On Body and Soul (Testről és lélekről) directed by Ildiko Enyedi has been selected by the Hungarian Oscar Selection Committee to represent the country in the best foreign-language film category at the 2018 Oscars.
The film premiered at the 2017 Berlinale earlier this year, where the int’l jury headed by Paul Verhoeven awarded it the prestigious Golden Bear. On Body and Soul won the FIPRESCI Prize, the Ecumenical Jury Prize, the Berliner Morgenpost’s Reader Jury Prize in Berlin as well, and the Sydney Film Festival competition in June. Ildikó Enyedi became the first woman director to win in the 10-year history of the Sydney Film Festival competition for “courageous, audacious and cutting-edge” cinema.
Endre (Géza Morcsányi) and Maria (Alexandra Borbély) work at a slaughterhouse. He is the financial director, she the new quality inspector. By day, their urban workplace houses scenes of animals being slaughtered — and Enyedi does not shy away from the carnage. By night, they dream of the same pastoral scene in which deer rub against each other in the snow. Endre is mild-mannered, while the OCD-afflicted Maria is nervous and introverted. In everyday life, these two can’t quite connect, then a company psychiatrist realizes that they see identical images during sleep. Should these subconsciously kindred coworkers commingle in their waking hours? Or are they better off resigning themselves to being lovers only in dreams?
On Body and Soul will have its North American premiere at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS6mv_rN6bUFilms
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Award Winning ON BODY AND SOUL is Hungary’s Entry for 2018 Oscar Race for Best Foreign Film | TRAILER
On Body and Soul (Testről és lélekről) directed by Ildiko Enyedi has been selected by the Hungarian Oscar Selection Committee to represent the country in the best foreign-language film category at the 2018 Oscars.
The film premiered at the 2017 Berlinale earlier this year, where the int’l jury headed by Paul Verhoeven awarded it the prestigious Golden Bear. On Body and Soul won the FIPRESCI Prize, the Ecumenical Jury Prize, the Berliner Morgenpost’s Reader Jury Prize in Berlin as well, and the Sydney Film Festival competition in June. Ildikó Enyedi became the first woman director to win in the 10-year history of the Sydney Film Festival competition for “courageous, audacious and cutting-edge” cinema.
Endre (Géza Morcsányi) and Maria (Alexandra Borbély) work at a slaughterhouse. He is the financial director, she the new quality inspector. By day, their urban workplace houses scenes of animals being slaughtered — and Enyedi does not shy away from the carnage. By night, they dream of the same pastoral scene in which deer rub against each other in the snow. Endre is mild-mannered, while the OCD-afflicted Maria is nervous and introverted. In everyday life, these two can’t quite connect, then a company psychiatrist realizes that they see identical images during sleep. Should these subconsciously kindred coworkers commingle in their waking hours? Or are they better off resigning themselves to being lovers only in dreams?
On Body and Soul will have its North American premiere at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS6mv_rN6bU
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Supernatural Thriller THELMA is Norway’s Entry for 2018 Oscar Race for Best Foreign Film | TRAILER
Thelma directed by Joachim Trier has been selected as Norway’s entry for the foreign-language category at the 2018 Oscars.
The Norwegian Oscar committee chose Trier’s fourth feature, which will have its international premiere at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival (September 7 to 17) followed by New York Film Festival (September 15 to October 28), from a shortlist of candidates, which also included Norwegian directors Izer Aliu’s Hunting Flies (Fluefangeren) and Jorunn Myklebust Syversen’s The Tree Feller (Hoggeren).
The film which opened last month’s Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund and received the Norwegian Film Critics Prize, will open in the US on November 10th.
Starring Eili Harboe, Thelma portrays Thelma, a young student in Oslo. When she is drawn to another woman, she is overwhelmed by emotions she does not dare acknowledge – and frightening and inexplicable powers are forcing themselves into the open.
“Thelma confirms that Trier is a unique and style-safe film artist of a broad and international format,” explained the Norwegian Oscar committee – “based on his special and character-exploring universe, the film has become an all-embraced, ambitious and personal drama about a young woman’s awakening and detachment.
“Thelma is a film that touches the viewer on several levels, both emotionally and intellectually – it is visually striking, modern in its expression, at the same time with clear references to film classics. With this film Trier, Vogt and their regular group of assistants have delivered a story that will reach a wide audience, and which we strongly believe in as our Oscar candidate,” added chairman of the Oscar committee, managing director Sindre Guldvog, of the Norwegian Film Institute.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4lHlIMNNbY
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Muslim Drama LAYLA M. is The Netherlands’ Entry for 2018 Oscar Race for Best Foreign Film | TRAILER
Layla M. directed by Mijke de Jong, has been selected as the official entry from The Netherlands for the Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category.
The film tells the controversial and searingly honest story of a young female Islamist. Layla, a Dutch-Moroccan teenager, is radicalized by her adopted country’s anti-Muslim measures. She marries a devout young jihadist and together they leave Amsterdam to join an Islamist cell in the Middle East – only to discover that her new community has its own restrictions, prejudices and dangers.
Layla M. starring Nora el Koussour (Laila), Ilias Addab (Abdel), Yasemin Cetinkaya (Oum Osama), Hassan Akkouch (Zine), Husam Khadad (Sheikh Abdullah Al Sabin), Ayisha Siddiqi (Mereyem) Bilal Wahib (Younes) Bobbie Koek (Hana) Mohammed Azaay (Father) and Esma Abouzahra (Mother), world premiered in the Platform competition of the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival.
Layla M. (18) is a young Muslim born in Holland.
Their Moroccan parents had already emigrated to Amsterdam before their birth, and there lay Layla and her brother Younes liberal large.
Layla is an intelligent, funny and stubborn girl with a strong sense of justice. Through the daily confrontation with prejudices against Muslims and Islam, Layla feels increasingly less affable and incomprehensible. Her parents do not try to attract attention and do not help her. Whether on the road, in school, or in politics; the reservations about headscarf-wearing women and men with raucous beards are almost omnipresent in Layla’s world, against the background of various Islamic terror attacks.
Their faith gives Layla a hold and is only strengthened by her displeasure and her longing for affiliation. It is slowly, but surely, joining a group of radical Muslims to create a world in which Islam is tolerated and accepted; and can be lived freely.
Layla is increasingly in conflict with her environment, her family, and even her best friend, Mereyem. Her father, a parade example of an “assimilated alien,” tries to keep his children in check, but Layla refuses to live as he does: as a guest in his own country.
The radical group becomes their new family. Including Abdel, a charismatic believing Muslim, who impressed Layla with his strong speeches.
As Layla’s relationship with her family grows, she feels that your only option is to go away from home. True to her belief, Layla decides to marry Abdel.
After her wedding, Layla goes to the Middle East with Abdel.
Layla meets a world that nourishes their ideas and needs, but ultimately puts them before a seemingly impossible choice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esGsns05lI0
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Kino Lorber to Release FILMWORKER and HITLER’S HOLLYWOOD from Telluride 2017
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Filmworker[/caption]
Tony Zierra’s Filmworker and Rüdiger Suchsland’s Hitler’s Hollywood, two documentaries that had their North American premieres at the 2017 Telluride Film Festival, has been acquired by Kino Lorber for release in the North America in 2018.
Zierra’s homage to Kubrick’s right-hand man had its world premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and will also show at the upcoming New York Film Festival, while Suchsland’s follow-up to his 2014 film From Caligari to Hitler will premiere at New York’s Film Forum next April.
Filmworker is focused on the work and life of Leon Vitali, the actor who played Lord Bullingdon in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon and subsequently abandoned his acting career to become Kubrick’s dedicated assistant. For more than two decades, Leon played a crucial role behind-the-scenes, helping Kubrick make and maintain his legendary body of work. The complex, interdependent relationship between Vitali and Kubrick was founded on devotion, sacrifice and the grueling, joyful reality of the creative process. Tony Zierra directed, shot and edited the film and Elizabeth Yoffe produced.
Rüdiger Suchsland’s Hitler’s Hollywood captures an entirely different dimension of filmmaking by focusing on the most controversial period of German film history – and examining titles produced during the Third Reich, from blatant propaganda to seemingly ‘harmless’ entertainment. About 1000 feature films were made in Germany in the years between 1933-45, but only a few were created as overtly Nazi propaganda films. Suchland’s incisive analysis shows how even the most innocent entertainment carries with it a subversive ideological – and in this case Nazi – message.
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Watch Trailer for MUDBOUND Dee Rees Powerful Indie Drama from Sundance 2017
The trailer dropped today for Mudbound directed by Dee Rees (Pariah) which premiered earlier this year at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. The film starring Carey Mulligan, Jason Clarke, Jason Mitchell, Mary J. Blige, Jonathan Banks and Garrett Hedlund will debut on Netflix and in select theaters onFriday, November 17.
Set in the post-WWII South, this epic pioneer story pits two families against a barbaric social hierarchy and an unrelenting landscape as they simultaneously fight the battle at home and the battle abroad. Newly transplanted from the quiet civility of Memphis, the McAllans are underprepared and overly hopeful for Henry’s grandiose farming dreams while Laura strives to keep the faith in her husband’s losing venture. For Hap and Florence Jackson, whose families have worked the land for generations, every day is a losing venture as they struggle bravely to build some small dream of their own. The war upends both families, as their returning loved ones, Jamie and Ronsel, forge a fast, uneasy friendship that challenges them all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAZWhFI9lLQ
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2017 Fantastic Fest Announces Short Film Lineup, CERULIA, THE BURDEN, and More
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CERULIA by Sofia Carrillo[/caption]
The 2017 Fantastic Fest announced the short film line up for the 13th edition of the festival, which runs September 21 to September 28, 2017 at Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin, TX.
This year, to celebrate the festival’s Arabic theme, veteran festival programmer Peter Kuplowsky and Fantastic Fest creative director Evrim Ersoy have added a unique sidebar to the festival’s regular short-subject programming. YALLA! ARAB GENRE SHORTS assembles four remarkable genre productions from Arab countries, each with a distinct sensibility and style that further expands the breadth of genres traditionally showcased at the festival.
The 48 film lineup, culled from a record submission pool of nearly 1200 entries, spans 23 countries and features a trio of stop-motion mini-masterpieces including the North American premiere of the chilling CERULIA by Sofia Carrillo (who genre fans will be familiar with from her contributions to the anthology feature XX) and the US premiere of THE BURDEN, Niki Lindroth von Bahr’s award-winning musical. Other highlights include an acclaimed and mind-melting short about escaping a Red Lobster commercial (GREAT CHOICE), and a potent sci-fi skewering of government bureaucracy so incendiary it was banned in Turkey (THE LAST SCHNITZEL)!
Speaking on the program, curator Kuplowsky commented: “With the proliferation of digital distribution channels, the audience for short films is growing exponentially and the mode of filmmaking is becoming more relevant than ever before. I’m thrilled that Fantastic Fest can be the first stop for so many of these fantastic films on their road to people’s eyeballs.”
The complete lineup, divided by program, is as follows:
FANTASTIC SHORTS
ANIMAL Iran, 2017 US Premiere, 15 min Directors: Bahram & Bahman Ark A desperate man adopts the guise of a ram in a plot to penetrate a heavily guarded border crossing. THE BURDEN Sweden, 2017 US Premiere, 14 min Director: Niki Lindroth von Bahr Lonely fish, tap-dancing mice and telemarketing monkeys harmonize in their collective angst towards the apocalyptic banality of the modern age in this epic stop-motion reverie. DEAD HORSES Spain, 2016 Texas Premiere, 6 min Directors: Marc Riba & Anna Solanas A child caught in a war zone innocently grapples to understand his horrifying surroundings in this grim stop-motion parable. FUCKING BUNNIES Finland, 2017 Texas Premiere, 17 min Director: Teemu Niukkanen The comfortable routine of Raimo’s middle-class life is interrupted when a Satan-worshipping sex cult moves next door. A wickedly funny comedy of manners. JUST GO! Latvia, 2017 Texas Premiere, 11 min Director: Pavels Gumennikovs Young Just may not have legs, but that doesn’t prevent him from proverbially kicking ass in this remarkable slice of action inspired by the star’s extraordinary life story. KAIJU BUNRAKU USA, 2017 Regional Premiere, 13 min Directors: Lucas Leyva & Jillian Mayer The Japanese art of bunraku puppetry dramatizes the existential crisis of a despondent denizen of a Kaiju-infested region of Japan; a rigorous theatrical tradition soaked in profound absurdism. THE LAST SCHNITZEL Denmark, 2016 US Premiere, 22 min Directors: Ismet Kurtulus & Kaan Arici The world is ending, but the president of Turkey won’t let it until he has a chicken schnitzel. Gleefully silly science-fiction satire with political bite. LET THEM DIE LIKE LOVERS USA, 2017 World Premiere, 16 min Director: Jesse Atlas Fantastic Shorts Award Winner Jesse Atlas (RECORD/PLAY) returns to the section with an arresting sci-fi character study about a body-hopping assassin. THE NIGHT I DANCE WITH DEATH France, 2017 Regional Premiere, 6 min Director: Vincent Gibaud The consequences of saying “hell yeah, I’ll try that” at a party. A marvelously animated kaleidoscope that collides liberating euphoria with crippling anxiety.SHORT FUSE Presented by Stage 13
CERULIA Mexico, 2017 North American Premiere, 13 min Director: Sofia Carrillo The brilliant animator behind the stop-motion segments of XX spins an eerie fable about a young woman’s repressed memories luring her back to her childhood home. CRESWICK Australia, 2016 Regional Premiere, 10 min Director: Natalie Erika James Creeping dread meticulously escalates to an understated but deeply unsettling coda as a father and daughter pack away the contents of their family home. EARWORM USA, 2016 Texas Premiere, 5 min Director: Tara Price When a few measures of music get stuck in a man’s head, the consequences are almost as disturbing as the source of the tune. GREAT CHOICE USA, 2017 Austin Premiere, 7 min Director: Robin Comisar A woman is trapped in a Red Lobster commercial. Sublime absurdity that crescendos to nightmarish heights and remarkable emotional resonance. HIGHWAY Australia, 2016 Texas Premiere, 10 min Director: Vanessa Gazy A teenage hitchhiker traverses a lonely mountain highway and begins to pick a mysterious radio broadcast rife with ominous reports of the near future. LATCHED Canada, 2017 International Premiere, 17 min Directors: Justin Harding & Rob Brunner Spilt milk is nothing to cry over but when it inadvertently awakens a voracious woodland creature, this funny and freaky short makes the case that it might be something to scream over. SETACEOUS Australia, 2017 World Premiere, 11 min Director: Tel Benjamin An incessant car alarm attracts the curiosity of a cul-de-sac’s residents with chilling consequences. A measured slice of suburban horror that implies and terrifies. STAY USA, 2017 World Premiere, 9 min Director: David Mikalson Satan sucks, but this pitch-black comedy about catching the eye of the prince of darkness is the best. THURSDAY NIGHT Portugal, 2017 US Premiere, 8 min Director: Gonçalo Almeida Hypnotic cinematography buoyed by a ghostly soundscape envelopes remarkable canine performances in this moody, experimental nightmare. TOOTH FAIRY Uruguay, 2017 World Premiere, 6 min Directors: Jeremias Segovia & Gonzalo Torrens A greedy young boy discovers that the Tooth Fairy is a stickler for the rules in this frightening permutation of the folk figure. VOYEUR Canada, 2017 US Premiere, 4 min Directors: Claire Stradwick & Charlotte Lam The private spaces of women are unnervingly encroached upon by a masculine other in this confrontational work that shifts cinema’s scopophilic gaze back on the audience.SHORTS WITH LEGS
THE ALIENS USA, 2017 World Premiere, 4 min Director: Alex Lee A punk ruminates on the consequences of an alien invasion during some katana practice in the park. beans. USA, 2017 World Premiere, 7 min Director: Maxwell Nalevansky An acerbic narrator reflects nostalgically on the profound pleasure that was afforded to him upon once being offered a free bowl of beans. CALL OF CUTENESS Germany, 2017 Austin Premiere, 4 min Director: Brenda Lien A parade of cat meme tributes mutate into a disturbing animated critique of how these sublime objects of cuteness belie a more sinister cycle of exploitation and control. THE CURE USA, 2017 Texas Premiere, 20 min Director: Mike Olenick A surreal sci-fi soap opera that collides the idiosyncratic private lives of both humans and aliens in a parade of hypnotic slow-zooms and kitschy feline totems. HOMER_A Canada, 2017 World Premiere, 10 min Directors: Milos Mitrovic & Conor Sweeney Conor Sweeney of ASTRON-6 and FF alumni Milos Mitrovic smash the characters of THE SIMPSONS with the aesthetics of TRASH HUMPERS, and the results both haunt and disturb. Ay caramba. LA TRISTESSE DURERA TOUJOURS USA, 2017 Texas Premiere, 12 min Director: Vinny De Giulio Vinny De Ghoulie returns to SHORTS WITH LEGS with what may very well be his 8 ½. This is a maddening deconstruction of his own process culled from the remnants of a feature film he mounted, but failed to to realize. As amusingly bemusing as it is devastating. MÖBIUS USA, Canada, 2017 Regional Premiere, 15 min Director: Sam Kuhn A hallucinogenic dive into the consciousness of a teenage poet in the wake of her lover’s mysterious death. Exquisitely photographed and seemingly assembled in a Lynchian dreamstate. THE TESLA WORLD LIGHT Canada, 2017 Texas Premiere, 8 min Director: Matthew Rankin Visionary inventor Nikola Tesla makes one last appeal to his benefactor in Matthew Rankin’s mesmerizing live-action/animated hybrid that paints with light itself to conjure its indelible abstract visuals. THE VETTING USA, 2017 Texas Premiere, 19 min Director: Matthew Dunehoo A twitchy and hysterically garish political satire in which a US senator is vetted for a Presidential nomination by a 6,000-year-old telepath that secretly rules the Earth. THE VIEW FROM HERE Canada, 2017 US Premiere, 9 min Director: Sofia Bohdanowicz A delirious puppet-theatre libretto that depicts two lovers nostalgically yearning for the good-old-primordial-soup days of yore.YALLA! ARAB GENRE SHORTS:
DUNIA Qatar, 2017 North American Premiere, 15 min Director: Amer Jamhour Little Dunia is asked to wait in the car in an effort to shield her from her mother’s desperate decision, but when a curious cop comes a-knocking, Dunia’s innocence is suspensefully put to the test. FEAR: AUDIBLY Saudi Arabia, 2017 International Premiere, 22 min Director: Maha Al-Saati Anxious that Judgment Day is on the horizon, Amal keenly awaits to hear the Trumpet of Doom; could the incessant mewing of cats in her office be the first harbinger? An eccentric and experimental rumination on the end of days. KINDIL Algeria, Kuwait, USA, 2016 Regional Premiere, 40 min Director: Damien Ounouri The spectre of a murdered woman returns to the site of her death, claiming the lives of those responsible, as well as those who turned a blind eye. An arresting social critique in the guise of a vengeful ghost story. LAST DAYS OF THE MAN OF TOMORROW Germany, Lebanon, 2017 World Premiere, 29 min Director: Fadi Baki A remarkable mock-doc that profoundly explores Lebanon’s turbulent history through the life and times of a reclusive metal automaton that once was emblematic of the country’s hopes and dreams.PAIRED WITH FEATURES:
THE ACCOMPLICE USA, 2017 Regional Premiere, 7 min Directors: Jon Hoeg & John F. Beach A man discovers his unwitting participation in a bank robbery across a series of increasingly incriminating (and hilarious) answering machine messages. CATHERINE Belgium, 2016 Special Presentation, 11 min Director: Britt Raes Delightful animation depicts the origins of a crazy cat lady, while disturbingly proving the axiom: “You always hurt the ones you love.” THE DROP-IN Canada, 2017 US Premiere, 13 min Director: Naledi Jackson A hairstylist confronted with her past fights to protect her future in this stylish, genre-hopping metaphor for the immigrant experience. THE DUNDEE PROJECT USA, 2017 Texas Premiere, 19 min Director: Mark Borchardt Cult filmmaker Mark Borchardt (as seen in AMERICAN MOVIE) takes a trip to the UFO Days festival in Dundee, Wisconsin. Eccentric personalities abound as Mark poetically ruminates on why the compulsion to seek out little green men seems to converge in his home state. THE END OF DECAY USA, 2017 Texas Premiere, 12 min Director: Chris Todd A paraplegic scientist attempts a dangerous experiment to reclaim his mobility in this visceral bit of gruesome, wince-inducing body-horror. GIRL AT THE DOOR South Korea, 2017 Texas Premiere, 11 min Director: Song Joo-sung A young girl gleans a few choice maneuvers from gym class that enable her to turn the tables on her abusive father. MANILA DEATH SQUAD Philippines, USA, 2017 World Premiere, 13 min Director: Dean Colin Marcial An ambitious journalist challenges the leader of a violent vigilante group to a high-stakes drinking game that may score her a scoop or a bullet to the head. NEONATAL USA, 2017 Austin Premiere, 15 min Director: Andrew McDonald In this tense Austin-bound thriller, an expectant mother is lured into a sinister plot by a disturbed and desperate woman. NOTHING A LITTLE SOAP AND WATER CAN’T FIX USA, 2017 Regional Premiere, 9 min Director: Jennifer Proctor An exhaustive and illuminating deconstruction of how horror films frequently feature the bathtub as both a private sanctuary for women and, damningly, as an impromptu sarcophagus. THE PASSENGER Russia, 2017 International Premiere, 11 min Director: Egor Abramenko A Russian cosmonaut grapples with post-traumatic stress following his return from orbit. But that’s not all he’s brought back. UFO DAYS USA, 2017 Austin Premiere, 9 min Director: Quinn Else A fascinating fusion of documentary and fiction against the backdrop of UFO Days that juxtaposes a Ufology lecture with the rural wanderings of an enigmatic “visitor.” VIULU Finland, 2017 Texas Premiere, 12 min Director: Ramin Sohrab When a precious violin is snatched by gangsters, an ex-hitman wreaks some serious martial-vengeance in an effort to reclaim it. YOUR DATE IS HERE USA, 2017 Austin Premiere, 6 min Directors: Todd Spence & Zak White An old Mystery Date-style board game holds more evil than amusement in this expertly wound fright flick. ZARR-DOS Switzerland, 2017 North American Premiere, 7 min Director: Bart Wasem Two grotesque floating heads engage in an aerial waltz of wanton destruction in this spectacularly animated epic. You won’t have a clue, but you’ll appreciate the cosmic justice.
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HER LOVE BOILS BATHWATER is Japan’s Entry for 2018 Oscar Race for Best Foreign Film | TRAILER
Ryota Nakano’s Her Love Boils Bathwater (湯を沸かすほどの熱い愛 / Yu o Wakasu Hodo no Atsui Ai) has been selected by Japan as the country’s submission in the foreign-language category at the 2018 Oscars.
The film stars Rie Miyazawa, Hana Sugisaki, Yukiko Shinohara, Taro Suruga, Aoi Ito, Tori Matsuzaka, Joe Odagiri
InHer Love Boils Bathwater, Futaba is a loving but strict single mother whose world is shaken when she discovers she has terminal cancer and has only a few months to live. Newly determined, she decides to use the brief amount of time she has left to bring back her husband, reopen their shut-down bathhouse, and set her teenage daughter on the path to independence. As she attempts to reconcile her splintered family before it is too late, long-repressed revelations rise to the surface.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQYrbqO0d48
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VIDEO: Watch Breathtaking Magic of Fireworks in Trailer for BRIMSTONE & GLORY
Here is the trailer for Brimstone and Glory, a documentary about the National Pyrotechnic Festival in Tultepec, Mexico, in celebration of San Juan de Dios, patron saint of firework makers.
The film directed by Viktor Jakovleski, will be released in theaters on October 27.
The National Pyrotechnic Festival in Tultepec, Mexico is a site of festivity unlike any other in the world. In celebration of San Juan de Dios, patron saint of firework makers, conflagrant revelry engulfs the town for ten days. Artisans show off their technical virtuosity, up-and-comers create their own rowdy, lofi combustibles, and dozens of teams build larger-than-life papier-mâché bulls to parade into the town square, adorned with fireworks that blow up in all directions. More than three quarters of Tultepec’s residents work in pyrotechnics, making the festival more than revelry for revelry’s sake. It is a celebration that anchors a way of life built around a generations-old, homegrown business of making fireworks by hand. For the people of Tultepec, the National Pyrotechnic Festival is explosive celebration, unrestrained delight and real peril. Plunging headlong into the fire, BRIMSTONE & GLORY honors the spirit of Tultepec’s community and celebrates celebration itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36iHKZmeH60
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THE CHRONICLES OF MELANIE is Latvia’s Entry for 2018 Oscar Race for Best Foreign Film | TRAILER
The Chronicles of Melanie (Melanijas hronika) directed by Viestur Kairish, has been selected as Latvia’s official candidate for best foreign-language film for the 2018 Oscars.
The film “The Chronicles of Melanie” is based on the life story of Melānija Vanaga, a Latvian woman who managed to survive her deportation to Siberia. It is a truthful account of the miracle of human character, magnitude of the human spirit and the painful destinies, which were a part of the greatest tragedy facing the Latvian nation. It is the story of Latvian women who had to suffer and survive physically and emotionally in order for Latvia to live.
An early morning of 15 June 1941 in Soviet-occupied Latvia. The authorities break into the house of Melanie and her husband Aleksandrs, editor of a newspaper of independent Latvia, make them wake up their eight-year-old son Andrejs and get into a lorry. At the station, the men are separated from their families. On this day, the Soviets deported about 17,000 people from Latvia (the next wave of deportations came in March of 1949).
The deported are taken to Siberia in cattle cars. Melanie and her son first have to survive – the three-week long ride to the remote Tiukhtet village, the first months in the alien environment, famine and illness – and then to live. They have to make peace with the new life and accept it even though everything seems to have lost its point and reason. This drives some to the point of collapse, yet Melanie is aware of “only one string sounding and that string is hope.” She takes detailed notes that later becomes a weighty literary work about the 16 years spent in Siberia.
Out of her notes, Melānija Vanaga prepared a book of documentary prose Veļupes krastā, which was published in 1991, soon after Latvia regained independence. Later, it served as the concluding volume in Vanaga’s seven-book series “The Gathering of Souls” about the personal history of her family and entire Latvia.
For the entire period of her exile (1941–1957), Melānija writes letters to Aleksandrs without sending them and dedicates a handwritten family chronicle to her son Aleksandrs, for she herself no longer hopes to return to Latvia. In 1957, Melānija is freed. She goes to Riga where she finds out that Aleksandrs barely survived a year in the harsh environment to which he was sent. Melānija spends the rest of her life working as a cow herder.
To maintain hope, to preserve in oneself a person who is stronger than famine, cold, cruelty and even death and is capable of taking on responsibility for another person, to help others – such is the confirmation of Melānija Vanaga, her memories and also this film to the light in the world and in every one of us.
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REQUIEM FOR MRS. J is Serbia’s Entry for 2018 Oscar Race for Best Foreign Film | TRAILER
The black comedy Requiem for Mrs. J (Rekvijem za gospodju J.) directed by Bojan Vuletić Mirjana has been selected by Serbia as its candidate for best foreign-language film in the 2018 Oscars.
The film, starring Mirjana Karanović (Mrs. J), Jovana Gavrilovic (Ana), Danica Nedeljkovic (Koviljka), and Vucic Perovic (Milanče) premiered at the 2017 Berlin International Film Festival.
In Requiem for Mrs. J, Mrs. J. is a middle-aged widow living in a modest post-communist flat in Belgrade with her mother in law and two daughters. Jelena has had enough of life. Her husband died a year ago, and she feels tired and lonely – in spite of her two daughters and her mother-in-law who all share her flat. She has decided that, at the end of the week, on the anniversary of her husband’s death, she will commit suicide. She has a pistol ready for the job. But beforehand there are a number of things to sort out: she needs to return an armchair she borrowed from a neighbour and she has to terminate her life insurance policy. She also needs to get a mason to put her portrait photograph on her gravestone and renew her health insurance card. In order to do so, Jelena needs proof that she has been a salaried employee for the past twenty years. Gradually, this quiet, humble woman begins to realize that nothing’s simple in a country that’s constantly swinging back and forth between torment and transition. The authorities are unable to cope, Jelena’s former employers are now bankrupt and the remaining staff are just killing time. And the end of the week is drawing near.
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VIDEO: Watch First Greta Gerwig’s LADY BIRD Trailer Starring Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf
Here is the first trailer for Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird which had its world premiere over the Labor Day weekend at Telluride Film Festival. The film, starring Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Lois Smith, will next screen at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival and open in theaters on November 10.
In Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig reveals herself to be a bold new cinematic voice with her directorial debut, excavating both the humor and pathos in the turbulent bond between a mother and her teenage daughter. Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) fights against but is exactly like her wildly loving, deeply opinionated and strong-willed mom (Laurie Metcalf), a nurse working tirelessly to keep her family afloat after Lady Bird’s father (Tracy Letts) loses his job. Set in Sacramento, California in 2002, amidst a rapidly shifting American economic landscape, Lady Bird is an affecting look at the relationships that shape us, the beliefs that define us, and the unmatched beauty of a place called home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNi_HC839Wo
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TOM OF FINLAND is Finland’s Entry for 2018 Oscar Race for Best Foreign Film | TRAILER
The biopic Tom of Finland directed by Dome Karukoski has been selected as Finland’s submission for best foreign film at the 2018 Oscars.