Pedro Almodovar’s Oscar-nominated Pain and Glory swept the top awards on Saturday at 34th Goya Awards, Spain’s version of the Oscars, winning a total of seven awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. Antonio Banderas won the award for Best Actor, Julieta Serrano for Best Supporting Actress in addition to awards for Best Editing, and Best Original Music.
International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) revealed the first confirmed films of the 2020 edition, including the world premiere of Artem Aisagaliev’s Babai, the international premiere of Oda Kaori’s Cenote, and the European premiere of Nigina Sayfullaeva’s Fidelity.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (France) by director Céline Sciamma, hailed by the jury as a portrayal of the all-consuming nature of love and the beauty of women’s solidarity, took home the top prize in the International Feature Film Competition at the 55th Chicago International Film Festival.
Twenty-one Basque films are selected for the 67th edition of the San Sebastian Festival, and nine of these, feature films having their world premiere at the Festival, will compete for the Irizar Basque Film Award. Zinemira, the section specifically dedicated to Basque cinema, contains ten films.
For 12 days from October 2 to 13, the 63rd BFI London Film Festival (LFF) will showcase 229 feature films including 41 documentaries, 7 animations, 13 archive restorations and 7 artists’ moving image features. The program also includes 116 short films.
Ten new films including the latest works by Casey Affleck, Robert Eggers, Hirokazu Koreeda, Pablo Larraín, Céline Sciamma, Makoto Shinkai and Steven Soderbergh, will be featured in the Perlak section at the 67th edition of the San Sebastian Festival. Furthermore, The Climb, a comedy directed by Michael Angelo Covino, will close the section out of competition.
The European Film Academy announced the 46 films on this year’s EFA Feature Film Selection, the list of feature-length fiction films recommended for a nomination for the European Film Awards 2019. With 31 European countries represented, the list illustrates the great diversity in European cinema.
The Wavelengths program of the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival consists of 37 films, comprised of four programs of experimental short films, two curated pairings, and 10 features, each contributing to a dynamic survey of some of today’s most exciting moving-image work.
This year’s Main Slate of the 57th New York Film Festival, September 27 – October 13, showcases 29 films from 17 different countries. Nine films in the festival were honored at Cannes, including Bong Joon-ho’s Palme d’Or–winner Parasite; Grand Prix–winner Atlantics: A Ghost Love Story, directed by Mati Diop, an alum of annual FLC series Art of the Real and winner of the 2016 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist award; Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, NYFF’s Film Comment Presents selection and winner of both the Queer Palm and the Best Screenplay prize; Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory, awarded Best Actor for Antonio Banderas; Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’ Jury Prize–winner Bacurau; Young Ahmed, which brought home the Best Director prize for Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne; and three Un Certain Regard winners, including Oliver Laxe’s Jury Prize–winner Fire Will Come, Albert Serra’s Special Jury Prize–winner Liberté, and Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole, which collected the Best Director prize. Top prize winners from the Berlinale will also appear in the Main Slate: Nadav Lapid’s Golden Bear–winner Synonyms and Angela Schanelec’s I Was at Home, But…, which won the Silver Bear for Best Director.
Parasite by Bong Joon Ho which won the Golden Palm in Cannes, Les Misérables, the first feature film by Ladj Ly and Amazing Grace, the Aretha Franklin gospel concert documentary, are among eight films that will compete for the City of Donostia / San Sebastian Audience Award decided by the audience at the 2019 San Sebastian International Film Festival.
The South Korean film Parasite directed by Bong Joon-Ho won the Palme d’Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. The film is described as “A family tragicomedy depicting the inevitable collision that ensues when Ki-woo, the eldest son in a family of four unemployed adults, is introduced to the wealthy Park family for a well-paid tutoring job.” Bong Joon-Ho who is best known for his earlier films Okja and Snowpiercer is the first Korean director to win the top award at Cannes Film Festival.
The Official Selection of the 72nd Cannes Film Festival was unveiled this morning at the annual press conference. In addition to opening night film – Jim Jamusch’s The Dead Don’t Die, the competition lineup includes new releases from Pedro Almodóvar, Xavier Dolan, Ken Loach, and Terrence Malick. Films premiering out of competition include Nicolas Winding Refn’s Too Old to Die Young – North of Hollywood, West of Hell.