A Taxi Driver directed by Jang Hun, has been selected as South Korea’s official candidate in the Best Foreign Language Film at the 2018 Oscars.
The film, starring Song Kang-ho, Thomas Kretschmann, Yoo Hai-jin, and Ryu Jun-yeol, is based on the true story of German reporter Jürgen Hinzpeter and Korean taxi driver Kim Sa-Bok.Jürgen Hinzpeter covering the Gwangju Uprising, which took place from May 18-27, 1980 in Gwangju, South Korea.
A Taxi Driver had its international premiere as the closing night film of the 2017 Fantasia International Film Festival, where Song Kang-ho won the award for Best Actor.
May, 1980, Seoul. Demonstrations denouncing the martial law proclaimed by the dictator Chun Doo-hwan disrupt the routine of Man-seob, a cranky taxi driver who curses the protesters who prevent him from working. Raising his daughter alone after the death of his wife, Man-seob is crushed by debt. Every fare counts. When he hears a colleague boast that he’s about to receive a colossal sum for taking a Westerner to Gwangju, Man-seob rushes to the rendezvous point to rob him of his client, a German journalist calling himself Peter. The latter intends to investigate clandestinely rumours that Gwangju is under siege by the army and that the government has cut off all communication between the city and the rest of the country. Man-seob, however, lies about his understanding of English and the reasons for their journey. He has no idea what he has embarked on. Their fate will be closely bound to that of the inhabitants of Gwangju.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbUwOP9HZQkFilms
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A TAXI DRIVER is South Korea’s Entry for 2018 Oscar Race for Best Foreign Film | TRAILER
A Taxi Driver directed by Jang Hun, has been selected as South Korea’s official candidate in the Best Foreign Language Film at the 2018 Oscars.
The film, starring Song Kang-ho, Thomas Kretschmann, Yoo Hai-jin, and Ryu Jun-yeol, is based on the true story of German reporter Jürgen Hinzpeter and Korean taxi driver Kim Sa-Bok.Jürgen Hinzpeter covering the Gwangju Uprising, which took place from May 18-27, 1980 in Gwangju, South Korea.
A Taxi Driver had its international premiere as the closing night film of the 2017 Fantasia International Film Festival, where Song Kang-ho won the award for Best Actor.
May, 1980, Seoul. Demonstrations denouncing the martial law proclaimed by the dictator Chun Doo-hwan disrupt the routine of Man-seob, a cranky taxi driver who curses the protesters who prevent him from working. Raising his daughter alone after the death of his wife, Man-seob is crushed by debt. Every fare counts. When he hears a colleague boast that he’s about to receive a colossal sum for taking a Westerner to Gwangju, Man-seob rushes to the rendezvous point to rob him of his client, a German journalist calling himself Peter. The latter intends to investigate clandestinely rumours that Gwangju is under siege by the army and that the government has cut off all communication between the city and the rest of the country. Man-seob, however, lies about his understanding of English and the reasons for their journey. He has no idea what he has embarked on. Their fate will be closely bound to that of the inhabitants of Gwangju.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbUwOP9HZQk
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Indie Legal Thriller CREATED EQUAL Wins at Action On Film Festival and BronzeLens Film Festival
Thada Catalon, Bill Duke, Edy Ganem The indie legal thriller Created Equal continues its award winning sweep, winning prizes at the Action On Film Festival in Las Vegas and the BronzeLens Film Festival in Atlanta.
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QUIT STARING AT MY PLATE is Croatia’s Entry for 2018 Oscar Race for Best Foreign Film | TRAILER
Quit Staring at My Plate (Ne gledaj mi u pijat), the debut feature film from director Hana Jušić’, has been selected by Croatia as its official candidate in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 2018 Oscars.
The film starring Mia Petričević, Nikša Butijer, Arijana Čulina, Zlatko Buric had its World Premiere at the 2016 Venice Days where the film won the FEDEORA Award for Best European Film.
In the film Marijana’s life revolves around her family, whether she likes it or not. They live on top of one another in a tiny apartment, driving one another crazy. Then her controlling father has a stroke and is left completely bedridden, and Marijana takes his place as head of the clan. Soon, she is working two jobs to keep everything afloat, while her mother and disabled brother do their best to scupper the ship. Driven to the edge, Marijana finds comfort in seedy sex with random strangers; and this taste of freedom leaves her wanting more. But now that she has finally found freedom, what’s she meant to do with it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjE6IE9QgNk
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VIDEO: Watch Trailers for 2 Netflix Documentary Shorts Premiering at 2017 Telluride Film Festival
Here are the trailers for two Netflix original documentary shorts – Heroin(e) and Long Shot premiering this weekend at the 2017 Telluride Film Festival.
Heroin(e), making its world premiere, focuses on the once bustling industrial town, Huntington, West Virginia that has become the epicenter of America’s modern opioid epidemic. With an overdose rate 10 times the national average, the crisis threatens to tear this community apart. West Virginia native Sheldon highlights three women working to change the town’s narrative and break the devastating cycle of drug abuse one person at a time. Heroin(e) shows how the chain of compassion holds one town together. The Netflix original documentary short, by Peabody award-winning filmmaker, Elaine McMillion Sheldon (Hollow), will launch on September 12.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khSO7qEKbvo
Also making its’ world premiere, Long Shot, an improbable story where justice prevails with a series of events that could only happen in Hollywood. An innocent man is accused of murder, leading his dedicated attorney on a wild chase to confirm his alibi among thousands of people in a baseball stadium. To tell the whole story, the search would lead him from the LA Dodgers, to a cellphone tower, to the office of the entertainer Larry David. On the night in question, television cameras happened to be positioned throughout the stadium, and captured a story of remarkable circumstance. Directed by Jacob LaMendola (Anosmia), Long Shot launches September 29.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDxISykYRc4
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SCARY MOTHER is Georgia’s Entry for 2018 Oscar Race for Best Foreign Film | TRAILER
Ana Urushadze’s award-winning debut feature film, Scary Mother (Sashishi deda), has been selected by Georgia as its official candidate in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 2018 Oscars.
The film starring Nata Murvanidze, Ramaz Ioseliani, Dimitri Tatishvili, and Avtandil Makharadze, World Premiered at the 2017 Locarno Film Festival where the film won the Swatch First Feature Award (Prize for Best First Feature). After the Locarno Film Festival, the film competed at the 2017 Sarajevo Film Festival where it won the the Heart of Sarajevo for Best Feature Film; and the Cineuropa Prize.
Scary Mother follows the story of a 50-year-old housewife, Manana (Nato Murvanidze), struggling with a dilemma: she has to choose between her family life and a love for writing she has repressed for years. When she finally decides to follow her passion, she is ready to sacrifice everything for it, mentally and physically.
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VIDEO: Watch Trailer for THE PATHOLOGICAL OPTIMIST on Man Behind Controversial Anti-Vaccination Movement
Here is the new trailer and poster for The Pathological Optimist directed by Miranda Bailey that documents Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the man behind one of the most highly controversial, intensely debated topics in modern medicine: the anti-vaccination movement. The film will be released in theaters on September 29th.
In The Pathological Optimist, director Miranda Bailey brings us a character study of Dr. Andrew Wakefield, one of 13 co-authors of a notorious 1998 paper in the UK medical Journal The Lancet, but who became the very public face of what has come to be known as “The Anti-Vaccination Movement.” An expat from Britain who currently resides in Austin, Texas, Wakefield allowed Bailey and her team to follow him and his family for five years beginning in 2011 as he fought a defamation battle in the courts against the British Medical Journal and journalist Brian Deer. The results of that case – and the self-reflection, pronouncements, and observations of Wakefield, his legal team, wife, and his children – create a complex and incisive look at one of our era’s most fear-provoking and continuingly provocative figures. The Pathological Optimist takes no sides, instead letting Wakefield and the battles he fought speak
for themselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRA0w1pvFLk
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Annemarie Jacir’s WAJIB is Palestine’s Entry for 2018 Oscar Race for Best Foreign Film | TRAILER
Wajib, a film written and directed by Annemarie Jacir, has been selected by Palestine as its official candidate in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 2018 Oscars.
The film starring Mohammad Bakri, Saleh Bakri, Maria Zreik and Leila Bakri, World Premiered in official competition at the 2017 Locarno Film Festival, and will have its North American premiere at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival.
In the film, Abu Shadi is a divorced father and a school teacher in his mid-60s living in Nazareth. After his daughter’s wedding in one month he will be living alone. Shadi, his architect son, arrives from Rome after years abroad to help his father in hand delivering the wedding invitations as per local Palestinian custom. As the estranged pair spend the day together, the tense details of their relationship come to a head challenging their fragile and very different lives.
This is director Annemarie Jacir’s third time representing Palestine at the Academy Awards, having been submitted for Salt of the Sea (2008) and When I Saw You (2012).
Click here to see a clip from Wajib
Wajib by @AnnemarieJacir is selected to rep. #Palestine in the Best Frgn Film category at the 90th Academy Awards. #Oscars, here we come! pic.twitter.com/cE4ZiEHmNt
— Noor (@suleimannh) August 29, 2017
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VIDEO: Watch Trailer + Poster for Documentary Fairy Tale SPETTACOLO
Its finally here, the trailer and poster for Spettacolo, the documentary fairy tale about a tiny Italian farming village that turns their lives into a play. The documentary directed by Jeff Malmberg and Chris Shellen will be released in theaters in New York on September 8th.
Once upon a time, villagers in a tiny hill town in Tuscany came up with a remarkable way to confront their issues: they turned their lives into a play. Every summer, their piazza became their stage and residents of all ages played a part – the role of themselves. Monticchiello’s annual tradition has attracted worldwide attention and kept the town together for 50 years, but with an aging population and a future generation more interested in Facebook than farming, the town’s 50th anniversary performance just might be its last. Spettacolo tells the story of Teatro Povero di Monticchiello, interweaving episodes from its past with its modern-day process as the villagers turn a series of devastating blows into a new play about the end of their world.
Jeff Malmberg is a documentary director and editor based in Los Angeles. In 2017, his feature documentary Spettacolo had it’s world premiere at the 2017 SXSW Film Festival. The film is supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Sundance Documentary Fund, Creative Capital, and the Tribeca Film Institute. Jeffʼs debut film Marwencol won over two dozen awards, including two Independent Spirit Awards, Best Documentary of the Year from Boston Society of Film Critics and Rotten Tomatoes, and the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 SXSW Film Festival.
Chris Shellen is a writer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She produced the award-winning documentary Marwencol and co-authored the companion art book “Welcome to Marwencol,” which was named one of the Best Books of 2015 by Amazon.com. She began her career as a film development executive based at a Paramount Pictures, and has worked in documentary, narrative and new media for over 15 years. Her directorial debut Spettacolo had it’s world premiere at the 2017 SXSW Film Festival.
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BLACK LEVEL is Ukraine’s Entry for 2018 Oscar Race for Best Foreign Film | TRAILER
The Ukraine Oscar Committee has selected Valentyn Vasyanovych’s Black Level, as its candidate in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 2018 Oscars.
The film had its world premiere at the 2017 Odesa International Film Festival, where it won the International Federation of Film Critics FIPRESCI prize.
“Black Level” is a documentary-feature drama telling the story of a 50-year-old wedding photographer facing the prospect of losing everything he has ever loved.
50-year anniversary is the beginning of a complicated phase in the life of a wedding photographer Kostya. All that he loved and to which had been tied to, permanently disappears. Although there are not so many such things in his life: father, paralyzed by a stroke; girlfriend, working as a stylist in a wedding magazine; an old cat and photographic slides in which Kostya is young and happy. Kostya is photographing someone else’s happiness all of his life. For him, it is a daily routine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0D0CRejU3A
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British Independent Film PANIC, Directed by Sean Spencer, Now Streaming on US VOD Platforms
The British independent film Panic directed by Sean Spencer and starring David Gyasi, Pippa Nixon, Jason Wong, Yennis Cheung is now available in US on the major streaming and VOD platform.
In the film, music journalist Andrew Deeley played by David Gyasi, lives in a high-rise tower block, cut off from the world, psychologically scarred after a vicious street attack. He spends his evenings watching his neighbors and becomes infatuated with Kem, a beautiful young Chinese woman.
When Amy, a married woman he meets online, witnesses Kem’s kidnapping, Deeley tries and fails to get the police involved. He is left with no choice but to try and find Kem himself, fighting his own anxieties as he strives to find someone whom the world is happy to forget.
Armed with only an Oyster card and a hammer, Deeley spirals into the heart of the Chinese Triad underworld. Hoping for a fresh start with the elusive Amy, Deely puts his life on the line as he fights to save Kem.
Shot on location in East London over three weeks, the film captures the raw, gritty energy of the city, and features a brooding, charismatic performance by the brilliant up-and-coming British actor David Gyasi. After securing key roles in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar and the blockbusters Cloud Atlas and Red Tails, Gyasi is soon to be seen in Alex Garland’s sci-fi thriller Annihilation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PudNwXt9zSQ
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Lake Bell’s I DO… UNTIL I DON’T Starring Amber Heard, Chace Crawford Opens This Weekend | Trailer
[caption id="attachment_24229" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]
(L-R) Wyatt Cenac (Zander), Marcanthonee Jon Reis (Zenith), and Amber Heard (Fanny) in I Do… Until I Don’t by Lake Bell[/caption]
I Do… Until I Don’t, Lake Bell’s directorial follow-up to her acclaimed 2013 film In A World, will open in theaters, this weekend, on September 1, 2017. The film which also stars Lake Bell, features an all star cast including Lake Bell, Ed Helms, Mary Steenburgen, Paul Reiser, Amber Heard, Wyatt Cenac, Dolly Wells, Chace Crawford.
In Vero Beach, Florida, a trio of couples at various points in their relationships become the subjects of a film about marriage being an antiquated idea that needs a reboot: Why not turn marriage into a seven-year deal with an option to renew?
For Alice and Noah (Lake Bell, Ed Helms), more than a hint of boredom is setting in as they approach their first decade together and the prospect of parenthood. Meanwhile, Alice’s funky sister Fanny (Amber Heard) is sure her “open marriage” to Zander (Wyatt Cenac) is the key to their free-spirited happiness. And then there’s Cybil and Harvey (Mary Steenburgen, Paul Reiser), a pair of empty-nesters wondering what the next stage will be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyHLlfYAkHc
New York Theaters on September 1
AMC Empire 25 234 West 42nd Street (Between 7th and 8th Ave) AMC Lincoln Square 13 1998 Broadway (Between 67th and 68th St) Angelika Film Center 18 W Houston St (Corner of Mercer and W. Houston St)
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Coralie Fargeat’s Blood-Pumping Debut REVENGE Heads to Shudder + Theaters in 2018
Coralie Fargeat’s blood-pumping debut Revenge which is set to world-premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival next month has been snapped up by AMC Networks’ Shudder. The film will be available on the premium thriller, suspense and horror video streaming service, and play theatrically in early 2018. Revenge will also play at this year’s Fantastic Fest.
Soaking the perennial rape/Revenge thriller in a strikingly hypnotic style, writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s compelling feature debut reframes the genre’s typical proclivities with a gaze that scrutinizes male bodies and foregrounds its protagonist’s transformation into a hardened vehicle of vengeance.
Jen (Matilda Lutz), arrives at a remote desert villa with her millionaire Adonis boy toy (Kevin Jannsens) expecting a weekend of romantic and illicit frivolity. Things take a turn for the worse with her lover’s unseemly hunting pals and Jen must seek vengeance on her attackers as they try to sweep her assault under the rug. Revenge plunges Jen into an arid, drug-induced hell, but one she resolves to emerge from, leaving a tidal wave of righteous violence in her wake.
Revenge is the latest all-rights acquisition for Shudder, following the acquisitions of Stefan Ruzowitzsky’s thriller Cold Hell, Graham Skipper’s sci-fi romance Sequence Break, Joe Lynch’s violent corporate satire Mayhem and Chris Peckover’s Christmas-set black comedy Better Watch Out. With multiple exclusives premiering on the service every month alongside a rapidly expanding collection of genre favorites, Shudder is deeply committed to bringing the best of horror and thriller to all of its members.
Coralie Fargeat, director of Revenge, said: “ As a true fan of genre films, I am extremely proud that my first feature is being released by Shudder. Having the support of such an impressive new player within the genre space will help the film find an enthusiastic and passionate audience. I am delighted that they will be accompanying me to the world premiere at TIFF!”