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New projects from Lone Scherfig and Hlynur Palmason are among the 55 projects selected for Goteborg Film Festival’s Nordic Film Market (January 29-31).

Scherfig will present Honeytrap in the Discovery - Films In Development strand. The film is produced by Rebecka Hamberger for Sweden’s Art & Bob, with few details currently available on the project. Scherfig’s last feature was 2023’s The Movie Teller, with 2019 Berlinale opener The Kindness Of Strangers prior to that.

Scroll down for the full list of projects

Icelandic director Palmason will present The Love That Remains in the Works in Progress strand. The film is...

Turkish-British writer Elif Shafak’s Booker Prize-nominated novel “10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World,” which is set in the world of Istanbul sex workers, will be adapted into a feature film by Madrid-based Isb Films and Turkey’s Limon Film.

Shafak, who is Turkey’s most widely read female author, is known for her vast body of work spanning a dozen novels that have been translated into 50 languages. They often delve into themes of human rights, freedom of expression and identity. “10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World” is the first of her novels to be adapted into a feature film.

More than a decade ago, she moved from Turkey to the U.K. after her book “The Bastard of Istanbul” – which touches on the mass killings of Armenians during the final years of the Ottoman Empire – led her to be tried for “insulting Turkishness,” for which she was eventually acquitted.

“TransMexico,” “Edge of Everything” and Andragogy” are among the winners of the 39th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

The Sbiff, whose mission is to discover and showcase the “best in independent and international cinema,” has become one of the leading film festivals in the United States – attracting roughly 100,000 attendees for a packed week slatted with screenings of over 200+ films.

A panel of jury members selected the winners, which included Lesley Chilcott, Alex Keledjian, Chris Landon, Lael Loewenstein, Jacqueline Lyanga, David Magdael, Gail Mancuso, Greg Nava, Pituka Ortega Heilbron, Carla Renata, Gil Robertson, Ondi Timoner, Clay Tweel and Ali Wolfe.

“We are so grateful to our dedicated group of jurors for their fine selections,” Claudia Puig, Sbiff’s programming director, said in a statement. “The winning films tell stories that span the globe, from the magic of movie palaces in the Atacama Desert to the stunning mystery of ice caves...

Scanbox Entertainment has finalized a restructuring of its senior management team with a series of internal promotions alongside a new hire.

Merete Martensen Christensen has taken over from Kim William Beich as acting Chief Operations Officer (COO). Beich will continue at the company as Head of Acquisitions and Special Projects. Christensen will also retain her role as Head of Theatrical in Scandinavia and as local Head of Theatrical in Denmark. Christensen has been part of the management group since 2014 and originally joined Scanbox back in 2011.

Elsewhere, Per Bergholdt Knudsen has joined Scanbox in the newly created Director of Sales & Acquisition Manager. He will work closely with Torben Thorup Jørgensen, Chief Commercial Officer (Cco), taking over sales duties and joining the acquisitions team at Scanbox Entertainment. Knudsen is a senior sales and acquisitions executive who started as a film buyer in TV2’s acquisition department and worked there for five years,...

Two movies which come in on immigration from vastly different angles – Laura Ferrés’ “The Permanent Picture” and Ken Loach’s “The Old Oak” – won big Saturday night at Spain’s Valladolid Festival, walking off with its main competition Golden Spike and the Spanish event’s best actor (Dave Turner) and Audience Award plaudits respectively.

The prize ceremony also saw Charlotte Rampling, star of closing film “Juniper” from Matthew J. Saville, accept an enthusiastically applauded Honorific Spike for her career achievement.

Though decided upon by independent juries, Valladolid’s prizes say much about the new-fit festival after a first-year reboot by new director José Luis Cienfuegos, previously a Gijón and Seville fest head.

Under directors Fernando Lara (1984-2004), Juan Carlos Frugone (2005-08) and Javier Angulo (2009-2022), Valladolid has consolidated as one of Spain’s biggest festivals, after San Sebastián. and a bastion of auteurist, arthouse independent cinema. Few figures in Europe...

In times of dramatic change for the film-tv industry, Spanish auteur cinema is booming, goosed by multiple significant and high-quality titles, reaping prizes, critical praise and profile at international festivals.

Beyond the preeminent interest in established auteurs such as Pedro Almodóvar, Alejandro Amenábar, J.A. Bayona, Isabel Coixet and Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Spanish sales agents and distributors celebrate the increasingly strong presence of young local film auteurs on the international scene. The big question is, however, how this profile can translate into box office impact and substantial sales.

“We are living a very sweet moment in terms of the recognition of our cinema at international festivals, with ever more filmmakers who are creating dazzling works,” says Luis Renart, founder of Santa Cruz de Tenerife-based sales company Bendita Films.

“There’s a generation of creators and producers who look to international auteur cinema when they build their projects, made with a European sensibility and a very marked identity,...

One of Spain’s biggest and oldest movie events, the Valladolid Intl. Film Festival, known as the Seminci in Spain, is broadening its range of Spanish films and aims to strengthen its position as an international platform for art films.

Running Oct. 21-28 in Valladolid, the capital city of Spanish region Castilla-Leon, the Seminci’s 68th edition marks the first under new director José Luis Cienfuegos, named last April.

With an illustrious near 30-year career as a festival director, at the helm of the Seville European Film Festival (2012-2023) and prior to that at the Gijon Intl. Film Festival (1995-2011), Cienfuegos has arrived to Valladolid at a time when a new generation of Spanish film auteurs, often women, is booming, making waves at the international festivals circuit.

“Valladolid is a city absolutely dedicated to the festival that demands and needs to open the doors to a new generation of filmmakers,...

“All of Us Strangers,” Andrew Haigh, U.K., U.S.)

Setting a high benchmark for Valladolid’s main competition, “a curious kind of ghost story, at once incredibly tender and profoundly devastating as it slowly reveals its secrets,” Variety wrote in its review. Written and directed by Haigh. behind an impressive body of work taking in “Weekend,” “45 Years” and HBO series “Looking.”

“Andrea’s Love,” (“El amor de Andrea,” Manuel Martín Cuenca, Spain)

Sold by Film Factory, the latest from the always interesting Martín Cuenca about Andrea, 15, attempting to reconnect with her estranged father. “A title opening up a new stage in Martín Cuenca’s career, his simplest, most tender and sincere of works,” Valladolid Festival notes run.

“Gasoline Rainbow,” (Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross, U.S.)

Produced by Mubi and sold by The Match Factory, the Venice Horizons world premiere follows five teens who pile into a van...

The 68th edition will screen a mix of new Spanish films and 2023 favourites and host an expanded industry programme.

The 68th edition of the Seminci, the Valladolid International Film Week opens this weekend (October 21) with a screening of The Movie Teller, directed by Lone Scherfig, starring Bérénice Béjo, Antonio de la Torre and Daniel Brühl and written by Walter Salles, Isabel Coixet and Rafa Russo.

For what is a vital launchpad into the Spanish market, new festival director José Luis Cienfuegos has programmed a series of international festival favourites from 2023 alongside new films by Spanish directors Antonio Méndez Esparza and...

This edition boasts the largest feature film selection programmed to-date at Emiff.

The Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival has unveiled its full line-up for the 12th edition of the Spanish festival, with a total of 140 projects, including German auteur Wim Wenders’ Cannes world premiere Perfect Days and a special spotlight screening of David Fincher’s Venice title The Killer.

This year boasts the largest feature film selection programmed to date at Emiff. Additional categories for long-form projects include the debut feature film competition, the Made In Baleares (Mib) feature film competition, Spotlight Screenings and the Drive In Cinema strand. Six...

The Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival, running from October 18 to 24 in the Spanish island’s capital of Palma, has unveiled its full line-up.

The festival will open with Spanish director Isabel Coixet’s new feature Un Amor, which recently world premiered at San Sebastian.

Coixet will also be feted with the festival’s Evolution Vision Award at the opening night ceremony.

Other honorees will include German-Spanish actor Daniel Brühl, best known for his roles in Goodbye Lenin, Rush and The Alienist, and Danish writer and director Susanne Bier, whose recent credits include The Night Manager and The First Lady.

They will both receive Evolution Icon awards while there will also be screenings of Brühl’s most recent film The Movie Teller, as the closing film, and Rush and Bier’s 2010 feature In A Better World, which won the Best International Feature Film Oscar.

The 12th edition marks the festival’s...

The 12th edition of the Spanish festival runs October 18-24

Isabel Coixet’s Un Amor will open the Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival while Lone Scherfig’s The Movie Teller will close the 12th edition of the Palma event.

Coixet will also receive the festival’s 2023 vision award. The Spanish filmmaker and her cast of Laia Costa, Hovik Keuchkerian and Hugo Silva, are expected to attend.

Un Amor is based on Sara Mesa’s novel and explores a complicated sexual relationship between a young woman and her older neighbour. It will world premiere at San Sebastian before screening at the UK’s Raindance Film Festival.

Last year, as movies conceived and shot during the Covid-19 pandemic began to be released, we saw a sudden influx of films rejoicing in the act of moviemaking and movie-watching. From Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” to Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon,” from Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light” to the Indian Oscar entry “Last Film Show,” a surprising number of films bred during pandemic isolation were movies about movies.

And a year later, during the final days of the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, another movie that belongs in that company had its world premiere. “The Movie Teller,” a Spanish-language film set in Chile and made by a Danish director with a cast whose biggest names are known for French and German movies, puts an international spin on the love of movies and embraces the art of storytelling in a way that is at times profoundly moving.

The film is a mixture of genres,...

The Movie Teller is not a love letter to cinema like the movies about movies that precede it—it is a love letter to the community that grows from the seeds of storytelling. Based on Chilean author Hernán Rivera Letelier’s novel La Contadora de Películas, it is a sweeping, decades-spanning tale about the enduring spirit of humanity, as told by the film’s titular “Movie Teller” María Margarita.

When I was in college cinema courses I made a Super 8 film called Movie Girl. It was a Hollywood-set love letter to movies centered on a Musso & Frank waitress who put herself dreamily into the plots of classic films. It won an award there but was the highlight of the directing career I never had. However, I have always been partial to filmmakers who put their own early film-going experience and passion into their careers now. You may have heard of them: Kenneth Branagh won an Oscar for doing just that in Belfast. Steven Spielberg got several nominations last year for his very personal The Fabelmans. Woody Allen had his own charming take in The Purple Rose of Cairo. Peter Bogdanovich made a lasting impression with 1971’s The Last Picture Show, as did Giuseppe Tornatore with his Oscar winner Cinema Paradiso.

It is a combination of the latter two especially...

The programme comprises 47 films from 45 countries.

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has unveiled the line-up for its Centrepiece programme, with 47 titles screening from filmmakers representing 45 countries.

Included in the programme (previously known as Contemporary World Cinema) are Victor Erice’s Close Your Eyes, getting its North American premiere; Aki Kaurismaki’s Fallen Leaves, receiving its Canadian premiere; and Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border, a North American premiere.

Scroll down for the full list of Centrepiece titles

TIFF also announced additional titles for its Galas, Special Presentations and Documentaries programmes, among them the world premiere of Brian Helgeland’s Finestkind.

The Toronto International Film Festival has added 59 more films to the lineup of its 2023 festival, including 47 international films in the Centrepiece program, which in previous years was known as Contemporary World Cinema. New films were also added to the Galas, Special Presentations and Documentary sections.

World premieres among the new selections include “Finestkind,” a crime thriller from Brian Helgeland (screenwriter of “L.A. Confidential”) starring Tommy Lee Jones and Ben Foster; The Movie Teller,” a film set in Chile starring Berenice Bejo from “An Education” director Lone Scherfig; and Jessica Yu’s “Quiz Lady,” with Sandra Oh and Awkwafina.

The Centrepiece selections include a number of films from May’s Cannes Film Festival, among them Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days,” Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “About Dry Grasses,” Aki Kaurismaki’s “Fallen Leaves,” Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s “Banel & Adama,” Amjad Al Rasheed’s “Inshallah a Boy,” Joanna Arnow’s “The Feeling That the...

Despite the ongoing SAG-AFTRA actors and WGA writers strikes, the Toronto Film Festival continues to turn up the star wattage for its 48th edition, adding movies with Dakota Johnson, Bérénice Bejo, Awkwafina, Sandra Oh and Mads Mikkelsen to its lineup on Thursday.

For the Gala section, TIFF unveiled the A-list heavy crime drama Finestkind from Brian Helgeland, the Oscar-winning writer-director behind Mystic River and L.A. Confidential; and A Knight’s Tale, which stars Ben Foster, Jenna Ortega, Tommy Lee Jones and Toby Wallace.

Also headed to Roy Thomson Hall is the South Korean drama A Normal Family, directed by Hur Jin-ho, the Korean auteur who in the past premiered Dangerous Liaisons and April Snow in Toronto. TIFF earlier tapped fellow Korean director Ryoo Seung-wan’s Smugglers for its Special Presentations sidebar, and has now bumped that drama up to a gala screening in Toronto after a world bow in Locarno.

A new cinematography sidebar has also been unveiled.

Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival (Emiff) is to honour Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig and Spanish actor Laia Costa with the Evolution Vision and Evolution New Talent awards respectively, at the festival’s 11th edition, taking place on the Spanish island of Mallorca from October 26 to November 1.

Scherfig’s international breakthrough came in 2000 with Italian For Beginners, which won the Silver Bear jury grand prix award at Berlin. Her credits include features One Day, An Education and upcoming Spanish-language The Movie Teller, that stars Daniel Brühl and Bérénice Bejo, and is being sold by UK sales agent Embankment.

A new cinematography sidebar has also been unveiled.

Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival (Emiff) is to honour Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig and Spanish actor Laia Costa with the Evolution Vision and Evolution New Talent awards respectively, at the festival’s 11th edition, taking place on the Spanish island of Mallorca from October 26 to November 1.

Scherfig’s international breakthrough came in 2000 with Italian For Beginners, which won the Silver Bear jury grand prix award at Berlin. Her credits include features One Day, An Education and upcoming Spanish-language The Movie Teller, that stars Daniel Brühl and Bérénice Bejo, and is being sold by UK sales agent Embankment.

The Spanish-language film is in production in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

UK sales outfit Embankment has unveiled a first look at Lone Scherfig’s The Movie Teller.

Screen can exclusively reveal the image, which features newcomer Alondra Valenzuela with Bérénice Bejo and Antonio de la Torre.

The Spanish-language film is set in a 1960s mining community in Chile’s Atacama Desert, where it is in production. It is based on a novel by Hernán Rivera Letelier, La Contadora De Películas, about a woman who inspires a passion for cinema in her daughter. In a town where families are unable to afford tickets to the cinema,...

Exclusive: UK sales and production firm Embankment is teaming up with veteran UK producer Kevin Loader to create new label Free Range Entertainment.

The key shareholders in the company are Embankment’s Tim Haslam and Hugo Grumbar and Free Range’s Kevin Loader.

The combined company will develop, produce, co-produce, sell, and distribute film, TV and “allied” content, while also investing directly into production and working with third party investors and financiers.

Tim Haslam explained: “Free Range Entertainment is a creative hub for like-minded storytellers, writers, directors, and producers; converting IP from inception and development, through to production and commercial global exploitation. The Embankment sales brand will continue.”

Free Range Films was founded by producer Kevin Loader and director Roger Michell in 1996. Following Michell’s untimely passing last September, the production company has decided to embark on a new structural partnership.