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Marianne Metivier’s debut feature “The Splendour of Life” (“Une splendeur de vivre”) is set to start principal photography at locations across Canada and the Philippines, the producers revealed at the Cannes Film Festival.

The ensemble cast includes Camille Rutherford (“Anatomy of a Fall”), Garance Marillier (“Raw”), Sue Prado (“Your Mother’s Son”), Kyrie Samodio (“Hito”) and Amaryllis Tremblay (“Genesis”).

Set against a lush countryside backdrop, Marie (Rutherford) questions her relationship, while Noée (Marillier) grieves her father. In a stifling Montreal, Eva (Kyrie Samodio) searches for stability as Jeanne (Tremblay) plans her departure.

Canadian-Filipino Metivier won acclaim for her short “She Who Wears the Rain” that was selected for the Berlinale Short Film Competition in 2020.

Geneviève Gosselin-g. of Canada’s Le Foyer Films, known for “Richelieu”, partners with Alexa Rivero of France’s Altamar Films (Venice 2021 winner “The Great Movement”) and Wilfredo Manalang of the Philippines’ Fusee Media (Cannes 2022 winner “Plan 75”), as producers.

The Athens International Film Festival was the latest festival to fall for the charms of UK director Molly Manning Walker’s directorial debut How to Have Sex this week, presenting the drama with the €2,000 Golden Athena award for best film.

The coming-of-age film about a group of teenagers on holiday shot in Greece and was co-produced by George Karnavas and Konstantinos Kontovrakis’ Heretic which also handles world sales. Local theatrical distributor and platform Cinobo picked up Greek rights.

How To Have Sex debuted at Cannes where it won the Un Certain Regard prize and nost recently won best film at Germany’s Filmfest Hamburg.

Quebec festival wrapped on August 9.

Talk To Me, the horror hit from Danny and Michael Philippou which has grossed more than $31m in North America and close to $50m worldwide, has been named best international feature in the 2023 Fantasia audience awards.

In other key awards Lee Sang-yong’s South Korean title The Roundup: No Way Out was named best Asian feature, while Shigeyoshi Tsukahara’s Japanese entry Kurayukaba earned best animated feature, and

Satan Wants You from Steve J. Adams and Sean Horlor took the inaugural Dgc Audience Award for Best Canadian Film (narrative or documentary).

The full list of audience award winners appears below.

A couple weeks ago, the Fantasia International Film Festival announced the films that won jury prizes at the 27th edition of the show, which recently came to a close. Yesterday, our own Tyler Nichols shared his list of favorite films from this year’s Fantasia festival. Now Fantasia has unveiled the list of audience award winners, with wins going to films like Talk to Me, The Roundup: No Way Out, Kurayukaba, and Satan Wants You, among others. The full list can be seen below:

Best International Feature

Gold: Talk To Me

Silver: Late Night With The Devil

Bronze: Hundreds Of Beavers

Best Asian Feature

Gold: The Roundup: No Way Out

Silver: River

Bronze: Phantom (South Korea d. Lee Hae-young)

Best Animated Feature

Gold: Kurayukaba

Silver: The Concierge

Bronze: The First Slam Dunk

The Dgc Audience Award for Best Canadian Film (Narrative or Documentary)

Satan Wants You – This year’s...

There was no escaping “Red Rooms” at Fantasia.

Awarded the Cheval Noir Award for best feature at the 27th edition of the fest, Pascal Plante’s film also took honors for screenplay and Dominique Plante’s haunting score, as well as an outstanding performance award for Juliette Gariépy.

“The ultimate effect a film can achieve is to implant a significant and lasting emotional memory. ‘Red Rooms’ masterfully accomplished that goal,” said jurors David Hewlett, Brenda Lieberman, Jourdain Searles, Virginie Sélavy and Gary Sherman.

“With incredible skill and artistry, without resorting to gore or violence, this film delivers not only an extremely disturbing and frightening experience but introduces you to characters and situations you may never forget.”

Produced by Nemesis Films, it takes on the trial of a man accused of murdering teenage girls and selling videos of his crimes online. But Plante wanted to focus on women who follow him.

As a form of art, cinema can be used for many different purposes. A movie can entertain the audience or move people, but it can also be used as a political tool to denounce the injustices that plague our world. That's the case in Pier-Philippe Chevigny's Temporaries (Richelieu), a devastating movie about how immigrant workers are exploited by first world companies that can't abuse the citizens of their own countries quite so easily.

A first teaser has been unveiled for Canadian filmmaker Pier-Philippe Chevigny’s debut feature “Temporaries” (“Richelieu”), which will bow at the Tribeca Festival followed by the Karlovy Vary Film Festival and Fantasia International Film Festival.

The film follows Ariane (Ariane Castellanos), who moves back home to the Richelieu Valley after a breakup and gets a job as an interpreter for seasonal migrant workers in a factory. Witnessing workplace abuses perpetrated by Stephane (Marc-André Grondin), the factory’s aggressive supervisor, Ariane must decide how far she is willing to go to speak out against injustice.

Chevigny grew up in the Richelieu Valley in Quebec and observing migrant workers there informed the film. “My first feature aims to question the image of Canada as a perfect, injustice-free country. Launching at Tribeca, Karlovy Vary and Fantasia matters because it gives the weight of international attention to that criticism: it’s harder to ignore...