why Not Productions, Nordisk Film Production Ab

Backing: Danish Film Institute, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Moin Filmförderung, Dfff, Ffa, Nordisk Film + TV Fund, Swedish Film Institute, Eurimages, Film I Väst, Zdf, Arte, Arte France Cinéma

Isa Wild Bunch has thus far sold Holy Spider to Utopia for U.S., Cinéart for Benelux, A-One Films Baltic for Baltics, Academy 2 ror Italy, Alamode Filmsfor Germany, BTeam Pictures for Spain, Bir Film for Turkey, Camera Film for Denmark, Canibal for Mexico, Cinobo for Greece, Edko Films for Hong Kong, Falcon Pictures for Indonesia, Film Europe for Czechia and Slovakia, Fivia/Cenex for Yugoslavia, Gaga for Japan, Gutek Film for Poland, Independenta Film for Romania, Karma for Spain, Metropolitan Filmexportfor France, Mubi for UK Ireland, Malaysia, India; Nordisk and Mer for Norway, Nos Lusomundo Audiovisuais for Portugal, Pancinema for South Korea, United King Films for Israel, Vertigo for Hungary, Xenix for Switzerland, Front Row for Mena.

MollywoodThe movie is directed by Ratheena and produced by Dulquer Salmaan’s production house Wayfarer Films. Tnm StaffMollywood star Mammootty and actor Parvathy Thiruvothu’s upcoming film Puzhu went on floors on Tuesday, August 17. A customary puja ceremony was held on Tuesday, coinciding with the first day of Chingam month as per the Malayalam calendar. Mammootty shared the photos on social media and wrote: “#Puzhu starts Rolling Today!” The movie is helmed by Ratheena, who is making her directorial debut, and is produced by actor Dulquer Salmaan’s production house Wayfarer Films and S George’s Cyn Cyl Celluloid. The shooting for Puzhu is underway in Ernakulam. Puzhu will also be the first film in which Mammootty and Dulquer will be working together, with the father playing the male lead and the son taking on the role of the producer. Puzhu has been jointly written by Harshad, who also came up with the story,...

Mollywood ‘Kaaval’ marks Nithin Renji Panicker’s second directorial venture, after the Mammootty starrer ‘Kasaba’. Tnm StaffScreengrab/YouTubeThe trailer of actor Suresh Gopi’s upcoming Malayalam film Kaaval was released on Friday, July 16. The plot, spanning across two generations, revolves around the life of Thamban, played by Suresh Gopi. Judging by the trailer, Thambaan is a man who retired from a life of violence to spend time with his family, and is forced to go back to his old ways. Filled with action sequences, emotional scenes and punchlines, the trailer hints at an engaging action drama. Sharing the trailer on Twitter, actor Suresh Gopi wrote: “Taking you all into the world of Thambaan, Antony and the rest. Here's the official trailer for #Kaaval.” Kaaval is spearheaded by Nithin Renji Panicker, the son of actor Renji Panicker. Nithin made his directorial debut with 2016 Malayalam action-thriller Kasaba, starring Mammootty, Neha Saxena, Jagadish,...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

About Endlessness (Roy Andersson)

Watch an exclusive clip for the film, which is also now in theaters.

“What should I do now that I have lost my faith?” is the question that animates About Endlessness; this being the new film by Roy Andersson, it is delivered in a doctor’s waiting room, over and over again, in a creaky voice, by a dumpy man in late middle age who continues his plaint even after the doctor and his receptionist gruntingly force him outside into the hallway, from whence they can hear him scratching at the door like a zombie. About Endlessness is Roy Andersson’s fourth film of this...

Things that start off with the best of intentions often, over time, become the very thing they were fighting against (see the pigs in Animal Farm). And a waterfall begins with a single drop of water. So movements for change often begin with a single person, the one willing to speak that which others are only thinking, the one with either little or nothing left to lose, or simply no more time or patience to put up with ill treatment. How do the Davids triumph over the Goliaths, in a world that continually squashes the former and protects the latter? Icelandic filmmaker Grímur Hákonarson (Rams) returns to familiar territory in his recent feature The County. The plight of farmers, their vulnerability to both the natural...

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

The Sorrows of Milk: Hákonarson Returns for More Rural Retribution

Iceland’s Grímur Hákonarson heads to Norma Rae (1979) territory in the agricultural hinterlands with third narrative feature, The County, a grim predecessor to the redemptive irreverence of his 2015 international breakout Rams, which took home the top prize out of Un Certain Regard at Cannes (and has now been subjected to an English language remake).

Staking a claim as a notable contemporary amongst Iceland’s burgeoning film industry, Hákonarson’s latest, while featuring a likeable, unfussy lead performance from Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir, is less dexterous than his previous feature in its delivery of an old-fashioned (wo)man against society melodrama which attempts to satisfy too many urges as the film is too realistically low-key to justify its attempts at violence or anarchy and too shortsighted in its character development to exculpate some of its heroine’s more outlandish decisions.…

Continue reading.

After earning much acclaim with his Un Certain Regard Cannes winner Rams (which was recently remade with a Sam Neill-led project), director Grímur Hákonarson returned with The County, which follows an Icelandic woman who rises up against her local co-op and the old ways of life in her small village. Following a premiere back at TIFF in 2019, it’ll finally arrive in U.S. theaters and Virtual Cinemas this month, beginning on April 30, and a new trailer has landed from newly-launched distributor Dekanalog.

Jared Mobarak said in his TIFF review, “The County shows that it only takes one person to beat the drum for change to occur. But it also posits just how sinister the opposition can be when its livelihood of means is threatened in the process. I think Hákonarson could have gone further with this aspect of the film because there’s some real suspense built as...

Exclusive: Dekanalog, a new theatrical and digital distribution company with an emphasis on presenting international titles for U.S. audiences, will launch in March with four films on its initial slate.

The company will release Keep an Eye Out, an absurdist comedy directed by Quentin Dupieux, online on March 5. The film played the festival circuit and received a commercial release in France, where Dupieux has garnered a following after receiving critical praise for previous films like Wrong and Rubber.

Festival prize winner This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection will have its virtual debut April 2 via Brooklyn Academy of Music and Museum of the Moving Image. Directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, the drama is this year’s official Oscar submission from Lesotho, the first ever from the African nation.

Also on the Dekanalog slate, without release dates as of now, are Take Me Somewhere Nice and The County.

If there's one thing films about farming have consistently shown us in recent years, from Britain to Iceland (The County) and beyond, it's that toxic masculinity thrives like wheat in the environment.

This time it's France where men rule the roost and women are thin on the ground and where, for once, the English title of the film gets to the heart of its emotions more than perhaps the more poetic French name La Terre Des Hommes (The Land of Men). Naël Marandin, writing with Marion Doussot and Marion Desseigne-Ravel, takes us to rural dairy country, where Constance (Diane Rouxel) is trying to keep her family farm afloat alongside her dad (Olivier Gourmet) and fiance Bruno (Finnegan Oldfield). With auction prices for their stock dropping - like many details here shown to us in an immersive cattle market scene rather than simply relayed through dialogue -...

Leading off today’s news round-up, multi-hyphenate Mélanie Laurent is in pre-production on 2021’s WWII drama The Nightingale, starring both Fanning sisters, but Variety reports she will begin filming a project next week. The first French Amazon Prime original movie, The Mad Woman’s Ball, reunites Laurent with Breathe breakout Lou De Laâge and follows a woman in the 19th century who is institutionalized in the infamous Salpêtrière hospital in Paris when she tells her parents that she can hear the dead.

Coming off this year’s King of Staten Island, Judd Apatow will next (per the Netflix Twitter account) direct a feature about a group of actors and actresses stuck in a hotel during a pandemic while attempting to complete a film. It’s co-written by Pam Brady who’s had her hand in offbeat comedy ranging from Lady Dynamite to Hamlet 2.

Following the sleeper festival hit, Rams (whose...

Exclusive: Miles Teller (Whiplash), Golden Globe nominee Shailene Woodley (Big Little Lies) and Oscar-winner William Hurt (Kiss Of The Spider Woman) are set to star in political satire The Fence from in-demand Icelandic director Grímur Hákonarson.

The film’s fun premise sees two liberal newlyweds increasingly at odds with their ultra-conservative ex-marine neighbor over a nine-foot-tall fence that he insists on building to keep his home safe from potential terrorists.

ICM Partners and CAA Media Finance are representing worldwide distribution rights and launching the project this week for the virtual AFM. Interestingly there’s no international sales firm attached. Filming is slated to get underway next March.

The film’s premise is fertile ground right now given the polarized political climate and the casting should make it an attractive prospect for buyers or financiers.

Screenplay was written by Shane Danielsen from a story by Hákonarson. Treehouse Pictures’ Justin Nappi (All Is Lost...

A Cannes Marche panel of experts notes that industry still missing the impact of theatrical and festival launches, however.

While the industry waits for festivals and cinemas to come back to full health after the Covid pandemic, there are some bright spots to consider during this unprecedented time, said a panel of experts at the online discussion ‘A conversation on the near future of film distribution across all streams’ held in partnership with the Cannes Marche and Screen International last week.

Those include smart collaborations and revenue shares for VoD launches, event-ifciation of online and cinema releases, and audience appetite for genre films and documentaries.

Grímur Hákonarson finds more trouble brewing down on the farm in his follow-up to the Cannes Un Certain Regard-winning Rams. More of a low-key straight forward drama than his black comedy-inflected hit, The County tracks what happens to farmer Inga (Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir) after the unexpected death of her husband Reynir (Hinrik Ólafsson).

Suddenly in control of their farm, which was scraping by even with two of them working it, she finds herself locking horns with the local co-op after discovering the company has been strong-arming those who don't like its elevated prices in a move that cuts close to home.

Hákonarson's woman against corporate Mafia premise is solid enough but The County never manages to generate the emotional intensity that the feuding brothers brought to his previous film, perhaps because the bad guy, co-op chief Eyjólfur (Sigurður Sigurjónsson) gets less screentime than he might - although this does stop...

A farmer’s widow wages war against local power brokers in this bittersweet Icelandic drama

In his deadpan 2015 feature Rams, Icelandic film-maker Grímur Hákonarson breathed bittersweet life into a tale of feuding sheep-farming brothers facing a cull that risked destroying their ancestral stock and way of life. Here, he peels back another layer of dour Nordic culture, turning his attention to a woman finding her voice amid the often chilly silence of agrarian life, making her mark in a male-dominated industry. Like its predecessor, The County blends elements of heartfelt tragedy with absurdist comedy, conjuring a humanist portrait of life in which community and loneliness coexist in a landscape of contradictions – geographical, personal, and political.

In a scene that reminded me of the arresting opening of Andrew Kötting’s This Filthy Earth, we meet Inga (stage and TV veteran Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir) pulling a newborn calf from its mother’s...

His wry parable Rams won acclaim at Cannes, but for his new film The County, Grímur Hákonarson delves into a shady world of farming co-operatives

‘The majority of people there support the co-operative, and if they found out we were criticising it, there might have been more complications.” Iceland’s buzziest director, Grímur Hákonarson, is talking about how he decided where to shoot his new film, The County. The shady agricultural co-operative it depicts was not completely fictional, he admits, so filming in Skagafjördur, the area concerned on the country’s north coast, didn’t seem prudent.

“It allowed me to concentrate on the art and not worry about being stabbed.” Surely it never would have got that bad? “No, no,” Hákonarson says. “It’s just a metaphor.”...

In The County, Rams writer/ director Grímur Hákonarson gives us another slice of rural Icelandic life in this stunning, heartbreaking and at times deliciously playful drama. Written by Hákonarson and with a stunning cinematography courtesy of Mart Taniel, the film tells the story of a woman’s solitary fight against corruption and injustice in her farming community.

Middle-aged couple Inga (Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir) and Reynir (Hinrik Ólafsson) run a small dairy fam in one of the most remote areas of Iceland. Recently, however, the couple have struggled to keep afloat amidst mounting debts and a powerful local cooperative breathing down their necks. For years the local farming co-op has had a say on where farmers can buy or sell their produce, leaving them almost with no profit ands unable to prosper.

When Reynir dies suddenly leaving huge debts and a lot of unanswered questions behind, Inga learns of the true...

This year’s festivities kicked off with with a bang with the opening night gala which presented Alice Winocour’s beautifully atmospheric drama Proxima. Winocour was also present after the main event for a Q&a session in which she talked about her experiences of working with a multi-national team of actors and technicians.

Day 2 was marked by the Scottish premier screening of Lorcan Finnegan’s brilliantly unsettling sci-fi drama Vivarium. Finnegan and star of the film Imogene Poots were also there to introduce the film.

The festival also welcomed Icelandic director Grímur Hákonarson who was there to introduce his new film The County. Hákonarson also stayed afterwards for a short Q&a session. The County is part of a wider Icelandic strand at this year’s Gff. Other films in this strand also feature the brilliant A white, White Day by Hlynur Palmason.

Meanwhile 1917 star George MacKay was also...

Fans of Icelandic cinema will be pleased to know that this year’s Glasgow Film Festival has a whole strand dedicated to the country and its cinema. This is Gff’s biggest ever country focus strand, offering up a chance to catch the very best Icelandic films of the past years. This programme includes the UK premiere of the eagerly awaited The County, from Rams director Grímur Hákonarson.

The Country

Set in a small Icelandic farming community, The County tells the story of Inga (Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir) a recenstly widowed dairy farmer who rebels against the powerful and corrupt local cooperative.

A White, White Day

This is the second feature from Winter Brothers director Hlynur Pálmason. Police officer Ingrimundur (Ingvar Sigurðsson) is devoted and still grieving after the sudden death of his wife. He tries to carry on, but starts to suspect that the woman he thought loved him unconditionally had been unfaithful to him.

Exclusive: Prolific Paris-based producer-distributer Haut et Court, whose TV credits include The Returned, The Young Pope and The Last Panthers, has hired a UK-based development scout as the company’s search for international TV and film projects gathers pace.

Based in London, former Fremantle editorial assistant Juliette Carlton-Thoquenne will act as Haut et Court’s UK contact and first port of call for writers and agents, and will develop and script-edit on English-language projects.

The French-British dual national will report into producer Caroline Benjo and will travel between the company’s London and Paris office.

Haut et Court has grown its international TV slate in recent years. Latest co-productions emanating from Israel include English-language dramas Fertile Crescent from Hulu/Arte, and Canal + show Possessions. Both series are currently in post-production. The former, starring James Purefoy, is created by Maria Feldman, Eitan Mansuri, Amit Cohen and Ron Leshem and directed by...

Jan Naszewski’s Warsaw-based sales company has boarded Finnish-Iranian Hamy Ramezan’s debut feature “Any Day Now,” to be shown as a work in progress at Göteborg’s Nordic Film Market, Which Runs Jan 30.-Feb 2.

Ramezan’s drama, produced by Aamu Film Company (“The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki”), already enjoys a strong buzz from earlier industry pitch events such as Helsinki’s Finnish Film Affair where the film was handed the Best Project Award.

The realistic drama is inspired by the director’s own experience as a refugee who fled the Iran-Iraq conflict with his family and landed in Finland in 1990.

Co-written by Ramezan and Antti Rautava, the story follows 13-year-old Ramin Mehdipour, of Iranian origin, who is enjoying a perfect summer in a small Finnish town. A few weeks before the new school year, his family gets the news that the Finnish Immigration Service has...

50% of its programme will be comprised of films directed by women.

The world premiere of Maria Bäck’s Swedish drama Psychosis in Stockholm wil open the Goteborg Film Festival on January 24 as part of the festival’s Nordic Competition. Goteborg has promised that 50% of its programme will be comprised of films directed by women.

The film is inspired by an experience writer-director Bäck had when she was 15 and her mother developed a psychosis while they were on a trip to Stockholm. The filmmaker describes the project as a “surreal fiction drama”; Garagefilm produces what is Bäck’s second feature following I Remember When I Die.

Goteborg Film Festival, the biggest showcase of local and international movies in the Nordics, will kick off its 43rd edition with Maria Bäck’s “”Psychosis,” and will close with actor-turned-director Mårten Klingberg’s “My Father Mary Anne.”

Both timely Swedish dramas dealing with trauma post-sexual abuse, and the experience of a transgender priest, respectively, “Psychosis” and “My Father Mary Anne” will have their world premiere at Goteborg.

Stellan Skarsgård, who just won a Golden Globe for his performance in the hit HBO series “Tchernobyl,” will receive the prestigious Nordic Honorary Dragon Award and will be honored with a retrospective of some of the greatest films of his career. As part of the tribute, the estival will also host the Nordic premiere of “The Painted Bird” which was recently shortlisted for the international feature film category at the Oscars. During the festival, Skarsgård will also having a masterclass.

In addition to opening the festival,...

After the death of her dairy farmer husband, a middle-aged woman courageously sacrifices her livelihood to speak out against the corruption and injustice at work in her community in the audience-pleasing, humanist drama “The County.” Like writer-director Grímur Hákonarson’s previous film “Rams,” . The yin to that film’s yang, “The County” is full of feisty female energy and imagery, and sprinkled with rousing “you go girl!” comic moments. Niche arthouse play is a given for this appealing and endearingly modest tale.

Hard-working couple Inga (Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir) and Reynir (Hinrik Ólafsson) run Dalsmynni, a mom-and-pop dairy farm that has been in his family for generations. With money tight and their hours long, they haven’t been able to take a vacation for three years. At night, they are so fatigued that they can barely manage to mumble, “Did you call the inseminator?” or “Did you order the fertilizer?” before collapsing into bed.

The devolution of a worker-owned entity into that which it was formed to combat probably occurs much faster than you’d expect. Things initially work like they should with successful profits and happy members. The establishment itself is also pleased because it sees little threat of anyone going outside its economic reach when the whole point of forming it was to get out from under the exorbitant costs of external resources. Vote an incoming director with greed in his/her heart that sees how good things are, however, and they’ll start finding ways to personally capitalize on that implicit harmony. Executive salaries are slowly raised, prices are gradually increased, and a new monopoly is eventually formed. And when members finally catch on, they unfortunately realize they’re too late to escape.

It’s at this point in the lifespan of one such co-op that writer/director Grímur Hákonarson introduces...

Sol Bondy’s Berlin-based One Two Films has boarded Iranian helmer Rafi Pitts’ latest film, “Random Star Suicide,” produced by French shingle Les Films du Worso and set to shoot next year.

After 2016’s “Soy Nero,” Pitts again examines Americans living on the margins of society in a story that follows a young black man and a working-class veteran whose lives and destinies cross.

One Two Films is continuing its focus on international and English-language productions as it recalibrates following the recent exit of longtime partner Jamila Wenske. The company has a new office in Berlin and a slew of projects in the works as it seeks to broaden its reach as an international co-producer specialized in Germany’s soft money incentives.

One Two Films partnered with Denmark’s Profile Pictures on Grimur Hakonarson’s Icelandic drama “The County,” which premieres in Toronto’s Contemporary World Cinema section, and the...

Grímur Hákonarson landed on our radar with his last film, the heartfelt Un Certain Regard Cannes winner Rams. Four years later he’s now back with The County, which follows an Icelandic woman who rises up against her local co-op and the old ways of life in her small village. Described as David-and-Goliath story, we look forward to the specificity and splendor that Hákonarson will likely once again bring to screens in this chilly locale.

Ahead of an international premiere at Tiff starting this Friday, we’re pleased to debut an exclusive track from the soundtrack, from Icelandic composer Valgeir Sigurdsson. Titled “Burial Ground,” it’s an eerily beautiful, scene-setting piece of music.

“I wanted to make a film about an individual who stands up to change society,” the director recently said. “Then I had the idea of Inga, a strong woman, working in a modern farm, fighting a patriarchal society.

"It's time for us farmers to retake control." Yes! Fight the power! Screen Daily has debuted a festival promo trailer for the Icelandic drama titled The County, premiering at the Toronto Film Festival coming up next month. The film will screen in the Contemporary World Cinema section, after already opening in Icelandic cinemas this summer. From the acclaimed director of the film Rams, Grímur Hákonarson's The County is set in rural Iceland and follows Inga, a middle-aged cow farmer who loses her husband in an accident and must stand on her own two feet. She begins a new life on her own terms by fighting against corruption and injustice at the co-op in her community. Don't follow the herd! The film stars Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir, Sveinn Ólafur Gunnarsson, and Sigurður Sigurjónsson. I'm really enjoying this outstanding trend of anti-corruption, power-to-the-people films from Iceland these days (see also: Woman at War). More of this.

‘Rams’ director set to premiere new film in Toronto’s Contemporary World Cinema strand.

Screen can reveal the first trailer for Grimur Hakonarson’s The County, the Icelandic filmmaker’s follow-up to 2015 indie hit Rams.

The film will premiere in the Contemporary World Cinema strand at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 6.

The County is set in rural Iceland and follows Inga, a middle aged cow farmer who loses her husband in a car accident and must stand on her own two feet.

New Europe Film Sales handles international rights.

Producers are Netop Films in Iceland with Profile Pictures in Denmark,...

Berlin-based company to move into international co-productions and branch out into fiction.

Berlin-based production outfit Achtung Panda! Media has appointed Jamila Wenske and Melanie Blocksdorf as new heads of the company. Wenske will served as producer and managing director and Blocksdorf as producer.

Carli Hameder joins as the company’s project manager.

These hires follow the departure of previous head Helge Albers, who has started in his new position as CEO of Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein.

Achtung Panda! was launched in 2015 by Danny Krausz and Oliver Damian. The pair remain shareholders but aren’t involved actively in productions.

The company has...

German producer Jamila Wenske has left One Two Films to head Achtung Panda!, a Berlin-based film production company.

Wenske succeeds former managing director Helge Albers, who left Achtung Panda! to become the new CEO of regional funder Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein.

Wenske partnered with Sol Bondy and Christoph Lange to launch One Two Films in 2010. The Berlin company has co-produced domestic and international productions, including Jennifer Fox’s “The Tale,” Isabel Coixet’s “The Bookshop” and Vadim Perelman’s “Persian Lessons.”

Variety selected Wenske and Bondy for its 10 Producers to Watch list last year.

Producer Melanie Blocksdorf, who previously worked at Berlin-based Propellerfilm, is joining Wenske at Achtung Panda!

Established as a joint venture in 2015 between Danny Krausz’s Vienna-based Dor Film and Oliver Damian’s 27 Films in Berlin, Achtung Panda! had largely focused on documentaries under Albers’ management. But Wenske and Blocksdorf, along with project manager Carli Hameder, intend to...

Bondy will continue to run the company.

Jamila Wenske and Sol Bondy, founders and managing partners of German production outfit One Two Films, have decided to part ways.

Bondy will continue to run the company with investor and partner Christoph Lange. Fred Burle, One Two Films’ project manager since 2017, has started working on his own projects as a producer, reporting to Bondy.

Wenske will take her projects with her to Achtung Panda!, the Berlin-based production outfit she is joining as managing director. More details about her role at Achtung Panda! will be revealed soon.

One Two Films has made a...

Bondy will continue to run the company.

Jamila Wenske and Sol Bondy, founders and managing partners of German production outfit One Two Films, have decided to part ways.

Bondy will continue to run the company with investor and partner Christoph Lange. Fred Burle, One Two Films’ project manager since 2017, has started working on his own projects as a producer, reporting to Bondy.

Wenske will take her projects with her to Achtung Panda!, the Berlin-based production outfit she is joining as managing director. More details about her role at Achtung Panda! will be revealed soon.

One Two Films has made a...

Oslo — New-York based distributor Film Movement has acquired U.S. rights to critically-lauded Icelandic drama “A White, White Day,” today’s opening film at New Nordic Films in Haugesund.

In a separate deal, sales agent New Europe Film Sales has closed French-speaking Canada with Funfilm and English-speaking Canada with Game Theory.

Hlynur Pálmason’s sophomore pic, “A White, White Day” bowed at the Critics’ Week in Cannes where Icelandic heavyweight thesp Ingvar Sigurðsson won an acting prize for his solid performance as an off-duty police officer on an obsessive quest. The picture’s winning festival streak continued at the Transilvania and Motovun fests. After this week’s market screening at Haugesund confab New Nordic Films, the drama will have its North American premiere in the Toronto Festival’s Contemporary World Cinema program.

Film Movement’s president Michael Rosenberg said: “Hlynur put the international filmmaking community on notice with his feature film debut,...