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Neophyte indie distributor 1-2 Special has acquired North American distribution rights to Kontinental ’25, the new film from Radu Jude, the Romanian auteur behind Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn and Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World. The deal was negotiated by Luxbox on behalf of the filmmakers with 1-2 Special.

An absurdist comedy-drama about Romania’s housing crisis and the country’s conflicted middle class, Kontinental ’25 follows a homeless man who seeks shelter in a house cellar and the well-meaning bailiff (Eszter Tompa) ordered to carry out his eviction. It premiered last week in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay.

“Dear friends, the makers of Kontinental ’25 are happy to be able to share the film, which takes place in the Transylvanian region of Romania, with the American audiences,” said Jude. “For me personally,...

Brand-new boutique distribution label 1-2 Special has made its first big buy — out of the Berlinale, and it’s a banger. The new shingle has Friday announced that it has acquired North American rights to “Kontinental ’25,” the latest film from Radu Jude, director of 2021 Golden Bear winner “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn” and “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World.” The Romanian filmmaker’s work has been widely acclaimed in the States.

The film premiered in competition earlier this month at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay from a jury led by Todd Haynes. Officially described as “an existential black comedy that follows Orsolya (Eszter Tompa), a bailiff in Cluj, Transylvania,” the film follows what happens “one day [when] she must evict a homeless man who lives in the basement of a building. An unexpected event creates...

Jason Hellerstein’s new film distribution company 1-2 Special has acquired North American rights to Radu Jude’s new film Kontinental ’25 in its first acquisition since launching this month.

Hellerstein acquired the existential black comedy out of the Berlinale, where the film world premiered in competition, winning Jude the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay Award from the jury presided over by Todd Haynes.

Maverick Romanian director Jude previously won Berlin’s Golden Bear in 2021 for his pandemic era-shot drama Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn, while his next film Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World won the Special Jury prize in Locarno in 2023 and was Romania’s Oscar entry for the 96th awards.

Set in the picturesque city of Cluj in Transylvania, Jude’s new film follows bailiff Orsolya (Eszter Tompa) who has to evict a homeless man who lives in the basement of a building.

The 75th anniversary edition of the Berlin Film Festival — and the first under the leadership of its new chief, Tricia Tuttle — drew to a close Saturday night, as the jury awarded the Golden Bear to Dag Johan Haugerud’s “Dreams (Sex Love).”

There’s a special poetry in giving this film — the portrait of a teenage girl with a passionate imagination who pours her intense feelings toward a teacher into a transformative personal essay — the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival. The film represents the third installment in the Norwegian writer-director’s “Dream Sex Love” trilogy. The first, “Sex,” premiered a year earlier in the Panorama section of the 2024 Berlin Film Fest, while “Love” debuted in competition at Venice late last summer.

“The film is called ‘Drømmer’ — it’s Norwegian for ‘dreams’ — and this was beyond my wildest dreams really,” said Haugerud, in accepting the prize from jury president Todd Haynes.

Romanian writer-director Radu Jude’s social satire Kontinental ’25 has sold to a slew of European territories after world premiering in Berlin Film Festival’s competition.

Paris-based Luxbox, which is handling international sales, has sold the film to France (Météore Films), Italy (I Wonder Pictures), Poland (Aurora), Portugal (Films4you), Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark (Njutafilms), Greece (Cinobo), Estonia (Filmstop), Lithuania (Scanorama), Hungary (Mozinet), Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo, and Albania (McF), Slovenia (Fivia), and Bulgaria (Beta films). Other territories are currently in negotiations.

The film follows a bailiff who tries to find ways to ease her troubled...

Radu Jude’s Kontinental ’25 makes a strong debut on the Berlin critics jury grid while Johanna Moder’s Mother’s Baby, Ameer Fakher Eldin’s Yunan and Dag Johan Haugerud’s Dreams (Sex Love) also land.

Kontinental ’25scored a 3.1 average rating from the critics, putting it second behind Gabriel Mascaro’s The Blue Trail on 3.4. Jude’s Romanian-set drama received three four-stars (excellent) four three-stars (good) and two two-stars (average) – the latter from Barabara Hollender and Kalapapruek.

Click on the grid above for the most up-to-date version

Jude was last in Berlin with his Golden Bear-winning Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn...

This year’s Berlin Film Festival, under new artistic director Tricia Tuttle, moves closer toward popular tastes than arguably under the stead of Carlo Chatrian. He departed the festival last year while leaving behind a legacy of programming a more arthouse-minded slate. Italian cineaste Chatrian came from Locarno as well as more niche festivals throughout Europe; Tuttle is an American with a history of film journalism and programming in the States and at the BFI London.

Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17” and the Berlin premiere of “A Complete Unknown” (Searchlight Pictures) brought stars like Robert Pattinson and Timothée Chalamet (along with his girlfriend Kylie Jenner) to the festival for viral moments that have put an energizing, social-media-friendly spotlight on the European showcase here in the U.S. “Mickey 17” needs all the help it can get, as the sci-fi comedy has been re-dated several times and, in the David Zaslav...

There are any number of unique and memorable lines in Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude’s characteristically stinging “Kontinental ’25,” but the most trenchant of them all is borrowed secondhand from Bertolt Brecht: “The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to die.” Cynically referring to the Trotskyists accused in the show trials that Stalin staged in Moscow as part of the Great Purge, Brecht’s comment is still debated in part because its degree of sincerity is so hard to parse.

Jude’s own provocations (including “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn” and “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World”) tend to wear their heart on their sleeve more than most public figures could at the height of the Soviet Union, but their side-eyed profiles of today’s social ills are similarly caustic and cagey all at once. Jude’s sympathies are as generous as his arguments are damning,...

It is one of the minor miracles in the world of international art-house cinema that the movies of Romania’s iconoclast and idiosyncratic director Radu Jude have found a wider audience. Among the directors of the Romanian New Wave, which kicked off two decades ago and shows no sign of ebbing, Jude is arguably the most radical and unpredictable. He’s made a coming-of-age comedy (The Happiest Girl in the World), an historic western (Aferim!), a Kafka-esque docudrama (Uppercase Print), a Covid-era sex satire (Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, which won the Berlinale Golden Bear in 2021), a three-hour black-and-white feminist drama (Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World), and a found-footage documentary, Eight Postcards from Utopia, assembled exclusively out of post-socialist Romanian advertisements.

Jude’s latest, Kontinental ’25 is another stylistic swerve, an absurdist comedy-drama about Romania’s housing crisis and the country’s conflicted middle class.

Paris-based Luxbox has acquired Romanian writer-director Radu Jude’s Kontinental ’25,about a woman’s attempts tosootheher conscience when a homeless man she was attempting to evict commits suicide.

It will world premiere in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival next month.

The film, whose title is inspired by Roberto Rossellini’s Europe ’51, isproduced by Romania’s Saga Film with Brazil’s Rt Features, Switzerland’s Bord Cadre films, the UK’s Sovereign Films, and Luxembourg’s Paul Thiltges Distributions.

Luxbox, fresh off a strong festival and awards season run for Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light,...

New features from Tatiana Huezo, Kirsten Tan and Stephan Komandarev are among the 35 projects selected for the 2025Berlinale Co-Production Market.

The 35 projects hail from 27 countries, and will participate in the market to find financing and production partners. The Berlinale has also programmed its Forum Special and Forum Expanded strands.

Scroll down for the full list of titles

Salvadoran-Mexican filmmaker Huezo will participate with her new project Galerna, produced by Mexico’s Pimienta Films. Huezo’s first fiction feature Prayers For The Stolenwon a special mention in Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2021, and was Mexico’s entry for the international feature Oscar.

The Berlinale’s Co-Production Market has selected 35 feature projects for its 2025 edition, including new works from Tatiana Huezo, Kirsten Tan and Stephan Komandarev.

The 35 projects hail from 27 countries, and will participate in the market to find financing and production partners. The Berlinale has also programmed its Forum Special and Forum Expanded strands.

Scroll down for the full list of titles

Salvadoran-Mexican filmmaker Huezo will participate with her new project Galerna, produced by Mexico’s Pimienta Films. Huezo’s first fiction feature Prayers For The Stolenwon a special mention in Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2021, and was Mexico’s entry for the international feature Oscar.

New films by Jasmila Zbanić and Radu Jude are among 38 projects sharing almost €15m of production support from the Austrian Film Institute’s (ÖFI) selective funding programme, the ÖFI+ automatic incentive and the Vienna Film Fund

Vienna-based Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion received €175,000 from ÖFI’s project committee and €120,000 from the Vienna Film Fund for its minority participation in Zbanić’s Quo Vadis, Aida? - The Missing Part which will be the sequel to her award-winning war drama from 2020.

Produced by Zbanic’s own company Deblokada with partners such as Germany’s Razor Film and Poland’s Madants, the new film is...

The Worst Person In The World producer Andrea Berentsen Ottmar and Carla Fotea of Romania’s microFILM are among 18 independent producers selected for the 34th edition of Ace Producers’ annual workshop programme.

The producers will attend three workshops throughout 2024 and 2025, developing the projects with which they applied. At the conclusion of the programme they will join the Ace Network.

Scroll down for the list of selected producers

Ottmar, producer at Norway’s Eye Eye Pictures, is participating with Stefan Faldbakken’s Slave. Ottmar is currently in production on Worst Person director Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, and produced Cannes 2024 title Armand.

There are more ways than ever to finance films but rising costs have made independent production significantly more challenging, according to panellists speaking at Locarno Pro’s StepIN think tank event this morning.

The panellists also agreed that a changing of the guard is needed among key decision makers at financiers, festivals, distributors right through to reviewers to ensure that new, diverse filmmaking voices are championed.

The theme of this year’s StepIN is “The Ground Is Shaking,” with debate centring on topics such as A.I., challenges in independent production and financing, the traditional theatrical model and gender equality and diversity representation.

How will artificial intelligence, including generative AI, impact the film industry and its creatives? That was one key question discussed during the opening day of Locarno Pro, the Locarno Film Festival’s industry strand, on Thursday.

The debate came a day after the 77th edition of the Locarno fest opened with a lineup that features several movies with AI themes, topics, and technology.

During a panel discussion that drew a huge crowd, Alex Walton, co-head of WME Independent, Katie Ellen, the former BFI executive who is now head of production at HanWay Films, and Romania’s Ada Solomon (Radu Jude’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann), producer at Hi Film Productions and MicroFILM and deputy chair of the board of the European Film Academy, discussed the state of the business, including thoughts on AI, funding, diversity and more.

“The advancement in virtual production is really exciting,...

Rome-based sales outfit Intramovies has picked up international rights to “My Uncle Jens,” the directorial debut of Norwegian helmer of Kurdish origin Brwa Vahabpour, credited for the hit series “Countrymen.”

Renée Hansen Mlodyszewski, associate producer on “The Worst Person in the World,” is producing for True Content Production, the Oslo branch of Scandi group True Content Entertainment, headed by Yellow Bird founder Ole Søndberg.

Anda Ionescu of Bucharest-based Tangaj Production serves as co-producer.

Crew members include cinematographer Jørgen Klüver (“Nudes”) production designer Kristian Lahn Vestby (“Nach”) and seasoned Romanian editor Cătălin Cristuțiu (“Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn”) who collaborated with the Norwegian Brynjar Lien Aune.

Vahabpour first caught festival attention with his 2020 short film “Silence”, selected for the Palm Spring International ShortFest. He went on to direct two episodes of the Norwegian award-winning series “Countrymen”.

Known earlier as “Europa”, the feature about family ties and cultural identity stars Peiman Azizpour...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg (Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill)

You can’t always get what you want, unless you are a Rolling Stones fan hungering for documentary deep-dives into the band’s storied history. Indeed, it is spectacularly serendipitous that Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg arrives just a few months after The Stones and Brian Jones. The latter doc, from Nick Broomfield, centered on Jones, the band’s founder and leader until Mick Jagger and Keith Richards snatched that mantle. Catching Fire and The Stones and Brian Jones cover much of the same ground, use some of the same archival footage, and even feature the same anecdotes from delightful Tin Drum director Volker Schlöndorff. The films are...

Sovereign is proud to announce that award-winning Mexican director Amat Escalante’s powerful thriller Lost In The Night received its UK premiere at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival, as part of the ‘Thrill’ section, and now the film is available to rent/buy on Amazon Prime Video in the UK.

From acclaimed Mexican director Amat Escalante, following Heli, for which he won Best Director at Cannes in 2013, and The Untamed, which won him the Best Director prize at Venice in 2016, comes Lost In The Night, a taut, engrossing thriller that blends traditional elements of Latin American cinema with astute social commentary on Mexican society and contemporary influencer culture.

The film, which premiered at Cannes this year, stars Juan Daniel García Treviño (Narcos México), and Latin American influencer superstar Ester Expósito, who has 27 million followers, and features a superb score by Stranger Things composers Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein.

The film...

Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude has a pile of awards to his name — including a 2021 Berlinale Golden Bear for “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn” — and isn’t too stressed about Academy Awards.

The provocation-making director, whose politically-bristly latest “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World” arrives in select U.S. theaters next week, has repped Romania four times in the Best International Feature Oscar race — including for “Do Not Expect Too Much.” He’s never even been shortlisted, and as he told IndieWire in a recent Zoom conversation from his homeland, where he’s already at work on new films, he’s never even watched the Oscars.

“I don’t care about the type of cinema that is promoted by the Oscars. I mean, most of them,” he said. “Of course, I watch [the films]. I appreciate some of them. I like very much Martin Scorsese’s film,...

U.K.-based film production and distribution company Sovereign is expanding across the Atlantic with the launch of a distribution arm in the U.S.

With a plan to release two to three titles a year theatrically and across VOD platforms, the first film slated for release from the new entity is Laurent Nègre’s World War II thriller “A Forgotten Man,” which Sovereign also produced. Set in 1945 after the surrender of Nazi Germany, the story follows the Swiss ambassador (played by Michael Neuenschwander) after he leaves Berlin, but finds himself haunted by his past.

The film, which recently had its U.S. premiere at the Miami Jewish Film Festival and first bowed in Zurich, was released in the U.K. by Sovereign with support from the Swiss Confederation and Swiss Films. Its U.S. release is now slated for April.

Andreas Roald, who first founded Sovereign in 2008, and the head of U.

The Berlin Film Festival, which runs Feb. 15-25, has revealed the lineup of its Berlinale Co-Production Market.

Producers of 34 film projects from 27 countries will be pitching to potential financing and co-production partners at the 21st Berlinale Co-Production Market, which runs Feb. 17-21. Seventeen projects are directed by women. There were 318 submissions, a slight increase from last year.

Eighteen of the projects are already partly financed with budgets ranging between Euros 600,000 and Euros 5 million ($5.47 million). Among the directors whose new works are likely to spark interest are Ukrainian filmmakers Kateryna Gornostai, who won a Crystal Bear for “Stop-Zemlia” in 2021, and Antonio Lukich, the director of “Luxembourg, Luxembourg,” which played in Venice in 2022, Italy’s Andrea Pallaoro, Serbian director and actor Mirjana Karanović, and the Chinese-Japanese directing duo Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka.

The Berlinale Directors section features three brand-new projects by directors who have had films at the Berlinale in the past: “Alma” from Sally Potter,...

“Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World,” from Romania’s Radu Jude, added to its ever larger silverware collection, winning the top Albar Award at Spain’s Gijón Festival.

Gijón’s big win join not only a Special Jury Prize at August’s Locarno Film Festival, where the film was the most talked about – one of Jude’s aims– and lauded of competition titles among reviewers, plus a Chicago Silver Hugo best performance nod (Ilinca Manolache) in October and a Lisbon Fest Jury Prize late last month.

Over 61 editions, and most especially when José Luis Cienfuegos, now Valladolid chief, took over its reins in 1995, the Gijón-Xijón Film Festival (Ficx) has carved out an identity as highlighting edgier international auteurs and indie fare, moving into promoting often more singular movies from a burgeoning new generation of Spanish filmmakers, greeted with enthusiasm by discerning and predominantly YA audiences...

When Roma actress-turned-director Alina Șerban reflects on her life, rising from an impoverished background in Bucharest to become an acclaimed and groundbreaking force on stage and screen, she describes it as “an urban Cinderella story.” A review from one of her first stage shows, she says, sums it up best: “Roma actress beats the odds.”

As a multi-faceted artist, Șerban has dedicated her life and career to reframing the narrative about her marginalized community. Now she’s developing her feature-length directorial debut, “I Matter,” a deeply personal story about a young Roma woman studying to be an actor who, faced with the threat of being kicked out of her orphanage, must suddenly confront the reality of making it through life on her own.

“I Matter” is among the projects being pitched this week at the Crossroads Co-Production Forum, which takes places Nov. 5 – 9 during the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. Written and directed by Șerban,...

In “Familiar,” Berlinale Golden Bear-winning director Călin Peter Netzer follows Dragoş Binder, a film director, as he delves into the murky secrets of his family, and tries to exorcise the trauma of his childhood by making a film about it. Beta Cinema is handling world sales for the film, which has its world premiere this month at Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn, Estonia.

In the film, Dragoş is trying to understand how his family were able to leave Romania in the early 80s, during the most oppressive period of Nicolae Ceausescu’s rule. Dragoş also seeks to discover the truth of the breakdown in the marriage between his father, Emil, and mother, Valentina, and the true nature of Valentina’s relationship with swimming instructor Harald Stern, a suspected informant for the secret police, the Securitate.

The trailer for “Familiar”

Emanuel Pârvu, who appeared in Cristian Mungiu’s Cannes award winner “Graduation,...

Leading European artists, including Maria Choustova (“Donbass”), Sergei Loznitsa (“Donbass”), Pawel Lozinski (“Film balkonowy”) and Radu Jude (“Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn”), have taken a stand to support the Israeli film community as it seeks to rally voices and help free over 220 hostages in Gaza.

These names penned a heartfelt letter addressing the resurgence of antisemitism across Europe and the significant part that European artists must play in raising the alarm. The letter will be sent to the European Film Academy with a request to circulate it among its 3,000 members ahead of the European Film Awards ceremony on Dec. 9.

In Israel, prominent filmmakers such as Ari Folman, Hagai Levi, Jasmine Kainy, Eliran Peled and Joseph Cedar (“Footnote”) have spearheaded an online campaign called Bring Them Home Now, documenting the stories of relatives whose loved ones, including children and elderly people, were abducted during the Hamas terror attack on Oct.

Just when we thought that Radu Jude’s naming scheme couldn’t get any more complicated with his previous narrative essayistic experiment — Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn — he has decided to amuse us with yet another film with a tongue-twister as its name. Do Not Expect Too Much Of The End of the World is Jude’s latest experimental comedy. which recently won a Special Jury Prize in the International Competition selection at the Locarno Film Festival. The film is also due to play at Toronto, London, and New York film festivals in the coming months.

The action opens with a message saying that the film we’re about to watch is a conversation, or rather a dialogue, with an older Romanian film Angela Moves On (1981). This dialogue unfolds in a sort of one-two rhythm where, as we’re introduced to the contemporary state of affairs, we...

Exclusive: Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, which has just been submitted as Romania’s official entry into the Best International Feature Film Oscar race, has been picked up by Mubi for multiple key territories.

Related: Best International Feature Film Oscar Winners: Photo Gallery

The streamer has taken all rights for U.S. and streaming rights for Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, India, Turkey and Latin America in advance of its North American premiere at Toronto on September 9.

Sales company Heretic has also cinched distribution deals in a flurry of territories: I Wonder Pictures (Italy); Filmin (Spain); Njutafilms; Films4U (Portugal); Aurora (Poland); Filmgarten (Austria); European Film Forum Scanorama (Lithuania); and Cinobo (Greece). Warner Bros. Discovery has picked up Eastern and Central European rights and will be shown on HBO, HBO Max and Cinemax in Czech Republic, Slovak Republic,...

Sovereign has acquired the U.K. and Ireland rights to Radu Jude’s latest feature, “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World,” which won the special jury prize at Locarno Film Festival.

Written and directed by Jude, the comedy stars Ilinca Manolache, Ovidiu Pîrșan, Dorina Lazăr, László Miske, Katia Pascariu and Sofia Nicolaescu, with cameos from Nina Hoss and Uwe Boll. According to its official synopsis, the film follows an overworked production assistant who is instructed to “film a workplace safety video commissioned by a multinational company. But an interviewee makes a statement which forces him to reinvent his story to suit the company’s narrative.”

“Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World” recently premiered at Locarno, where it was nominated for the Golden Leopard Award for best film and won the festival’s special jury prize. The film was well-received by critics at the fest,...

Locarno — Switzerland’s Locarno Fest hit its final straits on Wednesday evening with “Spring Breakers” director Harmony Korine, among a slim roster of on-site stars, set to arrive to accept in person an Honorary Golden Pard.

Otherwise, the dust is settling on activities at the festival’s vibrant industry arm, Locarno Pro, which broke all-time attendance records with 1,530 delegates, and on a market which, however relaxed, says much about larger forces rocking the arthouse and crossover business worldwide:

Arthouse Crunch

Over the last decade, theatrical arthouse markets have imploded soufflé-like. “We used to make 5,000 admissions per title, now the target audience is 500,” Peter Bognar, at Hungary’s CinefilCo, told Variety at Locarno. So, to close the gap and move hopefully into a little upside, having tapped subsidies and local TV pre-buys, producers are looking ever more to overseas public-sector coin, channelled via international co-producer partners. Tapping that not by chance...

Nobody can be both the magnifying glass and the ant burning up under its glare. Nobody, that is, except shaggy Romanian shaman Radu Jude who, with his Locarno competition entry “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World,” follows up 2021’s Berlinale-winning “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn” with a dizzying, dazzling feat of social critique, an all-fronts-at-once attack on the zeitgeist, and a mischievous, often hilarious work of art about the artifice of work. Funny and furious, crude and subtle, unkempt and thoroughly disciplined, this deranged movie is also maybe the sanest film of the year: a multifaceted manifesto exposing the absurd internalized fallacy that one must work in order to live, when it’s work — as in, the pitiless daily grind — that will be the death of us all.

Life is short but art is long, the saying goes. And at two hours 43 minutes, “Do Not Expect…...

Berlin Golden Bear winner Radu Jude, whose latest feature, “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World,” premieres Aug. 4 in competition at the Locarno Film Festival, is in post-production on his next film, Variety can reveal.

“Eight Postcards From Utopia” is a found-footage documentary assembled from advertisements made during the post-socialist period in Romania. Co-directed by Jude and the philosopher Christian Ferencz-Flatz, and edited by long-time collaborator Catalin Cristutiu, the film turns the fictional and often ludicrous medium of advertising clips into a lens on the desires, beliefs, hopes and fears of a country making the turbulent transition to democratic capitalism.

The documentary, which will be completed by the end of the year, is a continuation of a “preoccupation of mine about how images are constructed in the world,” Jude told Variety. “The use of images, the way they are made, the way they are used.”

The...

Easy to overlook in the looming shadow of the Venice, Telluride, Toronto, and New York Film Festivals (and all of the awards season hoopla they portend), Switzerland’s historic Locarno Film Festival has remained so distinct and essential precisely because of its refusal to concede to industry pressures or chase attention over artistry.

While the magical Piazza Grande has been home to its fair share of glitzy outdoor screenings over the years — last year saw the 8,000-seat town square transform into an impromptu “Bullet Train” station, for example, while this year’s fest will host open-air screenings of everything from “Theater Camp” to Federico Fellini’s “City of Women” — Locarno has always prided itself on providing a more curious and less hostile platform for elite auteurs whose work may not conform to the commercial demands of the international marketplace; recent winners of the festival’s prestigious Golden Leopard award include Hong Sang-soo,...

International competition features 16 world premieres.

The Locarno Film Festival (August 2-12) has revealed the line-up for its 76th edition, which includes the world premiere of Romanian director Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much Of The End Of The World.

Locarno’s international competition will comprise 17 films, including 16 world premieres, which will vie for the coveted Golden Leopard awards.

Scroll down for full list of titles

These titles include Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much Of The End Of The World, his first feature since winning the Berlinale Golden Bear for Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn in...

The Locarno International Film Festival unveiled the full program for 2023 on Wednesday, with dozens of world premieres set to screen in the 76th edition of the Swiss festival.

Locarno’s main Piazza Grande section will include several of this season’s festival favorites, among them Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall from French director Justine Triet starring Sandra Hüller; Ken Loach’s latest (and possibly last) feature, The Old Oak; Noora Niasari’s Sundance audience award winner Shayda, featuring Holy Spider star Zar Amir Ebrahimi; and Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman’s comedy Theater Camp, which won a special jury prize at Sundance. Other highlights include U.S. horror feature Falling Stars by directors Richard Karpala and Gabriel Bienczycki; Dammi from 71′ and White Boy Rick-helmer Yann Demange; and Magnetic Continent, the new nature documentary from March of the Penguins‘ filmmaker Luc Jacquet about the continent of Antarctica.

Amid turbulent times for global streaming services who continue to course correct after years of pursuing subscriber growth at all costs, TV writers and producers in Eastern Europe are pondering the next step for a region still searching for its first international breakout hit.

“The biggest challenge is the great Netflix correction — the recalibration, the reassessment of dollars,” Ioanina Pavel, who served as creative producer on the HBO Max original series “Spy/Master,” said Friday at the Transilvania Film Festival. “It’s not a bad thing, but it is a challenge. There’s been a glut. The Golden Age of TV is now coming to a close. It’s not a bad thing; it just means a reallocation of money.”

“Spy/Master,” a six-part drama series set during the Cold War that dropped its final episode last week, is one of the last productions from Central and Eastern Europe for Max, after...

When “Avatar 2: Way of the Water” surged to the top of the Romanian box office earlier this year to become the highest-grossing film of all time, it marked an auspicious sign for a theatrical business still looking to recover from the doldrums of the coronavirus pandemic.

Yet local industry-watchers were even more encouraged to see a historic first in 2022, with two Romanian films cracking the top 10 at the year-end box office — a striking achievement for an industry that hasn’t historically been known for cranking out crowd-pleasing hits.

Topping the list was “Teambuilding,” a satirical workplace comedy from directors Matei Dima, Alex Coteț and Cosmin Nedelcu, which briefly reigned as the top-grossing film ever in Romania before being knocked from its perch by James Cameron’s blockbuster, which has raked in more than $8.3 million to date.

Meanwhile, first-time filmmaker Cristian Ilișuan’s “Mirciulică,” a comedy about a 30-year-old forced...

Welcome to Deadline’s International Disruptors, a feature where we shine a spotlight on industry players outside of the U.S. shaking up the offshore marketplace. This week we’re talking to Heretic co-founder Giorgos Karnavas about the growth of his Athens-based production and sales house he started in 2013 with Konstantinos Kontovrakis. The company played a pivotal role in co-producing Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or winner and Oscar contender Triangle of Sadness, its first English-language production.

Giorgos Karnavas is a little jet-lagged, but it’s been for the worthiest of causes. When Deadline sits down with the Heretic co-founder, he has just arrived back in Athens after a whirlwind trip to L.A. where he attended the Oscars for the first time with his co-production Triangle of Sadness. The Palme d’Or-winning title was up for Best Picture as well as Best Director for Ruben Östlund and, while it came away empty-handed,...

Director Liu Jian was previously in Competition with ‘Have A Nice Day’ in 2017.

The Berlinale has made a last-minute addition to its Competition lineup with Chinese filmmaker Liu Jian’s animated feature Art College 1994 and revealed its competition juries.

Art College 1994 will receive its world premiere at the festival’s 73rd edition, which runs February 16-26, and marks Liu’s third feature after 2010’s Piercing I and Have A Nice Day, which became the first Chinese animation ever selected to play in Competition at the Berlinale in 2017.

Art College 1994 is set among a group of students in China in the...

Italy-based sales agent Lights On has acquired world rights for “Mammalia” by Romanian director Sebastian Mihăilescu, ahead of its world premiere in the Berlinale Forum strand. It has debuted the film’s trailer (below).

In “Mammalia,” 39-year-old Camil (István Téglás) embarks on a dreamlike trip where the banal and the surreal merge. Struggling to come to terms with losing control – of his work, his social status, his relationship – Camil sets off on a search that leads him to question the basis of his identity as a man. He pursues his girlfriend (Mălina Manovici) into an increasingly bizarre and disturbing world of community and ritual before being confronted by a tragi-comic role-reversal that leads us to question everything.

Mihăilescu comments: “The film satirizes the way that classic binary gender roles are often rigidly defined in society, and it highlights the performative nature of gender identity, emphasizing the ways in which, by assuming our gendered role,...

For the 20th edition 33 films projects from 26 countries will take part.

New features from Palestinian filmmaker Muayad Alayan and German director Leonie Krippendorff are among those to be presented at the 20th Berliane Co-production Market (February 18 to 22), the first in-person edition since 2020.

The market will provide the opportunity for 33 projects from 26 countries to secure financing and get fired up as international co-productions in the next few years, with sales agents, broadcasters, funding bodies, streaming platforms, film distributors and other financing partners in attendance.

For the official project selection, 17 fiction feature projects with budgets between €600,000 and €5m and chosen from among 302 submissions will take part.

With everything going the way it is in the world right now, we’re laughing to keep less cheery emotions at bay. At least this bizarre, still-very-much-in-progress century has already produced any number of great comedies that you can fire up any time you need a serotonin burst, thanks to the ever-growing cadre of streaming services. The pandemic may be starting to recede but the specter of war and a tortured economy have occupied our minds instead: so, in desperate need of some humor, we thought it was more important than ever to give our Greatest Comedies of the 21st Century list, originally published in 2017 (and last updated in August 2021), a rethink.

We’ve added 25 new films to the Top 50 list we unveiled in August. At that time, we dropped a number of titles from the original list that are funny, but not necessarily comedies. And we’ve added some...

Hushed audiences witnessed footage of the first Russian shells hitting cities in Ukraine on the opening night of the Ji.hlava Intl. Documentary Film Festival on Tuesday as frontline filmmaking was honored.

Oksana Moiseniuk’s “8th Day of the War” screened at the Czech city’s venerable Dko cultural hall after audiences heard from the Ukrainian director via video link from Kiev, which remains under shelling in the eighth month of the war. The film’s diary-like immediacy captures the outbreak of the Russian attacks through the eyes of Ukrainians in the Czech Republic as they try to carry on with a semblance of normalcy, while their minds are consumed with the events taking place back home and they try to help any way they can.

Amid dimly lit tables in the decades-old theater building, Romanian producer Ada Solomon, a key film figure in regional art film behind “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn,...

Spanish production and distribution company Elamedia has acquired “Tengo sueños eléctricos” (I Have Electric Dreams), the Locarno prize-winning debut by director Valentina Maurel, which will screen in the Horizontes Latinos section of the San Sebastian Film Festival. Elamedia will be releasing the film in Spanish theaters later this year.

Set in Costa Rica, “Electric Dreams” follows Eva (Daniela Marin Navarro), a strong-willed 16-year-old girl who lives with her mother, her younger sister and their cat, but desperately wants to move in with her estranged father (Reinaldo Amien Guttierez). Clinging onto him as he goes through a second adolescence, she balances between the tenderness and sensitivity of teenage life and the ruthlessness of the adult world.

Produced by Wrong Men (Belgium) and Geko Films (France) and co-produced with Tres Tigres (Costa Rica), the film had its world premiere in the international competition at Locarno, where Maurel won the award for best...

Heretic, the Athens-based boutique production company and sales agent, has acquired world sales rights for “Runner,” by director Marian Mathias, which will have its world premiere in the Discovery section of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Already sparking upbeat word of mouth, “Runner” follows Haas (Hannah Schiller), an 18-year-old girl who was raised by her father in the rural Midwest. When her father suddenly dies, she must carry out his wish to be buried in the town where he was born. There, she meets a young man named Will (Darren Houle), a lonely, creative soul who is working to support his family back home. The two form a friendship that challenges their understanding of love and loss.

“Runner” was produced by Joy Jorgensen (Killjoy) and co-produced with Nadia Turincev, Omar El Kadi (Easy Riders) and Marian Mathias (Man Alive), whose short film “Give Up the Ghost” was an official selection...

Heretic, the Athens-based boutique production company and sales agent, has acquired world sales rights for “Tengo sueños eléctricos” (“I Have Electric Dreams”), by director Valentina Maurel, which will have its premiere in the Locarno Film Festival’s international competition.

Set in Costa Rica, the film follows Eva (Daniela Marin Navarro), a strong-willed 16-year-old girl who lives with her mother, her younger sister and their cat, but desperately wants to move in with her estranged father (Reinaldo Amien Guttierez). Clinging onto him as he goes through a second adolescence, she balances between the tenderness and sensitivity of teenage life and the ruthlessness of the adult world.

Produced by Wrong Men (Belgium) and co-produced with Geko Films (France) and Tres Tigres (Costa Rica), the film straddles the fine line between love and hate, in a world where aggression and rage are intertwined with the vertigo of female sexual awakening.

“‘I Have Electric...

Upcoming animation from ’My Life As A Courgette’ director Claude Barras also among recipients.

Berlin Golden Bear winner Radu Jude’s upcoming feature A Case History is one of 24 features to receive a share of €6.5m (6.87m) in the latest round of Eurimages co-production support funding.

The film, a co-production between Romania and Croatia, has received €150,000 and marks the Romanian filmmaker’s next feature after winning the Golden Bear in 2021 with Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn.

Produced by Ada Solomon and Adrian Sitaru of Bucharest-based 4Proof Film, the story will be told in two parts. The first follows a...

Cristian Mungiu likes to take his time.

In terms of his craft, the Romanian filmmaker behind the Palme d’Or-winning “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” opts for long, unbroken takes, building out tension as his camera stubbornly refuses to cut away. In terms of his career, he works at a measured clip, delivering a new project on average every five years.

And in terms of his latest effort, the dense and foreboding “R.M.N.,” which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, that means putting his pieces on the board at an unhurried pace, weaving a tapestry that takes nearly half a runtime to reveal the full intricacy and artistry of its construction.

Also Read:

Cristian Mungiu’s ‘R.M.N.’ Acquired by IFC Films Ahead of Cannes Premiere

At first we struggle with the pieces of this puzzle: Who is this man in...

Producers will learn about sustaining business foundations.

Match Factory Productions’ Michael Weber is one of 12 producers and film professionals on the inaugural Ace Leadership Special, a workshop to improve business prospects for industry leaders.

Supported by Creative Europe Media and the Netherlands Film Fund, the programme will take place in the Netherlands in June and in France in September this year.

Scroll down for the full list of producers

In a workshop format, the selected producers will learn how to sustain sound business foundations, improve performance and prospects for their teams, and develop personal leadership and entrepreneurial skills.

Eve Gabereau,...

Accomplished screenwriter and avid movie watcher, Daniel Waters breaks down his ‘Best of the Best of 2021’ list with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Drive My Car (2021)

A History of Violence (2005)

Larry Crowne (2011)

The Vanishing (1988)

Don’t Look Up (2021)

Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)

Gerry (2002)

Swept Away (1974)

Swept Away (2002)

The Tender Bar (2021)

Riders Of Justice (2021)

Another Round (2020)

The Worst Person In The World (2021)

Pig (2021)

Dune (1984) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Dune (2021)

Fifty Shades Freed (2018)

Den of Thieves (2018)

Copshop (2021)

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) – Neil Marshall’s trailer commentary

Magnum Force (1973) – Alan Spencer’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairing

The Driver (1978)

Memoria (2021)

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

The Power of the Dog (2021)

Old Henry (2021)

The Village (2004)

The Sixth Sense (1999)

Annette (2021)

Titane (2021)

Zola (2021)

The Killing of Two Lovers (2021)

Who You Think I Am (2021)

Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar (2021)

Josie and the Pussycats (2001)

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy...