News

No sound so definitively evokes Jewish culture in the popular imagination as that of klezmer. With perceptible roots in Eastern Europe and a purely secular function, it’s a musical form that provides a direct link to centuries-old folk traditions that have all but vanished since the Holocaust. The Klezmer Project, the debut feature of Argentinian filmmakers Leandro Koch and Paloma Schachmann, combines documentary footage with a metatextual narrative to explore the remnants of Yiddish culture in small villages throughout the historical region of Bessarabia—the nexus of Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine, where the musical language of the Jews who lived there is kept alive by those who knew them.

In the early part of the 20th century, Hungarian composer Béla Bartók transcribed thousands of folk melodies across Eastern Europe, and in its own modest way, The Klezmer Project is guided by a similar spirit of preservation. Among other things,...

The festival runs October 21 - 29.

Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival will have world premieres of three new Ukrainian films as well as Portuguese director Andrés Marques’ The Drunk in its first complete edition with both competition and non-competition programmes since the beginning of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian director-DoP-artist-exhibition curator Ivan Sautkin’s debut documentary feature A Poem For Little People about a group of volunteers at the front-line zone and two elderly female friends from a village in the Chernihiv region will premiere in the documentary competition which will also feature Leandro Koch and Paloma Schachmann’s...

Films Boutique are close to further deals in China and Italy.

Animated sci-fi film White Plastic Sky has scores sales in Europe and Asia by Films Boutique following its world premiere at last month’s Berlinale.

The Berlin-based sales agent has sold the Hungarian feature to Kmbo for France and Flash Forward Entertainment for Taiwan. Films Boutique is in talks for the feature at Hong Kong Filmart and deals in China and Italy are expected to close shortly.

Directed by Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó, the film is set in 2123 and follows one man’s risky attempts to save his...

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,...