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Arjun Rampal speaks to Subhash K Jha about his many, varied exciting upcoming projects and more!

What are your current projects?

There are a few films that are completely ready for release, like Punjab 95 with Diljit, directed by Honey Trehan and produced by Ronnie Screwvala’s RSVP. The Rapist with Konkana Sen, directed by Aparna Sen, produced by Sameer Nair’s Applause. This is the one I am really excited about. It is a complex role of a man dealing with his wife’s rape.

The Rapist is an exceptional film. What was it like working with Sameer Nair and Aparna Sen?

Aparna is one of the few female directors I’ve worked with. The other was Reema Kagti for Honey Travels Pvt Ltd. The Rapist is a very sensitive exploration of the trauma of rape. Konkona is exceptional. Hats off to Sameer Nair and Applause for backing this game-changing project.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Three Monkeys” opens with a striking close-up of Servet driving on a rainy night. His tiredness and exhaustion are evident on his face. Struggling to stay awake, he runs over a pedestrian. In the following scene, another car pulls over. As the driver starts to investigate the motionless body on the street, a voice from the passenger seat advises against getting involved and instead suggests noting down Servet’s car number. Once the car drives away, Servet slowly emerges from the shadows, visibly fearful and shocked, before entering his car and driving off.

We soon learn that Servet, an influential and ambitious politician, convinces his driver, Eyup, to take the blame for the accident. Servet promises Eyup a lump sum payment upon his release (which he predicts will be within six months to a year) and assures him that his son will continue receiving his salary during his absence.

Entries for the 2025 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 97th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 3, 2025 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between November 1, 2023, and September 30, 2024. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 2.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is scheduled to...

Entries for the 2025 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 97th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 3, 2025 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between November 1, 2023, and September 30, 2024. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 2.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is scheduled to...

Entries for the 2025 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 97th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 3, 2025 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between November 1, 2023, and September 30, 2024. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 2.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is scheduled to...

Venice Film Festival competition title “Harvest,” directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari, is one of three films at the festival to be represented for sales by the Match Factory as well as being produced or co-produced by the company.

The other two are “Edge of Night,” the debut feature by German-Turkish director Türker Süer, screening in Horizons Extra, and “Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass,” an animated film by the Quay Brothers, playing in Venice Days.

Tsangari, the director of “Attenberg” (winner of Venice’s best actress award in 2010) and “Chevalier” (2015), returns to Venice competition with “Harvest.” Over seven hallucinatory days, a village with no name, in an undefined time and place, disappears.

In Tsangari’s tragicomic take on a Western, townsman-turned-farmer Walter Thirsk and befuddled lord of the manor Charles Kent are childhood friends about to face an invasion from the outside world: the trauma of modernity.

The film...

Although Turkish cinema scene is more associated with mainstream art house efforts, its more genre-oriented pool is also quite strong and recognized globally. One of the newer examples of it, a multi-genre crossover “The Funeral” written and directed by Orcun Behram is touring the genre festivals since its world premiere at the last year's edition of Sitges. Most recently, it was showcased at the official competition of Grossmann Fantastic Wine and Film Festival in Ljutomer, Slovenia, where it scooped the main Viscious Cat award.

Behram opens his film with a sequence mostly located in a hearse van touring the back roads of Turkey to a small village graveyard where a funeral takes place in the rain. Its purpose is to establish the character of our protagonist, the driver named Cemal as a loner and a man of few words who possibly holds a secret. Soon enough, Cemal is approached by...

The Cannes Film Festival has named the eight members of its main Competition jury who will join previously announced president Greta Gerwig in deciding the Palme d’Or and other key prizes at 77th edition running from May 14 to 25.

They are Turkish screenwriter and photographer Ebru Ceylan, U.S. actress Lily Gladstone, French actress Eva Green, Lebanese director and screenwriter Nadine Labaki, Spanish director and screenwriter J.A. Bayona, Italian actor Pierfrancisco Favino, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda and French actor and producer Omar Sy.

The wife and long-time collaborator of Nuri Bilge Ceylan, screenwriter and photographer Ceylan co-wrote 2014 Palme d’Or winner Winter Sleep and also took co-writing credits on Cannes selected films Three Monkeys (Best Director Prize 2008), Once upon a time in Anatolia (Grand Prix 2011), The Wild Pear Tree (2018) and About Dry Grasses (2023).

Ceylan also appeared as an actress and took art director credits on her husband’s early films...

The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the eight jurors who will be joining jury president Greta Gerwig for the event’s 2024 edition (May 14-25).

They are American actress Lily Gladstone, French actress Eva Green, French actor and producer Omar Sy, Lebanese director and screenwriter Nadine Labaki, Spanish director and screenwriter Juan Antonio Bayona, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, Turkish screenwriter and photographer Ebru Ceylan, and Italian actor Pierfrancisco Favino.

The jury will award the Palme d’Or to one of the 22 films in competition at the closing ceremony on May 25. Anatomy Of A Fall picked up the top prize last year.

One of the biggest forces in Turkish cinema in the past few decades has been director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. The Istanbul-born director became well-known in 2008 when his film Three Monkeys landed him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. Several years later, his movie Once Upon a Time in Anatolia won the Grand Prix award at Cannes, showing that he has continuously been one of the biggest names coming out of contemporary international cinema. In 2023, he has returned with his latest movie: About Dry Grasses. An epic three and a half hour story, it certainly catches all the verisimilitude one needs from these kinds of films, properly immersing you in its lengthy experience.

The movie first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where lead actor Merve Dizdar became the first Turkish actor to win the Best Actress award. It has since been nominated as Turkey’s entry for the Academy Awards,...

Nuri Bilge Ceylan likes to take his time. The Turkish director is one of the greatest living practitioners of slow cinema. The filmmaking ethos — pioneered by Russian auteur Andrei Tarkovsky and taken up by the likes of Theo Angelopoulos, Albert Serra, Béla Tarr, Kelly Reichardt and Lav Diaz — eschews the rapid editing and relentless nonstop forward-driving plots of the Hollywood blockbuster (looking at you, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) for a more contemplative, metaphysical approach.

The characters in a Ceylan movie don’t do much. There’s little action or traditional suspense, and the storylines are fairly basic. In 2002’s Distant, a rural factory worker visits his cousin in Istanbul. Homicide police unearth the body of a murder victim and take a long drive back to the city for the autopsy in 2011’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. An old actor, his wife and his sister sit...

The film is Picturehouse Entertainment’s second acquisition at the Cannes Film Festival.

Picturehouse Entertainment has acquired UK and Ireland rights to Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Cannes Competition title About Dry Grasses from France’s Playtime.

Ceylan’s seventh Competition film follows a teacher doing a mandatory stint at a small village in Eastern Anatolia. He loses hope of escaping the grim life he seems to be stuck in, but an encounter with another teacher could help him overcome his angst.

Co-­producers include France’s Arte France Cinéma and Sweden’s Film i Väst — both served as co-­producers...

A lengthy shoot, a lengthy post-production process and a lengthy runtime mean it’s business as usual for our favorite Turkish auteur. A mainstay on the Croisette, Nuri Bilge Ceylan has been very fortunate in the South of France landing several prizes over the years. After his first pair of films premiered at the Berlinale, he has been here with Uzak (Distant) which was awarded the Grand Prix and Best Actor prize in 2003, 2006’s Climates, 2008’s Three Monkeys, Once Upon A Time in Anatolia (2011), Palme d’Or winner Winter Sleep and finally The Wild Pear Tree in 2018.…...

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2023 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between January 1, 2022 and November 30, 2022. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 3, 2022.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is...

Aditya Vikram Sengupta is in Venice with his third feature drama “Once Upon a Time in Calcutta” which runs in the main competition. Back in 2014, he was awarded Best Debut Director for “Labour of Love” (Asha Jaoar Majhe) here in Venice, at the festival he says discovered him and made him a braver filmmaker.

“Once Upon A Time…” is a film completely based on true events, and it tells a couple of interwoven stories that center around one woman and one young man, and their hardships. If there is a bit of a love story involved, this isn’t a film about love. It’s the common people Sengupta is interested in, and the city he calls his home.

We spoke with Aditya Vikram Sengupta on the day of the film’s world premiere.

In the opening credits, it is stated that your film was based on true events, and...

Bookmark this page for all the latest international feature submissions.

Submissions for the best international feature film award at the 2021 Academy Awards have started to come in, and Screen is keeping a running list of each film below.

Scroll down for the full list

The 93rd Academy Awards is set to take place on April 25, 2021. It was originally set to be held on February 28, before both the ceremony and eligibility period were postponed for two months due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Submitted films must have been released in their respective countries between the expanded dates of October 1, 2019, and December 31, 2020. (Last year it was October-September.

Upcoming films from Mia Hansen-Løve, Quentin Dupieux and directing duo Mina Mileva - Vesela Kazakova will also be co-produced by the cinema branch of the Franco-German channel. The 4th selection committee for 2020 of Arte France Cinéma (headed by Olivier Père) has chosen to engage in the co-production and pre-buying of four projects. Standing out among them is Les herbes sèches from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, winner of Cannes’ Palme d'Or in 2014 with Winter Sleep and awarded several times on the Croisette. The film, set to be shot next year in Turkey and starring Deniz Celiloglu, Merve Dizdar and Musab Ekici, will centre on Samet, a young and single school teacher finishing his mandatory service in an isolated village in Anatolia, while...

To mark the release of Nuri Bilge Ceylan: The Complete Films on 11th November, we’ve been given a copy to give away to 1 winner.

The set contains all 8 feature films from the Cannes-winning director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Kasaba, Clouds of May, Uzak, Climates, Three Monkeys, Once upon a Time in Anatolia, Winter Sleep, The Wild Pear Tree and an early short, Koza. Plus several interviews with Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Behind the Scenes documentaries. The discs of Kasaba, Clouds of May, Uzak and Climates are Region Free. The discs of Three Monkeys, Once upon a Time in Anatolia, Winter Sleep and The Wild Pear Tree are Region B.

Please note: This competition is open to UK residents only

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The Small Print

Open to UK residents only The competition will close 14th November 2019 at 23.59 GMT The winner will be picked at random from entries received No...

Nuri Bilge Ceylan, the Turkish director of “Three Monkeys” and”Once Upon a Time in Anatolia,” has been named president of the jury for the competition section at this year’s Shanghai International Film Festival. He will head the panel that decides the festival’s Golden Goblet Awards.

“Ceylan has a unique film language. He depicts the journey of life with deep long lens and accurately expresses his philosophical thinking and reveals the truth of life to audiences silently in poetic words and literary narration,” said the Shanghai festival in a statement. It also described him as a national treasure.

Originally an electrical engineer, Ceylan has had six of his films selected for the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival. There he has collected awards including best film, best director and jury prize. His “Winter Sleep” was the Palme d’Or winner in 2014.

Previous jury presidents in Shanghai have included Luc Besson,...

Screen’s regularly updated list of foreign language Oscar submissions.

Nominations for the 91st Academy Awards are not until Tuesday January 22, but the first submissions for best foreign-language film are now being announced.

Last year saw a record 92 submissions for the award, which were narrowed down to a shortlist of nine. This was cut to five nominees, with Sebastián Lelio’s transgender drama A Fantastic Woman ultimately taking home the gold statue.

Screen’s interview with Mark Johnson, chair of the Academy’s foreign-language film committee, explains the shortlisting process from submission to voting.

Submitted films must be released theatrically...

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “The Wild Pear Tree” will be Turkey’s contender for this year’s best foreign-language film Oscar. The drama marks the fifth time one of the director’s films has been selected by Turkey.

The film tells the story of an aspiring writer who returns to his native village, where he pours his heart and soul into scraping together the money he needs to be published, only for his father’s debts to catch up with him. It saw its world premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

In his Cannes review, Variety’s Jay Weissberg called the film “another visually rich chamber piece from Nuri Bilge Ceylan that builds elaborate rhetorical set pieces of astonishing density.”

Turkish newspaper BirGün reported Friday that the film had been chosen by a 17-person committee from among 12 films submitted for consideration.

Turkey has submitted the director...

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s The Wild Pear Tree, which premiered this year in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, was selected as Turkey’s submission into this year’s Foreign Language Film Oscar race. It marks the fifth film from Ceylan chosen to rep the country, and the first since 2014’s Winter Sleep which won Cannes’ Palme d’Or.

Local media reports said 12 films were in the running for the slot and Pear Tree was chosen among film professionals and Culture and Tourism Ministry officials. The 91st Oscars are set for February 24, 2019. Cinema Guild has U.S. rights to the film and plans a 2019 release.

The Wild Pear Tree (Ahlat Agaci) center son Sinan (Aydin Doğu Demirkol), an aspiring writer, who returns home after university hoping to scrape together enough money to publish his first novel, but his ambition is slowed by the gambling past of his father (Murat Cemcir...

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's story of a young writer struggling to find the money necessary to publish a novel, The Wild Pear Tree, was announced Friday as Turkey's submission in the best foreign language category for the 91st Academy Awards next year.

The film, which had its world premiere in competition at Cannes this year, is the first Oscar submission for a director whose international acclaim includes a Palm d'Or for Winter Sleep in 2014, Cannes' best director prize for Three Monkeys in 2008 and a Grand Jury Prize for Distant in 2002.

Described in The Hollywood Reporter's Cannes' review as ...

Turkish producer Zeynep Atakan and Greek actress Angeliki Papoulia join Palestinian film-maker Elia Suleiman on the competition jury.

The Sarajevo Film Festival has revealed the juries for its 22nd edition (Aug 12-20).

As previously revealed, the feature film competition jury will be presided over by Palestinian director Elia Suleiman, who has twice been nominated for the Palme d’Or, and won a Jury Prize at Cannes for his 2002 feature Divine Intervention. Elia Suleiman currently serves as artistic advisor for the Doha Film Institute.

Joining him will be on this year’s jury will be: Turkish producer Zeynep Atakan, who worked with Nuri Bilge Ceylan on Once Upon A Time In Anatolia and Three Monkeys; Serbian actor Nikola Dubricko, whose credits include World War Z and In The Land Of Blood And Honey; Thomas Hailer, the curator of the Berlin Film Festival, and Greek actress Angeliki Papoulia, whose credits include Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster and Dogtooth.

The...

Director talked about his combative writing relationship with wife Ebru Ceylan and his love of ambiguity on the big screen during a Qumra masterclass.

Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan — taking a break from writing the screenplay for his next feature after his 2014 Palme d’Or-winner Winter Sleep — is participating in the Doha Film Institute’s Qumra event this week as one of its “Qumra Masters”.

The filmmaker gave a master-class to a packed auditorium at Doha’s Museum of Islamic Art on Sunday, touching on his late start as a director, love of Russian playwright Anton Chekov and use of ambiguity as a dramatic device, through his films Distant (Uzak), Climates, Once Upon A Time In Anatolia and Winter Sleep.

Ceylan, 58, said he started directing relatively late on in life due to the fact it was so expensive to make a feature prior to the arrival of digital technology.

Late start

“I was 36-years-old,” he said. “It...

Director talked about his combative writing relationship with wife Ebru Ceylan and his love of ambiguity on the big screen during a Qumra masterclass.

Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan — taking a break from writing the screenplay for his next feature after his 2014 Palme d’Or-winner Winter Sleep — is participating in the Doha Film Institute’s Qumra event this week as one of its “Qumra Masters”.

The filmmaker gave a master-class to a packed auditorium at Doha’s Museum of Islamic Art on Sunday, touching on his late start as a director, love of Russian playwright Anton Chekov and use of ambiguity as a dramatic device, through his films Distant (Uzak), Climates, Once Upon A Time In Anatolia and Winter Sleep.

Ceylan, 58, said he started directing relatively late on in life due to the fact it was so expensive to make a feature prior to the arrival of digital technology.

Late start

“I was 36-years-old,” he said. “It...

Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan ("Once Upon a Time in Anatolia," "Winter Sleep") and Russian filmmaker Alexsandr Sokurov ("Faust," Russian Ark") have been confirmed as Masters for the Doha Film Institute’s second edition of Qumra, set to take place from March 4-9, 2016.

Following the huge success of its inaugural edition, the two acclaimed filmmakers join previously announced Qumra Masters Naomi Kawase and Lucrecia Martel for the second edition of the new initiative, which debuted in March 2015 to support the development of emerging filmmakers from Qatar, the region and around the world

Ceylan and Sokurov are both masters in world cinema whose work has received the highest accolades at the world’s most prestigious film festivals including the Berlin Film Festival, the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival.

Fatma Al Remaihi, CEO of Doha Film Institute said: “We are proud to welcome Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Alexsandr Sokurov to Qumra. They have each created a distinctive body of work and a cinematic legacy for generations to come. They are an inspiration, not only to the emerging filmmakers whose work will be mentored through Qumra, but to us all.”

In their role as Qumra Masters, Ceylan and Sokurov will participate in a series of masterclasses, and one-on-one advisory sessions with participating Qumra projects and industry professionals from around the world, with a selection of the Masters’ films being screened for Doha audiences during the event. Qumra is presented by the Doha Film Institute and was developed with the guidance of Artistic Advisor, Elia Suleiman who participated as a Master in the inaugural edition.

In addition to representatives from the 30 projects from Qatar, the Mena region and around the world whose projects are mentored through the initiative, members of the local and regional creative industries are also invited to participate in Qumra, where they will have the opportunity to attend a series of networking events, Qumra Master Classes, and daily screenings of films by the Qumra Masters and recipients of funding from the Institute, followed by question-and-answer sessions.

Online accreditation is now open for local film industry delegates to register for Qumra 2016. Film and media industry professionals can visit www.dohafilminstitute.com to register their interest and and will receive a confirmation of accreditation after February 21, 2016. Capacity is limited and applications will be processed on a first-come, first-served basis.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan was born in Istanbul and after graduating from the Department of Electrical Engineering at Istanbul's Boğaziçi University, he studied cinema at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University for two years.

After making the short film "Cocoon" (1995), his first two feature-length films, "Small Town" (1997) and "Clouds of May" (1999) were screened at the Berlin International Film Festival.

His subsequent films 'Distant' (2002), won the Grand Jury and Best Actor Prizes at the Cannes Film Festival; "Climates" (2006) which took the Fipresci Prize at Cannes; "Three Monkeys" (2008), for which he was named Best Director at Cannes; and "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" (2011), which gave him his second Cannes Grand Jury Prize.

"'Winter Sleep" (2014), his most recent film, received the Palme d’Or, the most prestigious award of the Cannes Film Festival.

Alexander Sokurov was born in 1951 in the former Ussr. While a student of history at Gorky University, he began working in television and, at the age of 19, he produced several films and live television programmes. In 1975, he began studies at Vgik in Moscow and at the time of his graduation, Andrei Tarkovsky, impressed by Sokurov’s first feature, ‘The Lonely Voice of a Man’ (1977; released 1987) lent the younger director his support and the two went on to become lifelong friends.

In 1980 Sokurov went to work at Lenfilm, while at the same time working at the Leningrad Studio for Documentary Films. He has won numerous awards over the course of his career and in 1995, the European Film Academy listed Sokurov as one of the best 100 directors of world cinema.

He found international acclaim in 1997, with the release of "Mother and Son," which received the Silver St. George award at the Moscow International Film Festival and six years later ‘Father and Son’ (2003), took the Fipresci Prize at the Festival de Cannes. His "Russian Ark" (2002), remarkable for being composed of a single shot taken in the Winter Palace of the Russian State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, won the Visions Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.

His extensive filmography also includes numerous documentaries, and a tetralogy of films that are a meditation on power. ‘Moloch’ (1999), won the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes; "Taurus" (2001); "The Sun" (2004) and "Faust" (2011) which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Golden Lion, the festival’s most prestigious prize.

Most recently, "Francofonia" (2015), Sokurov’s consideration of the Louvre Museum, premiered in Venice, where it won the Mimmo Rotella Award. Currently, he is in the process of founding Bereg, a film studio for non-commercial films.

Previous Qumra Masters include Mexican actor, director and producer Gael Garcia Bernal ("Amores Perros;""No;" "Deficit"), Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako ("Timbuktu" - nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2015 Academy Awards); Romanian auteur and Palme d’Or winner Cristian Mungiu ("4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days;" "Beyond the Hills"); and Bosnian writer/director Danis Tanović ("An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker;" "Tigers," "No Man’s Land" - winner of Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2001).

The sixth episode of The Man in the High Castle is the best one yet, which also makes it the best dramatic hour of TV produced by Amazon Studios. It's dense in character development and narrative, it features strong design, and the actors' performances have never been better. It plays with Americana in brilliant ways — along with our expectations of what this show will be — while pushing the story toward an arc that will carry through the rest of the 10-episode season."Three Monkeys" opens with Joe (Luke Kleintank) as he heads to Smith's (Rufus Sewell) house for Va Day, the celebration of the end of WWII, which happened in 1947 in this alternate vision of history. The scene looks more like Norman Rockwell's America than a country run by Nazis. There are funhouse reflections of iconic Baby Boomer imagery throughout the episode, especially in the opening scenes that features...

Turkey's Committee of Artistic Activities (Sek) has announced the film "Sivas" by Kaan Müjdeci as the country's official Oscar entry to seek a nomination in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 88th Academy Awards.

Read More: Joshua Oppenheimer, Tobias Lindholm, & Anders Thomas Jensenn Vie to Represent Denmark at the Oscars

The decision might come as a surprise for most observers given that the most talked-about Turkish film of the year is Deniz Gamze Ergüven's "Mustang," about a group of girls discovering their sexuality in a repressive, chauvinist town. While the film has opened in France, where the director resides, and is scheduled to open stateside in November via Cohen Media Group, there is no indication that "Mustang" has already been released theatrically in Turkey - one of AMPAS requirements. If this is the case, "Mustang" will certainly figure into the race next year.

This is most likely the reason why another film was selected, and in that regard "Sivas" was the option with the highest profile and recognition. The film opened in its homeland on October 31, 2014 making it eligible.

Müjdeci's debut feature follows an 11-year-old boy who rescues a Kangal dog named Sivas, which was left for death after a brutal illegal fight, and the relationship that's formed between them. "Sivas" earned a Special Jury Prize at last year's Venice Film Festival, as well as a slew of awards at smaller festivals around the globe. International sales are being handled by Coloured Giraffes. U.S. rights are still available.

Read More: Norway's Oscar Entry 'The Wave' (Bølgen) Screening at Tiff!

No Turkish film has ever been nominated for the award; however, Nuri Bilge Ceylan got the closest with his profound effort "Three Monkeys," which made the 9-film shortlist in 2008.

'Everest' 2015, with Jake Gyllenhaal at the Venice Film Festival. What global warming? Venice Film Festival 2015 jury: Oscar winner Alfonso Cuarón president The 2015 Venice Film Festival, to be held Sept. 2–12, has announced the members of its three main juries: Venezia 72, Horizons, and the Luigi De Laurentiis Award for Best Debut Film. In case you're wondering, “Why Venezia 72”? Well, the simple answer is that this is the 72nd edition of the festival. Looking at the lists below, you'll notice that, as usual, Europeans dominate the award juries. The only two countries from the Americas represented are the U.S. and Mexico, and here and there you'll find a sprinkling of Asian film talent. Golden Lion jury The Golden Lion – Venezia 72 Competition – jury is comprised by the following: Jury President Alfonso Cuarón, the first Mexican national to take home the Best Director Academy Award (for the Sandra Bullock-George Clooney...

Despite director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s lauded history with Cannes, having twice received the festival’s second-place honor, the Grand Prix for 2002’s Distant and 2011’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and won the Best Director prize for 2008’s Three Monkeys, the Turkish filmmaker was shocked when it was announced he and his film Winter Sleep had won the Palme d’Or. Perhaps he assumed that the breathless stream of dialogue that propels the film through its monolithic 196 minute running time might put off or frighten people away. Some critics did indeed find the film too long and emotionally distant, including The New Yorker’s Richard Brody who said, “Ceylan paces this thin dramatic sketch as if it were a Wagner opera, with ponderous pauses and fraught gazes yearning toward depths that the movie doesn’t reach,” but where Brody fails to appreciate the incredible subtleties of tension that simmer throughout the film,...

New projects by Karabey, Aydogan, Sakaoglu among award winners at Istanbul Meetings

New film projects by Hüseyin Karabey, Zekeriya Aydoğan, and Sinem Sakaoğlu were among the award winners at the 10th edition of Meetings on the Bridge (April 15-16) during the Istanbul Film Festival.

Four awards were given to projects presented as part of this year’s Film Project Development Workshop and were decided by an international jury comprising of such leading industry figures as Meinolf Zurhorst (Zdf), Sergio Garcia De Leaniz (Eurimages), Gabrielle Dumon (Le Bureau Films), Giovanni Robbiano (Mediterranean Film Institute/Mfi) and Khalil Benkirane (Doha Film Institute).

The $ 10,000 Meetings On The Bridge Award went to German-born director Tarik Aktaş’ Dead Horse Nebula - about a sequence of incidents taking place around a small village -, while the € 10,000 Cnc Award was given to The Death of Father and Son by Zekeriya Aydoğan, a period drama set in the Kurdish society.

Aydoğan’s latest...

Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan is definitely one of the finest active filmmakers today. His 2014 film “Winter Sleep” won the Golden Palm (the biggest award) at the Cannes film festival. His “Winter Sleep” is not easy viewing—it is more than 3 hours long and is word heavy. It is a sensitive cinematic work where egos of men clash with those of women, the views of the rich clash with those less financially secure, and theatre performers become actors in their daily life on screen. Who is Ceylan and why are we discussing him?

Turkey is sandwiched between Europe and Asia. Ceylan as a young man went West to do his University studies and was disillusioned with life and attitudes there. With very little money on him, he went East, more precisely to India and then to Nepal, following his passion for mountain climbing, to find answers in life. He felt more comfortable in the East.

Below is Part 2 of my annual look at the films that have a shot at making the Foreign Language Oscar shortlist. There are 83 submissions this year with some truly remarkable films in the bunch — and no 100% frontrunner. Here’s a refresher on how the nine films are chosen for the shortlist which is expected to be revealed tomorrow: The phase one committee determines six of the candidates, and the other three entries are selected by the Foreign Language Film Award Executive Committee. For the profiles below and yet to come, I spoke with the directors of the films about their inspirations and expectations. In many cases, I also checked in with the U.S. distributor about why they acquired the movies. Below is a look at the second group of four titles that have generated serious buzz over the past several weeks of screenings, Q&As and consulate lunches. For...

The Philadelphia Film Festival completed another offering of debut, homegrown, and festival circuit successes.

Cannes winner Winter Sleep, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s follow-up to his 2011 masterpiece Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is another slow-burner, awash in the director’s favored browns and tans. Thematically similar to both Anatolia and 2008’s Three Monkeys, Winter Sleep features a methodical style, long conversations, and as the title might suggest, a chilly atmosphere. It feels like something of Sartre or Bresson in its slow descent into ugliness and detachment.

Dave Boyle’s Man From Reno is a flawed but fun film, reminiscent of Pen-Ek Ratanaruang’s 6ixtynin9 from 1999. Intentionally overplotted, the film veers into unexpected Patricia Highsmith territory in its final 15 minutes – territory that seems to warrant its own film rather than a continuation of the narrative already at hand – but does have a second act worthy of the breakneck confusion of The Big Sleep.

“Winter Sleep” may have won the top prize at the Cannes film festival but it faces an uphill battle on the road to the Oscars. “Winter Sleep” is the fourth film directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan that Turkey has submitted for Oscars consideration. Despite his other three all being winners at Cannes -- “Distant” (2003) got the Grand Prix (second place) and Best Actor; “Three Monkeys” (2008) took Best Director and “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” also won the Grand Prix -- all were snubbed by the academy. -Break- Is Sundance Film Festival winner 'Whiplash' destined for Oscars? "Winter Sleep," which tells the story of a wealthy property and hotel owner and his family on a mountainside, clocks in at three hours and sixteen minutes. It is not an easy watch. Last year’s Palme D’Or winner, “Blue is the Warmest Color,” was also impossibly long, albeit 17 minutes shorter ...

Three-hour feature from Nuri Bilge Ceylan won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Turkey has nominated Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep (Kış Uykusu) as its Oscar submission in the Best Foreign Language Film category.

The film, a sweeping 186-minute epic, won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

It centres on self-obsessed Aydin (Haluk Bilginer), a wealthy landowner and former actor who runs a hotel in the troglodyte region of central Anatolia with his much younger wife Nihal (Melisa Sozen).

Aydin isn’t a sympathetic protagonist, but he is a fully realised one, and his philosophical debates with his sister and wife have an undeniable rhythm, even as his hypocritical relationship with the local Iman give the film its limited narrative thrust.

It marks the third time Ceylan has been nominated in the foreign language category, after Once Upon A Time In Anatolia in 2011 and Three Monkeys in 2009.

At...

Hong Kong -- Turkey has nominated Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s sweeping, Palme d’Or winning drama Winter Sleep (Kış Uykusu)as its Oscar submission in the foreign language film category. The news was announced in a tweet by Ömer Çelik, Turkey’s Minister of Culture and Tourism. “I hope that Ceylan will achieve the same success on the road to the Oscars as he already has in the international arena,” Çelik wrote. It’s the third time Ceylan has been nominated in the foreign language category, after Once Upon A Time In Anatolia in 2011, and Three Monkeys in 2009. The 186-minute Winter Sleep

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We all know that Adopt Films has acquired all U.S. rights to the 2014 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or Winner, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Winter Sleep.” And we all know that Memento, with three films in the festival (“Cold in July” by Jim Mickle and the Argentinean “Refugiado” by Diego Lerman in the Quinzaine des Realisateurs, and “Winter Sleep” in Competition) is one of the top international sales agents of the best arthouse cinema today…

Our Pre-Cannes Film Festival Report, the Pre-Festival Report which Tom Brueggemann and I publish before the Festivals of Toronto, Sundance and Cannes. (Ask me if you want a free copy and I’ll send it to you.) lists international sales agents’ films in all sections of the Cannes Film Festival by numbers:

Wild Bunch

7

Le Pacte

5

Pyramide

4

3 films: Memento , Bac, Doc & Film, Films Distribution, Gaumont, Other Angle

2 films: Cj, Visit, Elle Driver, eOne, Seville, Urban Distribution Int’l, Les Films du Losange, MK2, Ndm, Sierra/ Affinity, The Match Factory, Westend

1 film: Alpha Violet, Altitude, Cinetic, Filmnation, Dreamworks Animation, Showbox, Films Boutique, Rezo, Myriad, Indie Sales, Snd - Groupe 6, Sunray, The Coproduction Office, Kinology, Pathe, The Festival Agency, Trust Nordisk, Versatile, Premium Panorama/ Annapurna, Kazak, Lotus,

Celluloid Nightmares, Film Factory, Rai Trade, 31 Juin Films, Alfama, Alice Films, Atoms & Void, Aud, Capricci, Morgane, Paraiso, Six Island Productions

Regarding this film, read my Cannes Blog: Cannes 2014 What I Saw #2: Palme d’Or Winner 'Winter Sleep' or just continue reading here:

Here is what I had to say about the film after I saw it in Cannes:

Whether this film will find a home in the U.S., whose audiences and movie theaters are so impatient, is questionable. At the very least, it should screen at New York’s Film Forum and in L.A. at the American Cinematheque or UCLA’s Film Program. Certainly it will play in the top film festivals forever. It is the sort of classic movie cinephiles will love, along the line of Tarkovsky or Angelopoulos. It is the sort of movie one wishes to see, to fully immerse oneself in, an experience only available in a certain type of movie or after reading a deeply immersive novel of Proust, Tolstoy or Marquez.

Once again, Jeff Lipsky and Adopt Films President Tim Grady who negotiated the deal with Memento Films International head of International Sales and Acquisitions, Tanja Meissner, have proven that they have an impeccable eye for quality.

Adopt plans a year-end 2014 U.S. release for “Winter Sleep.”

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s epic and yet personally intimate story is about a wealthy self-absorbed Anatolian hotelier and landowner and his uneasy relationships with those around him. Is he evil? Is the power of evil best resisted by giving in to it?

This is Nuir Bilge Ceylan’s first Palme d’Or but he has received the Grand Prix twice already: once for “Distant” (2002) and again for 2011 for “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia”. He also won for the Director Award in 2008 for “Three Monkeys”. It also won the Fipresci prize in Cannes.

“Winter Sleep” is also the second film by a Turkish director to win the Palm, after Yilmaz Guney and Serif Goren’s “The Way” in1982.

When Ceylan received the award, he noted that 2014 was the 100th anniversary of Turkish cinema. “This is a great surprise for me,” Ceylan said, “I want to dedicate the prize to all the young people of Turkey, including those who lost their lives over the past year.”

“Winter Sleep” is being sold internationally by Memento who will also release it in France. Ama Films acquired Greek rights before Cannes. New Wave acquired U.K. rights in Cannes. Stadtkino-Filmverleih has rights for Austria, Film Point Group has Poland.

Mexico

Mantarraya Producciones

Norway

As Fidalgo Film Distribution

Slovak Republic

Film Europe Media Company

Memento coproduced the film with the director's company, NBC Film, in collaboration with Turkey's Zeynofilm, Germany's Bredok Film Production. Eurimages backed the film with 450,000 € of the total 3.6 million € allocated to 13 film productions announced in March 13. (Parenthetically, seven of the Eurimages backed productions had French participation and five German were co-productions. “One, “Lucy in the Star” by Giuseppe Petitto an Italian, Swiss and Austria co-production received 130,000 €. “All My Children” by Ladislav Kabos from Slovakia and Czech Republic received 30,000 €.

To return to “Winter Sleep”: The opening scene of the stunning and surrealistic landscape of Cappadocia, Anatolia immediately establishes this story as exotic and yet familiar. The actor, Haluk Bilginer, seems to be a familiar type – and in fact, his character is that of a former actor who has turned hotelier and landowner; he is attractive in an actor sort of way and seems always somehow distracted while maintaining a hawk’s eye on the household and the area he appears to rule in an almost feudal style. The household he enters and its inhabitants fall into place like pieces of a puzzle one did not realize was, in fact, a puzzle, with the housekeeper, the sister and the young wife slowly taking on a shape within a larger context in this beautiful and ancient city built in the rocks like caves, with a primitively frightening side, personified by the impecunious family living on the property of the landlord. A modern and affable meeting of concerned citizens of the town establishes his relationship with his wife who lives an uneasy truce until he makes one final effort at destabilizing her hard-won independence of mind.

The 3-½ hours of the film pass without ever loosing the audience interest as the story unfolds about the relationship among the townspeople and the landowning man who, in factm is a tyrant until he is forced to see his own powerlessness.

The philosophic underpinnings, discussed in several intimate conversations, about the best way to resist evil, about wealth and the power it bestows and the resentment it engenders, finds a quiet resolution, which arrives unexpectedly along with the end of the story.

One wonders at the movie’s end if one is about to settle into a long winter sleep or if, in fact, one is emerging from such a sleep in which one dreamt of the previous autumn. And does Winter Sleep solve the problem of evil? In a silent and enigmatic way, it says that the power of money and of tyranny, in the face of resistance by one whose soul is not to be conquered, is null.

In a joint statement Grady and Lipsky said: “ ‘Winter Sleep’ is an epic film: A symphony of words and a sonata of visual splendor. A significant stylistic departure from one of the greatest international filmmakers working today. ‘Winter Sleep’ is a motion picture that will have movie audiences discussing with great passion its provocative discussions about art and artists, class struggle, and love and marriage. A film like this, so rich with ideas, dazzling dialogue, and intelligent characters, is one that is instantly unforgettable. We are proud to partner with Nuri Bilge Ceylan on his achievement of a lifetime. “

Adopt Films just debuted Martin Provost’s follow-up to “Seraphine,” “Violette,” starring Emmanuelle Devos and Sandrine Kiberlain. (Another great film)

Read our coverage here:

'Violette' by Martin Provost

Other recent successes for Adopt Films include the Oscar nominated “Omar” from Hany Abu-Assad, and Yuval Adler’s Venice Film Festival award-winning thriller “Bethlehem.” Its upcoming releases include Vinko Brešan’s Karlovy Vary comedy hit “The Priest’s Children,” Oscar winner Caroline Link’s new drama “Exit Marrakech,” Frederik Steiner’s Zurich,” starring Liv Lisa Fries, and Jacques Doillon’s “Love Battles.”

www.facebook.com/adoptfilms

www.twitter.com/adoptfilms...

Shia Labeouf was drinking and watching the World Cup early Thursday afternoon ... and he was acting just fine. According to the folks at Iguana NYC ...  Shia showed up around 1:00 Pm to watch Belgium's World Cup soccer match against South Korea. A bartender there tells us Shia said he wasn't much of a soccer fan, but felt the need to be patriotic because his family was from Belgium.Shia ordered 2-3 margaritas,pacing himself, and didn't ordered any food.

Winter Sleep , Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s epic and yet personally intimate story of a wealthy self-absorbed Anatolian hotelier and landowner and his uneasy relationships with those around him. Is he evil? Is the power of evil best resisted by giving in to it?

This is Nuir Bilge Ceylan’s first Palme d’Or but he has received the Grand Prix twice already: once for Distant (2002) and again for 2011 for Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. He also won for the Director Award in 2008 for Three Monkeys. It also won the Fipresci prize.

Winter Sleep is also the second film by a Turkish director to win the Palm, after Yilmaz Guney and Serif Goren’s The Way in1982. When Ceylan received the award, he noted that 2014 was the 100th anniversary of Turkish cinema. “This is a great surprise for me,” Ceylan said, “I want to dedicate the prize to all the young people of Turkey, including those who lost their lives over the past year.”

Winter Sleep is being sold internationally by Memento who will also release it in France. Ama acquired Greek rights before Cannes. New Wave acquired U.K. rights in Cannes. Stadkino has rights for Austria, Film Point has Poland. Memento coproduced the film with the director's company NBC Film in collaboration with Turkey's Zeynofilm, Germany's Bredok Film Production. Eurimages backed the film with 450,000 € of the total 3.6 million € allocated to 13 film productions announced in March 13. (Parenthetically, seven of the Eurimages backed productions had French participation and five German were co-productions. One Lucy in the Star by Giuseppe Petitto an Italian, Swiss and Austria co-production received 130,000 € and All my Children by Ladislav Kabos from Slovakia and Czech Republic received 30,000 €.)

The opening scene of stunning and surrealistic landscape of Cappadocia, Anatolia immediately establishes this story as exotic and yet familiar. The actor, Haluk Bilginer, seems to be a familiar type – and in fact, his character is that of a former actor who has turned hotelier and landowner; he is attractive in an actor sort of way and seems always somehow distracted while maintaining a hawk’s eye on the household and area he appears to rule in an almost feudal style. The household he enters and its inhabitants fall into place like pieces of a puzzle one did not realize was, in fact, a puzzle, with the housekeeper, the sister and the young wife slowly taking on a shape within a larger context in this beautiful and ancient city built in the rocks like caves, with a primitively frightening side, personified by the impecunious family living on the property of the landlord. A modern and affable meeting of concerned citizens of the town establishes his relationship with his wife who lives an uneasy truce until he makes one final effort at destabilizing her hard-won independence of mind.

The 3-½ hours of the film pass without ever loosing the audience interest as the unfolds about the relationship among the townspeople and the landowning man who in fact is a tyrant until he is forced to see his own powerlessness. The philosophic underpinnings, discussed in several intimate conversations, about the best way to resist evil, about wealth and the power it bestows and the resentment it engenders finds a quiet resolution, which arrives unexpectedly along with the end of the story.

Whether this film will find a home in the U.S. whose audiences and movie theaters are so impatient is questionable. At the least, it should show at New York’s Film Forum, at L.A.’s UCLA Film Program or at the American Cinematheque and certainly it will play in the top film festivals forever. It is the sort of classic movie cinephiles will love, along the line of Tarkovsky or Angelopoulos. It is the sort of movie one wishes to see, to fully immerse oneself in an experience only available in a certain type of movie or after reading a deeply immersive novel of Proust, Tolstoy or Marquez.

One wonders at the movie’s end if one is about to settle into a long winter sleep or if, in fact, one is emerging from such a sleep in which one dreamt of the previous autumn. And does Winter Sleep solve the problem of evil? In a silent and enigmatic way, it says that the power of money and of tyranny, in the face of resistance by one whose soul is not to be conquered is null.

Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan this evening won Cannes' top prize, the coveted Palme d'Or, for his latest film, Winter Sleep. A worthy award winner after previously coming close with such past efforts as 2011's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) and Three Monkeys (2008), Alice Rohrwacher's The Wonders and Bennett Miller's Oscar hopeful Foxcatcher had to settle for the Grand Prix and Best Director awards respectively, with the Jury Prize a tie between Canadian enfant terrible Xavier Dolan for Mommy and French Nouvelle Vague old-hand Jean-Luc Godard for Adieu au Langage. Other winners on the night included Timothy Spall, Best Actor for his turn in Mike Leigh's Mr. Turner and Julianne Moore (Best Actress) for her terrific performance in David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars.

The Palme d’Or of the 67th annual Cannes Film Festival went to Winter Sleep, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s epic and yet personally intimate story of a wealty self-absorbed Anatolian hotelier and landowner and his uneasy relationships with those around him. Ceylan’s first Palme d’Or, he has received the Grand Prix twice already. Once for 2002′s Distant and again for 2011′s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. He also won for best director in 2008 for Three Monkeys.

Winter Sleep is the second film by a Turkish director to win the Palme, after Yilmaz Guney and Serif Goren’s The Way in1982. When Ceylan received the award, he noted that 2014 was the 100th anniversary of Turkish cinema. This is a great surprise for me, Ceylan said, I want to dedicate the prize to all the young people of Turkey, including those who lost their lives over the past year.

Winter Sleep is being sold internationally by Memento who will also release it in France. Ama acquired Greek rights before Cannes.

The Grand Prix was awarded to Alice Rohrwacher’s semi-autobiographical drama The Wonders ( Le meraviglie), one of the true wild-card selections in the Competition. Rohrwacher’s only other film was Corpo Celeste. Isa: The Match Factory and distributed in its home country, Italy, by Bim.

Best Director Award went to Bennett Miller (Moneyball, Capote) for Foxcatcher, about the complex relationship of Olympic wrestlers Mark and Davd Schultz and the Pennsylvania millionaire John du Pont. It is being sold internationally by Kimberly Fox’s new production and sales company Panorama who had pre-sold rights before Cannes for U.S. to Sony Pictures Classics, Canada to Métropole Films Distribution and Mongrel Media Inc., France to Mars Films, Germany to Koch Media Gmbh, Japan to Longride Inc., Switzerland to Ascot Elite Entertainment Group, Taiwan to Long Shong International, U.K. to Entertainment One UK.

The Actress Prize went to Julianne Moore for her role in David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars , a Hollywood saga where in order to succeed you must be incestuous or schizophrenic. Written by Bruce Wagner it is being sold internationally by Entertainment One, it had pre-sold before Cannes to Benelux to Cdc United Network and Cineart , Colombia to Babilla Cine, France to Canal + and Le Pacte, Germany to Mfa Film Distribution and Rtc Media, Greece to Hollywood Entertainment S.A., Italy to Adler Entertainment Srl, So. Korea to Doki Entertainment, Mexico to Cine Video Y Tv, Norway to Star Media Entertainment, Romania to Independenta Film, Switzerland to Pathe Films Ag, Turkey to Calinos Films, Ukraine to Top Film Distribution (Ukraine), U.K. to Entertainment One Films International.

The Actor Award went to Timothy Spall for his role as the renowned British artist J.M.W. Turner whose use of light and color made him a pioneering and controversial figures of his day. Mr. Turner was directed by seven-time Academy Award® nominated and multiple BAFTA winning writer/director Mike Leigh (Another Year, Vera Drake, Secrets & Lies). The legendary British actor Timothy Spall (Harry Potter, Secrets & Lies) also includes frequent Leigh collaborators, including Academy Award® nominated cinematographer Dick Pope (Vera Drake, Secrets & Lies, The Illusionist) and Academy Award®-winning costume designer Jacqueline Durran (Another Year, Anna Karenina, Atonement). Leigh works in close collaboration with his actors, using his unique methods of improvisation to bring Turner and his 19th century world to life. Mike Leigh said: Turner as a character is compelling. I want to explore the man, his working life, his relationships and how he lived. But what fascinates me most is the drama that lies in the tension between this driven eccentric and the epic, timeless world he evoked in his masterpieces.

I’ve spent a lot of time being a bridesmaid. This is the first time I’ve ever been a bride, so I’m quite pleased about that, Spall said in a long, moving acceptance speech. This is as much an accolade for Mr. Leigh as it is for me. Spall recalled that when Leigh’s Secrets & Lies, in which he also starred, won the Palme d’Or, he was undergoing chemotherapy for leukemia. I thank God that I’m still here and alive.

The film was already pre-sold before Cannes by Isa Pyramide to U.S. to Sony Pictures Classics, Canada to Mongrel Media Inc., France to Canal + and Diaphana Distribution, Germany to Prokino Filmverleih Gmbh, Switzerland to Pathe Films Ag.

The Jury Prize went to two films from the Competition’s youngest and oldest directors: Xavier Dolan’s Mommy and Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language. Dolan thanked the Jury President Jane Campion and cited her Palme d’Or-winning The Piano as one of the first and most influential films he watched as a teenager. Godard did not attend the festival. Mommy is being sold internationally by both Seville and Entertainment One and was pre-sold before Cannes to Benelux to ABC - Cinemien, France to Diaphana Distribution, Japan toDongyu Club and Pictures Dept. Co. Ltd.

Camera d'Or went to Party Girl, Un Certain Regard Opening Night Film, the debut feature of three directors including two women, Marie Amachoukeli-Barsacq, Claire Burger and Samuel Theis. It had won the ensemble acting prize the night before at the Certain Regard Awards ceremony. It is being sold internationally by Pyramide. The Caméra d'Or ( Golden Camera ) is the award of the Cannes Film Festival for the best first feature film presented in one of the Cannes' selections (Official Selection, Directors' Fortnight or International Critics' Week). The prize was created in 1978 by Gilles Jacob and is awarded by an independent jury which this year was headed by Nicole Garcia.

Screenplay Award went to Andrey Zvyagintsev and Oleg Negin, Leviathan which was highly praised. Its Isa Pyramide presold the film to Australia to Palace Films, Benelux to Lumière, Brazil to Imovision, Greece to Seven Films, Spain to Golem Distribución, Taiwan toPomi International, U.K. to Artificial Eye,Curzon Cinemas and Curzon Film World

Other prizes:

Short Films Palme d’Or: Leidi (Simon Mesa Soto), a U.K. – Colombia coproduction.

Short Films Special Mention: Aissa (Clement Trehin-Lalanne) from France

Ecumenical Jury Prize: Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako, Mauritania-France) being sold internationally by Le Pacte who is also distributing it in France with TV5Monde.

Un Certain Regard Prizes

Un Certain Regard Prize: White God (Kornel Mundruczo, Hungary-Germany-Sweden). Isa: The Match Factory

Jury prize: Force Majeure (Ruben Ostlund, Sweden-France-Denmark-Norway) Isa: The Coproduction Office, sold to Benelux to Lumiere and to Norway’s Arthaus.

Special Prize: The Salt of the Earth (Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, France-Italy). Isa: Le Pacte who is distributing it in France and has licensed it to

Italy to Officine Ubu and to Romania to Independenta Film.

Ensemble: Party Girl (Marie Amachoukeli, Claire Burger, Samuel Theis, France) Isa: Pyramide

Actor: David Gulpilil, Charlie’s Country (Rolf de Heer, Australia)

Directors’ Fortnight Prizes

Art Cinema Award: Les Combattants (Thomas Cailley, France) Isa: Bac Films presold to Haut et Court for France.

Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers Prize: Les Combattants

Europa Cinemas Label: Les Combattants

Critics’ Week Prizes

Grand Prize: The Tribe (Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy, Ukraine) Isa: AlphaViolet (also French distributor)

Visionary Prize: The Tribe

Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers Prize: Hope (Boris Lojkine, France) Isa: Pyramide. France TV5Monde.

Fipresci Prizes

Competition: Winter Sleep

Un Certain Regard: Jauja (Lisandro Alonso, Denmark-u.S.-Argentina)

Directors’ Fortnight: Les Combattants...

Cannes - I'll say this much (and plenty of people today are saying far more) for Nuri Bilge Ceylan: it takes a brazen kind of confidence to build a 196-minute film from wall-to-wall conversation on such matters as intellectualism, altruism and class politics on the Turkish steppes, and then to go ahead and title it "Winter Sleep." Like "The Milk of Sorrow" or "An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker," it's the kind of wilfully austere art-house moniker that dyed-in-the-wool populists might invent in a fit of dismissive satire. They might also, if they had the time and inclination, dream up the film that lies behind a title I wish were more deceptively po-faced: swaddling its many moments of intelligence and curiosity in turgid explication and self-admiring form, "Winter Sleep" is unabashed essay cinema that makes difficulty its prime artistic objective. Not difficulty of interpretation, you understand:...

The esoteric world of masterful Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan proves as vibrant and uneasy as ever in Winter Sleep, a Chekhovian meditation on a marriage that returns to the mood of the director’s early films like Climates and Clouds of May. This is not necessarily good news for fans of his last two very particular murder mysteries, Three Monkeys and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, where the barest hint of genre offered viewers a tentative inroad into a long, slow-moving exploration of the human soul. Here, things are different. The 3½ hour running time takes no prisoners

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He’s won the Grand Jury Prize for Distant (2002) and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011), plus the Fipresci for Climates (2006) and Best Director for Three Monkeys (2008). Every appearance Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan has seen his work take home sort of prestigious recognition, and 2014 may be the year he takes home the juggernaut. That’s not to say previous awards necessitate future glory, but Ceylan’s certainly a masterful auteur whose work has only become more accomplished with each feature. Despite Winter Sleep’s run time (the longest of the comp), odds may very well be in his favor in what looks to his most epic endeavor yet. We’re curious to see what the Jane Campion led jury will gravitate towards. She’s the only female director to have yet been honored with the Palme d’Or (for 1993’s The Piano), and four other women join her on the jury,...

Welcome back to Cannes Check, In Contention's annual preview of the films in Competition at next month's Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off on May 14. Taking on different selections every day, we'll be examining what they're about, who's involved and what their chances are of snagging an award from Jane Campion's jury. Next up: the film that is currently the bookies' favorite for festival gold: Nuri Bilge Ceylan's "Winter Sleep."  The director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkish, 55 years old). A photographer's filmmaker -- with a BSc in electrical engineering, to boot -- Ceylan has been hovering around the world cinema A-list for over a decade, though his expansive 2011 feature "Once Upon a Time.in Anatolia" plainly sealed his place there. Having developed an interest in film in his twenties, he made his first short, "Cocoon," in 1995; it played at Cannes. His debut feature,"Kasaba," followed two years later; "Winter Sleep" is his seventh.

With only hours ago before the official selection for the Main Competition is announced, we’ve narrowed our final predictions to the following titles that we’re crystal-balling as the films that will be included on Thierry Fremaux’s highly anticipated list. Despite an obvious drought of Asian auteurs (we’re thinking the rumored frontrunner Takashi Miike won’t be included in tomorrow’s list) who’s to say there won’t be some definite surprises, like Jia Zhang-ke’s A Touch of Sin last year.

Several hopefuls appear not to be ready in time, including Malick, Hsou-hsien, Cristi Puiu, and Innarritu, to name a few. But there does appear to be a high quantity of exciting titles from some of cinema’s leading auteurs. We’re still a bit tentative about whether Xavier Dolan’s latest, Mommy, will get a main competition slot—instead, we’re predicting another surprise,...

Winter Sleep

Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Writers: Nuri Bilge Ceylan and wife/actress/producer Ebru Ceylan

Producers: Zeynep Ozbatur Atakan (has been Ceylan’s producer since Climates).

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available

Cast: Haluk Bilginer (The Reluctant Fundamentalist), Demet Akbag, Melisa Sözen

There was a time when Kar-Wai, Ki Duk, Almodovar could do no wrong. And while they’ve had recent bumps in the road, apart from Haneke the filmmaker personality who has landed number one on our 2014 list has been solid for more than a decade. Since he preemed his third film 2002′s Distant in Cannes, he has been batting near a thousand with Climates, Three Monkeys and arguably one of the best films of 2011 in Once Upon A Time in Anatolia. Nuri Bilge Ceylan might follow up his masterwork set in the sprawling hills with what looks like a portrait in a more unforgiving terrain. Production lasted four...

The Paris-based Pyramide co-founder, producer and distributor worked closely with Aki Kaurismaki, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Catherine Corsini, among others.

Veteran distributor and producer Fabienne Vonier, who co-founded Paris-based distribution and production company Pyramide, has died after a long illness. She was 66.

“Fabienne was passionate about film,” said long-term collaborator Eric Lagesse, who took over Pyramide’s distribution and international sales activities in 2008. “She was someone who was constantly on the look-out for interesting productions, directors.”

Lagesse continued: “She had done it all: exhibition, distribution and lastly production. She did everything to the full and was as demanding of herself as she was of everyone else. She was a true professional, working right up until the end.”

In a career spanning more than 40 years, Vonier supported the work of scores of directors from across the world including Finland’s Aki Kaurismaki, Canadian Denys Arcand, Mexico’s Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Palestinian Elia Suleiman, Egyptian [link=nm...