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Cate Blanchett once shared a list of her favorite arthouse and world cinema films during a discussion with director Todd Field, known for Tár.

The pair spent time exploring Criterion Collection titles, picking movies that shaped their views on filmmaking and storytelling. Blanchett’s picks cover a wide range of styles, from classic European cinema to modern dramas, showing her deep appreciation for both artistry and narrative.

One of the first films Blanchett highlighted was Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan, a 2015 drama about a former soldier, a young woman, and a little girl posing as a family to escape the Sri Lankan civil war.

Dheepan was widely praised by critics for...

Brink of Life: Mundruczó Hunts for the Grace in Grief with English Language Debut

One of Hungary’s most prolific arthouse auteurs of the last decade makes his English language debut with the Canadian/US co-production Pieces of a Woman. At first glance, it’s a far cry from the output which defines Kornél Mundruczó’s filmography, who often explores taboo or topical subject matters girded with either sensationalism or a touch of magical realism. Reuniting with scribe Kata Weber, who penned both 2014’s White God (read review) and Jupiter’s Moon (2017), this time around he drills into a sobering character study focused on tragedy and the splintering ripple effects of grief on a contemporary Boston couple already unsteady thanks to a class divide which has defined their equality in the eyes of others.…...

Tomorrow is the centenary of the birth of one of cinema’s greatest directors, Ingmar Bergman, and to celebrate, The Criterion Collection has announced of their most expansive releases ever. This November, they will release Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema, a 39-film box set comprising nearly all of his work, including 18 films never before released by Criterion. Curated akin to a film festival, the set features Opening, Centerpiece, and Closing Films, with many double features in between. The set also features 11 introductions and over five hours of interviews with the director himself, six making-of documentaries, a 248-page book, and much more.

As we await for its November 20 release, check out an overview from Criterion below, as well as the box art, the trailer, and the full list of films, in curated order. One can also see much more about each release and the special features on the official site.

With the...

Palme d'Or winner 'The Square' with Claes Bang: 'Gobsmackingly weird' Cannes Film Festival favorite may have a tough time landing a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award nomination. Ruben Östlund's comedy-drama is totally unrelated to Jehane Noujaim's 2013 Oscar-nominated political documentary of the same title, which refers to downtown Cairo's Tahrir Square. Cannes' Palme d'Or winner 'The Square' & other Official Competition favorites' Oscar chances Screenwriter-director Ruben Östlund's The Square was the Palme d'Or winner at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, which wrapped up on May 28. (See list of Palme d'Or and other 2017 Cannes winners further below.) Clocking in at about 2 hours and 20 minutes, Östlund's unusual comedy-drama revolving around the chaotic p.r. campaign to promote the opening of the titular installation – a symbolic square of light – at a contemporary art museum in Stockholm has been generally well-received by critics. In the opinion of The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw,...

Some actors and directors go together like spaghetti and meatballs. They just gel together in a rare way that makes their collaborations special. Here is a list of the seven best parings of director and actor in film history.

7: Tim Burton & Johnny Depp:

Edward Scissorhands; Ed Wood; Sleepy Hollow; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Corpse Bride; Sweeney Todd; Alice in Wonderland; Dark Shadows

Of all the parings on this list, these two make the oddest films. (In a good way.) Tim Burton is one of the most visually imaginative filmmakers of his generation and Johnny Depp was once the polymorphous master of playing a wide variety of eccentric characters. They were a natural combo. Depp made most of his best films with Burton, before his current ‘Jack Sparrow’ period began. The duo had the knack for telling stories about misfits and freaks, yet making them seem sympathetic and likable.

Thanks to the home entertainment team at Artificial Eye, we have Three Blu-ray copies of the upcoming Classic Bergman 5 disc box set (released on 28 May) to give away to our world cinema-loving. The box set includes five Bergman classics: It Rains on our Love, A Ship Bound for India, Sawdust and Tinsel, Dreams and So Close to Life. This is an exclusive competition for our Facebook and Twitter fans, so if you haven't already, 'Like' us at facebook.com/CineVueUK or follow us @CineVue.

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Even as Reverse Shot carries on working its way through the Spielberg oeuvre for the second time — the latest entry comes from Eric Hynes: "His cinema telescopes and microscopes, making big what's small, and near what's far, and always making you feel — both physically and emotionally — the ingenious contraption at work. Rarely has his marriage of form and feeling worked as fluidly and guilelessly as it did in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a film of colossal ambition that plays as intimate, of heart-thumping sensations that register as cosmic, of wondrous spectacle that in the end just sings" — the new Film Quarterly features Jonathan Rosenbaum on what more than a few believe to be Spielberg's best work: "A.I. is a film about having been programmed emotionally — something that the cinema does to us all, and a subject that my first book, Moving Places, attempted to explore. This is one reason why,...

Swedish actor known for his roles in Ingmar Bergman's films and television dramas

Although the actors who comprised Ingmar Bergman's repertory company all went on to make their own prestigious careers, they will for ever be associated with the great Swedish film and stage director. Erland Josephson, who has died aged 88 after suffering from Parkinson's disease, was artistically linked with Bergman even more than Max Von Sydow, Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Thulin. Josephson appeared in more than a dozen of Bergman's films, and played a Bergman surrogate in Ullmann's Faithless (2000).

In middle and old age, he was chosen by directors such as Andrei Tarkovsky and Theo Angelopoulos for the qualities he revealed in the Bergman films – a certain self-centred introspection and a deep melancholy, etched on his lined and grizzled features. Because he became a leading film actor in his 50s, he seems never to have been young.

Stockholm -- Swedish actor Erland Josephson, who collaborated with legendary film director Ingmar Bergman in more than 40 films and plays, has died. He was 88.

The award-winning actor died at a Stockholm hospital on Saturday following a long battle against Parkinson's disease, said Royal Dramatic Theatre spokeswoman Christina Bjerkander.

Josephson was born into a family of artists and culture workers in Stockholm in 1923 and would become the actor who had the longest-running collaboration with Bergman. The two first met when Josephson was just 16 and participated as an amateur actor in the play "The Merchant of Venice," directed by Bergman.

Although he never had any formal acting education, Josephson continued to appear in several Bergman stage plays in the 1940s and 50s, and received a minor part in 1946 film "It Rains on Our Love." In the late 50s he played larger roles in Bergman's films "The Magician" and "Brink of Life," but...

Studio Ghibli, London

If you've never stepped into the universes of Hayao Miyazaki and co, it's time you discovered what you're missing. These aren't just some of the best animated children's movies ever made; they'e some of the best movies full stop. The vibrant fantasy worlds, airborne adventures and noble junior heroes of Studio Ghibli's movies fascinate kids, but they're richer, more challenging and more psychedelically epic than most of what passes for grown-up fantasy. Avatar looks like Mr Men compared to, say, Princess Mononoke – which deals with similar themes with considerably more nuance. Having first championed them 10 years ago, the Barbican brings back Ghibli classics, from Laputa: Castle In The Sky and My Neighbour Totoro (the best one for young viewers), right up to previews of their latest, Arrietty, a version of The Borrowers.

Barbican Screen EC2, Wed to 31 Jul

Liverpool Arabic Fim Festival

Partly as a result of the Arab Spring,...

In a city often derided as art-phobic and money-obsessed, the Hong Kong International Film Festival provides an annual opportunity for local audiences to contextualize their own regional cinema alongside the breadth of international contemporary filmmaking. While the glitz of the Hk movie industry is paraded in various galas and a high-wattage opening award ceremony, the programmers have left plenty of room throughout the festival’s seventeen days of screenings for the usual arthouse suspects, student-director and avant-garde showcases, and a strong focus on new Chinese-language cinema. With this diverse slate spread out across multiplex theaters throughout the city, it’s surprising that Hkiff also manages to maintain a certain level of coherence, partly due to the atmosphere created by what seems to be a dedicated viewership and the visibility of well-known Sinophone cinephiles like Tony Rayns and David Bordwell. Since I had just four whole days in the city, I...