News

If you have clicked on this article to learn what Amityville: Where The Echo Lives has to do with the horrifying incident that occurred at the iconic 112 Ocean Avenue house, (spoiler alert) I am here to tell you that the use of “Amityville” in the title is nothing short of of clickbaiting. The movie, made by Carlos Ayala, was initially titled The Girl from the Other Side. Since I’ve seen the film’s trailer on the YouTube channel of Lionsgate Movies, I am guessing that they acquired the film, slapped “Amityville” onto the title (because Amityville is a word that is in the public domain which grabs eyeballs), and sold it to us. Congratulations, you have been duped. That said, if you do want to learn about what actually happens in the film when it isn’t padding the runtime by showing its protagonist going about her day doing her chores or procrastinating,...

Budapest International Film Festival (Biff) is building a film funding initiative independent of the Hungarian state, as the festival’s first edition gets underway today.

The fund will launch during the festival, which runs from October 29 to November 3 at the Corvin Cinema Budapest.

The fund will be run in collaboration with the Sandor Simo Foundation, and will support at least one Hungarian feature film and a short film, from script development through to theatrical release.It will aim to raise between€500,000 to€1m in its first year, which organisers say is the current average budget of an independent Hungarian feature film.

Tatiana Huezo’s documentary The Echo takes us to a remote corner of central Mexico, offering an intimate look at the rhythms of daily life in the small community of El Eco. Shot over the course of 18 months, the film follows several families as they work the land through changing seasons, observing the intergenerational bonds that hold the village together.

Huezo spent significant time with her subjects, gaining candid glimpses of their world, usually reserved for relatives, not outsiders. Her observational approach using natural light and handheld footage brings us directly into the community without barriers.

We come to know hardworking mother Luz María and her devoted daughter Montse, who finds herself torn between tradition and new dreams as she comes of age. Other families open their lives as well, showcasing the mix of hardship and humanity that defines this rural existence.

The film premiered to acclaim in 2023, praising Huezo’s subtle yet rich storytelling.

Melissa McCarthy and Clive Owen are set to star in a new Paramount+ limited series surrounding the JonBenét Ramsey case.

McCarthy and Owen play JonBenét’s parents, Patsy and John Bennett Ramsey, respectively, in the limited series, which explores the tragic unsolved murder of the 6-year-old beauty queen.

Following the Ramsey family, before and after the tragedy as they go through the painful loss of a child while facing intense public scrutiny caused by a media frenzy that captivated an entire nation, the series will explore “the unbreakable partnership of these two complex people – as husband and wife, as mother and father – who had committed themselves and their children to building the narrative of a perfect, privileged life only to have it destroyed one Christmas night in 1996,” per the official logline.

The series, which is currently titled “JonBenét Ramsey,” has received a series order at the streamer and will soon begin production in Calgary,...

Disney’s latest blockbuster Deadpool & Wolverine headlines this weekend’s UK-Ireland box office, aiming to revive the recent fortunes of the once-mighty Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).

A sequel to Deadpool and Deadpool 2 as well as a follow-up to Logan, the film sees Deadpool pulled from his quiet life by the Time Variance Authority and set on a mission to save his universe – during which he collides with Wolverine from another universe. Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman reprise their roles as the titular superheroes, with Matthew Macfadyen, Morena Baccarin and Screen Stars of Tomorrow Emma Corrin and Dafne Keen also among the cast.

The Echo

Salvadoran Mexican filmmaker Tatiana Huezo's The Echo (El Eco), a documentary that leans into the language of fiction, centres on three rural families. As in her previous film, Prayers For The Stolen (Noche De Fuego), the focus is on children. However, the image of young people caught up in the violence of the Mexican cartels contrasts with The Echo's gentle and rhythmic tapestry of emotions and day-to-day experiences in the Mexican countryside.

The Echo represents a departure for Huezo, from the dark subjects that have defined her feature documentaries. Alongside Prayers For The Stolen, she has documented the victimisation of women in Tempestad and the impact of a civil war on a small town in El Lugar Más Pequeño.

In conversation with Eye For Film, Huezo discussed her fascination with childhood, bringing the urban playground to the countryside and playing the role of provocateur.

The Echo...

Universal’s “Despicable Me 4” maintained its lead at the U.K. and Ireland box office for the second consecutive week, earning £4.9 million ($6.3 million), according to numbers from Comscore. The animated sequel has now accumulated £17.4 million in total.

Warner Bros.’ “Twisters” made a notable entrance, blowing into the second position with a £4.1 million opening. Disney’s “Inside Out 2” continued to perform well in its sixth week, adding £1.5 million to reach a cumulative total of £47.2 million after six weekends.

Black Bear’s “Longlegs” held onto fourth place in its second week with £1.3 million, bringing its total to £3.9 million. Paramount’s “A Quiet Place: Day One” rounded out the top five, earning £447,907 in its fourth week for a total of £9 million.

Further down the chart, Bollywood film “Bad Newz” from Moviegoers and Altitude’s “Blur: To The End” debuted at seventh and eighth places respectively, with openings of £165,464 and £147,981. The National Theatre Live...

A yearly highlight of New York (or American) programming, the Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look will return on March 13 with an opening-night screening of Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez’s Sujo, close on March 17 with Bill and Turner Ross’ Gasoline Rainbow, and in the intervening days combine programming of recent cutting-edge highlights with in-person talks and seminars.

First Look’s fixture “Working on It” will run between March 13 and 15, offering “a laboratory for works in progress and dialogues about process, bringing together festival guests, filmmakers, students, writers, and the general public.” Meanwhile, writers and editors from Reverse Shot “will continue discussions begun in last year’s Emerging Critics Workshop throughout the festival.”

So says MoMI’s Curator of Film Eric Hynes:

“Now in its 13th year, First Look has carved out a unique, and we think essential, place in New York’s film and cultural landscape.

No strangers to Sundance, filmmaker/cinematographer Gregory Kershaw and filmmaker/visual artist Michael Dweck are back for this 40th edition with their latest unsurprisingly cinematic, nonfiction study “Gaucho Gaucho.” While the acclaimed duo’s previous docs were set at a Long Island racetrack and in the Italian countryside, respectively, “Gaucho Gaucho” is an “Argentinean Western” (according to the Sundance synopsis) that takes place in the remote plains of that faraway, South American land. And therein lies the rub.

On the upside, “Gaucho Gaucho” is exquisitely crafted, with sumptuous black-and-white cinematography, camera angles framed askew, and eye-catching slo-mo sequences. (Cowboys atop galloping horses makes for one heart-pounding mix.) Not to mention an operatic — at times literally — score. (And Los Gatos’s “La Balsa” is an ear worm for sure.) And yet this heavily stylized, and often overly staged, approach actually ends up overwhelming the story the North American filmmakers have supposedly...

Rotterdam Film Festival Sets ‘Head South’ As Opening Film

Jonathan Ogilvie’s post-punk, coming-of-age comedy Head South has been announced as the opening picture of the 53rd International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), running from January 25 to February 4. The festival has also teased a handful of early selections. They include Indian filmmaker Ishan Shukla’s dystopian, sci-fi animation Schirkoa: In Lies We Trust and U.S. director Billy Woodberry’s biodoc Mário, about African independence activist Mário de Andrade, which will both world premiere. Further confirmations include European premieres for Amanda Kramer’s So Unreal and Ann Hui’s Elegies as well as Omar Hilal’s Voy! Voy! Voy!, which is Egypt’s Oscar entry this year. The festival will unveil its full line-up on December 18.

Paul Schrader To Be Feted At Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Avellino Festival

U.S. director and screenwriter Paul Schrader will be honored with a Lifetime...

Yorgos Lanthimos drama ‘Poor Things’ won two prizes.

Warwick Thornton was awarded the Golden Frog at Poland’s Camerimage International Film Festival on Saturday (November 18) for drama The New Boy.

The Australian Indigenous filmmaker received the festival’s top prize at a ceremony in the Polish town of Torun, where the director was recognised for his role as cinematographer on the film. Accepting the award, Thornton paid tribute to his fellow filmmakers and said: “I’ve had tears in my eyes the whole week and it’s not because of the alcohol or the cold weather. It’s the love of cinematography,...

Mstyslav Chernov’s unflinching account of the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine wins the public vote at the documentary festival

Mstyslav Chernov’s unflinching account of the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, 20 Days In Mariupol, has won the Npo IDFA Audience Award at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).

The €5,000 prize was awarded at the Royal Theater Tuschinski in Amsterdam on Saturday night, (November 18) followed by a special screening of the film. The award is based on votes by festival visitors who rate the films directly following their screenings via a Qr code.

Cinematographer and director Warwick Thornton scored top honors Saturday at the Camerimage cinematography film festival for his magical tale of an aboriginal youth, “The New Boy,” which film jurors called a distinctive “portrait of an extinguished spirituality.”

Thornton, in accepting the Golden Frog, said he had been so moved by the cinematography work onscreen at the fest, a top global event for directors of photography, he’d been “tearing for a week.”

Ed Lachman, director of photography for Pablo Larrain’s horror fantasy “El Conde,” inspired by the life of Chilean tyrant Augusto Pinochet, won the Silver Frog for what the jury called “cinematic high poetry,” while the Bronze Frog and Audience Award went to cinematographer Robbie Ryan for his Gothic dream-like imagery in Emma Stone-starrer “Poor Things,” directed by Yorgos Lanthimos.

Actor Peter Dinklage, honored with a festival director’s prize, expressed his gratitude for the Frog statuette,...

For the second year in a row, a film starring Cate Blanchett has taken the lead prize at Poland’s EnergaCamerimage Festival, celebrating the work of the world’s best cinematographers. This year, the Aboriginal drama “The New Boy” won the Golden Frog for its cinematographer Warwick Thornton, who also happens to be the picture’s director.

The film follows a 9-year-old Aboriginal orphan taken in by a rural monastery. It premiered to kind notices at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. However, the film still does not have a U.S. release date at this time. In 2022, Todd Field’s “Tár” won the Golden Frog for Oscar-nominated cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister and also starred Blanchett.

The Silver Frog went to Pablo Larrain’s moody vampire picture “El Conde,” for whom its legendary cinematographer Ed Lachman was honored. Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Poor Things” continued its awards streak by winning the Bronze Frog for lenser Robbie Ryan,...

This year’s winners at Camerimage Film Festival in Toruń, Poland were unveiled Saturday, with The New Boy, Warwick Thornton’s drama about an indigenous boy taken in at a mysterious remote monastery, taking the top prize.

Poor Things, Searchlight’s Yorgos Lanthimos drama starring Emma Stone, won the Audience Award at the festival, which focuses on the art of cinematography.

Camerimage’s Golden Frog is widely considered an Oscar precursor, with three of the past five Golden Frog winners going on to earn Oscar nominations in cinematography. Those titles include Lion (2016), Joker (2019) and Nomadland (2020).

Below is the complete list of this year’s winners.

Main Competition

Golden Frog: The New Boy

cin. Warwick Thornton

dir. Warwick Thornton

Silver Frog: El Conde

cin. Ed Lachman

dir. Pablo Larraín

Bronze Frog: Poor Things

cin. Robbie Ryan

dir. Yorgos Lanthimos

Fipresci Award

The International Federation of Film Critics Award for Best Film: The Zone of Interest

cin.

The New Boy — the story of a young Aboriginal Australian orphan boy that was written, directed and lensed by Warwick Thornton — collected the Golden Frog in the main competition of the 31st EnergaCamerimage international cinematography film festival, which closed Saturday night in Torún, Poland.

Cinematographer Ed Lachman received the Silver Frog for Pablo Larraín’s El Conde, which positions Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet as a vampire. Robbie Ryan’s lensing of Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, the story of a young woman (Emma Stone) brought back to life by an unorthodox scientist, claimed the Bronze Frog as well as the Audience Award. (Ryan collected the Golden Frog two years ago, for Mike Mills’ C’mon C’mon, and Lachman won the Golden Frog in 2015, for Todd Haynes’ Carol.).

The Fipresci Prize was awarded to Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, a chilling look at the life of Auschwitz concentration camp commander Rudolf Höss and his family,...

The Cinema Heritage festival announces the 9 films in the International Competition after more than 500 films were viewed. Costa Gavras and Cristian Mungiu will be the guests of honour on the closing night.

Eva Peydro, Barbara Lorey de Lacharrière and Philip Cheah, who make up the Selection Committee for the first edition of the Cinema Heritage festival, have viewed 500 films from 56 different countries and are presenting the finalists.

The International Competition comprises 9 films:

– The Winter Within by Aamir Bashir India, France, Qatar / 2022 / Paris Premiere

– The Echo by Tatiana Huezo Mexico, Germany / 2023 / French premiere

– Muyeres by Marta Lallana Spain / 2023 / Paris Premiere

– Behind The Haystacks by Asimina Proedrou Greece, Germany, Macedonia / 2022 / French premiere

– The Promised Land by Nikolaj Arcel Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany / 2023 / French premiere

– Lubo by Giorgio Diritti Italy, Switzerland / 2023 /French premiere

– The Land Where Winds Stood Still by Ardak Amirkulov Kazakhstan / 2023 / French premiere

– Esimde (This Is What I Remember) by Aktan Arym Kubat...

When asked how she felt about this year’s opening film at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) having been supported by the IDFA Bertha Fund (Ibf), the fund’s executive director and IDFA deputy director Isabel Arrate Fernandez beamed with pride, stating it is “amazing, most of all because it’s a beautiful film.”

The film in question is Olga Chernyk’s “A Picture to Remember,” which has its world premiere at IDFA, running between Nov. 8-19. “The film team was involved with IDFA in several ways, not only through financing via the fund but also because Olga and Kasia [Boniecka], the film’s editor, attended the IDFA Project Space earlier this year. From the fund’s perspective, you never know where the films will end up, and when they start their career this way it’s incredible.”

Speaking to Variety, Fernandez recalls how “A Picture to Remember” was...

Like the cinematography sector overall this year, the profession’s prime annual festival, Poland’s Camerimage, has come through major challenges in 2023, says the event’s founder, Marek Zydowicz.

Launching in the historic town of Torun on Nov. 11, the 31st edition of the fest was organized in a time of nearby crises in Europe plus record levels of inflation hitting the region, and fallout from the Hollywood actors strike.

“It’s hard to say these things were really helping us,” notes Kazik Suwala, one of the festival’s key organizers and director of its most ambitious project, the construction of the European Film Center, which broke ground in October. “It was a tough year to work,” as he puts it. “The preparations were much harder than usual. Getting movies programmed involved much more time.”

Thus, Zydowicz and Suwala confess to feeling a bit of extra pride in pulling off a...

Mexico’s official entry to the Best International Feature Oscar race, Lila Aviles’ “Totem,” and Tatiana Huezo’s documentary “The Echo” (“El Eco”) snagged three prizes apiece at the Morelia International Film Festival (Ficm), which wrapped Sunday, Oct. 29.

The awards doled out Saturday capped a busy 21st edition that saw a constellation of luminaries in town, including Jodie Foster, Jessica Chastain, Peter Saarsgard, Viggo Mortensen, Danny Huston, James Ivory, Irène Jacob and producing partners Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy.

Mexico’s multi-Oscar nominated cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, who received the festival’s Premio Cuervo lifetime achievement award, served as a juror in the official selection which gave best Mexican feature and best director awards to “Totem,” described by Variety as an“intimate, emotionally rich” film. “Totem” also took home the Audience Award, a good indication of its box office potential.

The best screenplay award went to Elisa Miller and Daniela Gómez for their gripping drama,...

Spoiler alert: The following article contains spoilers from American Horror Stories season 3, episode 4.

American Horror Stories season 3, episode 4 revolves around Toby, a women-hating man who meets a mysterious woman on a dating app. But their hookup takes a dark turn when Toby wakes up without his kidney. The episode is full of surprising twists as Toby investigates what happened to him. He discovers an underground organ theft ring called Magna Mater, and Natessa, the woman he met, is connected to it. Toby's coworker and friend Sasha, played by Havana Rose Liu, is secretly in love with him but betrays him in the end. The episode also features Detective Markham and Detective Grant, who work for Magna Mater, and a small role by Patrick Breen as the Auctioneer.

American Horror Stories season 3, episode 4, "Organ," revolves around the character of Toby, a women-hating man obsessed with a dating app — Pincher. But the...

Chicago – The 59th Chicago International Film Festival (Ciff) announced its competitive award winners on October 20th 2023, and the recipient of The Gold Hugo in the International Feature Film Competition – the festival’s top honor – is ‘Explanation for Everything” (directed by Gábor Reisz), a coming-of age story.

Picking up the Festival’s Silver Hugo in the International Feature Film competition is “The Delinquents” (directed by Rodrigo Moreno). In the New Directors Competition, Amr Gamal’s “The Burdened” takes the Gold Hugo and Ena Sendijarevic’s “Sweet Dreams” takes the Silver Hugo. The complete list of honorees is below.

“This year’s winning selections truly reflect a global perspective, giving audiences a glimpse into lives and lived experiences they might not have had the opportunity to explore before,” said Chicago International Film Festival Artistic Director Mimi Plauché. “Hailing from every region on the planet from Hungary to Mexico, Argentina to Yemen, Sudan to the U.

The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam has revealed its lineups for the competitions for short documentary and youth documentary, as well as the rosters for its Best of Fests section and its newly minted Signed section. In total, 100 films have been included in the IDFA program to date.

In addition, IDFA Forum, the festival’s co-production and co-financing market, has expanded to a total of 64 projects, including seven by Ukrainian filmmakers.

The 36th edition of IDFA runs from Nov. 8 to 19 in Amsterdam.

The competition for short documentary showcases a healthy boom for the short film form. A mosaic of styles and themes defines this selection of 15 films, exploring everything a short documentary can be. An international jury of three jurors will award the best film.

Pegah Ahangarani returns to IDFA with a personal telling of family history and their experience of the Iranian revolution in “My Father,” and Nastia Korkia...

Argentine director Paula Hernández’s “The Ravaging Wind,” toplined by Latin American star Alfredo Castro, will be the opening night film of Horizontes Latinos sidebar at the 71st edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival, which runs Sept. 22-30.

Carolina Markowicz’s “Toll,” whose producers include Brazilian giant Globo Filmes, will close the section, one of the biggest examples of San Sebastian’s long-term commitment to Latin American cinema.

In total, Horizontes will present this year 12 stories, set in Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Brazil.

Traditionally, the sidebar showcases feature films not yet released in Spain, either totally or partially produced in Latin America directed by Latino filmmakers or which are set against the backdrop or subject of Latino communities in the rest of the world.

The contenders list of the 2023 edition takes in two films who walked off with prizes at San Sebastian’s Latin American Work In Progress initiative...

Twelve stories set in Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Brazil make up Horizontes Latinos, a selection of the year’s feature films, not yet released in Spain, from among all those totally or partially produced in Latin America, directed by moviemakers of Latino origin, or which are set against the backdrop or subject of Latino communities in the rest of the world. In the selection of titles competing for the Horizontes Award at San Sebastian’s 71st edition are two films to have carried off awards at the last Wip Latam –El castillo / The Castle and Estranho caminho / A Strange Path– and at the Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum –Alemania–.

Having shown one of her previous movies in Horizontes Latinos, Los sonámbulos / The Sleepwalkers (2019), Paula Hernández returns to the section she will open with El viento que arrasa / A Ravaging Wind, a cinematic adaptation of Selva Almada’s homonymous novel. Alfredo Castro,...

"Let go of all of that anger that's holding you back... from truly living your life." Good advice!! With the 2023 Berlin Film Festival wrapped up, it's time to look back and highlight a few of the films playing in the line-up. Below is a small but mighty collection of trailers currently out for films that premiered at this year's Berlinale - including Golden Bear winner Sur l'Adamant, the doc Hello Dankness about America, animated film The Siren, Norwegian drama Dancing Queen, Hungarian sci-fi White Plastic Sky, and plenty of others - a mix of documentaries and narrative features. Dive in and discover something that you've never heard of!! We already posted a few other trailers before the fest began: Seneca with John Malkovich, Christian Petzold's Afire, Korean film Kill Boksoon, The Echo (a terrific doc), and German film Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything. Aside from those, this trailer...

The 73rd Berlin International Film Festival came to a close this past weekend, and despite speculation that Sundance import “Past Lives” or Lila Avilés’ “Tótem” would take the Golden Bear, the jury, led this year by Kristen Stewart, awarded it to the French documentary “On the Adamant.” Directed by Nicolas Philibert, the movie follows operations at the Parisian Centre de jour l’Adamant, a floating medical facility on the Seine that offers its patients innovative forms of art therapy.

Jordan Mintzer (The Hollywood Reporter) writes, “While documenting the daily routine of a small clinic that most Parisians walk by without ever noticing, ‘On the Adamant’ ultimately becomes a moving testament to what people are capable of, if they could just find the right place to do it.” Guy Lodge (Variety) compares the film to Philibert’s “To Be and To Have,” which is set inside a single-room schoolhouse in rural France,...

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.

Winners have been announced at the 73rd Berlin Film Festival, with On the Adamant by Nicolas Philibert scooping the coveted Golden Bear prize as the best film of the festival’s International Competition. Scroll down for the full list of winners, which were revealed Saturday evening at the Berlinale Palast.

The film chronicles a unique day-care center in the heart of Paris that welcomes adults suffering from mental disorders, offering the kind of care that grounds them in time and space and helps them to recover or keep up their spirits.

Introducing the film, jury head Kristen Stewart said the pic is “masterfully crafted” and acts as “cinematic proof of the vital necessity of human expression.”

Other winners in the International Competition included Philippe Garrel, who picked up the Silver Bear for Best Director for his latest pic Le grand chariot (The Plough). Garrel dedicated the award to the late filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard.

On the Adamant, a documentary by French director Nicolas Philibert that gives an intimate look at the patients and caregivers in a mental health center located on the Seine River in the heart of Paris, has won the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival’s Golden Bear for best film.

For his 11th feature, the 72-year-old Philibert spent months aboard a barge anchored on the Seine in Paris, chronicling a mental health care facility that caters specifically to its patients’ creative needs. His documentary explores issues of creativity and art, of sanity and madness, but does so without applying labels or clear-cut distinctions.

“I don’t like partitions or labels,” Philibert said. “In this film on psychiatry, we were always [careful] to not always distinguish very clearly between patients and carers. I tried to reverse the image we always have of mad people [which I see] as discriminating and stigmatizing. I wanted us to be able,...

As the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival drew to a close, the first of the three major international film festivals began giving out its awards. This year’s Berlin jury was headed by Kristen Stewart, and the selections promised to reflect the actress’ famously good taste in movies. But a strong lineup featuring a variety of innovative films from the world’s top directors ensured that their job was never going to be easy. From a timely documentary about the war in Ukraine to a variety of dramas about men trapped in small spaces (see: “Inside” and “Manhole”), the eclectic collection of films had something for everyone.

At last year’s festival, Carla Simon’s Spanish Drama “Alcarras” won the coveted Golden Bear. Several of the biggest names in global cinema also walked away with big prizes, as Claire Denis won the Silver Bear for Best Director for “Both Sides of the Blade...

With an admirable cohesiveness, Mexican-Salvadoran director Tatiana Huezo (“Prayers for the Stolen”) has curated a body of work that often returns to familiar questions, subjects, and even precise images of evolving girlhood and untarnished nature. The filmmaker’s most fixed preoccupation is the spaces women carve for themselves and each other in communities where their safety, needs, and aspirations often suffer the tacitly violent tactics of patriarchal social norms.

Back to her documentary roots, Huezo follows her acclaimed fiction debut, “Prayers for the Stolen” (“Noche de Fuego”), with another multigenerational saga of mothers and daughters in a remote locale.

Continue reading ‘The Echo’ Review: Tatiana Huezo Returns to Her Non-Fiction Roots with Another Striking, Multigenerational Story of Women and Nature [Berlin] at The Playlist.

“The Echo” — or rather, El Eco — is the name of a tiny rural village in Mexico’s Puebla state that sufficiently captivated Mexican-Salvadorean filmmaker Tatiana Huezo into filming it over the course of 18 months, observing its changes in weather, fortune and the temperament of its few, tightly bonded residents in fine, fraught degrees. But there’s more to the title of Huezo’s return to documentary filmmaking — following the major success of her 2021 fiction debut “Prayers for the Stolen” — than a mere marker of place: Examining the unique ties that bind farming families, where everyone’s welfare hangs on the same unkind elements, this exquisitely textured film observes how children’s lives echo those of their parents, repeating for generations on the same constantly inconstant land, until somebody breaks the pattern.

There’s something of an echo, too, between Huezo’s last film and this one, even as they nominally...

To return to documentary filmmaking after her lauded debut fiction feature “Prayers for the Stolen” (“Noche de Fuego”), Tatiana Huezo laid down a set of parameters to follow.

“I didn’t want to include any interviews, any narration or any voice-over,” she told Variety. “The Echo” (“El Eco”), world premiering at Berlinale’s Encounters sidebar, sometimes feels like a fictional story as a result.

“After ‘Prayers..,’ I felt like returning to the language of the documentary, but most importantly, to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, in the smallest details in everyday life,” she mused. Its trailer bows exclusively in Variety.

Research on the docu took some four years. The Mexican-Salvadoran filmmaker found the titular village of El Eco in the state of Puebla, a four-hour drive from Mexico City. After visiting several rural schools, she zeroed in on the village, captivated by its name and even more so after...