News

Projects from Austria, Switzerland, Canada and Italy were among the winners at last night’s Locarno Pro Awards (Sunday 10 August).

Locarno Pro, the industry platform of the Locarno Film Festival, handed out prizes to projects in its work-in-progress section First Look, co-development programme Alliance 4 Development, the Antaviana Spanish Previews Award and the Locarno Heritage Restoration Contest.

First Look

The 14th edition of Locarno Pro’s works-in-progress section First Look focused this year on six feature films in post-production from Canada.

Geneviève Dulude-De Celles’ Nina Roza picked up two awards: Toronto-based Urban Post Production’s First Look Award, which covers post-production...

The gender-neutral acting prize was won by Spain’s Sofía Otero for ’20,000 Species of Bees’.

Nicolas Philibert’s documentary On The Adamant, about a floating care centre in Paris, was awarded Golden Bear for best film at the Berlin International Film Festival tonight (February 25).

The film, which is being handled internationally by Les Films du Losange, is the fourth documentary to take top honours at the Berlinale.

German films found particular favour with the jury, presided over by Kristen Stewart, with no less than three of the Bear statuettes going to local productions: the Silver Bear Grand Jury award for Christian Petzold’s Afire,...

The documentary “On the Adamant” has been named the best film of the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival, Berlin organizers announced on Saturday.

The film from director Nicolas Philibert follows life in a daycare center located on the Seine in Paris for adults with mental disorders. It is the first documentary to win the festival’s top prize since “Fire at Sea” in 2016.

German director Christian Petzold won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize, essentially the runner-up award, for his drama “Afire,” while Philippe Garrel won the directing award for “The Plough.” The gender-neutral acting prizes went to Sofia Otero for “20,000 Species of Bees” in the leading performance category and Thea Ehre for “Till the End of the Night” in the supporting category.

The jury president was actress Kristen Stewart. The other jurors were actress Goldshifteh Farahani, directors Valeska Grisebach, Radu Jude and Carla Simón and Johnnie To and casting director Francine Maisler.

Hummingbirds, the documentary feature debut of directors Silvia Del Carmen Castaños and Estefanía “Beba” Contreras, has won the Crystal Bear, the top prize for best film, at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival’s Generation 14plus section.

In the doc, the two filmmakers examine issue of immigration along the Texas-Mexican border through the lens of their own friendship. The Generation international jury called the film “a touching and subtle glimpse into the intimate moments of memorable characters…their self-determination and playfulness, as both protagonists and authors, is inspiring. Their actions, jokes, songs, laughs, and bodies are political and necessary as a way of resistance.”

A special mention in the Generation 14plus section went to Vuk Lungulov-Klotz’s Mutt, a drama set over the course of a single hectic day in New York City, and centered on a trans man ( Lio Mehiel) who finds his life shaken up by the reemergence of...

Major deals close for Latin American and Spanish content at EFM.

In one of the largest deals done at the European Film Market (EFM) this year for Spanish and Latin American fare, Madrid-based Latido Films has closed a raft of deals on Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s rural thrillerThe Beasts, Rocío Mesa’s magical-realist tale Tobacco Barns and Gustavo Hernández’s zombie horror Virus 32.

A big winner at the Goyas earlier this month and a box-office hit in Spain and France, The Beasts has been licensed to Scandinavia (Edge Entertainment), while Hernán Jabes’ erotic crime thriller Jezabel has gone to Italy, and...

It is huge deal for Latin American and Spanish content at the EFM.

In one of the largest deals done at the European Film Market (EFM) this year for Spanish and Latin American fare, Madrid-based Latido Films has closed a raft of deals on Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s rural thrillerThe Beasts, Rocío Mesa’s magical-realist tale Tobacco Barns and Gustavo Hernández’s zombie horror Virus 32.

A big winner at the Goyas earlier this month and a box-office hit in Spain and France, The Beasts has been licensed to Scandinavia (Edge Entertainment), Hernández’s zombie horror Virus 32 has been sold...