Magnet Releasing debuted the official trailer for the horror film Censor, directed by Prano Bailey-Bond and starring Niamh Algar, Nicholas Burns, Vincent Franklin, Sophia La Porta, Adrian Schiller along with Michael Smiley. The film which premiered in the Midnight section at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, opens in theaters on June 11th, 2021 and on demand on June 18th, 2021.
San Francisco International Film Festival unveiled the 103 films for the 2021 Festival set to take place online and in-person events, with digital screenings being hosted through the SFFILM website and live screenings and performances at the Fort Mason Flix drive-in theater. The 2021 Festival will run April 9–18.
Magnolia Pictures acquired the psychological horror film Censor, the debut feature by Prano Bailey-Bond and starring Niamh Algar (Calm With Horses, “Raised by Wolves”) which had its World Premiere at Sundance Film Festival opening the Midnight Section. Magnolia Pictures is targeting June 11 release date following the film’s screening in the Berlinale Panorama section in March.
Berlin International Film Festival 2021 revealed the films selected for Encounters, Panorama and Perspektive Deutsches Kino programs. In the 2021 Perspektive Deutsches Kino, three documentary and three fiction films take us on journeys to places in Denmark, Nigeria, Canada, the USA, Georgia, Hong Kong and Germany – from the Black Forest in Baden-Württemberg, to Berlin and Brandenburg, to the Baltic Sea.
Sundance announced today the independent films selected for Feature Film, Short Film, Indie Series and New Frontier categories for the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. The Festival will take place digitally via a feature-rich, Sundance-built online platform and in person on Satellite Screens across the country (public health permitting) from January 28-February 3, 2021.
Director Václav Kadrnka, 52nd Karlovy Vary IFF[/caption]
The awards were presented at the closing ceremony of the 52nd Karlovy Vary IFF, and the fatherhood drama Little Crusader by Václav Kadrnka was awarded the Grand Prize – Crystal Globe and $25,000.
The directing prize was won by Slovak filmmaker Peter Bebjak, who was presenting his film The Line at the festival. In the competition East of the West, the road movie How Viktor “the Garlic” took Alexey “the Stud” to the Nursing Home by Russian director Alexander Hant won that award.
The award for best feature-length documentary went to the Spanish film Lots of Kids, a Monkey and a Castle. And the Právo Audience Award was awarded to the American crime drama taking place on a Native American reservation Wind River starring Jeremy Renner.
The 53rd Karlovy Vary IFF will be held from June 29th to July 7th, 2018.
Censor (Cenzorka)[/caption]
The Slovakian film Censor (Cenzorka), directed by Peter Kerekes and written by Ivan Ostrochovský, is the winner of the Works in Progress Award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The film received the award for “its original and vivid human portrait of a lonely woman.”
In the film, Irina Alexandrovna works as a censor in an Odessa prison. The inspection of letters is required by law in order to prevent the continuation of criminal activity. But the real criminals use smartphones, and old-fashioned letters are only used for declarations of love. So Irina spends eight hours a day in her office reading love letters. Through her, we follow various love affairs that only she can observe. Although she sees how women being used, and how the relationships end in disaster for them, she cannot take any action. Our heroine is a single woman and after twelve years of reading love letters full of the lies men tell, she is not capable of any relationship. If a guy on a date says “You are special,” she feels sick. But of course even she dreams of love.
The film, also produced by Peter Kerekes, is based on real situations and real characters and involved in-depth research conducted by the filmmakers at numerous prisons. The script was distilled from these materials, stories and characters. The plot follows the tragicomic micro-love stories between jailed men and women on the outside, as seen through the main protagonist. The film was shot with actors and non-actors (prisoners and ex-prisoners), mostly in a real setting, a real prison. The film’s expected premiere is in 2018.
The Stand-In (La Controfigura), directed and written by Rä di Martino was awarded the Eurimages Lab Project Award for its “ironic visual experimental approach to innovative narrative and for being an intersection of art and film.”
In The Stand-In, a small crew has been traveling around Marrakech and its surroundings looking for swimming pool locations for the remake of an American movie in which a man crosses the county, pool by pool, to reach his home. The filmmakers rehearse the shots to find the path through the city and the pools that the main actor will run and swim through. As we watch his struggles to become more than just a stand-in figure, the real actors and film crew burst onto the scene on a set where nobody seems to be in the right place. A film in search of itself, looking for where the real film is.