The Hong Kong International Film Festival unveiled the official poster for the 43rd edition with the theme “Colours in the Dark”, designed by internationally acclaimed photographer and visual artist Wing Shya. Shya teamed up with Hong Kong Film Award winner Aaron Kwok, this year’s Ambassador, to start the countdown towards the Festival, to be held from March 18 to April 1, 2019.
National Award-winning filmmaker Rima Das’ third Assamese feature, Bulbul Can Sing will have its European Premiere at the upcoming Berlin International Film Festival 2019 in competition in Generation 14 Plus category.
Timothée Chalamet will be presented with the Spotlight Award, Actor at the 30th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) for his “heartwarming, but tragic” performance in Beautiful Boy. The Festival runs January 3 to 14, 2019.
In the run-up to the 2019 Berlin International Film Festival, so far 16 feature-length films have been selected to compete in the 42nd edition of Generation’s two competitions, Kplus and 14plus.
When the Berlin International Film Festival takes place from February 7 to 17, 2019, Berlin will again be under the sign of the bear. The Berlin International Film Festival unveiled the 2019 official posters today, continuing the theme of bears, with this year’s twist – paying homage to the audience.
International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has selected 24 short films for the 2019 Ammodo Tiger Short Competition. Selections include exciting newcomers like German filmmaker Lucia Margarita and Moroccan artist Meriem Bennani, as well as filmmakers who have been in competition in Rotterdam before, such as Belgium-based artist Vincent Meessen or Taiwanese artist Su Hui-yu. Sara Cwynar (Rose Gold) and Daniel Jacoby (Mountain Plain Mountain), both winners of an Ammodo Tiger Short Award in 2018, return to Rotterdam in 2019 to present their films Red Film and Nehemías. Familiar names such as Simon Liu, Mike Hoolboom, Luke Fowler and Kevin Jerome Everson have shown several films at IFFR in the past, and this year make their competition debuts.
Berlin Film Festival today revealed the first 22 films in the 2019 Panorama program, including directorial debuts from actors Jonah Hill and Alexander Gorchilin. The 17 feature films and five documentary films, represent a total of 21 production countries. 14 of the films will be celebrating world premieres in Panorama. Nine of the selected works are first films,
Building on its wildly successful inaugural year, the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) announced the 2019 Animation First festival, showcasing the vast history, enduring ingenuity, and diversity of France’s renowned animation studios and schools. This year’s schedule includes 17 premieres, provoking feature-length films, exciting shorts, immersive exhibits, video game demonstrations, panels with filmmakers, a special spotlight on the City of Bordeaux’s animation industry, and much more. It will take place from Friday, January 25 through Sunday, January 27, 2019, at FIAF in New York City.
The thirteenth annual Beaufort International Film Festival will host thousands of film lovers from around the world starting February 19 through February 24, 2019, in the historic coastal town of Beaufort, SC.
Spain will be the country focus at 2019 Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF), and will see work by new and emerging Spanish filmmakers screen alongside that of the country’s best-known filmmakers with a range of industry and special events complementing the cinema program. The 73rd edition of EIFF runs from June 19 to 30, 2019.
British film and stage actress Charlotte Rampling will receive the Honorary Golden Bear at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival for her lifetime achievement, as well as dedicating the Homage to a selection of her films.
On February 14, 2019, in conjunction with the award ceremony for the Honorary Golden Bear, the festival will be showing Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter, Italy, 1974), directed by Liliana Cavani.
Among the oldest and most influential Jewish film festivals worldwide, the 28th annual New York Jewish Film Festival (NYJFF) will take place January 9 to 22, 2019. Featuring new work as well as restored classics, the festival’s 2019 lineup includes 32 wide-ranging and exciting features and shorts from the iconic to the iconoclastic. Screenings are held at the Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, NYC.
The NYJFF opens on Wednesday, January 9, with the New York premiere of Eric Barbier’s epic drama Promise at Dawn, starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Pierre Niney. This riveting memoir chronicles the colorful life of infamous French author Romain Gary, from his childhood conning Polish high society with his mother to his years as a pilot in the Free French Air Forces.
The Closing Night film is the New York premiere of A Fortunate Man, directed by Academy Award–winner Bille August (Pelle the Conqueror). In it, a gifted but self-destructive young man leaves his suffocating Lutheran upbringing for metropolitan 1880s Copenhagen, where he’s welcomed into a wealthy Jewish family and strives to realize his grand ambitions.
The Centerpiece selection represents the first time an Israeli television series has been presented at the NYJFF with the three-and-a-half-hour miniseries Autonomies, to be presented all at once, binge-style, with a 20-minute intermission. Directed by Yehonatan Indursky, the dystopian drama is set in an alternate reality of present-day Israel, a nation divided by a wall into the secular “State of Israel,” with Tel Aviv as its capital, and the “Haredi Autonomy” in Jerusalem, run by an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group. A globally relevant tale of identity, religion, politics, personal freedom, and love, this gripping story follows a custody battle that upends the fragile peace of the country, pushing it to the brink of civil war. Indursky will present a master class in conjunction with the screening of Autonomies.
New to the NYJFF this year is an annual initiative that highlights a film made by a woman filmmaker that deserves broader American recognition. Maria Victoria Menis’s Camera Obscura (2008) tells the story of an immigrant woman whose encounter with an itinerant photographer reveals a sense of self she never knew. The film was shot in the lush forests and lagoons of Buenos Aires province in a mélange of visual styles, including elements of hand-drawn animation, World War I archival footage, and early surrealist black-and-white films.
Filmmaker Amos Gitai returns to the 2019 NYJFF with the U.S. premiere of his thought-provoking new drama, A Tramway in Jerusalem. Gitai uses the tramway that runs through Jerusalem to connect a series of short vignettes, forming a mosaic of Jewish and Arab stories embodying life in the city.
The NYJFF will also present the U.S. premiere of Fig Tree by first-time director Aäläm-Wärqe Davidian. Set in Addis Ababa during the Ethiopian Civil War, the film concerns a young woman who plans to flee to Israel with her brother to reunite with their mother. But she is unwilling to leave her Christian boyfriend behind and hatches a scheme to save him from being drafted.