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Subversive Irish breakout pic Kneecap and Sasha Nathwani’s gentle yet ambitious debut Last Swim are among the titles that have nabbed mentions on the new talent longlists at this year’s British Independent Film Awards.

Both Kneecap and Last Swim pop up on the Douglas Hickox Best Debut Director Award longlist. Other nominees include Hoard, directed by Luna Carmoon, and Karan Kandhari’s Sister Midnight, which debuted at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

All four films also feature on the best screenplay longlist alongside Christopher Andrews’s Bring Them Down starring Barry Keoghan and Christopher Abbott. Other pics on the screenplay longlist include The Ceremony by Jack King and Jed Hart’s Restless.

Overall, the longlists include 31 British features, with 20 fiction and 11 documentary features across four debut filmmaking categories. Within that, there are 13 first-time fiction feature directors, 16 first-time feature documentary directors, 11 first-time writers, and 19 breakthrough producers.

The final...

Rich Peppiatt’s “Kneecap” and Luna Carmoon’s “Hoard” are among the titles in the British Independent Film Awards’ (BIFA) 2024 filmmaker new talent longlists, unveiled Friday. The selections spotlight 31 British features across four debut filmmaking categories, encompassing both fiction and documentary works.

Peppiatt and Carmoon join a group of first-time directors vying for the Douglas Hickox Award, including Amrou Al-Kadhi for “Layla,” Christopher Andrews for “Bring Them Down,” and Daina O Pusić for “Tuesday.” Other contenders in this category are Lucy Cohen with “Edge of Summer,” James Krishna Floyd for “Unicorns,” Stuart Gatt’s “Catching Dust,” Karan Kandhari’s “Sister Midnight,” Jack King’s “The Ceremony,” Rob Morgan’s “Stopmotion,” Sasha Nathwani’s “Last Swim,” and Joshua Trigg’s “Satu – Year of the Rabbit.” The category is sponsored by BBC Film.

The best debut screenwriter category, sponsored by Film4, sees Andrews and Carmoon competing alongside Floyd, Jed Hart for “Restless,...

Filmmakers from Bring Them Down, The Ceremony and Tuesday feature prominently on the filmmaker new talent longlists for the 2024 British Independent Film Awards (Bifas).

Bring Them Down’s Christopher Andrews is longlisted for the Douglas Hickox Award for best debut director and the best debut screenwriter award, while the film’s debut producer Jacob Swan Hyam is longlisted for breakthrough producer.

Scroll down for the filmmaker New Talent longlists

The Ceremony repeats that trio for writer-director Jack King and producers Hollie Bryan and Lucy Meer; as does Tuesday for writer-director Daina O Pusic and producer Helen Gladders.

Four filmmaker new...

Screenager Productions, the team behind 2021’s Satan’s Servant, is back later this month with the brand new indie horror movie Welcome Week: A College Horror Anthology.

The film, a co-production with Gory Cory Productions and Zomboy Productionz, premiered at 2024’s Salem Horror Fest and will release worldwide on Blu-ray and all major digital retailers on August 30. The film will have sneak previews in select theaters across the US throughout the month of August.

Exclusively watch the official trailer for Welcome Week: A College Horror Anthology below.

“After a relentless masked killer interrupts their plans to attend a frat party, this horror anthology follows Andrew and his bumbling roommate Josh as they set out across their dangerous campus to save their kidnapped friend. As the duo creeps closer to uncovering the killer’s dark secret, Andrew reveals terrifying tales of college from his family’s dark history.”

Following its premiere...

The 32nd edition of the UK’s Raindance Film Festival is to open with horror-thriller Cuckoo, starring Hunter Schafer, as the festival shifts away from autumn to a midsummer slot, running June 19-28.

This year, 90% of the international films screening in competition are debut features. The jury includes actors Alice Englert, Claes Bang, Jared Harris and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and producers Ivana MacKinnon and Paul Sng.

Cuckoo is a German-us co-production that has played at Berlin and SXSW. Schafer plays a 17- year-old who is forced to leave her American home to live with her father and his new family as...

The 32nd edition of the UK’s Raindance Film Festival is to open with Tilman Singer’s horror-thriller Cuckoo, starring Hunter Schafer, as the festival shifts away from autumn to a midsummer slot, running June 19-28.

This year, 90% of the international films screening in competition are debut features.

The jury includes actors Alice Englert, Claes Bang, Jared Harris and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and producers Ivana MacKinnon and Paul Sng.

Opening night film Cuckoo is a German-us co-production, that has played at Berlin and SXSW. Schafer plays a 17- year-old who is forced to leave her American home to live with her...

Two buddies, still clad in their graduation robes, take an evening stroll as they lament the passing of their high school days and celebrate the imminent arrival of their college experience. It is a bittersweet occasion. An era of their lives is over and a new dawn sparkles before them on the horizon, beckoning the boys forward toward any number of possible futures. The thought is as enticing as it is terrifying, landing squarely in the latter emotion’s camp with the arrival of a masked killer touting a sizable knife.

Welcome Week: A College Horror Anthology explores the trials and tribulations of the burgeoning freedom aging adolescents face as they leave behind the comforts, safeties, and simplicities of their childhood home for the unknown territory of a college education. Rather than present a series of disconnected and disjointed tales sharing a similar theme, Welcome Week smartly houses its short conceits within a grander narrative,...

Icelandic football filmThe Home Game won the Glasgow Film Festival audience award which was presented as the 20th edition drew to a close in the Scottish city last night (March 10).

Smari Gunn and Logi Sigursveinsson’s documentary about plucky underdogs Reynir Fc’s bid for cup glory scored the highest audience score in the award’s 10-year history.

Based in the Icelandic village of Hellissandur, with a population of 369, Reynir Fc was re-formed in 2020 with a ragtag bunch of locals including a 15-year-old schoolboy rapper, 40-something in goal and the somewhat controversial inclusion of a former Iceland women’s team player.

LevelK has signed key territory deals for Danish family animation Mumbo Jumbo, from prolific Scandinavian production company A. Film Production.

The film has sold to France (Gebeka Films), Middle East (Empire Networks Ltd.), Poland (Vivarto), Benelux (Just4Kids bv), Hungary (Ads Service ltd), Estonia (Estinfilm), Greece (Rosebud.21 S.A), Former Yugoslavia (Demiurg), Bulgaria (Pro Films Ood) and Cis (Silver Box/Russian Report). Further deals are in the works.

The film, currently in pre-production, will be pitched this week at animation industry event Cartoon Movie (March 5-7). Nordisk Film will release the film in Scandinavia in 2025.

3D CGI animation Mumbo Jumbo...

Falling Into Place, the debut feature of German filmmaker Aylin Tezel, has secured key deals ahead of its UK premiere at Glasgow Film Festival tomorrow (Saturday March 2).

Following last week’s European Film Market, the film has sold to Australia and New Zealand (Palace Films), Spain (Syldavia Cinema), Switzerland (Royal Film) and former-Yugoslavia and Albania, plus international inflight rights (Karantanija).

German sales agency Global Screen is selling the title; Port au Prince Pictures conducted a German release in December. The film will have its US premiere at Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival on March 14.

Set in Scotland and London, Falling Into Place...

Falling Into Place Photo: Glasgow Film Festival

From the moment that Kira (Aylin Tezel) and Ian (Chris Fulton) meet, it’s clear that there’s something between them that goes beyond just sexual attraction. They have instant chemistry, and every moment of their adventure together on the Isle of Skye is electric. What makes Falling Into Place unusual, however, is that instead of following them as they immediately embark on a romance, we see them part and go back to their separate lives. They spend most of the film apart, and we see how that connection, and the shift in perspective it has precipitated, changes how they relate to everything else they have to deal with.

As well as starring, Aylin wrote and directed the film. Shortly before the 2024 Glasgow Film Festival, where it’s due to screen, I met up with her to ask about that central concept and the process of developing it.

Rose Glass’s romantic thriller Loves Lives Bleeding is set to open the 20th edition of Glasgow Film Festival (Gff) on February 28.

The UK filmmaker’s follow-up to Saint Maud stars Kristen Stewart as a gym owner who falls for a bodybuilder with criminal connections. The A24 feature will receive its UK premiere at Glasgow following its debut at Sundance earlier this month.

John Archer’s documentary Janey, about Scottish stand-up comedian Janey Godley as she embarks on her final tour following a terminal cancer diagnosis, will close the festival on March 10.

Gff has secured eight world premieres (see below...

Sophia Bosch’s debut feature is a dystopian folklore drama.

LevelK has boarded sales rights on Sophia Bosch’s dystopian folklore drama Milk Teeth, ahead of the film’s world premiere at International Film Festival Rotterdam.

The film will play in the Big Screen Competition ; it is the debut feature of Swiss filmmaker Bosch.

Set in an isolated rural community, Milk Teeth follows a woman who has gained the respect of the community despite being born to an ‘outsider’ mother; but that respect is put at risk when the woman finds a mysterious girl in the local woods.

Bosch says...

Our Pmc sister website Variety is reporting that the motion picture academy has named 94 tunes as eligible for Best Original Song at the 2024 Oscars. See the complete list below of every song currently on the ballot for the music branch. A total of 15 will be announced this Thursday, December 21, on the Oscar short list. A final five will be revealed on January 23 as the the actual nominees.

SEEDiane Warren interview: ‘The Fire Inside’ from ‘Flamin’ Hot’

Gold Derby has been offering you the opportunity to predict the Best Original Song category for the past few weeks. Among some of the surprise omissions:

“Barbie” producers have chosen not to submit “Barbie World,” “Speed Drive” and “Pink.” That film’s three official submissions are “I’m Just Ken,” “Dance the Night” and “What Was I Made For?”

“Trolls Band Together” producers have not entered “Family,” “Watch Me Work” and “Let’s Get Married.

Projects ‘The Elf’, ‘Truth Or Consquences’; festival film ‘Falling Into Place’ all receive plaudits.

International industry attendees have praised the European Genre Forum as a highlight of Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (Poff), which closed its 27th edition on Sunday, November 19.

The Forum is a pan-European development event organised with Imagine Fantastic Film Festival in the Netherlands and Fantastic Zagreb Film Festival, that closes its three-lab structure with a marketing and packaging lab in Tallinn.

As head of Montreal-based distributor Attraction Distribution, Xiaojuan Zhou travelled further than most to Estonia, finding the trip worthwhile. “The quality of the pitches was...

Emma Dante’s film took the Grand Prix, plus best actor for Simone Zambelli.

Emma Dante’s Italian drama Misericordia won the award for best film in Official Selection Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, at the awards ceremony held tonight.

Adapted from Dante’s own play of the same name, the film follows three sex workers living in a wasteland by the sea, where the only light in their lives is the young man they care for together.

Scroll down for the full list of winners

Simone Zambelli also received the best actor award in the section.

Italian writer-director Emma Dante’s “Misericordia” has won the top prize at the Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn, Estonia. Adapted from her own play, her third feature tells the story of a young man (Simone Zambelli) with learning difficulties, cared for by a group of sex workers on an island, protecting him from the cruelty of his abusive father. It’s a raw portrait of a marginalized group of people, mixing natural beauty of the locations with the grime of everyday existence.

Zambelli also took the award for best actor, for his role as the man-child at the center of the drama. The best actress prize was shared by Lubna Azabal, who plays a teacher in Jawad Rhalib’s “Amal,” and Kim Higelin, who stars in the controversial French drama “Consent,” directed by Vanessa Filho, as a teenager having an affair with a manipulative and exploitative 50-year-old writer.

The...

The line-up is made up of 11 world premieres at 5 international premieres.

Aylin Tezel’s romance Falling Into Place is among 16 titles selected for the First Features competition at Estonia’s Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

The line-up comprises 11 world premieres and 5 international premieres.

German-Turkish actor Tezel, whose credits include 2019’s 7500, makes her directorial debut with the English-language Falling Into Place - a romance set between Scotland and London and starring Tezel, Chris Fulton and 2023 Screen Star of Tomorrow Rory Fleck Byrne. It recently world premiered at Filmfest Hamburg.

Also screening is Carolina Ingvarsson’s UK-produced drama Unmoored, fresh off its London premiere,...

German cinema is in Cannes with new works by Wim Wenders and films that explore Nazi propaganda, gender identity, economic crisis, romance, betrayal and fast cars.

In addition to domestic films, a dozen German co-productions are screening in this year’s Cannes Film Festival lineup, including major works from the likes of Wes Anderson, Aki Kaurismäki and Jessica Hausner.

Wenders is in Cannes with “Perfect Days,” which is vying for the Palme d’Or, and the documentary “Anselm” in Special Screenings.

“Perfect Days” tells the story of a Tokyo janitor (Kôji Yakusho) who seems very content with his simple life, structured routines and passion for music, books and photography. A series of unexpected encounters gradually reveal more of his past. The Japanese-German co-production is sold by the Match Factory.

“Anselm” explores the work of artist Anselm Kiefer, shedding light on his life, inspirations and creative process. Shot in 3D,...

Munich-based sales agency Global Screen has acquired romantic drama “Falling Into Place” for worldwide theatrical distribution. The English-language film is written and directed by Aylin Tezel, one of Germany’s leading young actors, and stars Tezel (“7500”) and Chris Fulton (“Bridgerton”).

The directorial debut is set in Scotland on the Isle of Skye and in London. It is an honest and poetic portrait of today’s 30-somethings caught between the fear of commitment and the desire for self-improvement. Like all great love stories, it is not just about the love between two individuals, but also about the dreams and anxieties of a whole generation.

Kira and Ian, two 30-somethings, meet all too briefly over a winter weekend on the Isle of Skye and form a sudden, deep, and surprising bond. Back in London, they try to move on with their separate lives – but both have to stop running from themselves...