COLD WAR (ZIMNA WOJNA)

  • Miami Film Festival Unveils GEM 2018 Lineup, Opens with BIRDS OF PASSAGE

    [caption id="attachment_31771" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]Birds of Passage (Pájaros de verano) Birds of Passage (Pájaros de verano)[/caption] Miami Film Festival unveiled the full line-up of the GEMS 2018, the Fall edition of the annual festival, opening with Colombia’s Oscar submission Birds of Passage (Pájaros de Verano) and closing with Spain’s Oscar submission Champions (Campeones). Miami Film Festival GEMS takes place October 11 to 14, at MDC’s Tower Theater Miami. Bárbara Lennie, the acclaimed and much in-demand Goya-winning Spanish actress, will accept the Festival’s Precious Gem Award prior to the presentation of her newest film, Petra, directed by Jaime Rosales. Lennie also joins Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Ricardo Darín in Oscar-winner Asghar Farhadi’s Everybody Knows (Todos lo saben), which will also play at GEMS. Lennie’s other recent roles are well-known to Miami Film Festival audiences – her 2018 film A Sort of Family won the Festival’s Knight Competition Grand Prize, and her 2017 film Maria (And Everybody Else) won the Festival’s HBO Ibero-American Feature Film Award. Cinematographer Diego García, touted as a strong contender for his first Oscar nomination for shooting Paul Dano’s directorial debut, Wildlife, starring Cary Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal, will receive the Festival’s Art of Light Award and participate in a conversation about his craft prior to the Florida premiere of Wildlife. Garcia’s previous credits include his Fenix Award-winning work on Gabriel Mascaro’s Neon Bull, and previous Miami Film Festival selections Cemetery of Splendor (2015) and The Darkness (2017). García will additionally lead a Master Class on Cinematography for attending local industry members and film students. Returning for a second consecutive year to Miami Film Festival GEMS is the virtual reality (VR) sidebar Virtual Escape, in partnership with MDC’s Miami Animation & Gaming International Complex (MAGIC). Festivalgoers will experience five projects of 360°, VR and Alternative Gaming available through the entire GEMS weekend. This year’s edition of GEMS will feature two distinct sections. The Spotlight Stage will feature high-profile, major-interest films from internationally renowned directors, many of which are in strong contention for Academy Award nominations. The Discovery Stage will feature new filmmakers creating some of the year’s most interesting debut work, breaking out into international prominence.

    The Spotlight Stage

    EL ÁNGEL – Argentina/Spain. The second collaboration of Almodóvar’s El Deseo and Argentina’s K&S Films production companies after their first, the international hit and Oscar-nominated Wild Tales (Relatos salvajes), which opened Miami Film Festival in 2016. Directed by Luis Ortega, El Ángel recently broke the record for the highest grossing debut weekend of an Argentine film in Argentina box office history. The film stars rising new talents Lorenzo Ferro and Chino Darín. MFF MARIMBAS AWARD NOMINEE. ANIMAL – Argentina/Spain. Filmmaker Armando Bo won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay for his previous feature film – Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), which also won Best Picture and Best Director for Alejandro Iñárritu. Animal stars Argentina’s box office superstar Guillermo Francella (The Clan, The Secret in Their Eyes, Corazón de león) and Carla Peterson, and was a summer box office hit in Argentina. MFF MARIMBAS AWARD NOMINEE. BEN IS BACK – U.S.A. Filmmaker Peter Hedges was nominated for an Oscar as writer of About A Boy, and his first feature as a director, Pieces of April, was also Oscar-nominated. Ben is Back recently world premiered in TIFF to acclaim and Oscar buzz for stars Julia Roberts and Lucas Hedges (Peter’s son), who was previously Oscar nominated for Manchester by the Sea. MFF MARIMBAS AWARD NOMINEE. BIRDS OF PASSAGE (PÁJAROS DE VERANO) – Colombia/Denmark/Mexico/France. Co-director Cristina Gallego will attend the Opening Night presentation and participate in a conversation with the audience. Gallego and her filmmaking partner Ciro Guerra previously collaborated on Embrace of the Serpent, which received Colombia’s first-ever Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 2015. MFF MARIMBAS AWARD NOMINEE. OPENING NIGHT FILM. BORDER – Sweden/Denmark. Winner of 2018 Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard BEST FILM Award and Sweden’s 2019 Oscar submission, Border will be Miami Film Festival GEMS’ first MIDNIGHT/LATE-NIGHT SPECIAL PRESENTATION. Directed by Ali Abbasi, Border is a follow-up to Swedish author Jon Ajvide Lindqvist’s 2008 international hit multi-award-winning film adaption, Let The Right One In. MFF MARIMBAS AWARD NOMINEE. BURNING – South Korea. The highest-rated film in the history of the international critics’ poll at Cannes Film Festival and South Korea’s 2019 Oscar submission, Burning stars Steven Yeung (Sorry To Bother You and TV’s The Walking Dead). Director Chang-dong Lee has won multiple international awards for previous films such as Secret Sunshine (2007) and Poetry (2010). The screening of Burning will be followed by a panel moderated by programmer Lauren Cohen featuring local film critics discussing the film and the state of art house cinema in 2018. MFF MARIMBAS AWARD NOMINEE. CAPERNAUM – Lebanon. Directed by the acclaimed Nadine Labaki and winner of the Jury Prize at 2018 Cannes Film Festival, Capernaum is a candidate for Lebanon’s 2019 Oscar submission. CHAMPIONS (CAMPEONES) – Spain. An unprecedented box office sensation at Spain’s domestic box office and Spain’s 2019 Oscar submission, Champions is directed by Goya winning director Javier Fesser (expected to attend the screening) and starring two-time Goya winning Best Actor Javier Gutierrez. MFF MARIMBAS AWARD & ZENO MOUNTAIN AWARD NOMINEE. CLOSING NIGHT FILM. COLD WAR – Poland/France. Pawel Pawlikowski won Best Director at 2018 Cannes Film Festival for his follow-up to Ida, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film of 2014. Cold War is a candidate for Poland’s 2019 Oscar submission. MFF MARIMBAS AWARD NOMINEE. EVERYBODY KNOWS (TODOS LO SABEN) – Spain/France/Italy. Only the second Spanish-language Opening Night Film of Cannes Film Festival in history. Directed by two-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Asghar Farhadi (A Separation, The Salesman) and starring Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Ricardo Darín, Inma Cuesta, Eduard Fernandez, and 2018 Miami Film Festival GEMS Precious Gem Awardee, Bárbara Lennie. PETRA – Spain. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Jaime Rosales, the exquisite Petra is a modern-day Spanish version of a classic Greek tragedy, featuring a towering performance by 2018 Miami Film Festival GEMS Precious Gem Awardee, Bárbara Lennie. MFF MARIMBAS AWARD NOMINEE. The Discovery Stage BOYS CRY – Italy. Winner of the Silver Ribbon for Best First Feature Film, Italy’s prestigious critical honor, and a world premiere at 2018 Berlin Film Festival. Written and directed by brothers Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo, Boys Cry is a candidate for Italy’s 2019 Oscar submission. JORDAN RESSLER FIRST FILM AWARD NOMINEE. DIAMANTINO – Portugal/France/Brazil. Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s deliriously offbeat Diamantino won the 2018 Critic’s Week Best Film Award in Cannes. JORDAN RESSLER FIRST FILM AWARD NOMINEE. DRY MARTINA – Chile/Argentina. Director Che Sandoval will attend the screening and participate in a conversation with the audience. Dry Martina is one of the most important releases from Chile in 2018 and features a hilarious lead performance by actress Antonella Costa. IBERO-AMERICAN FEATURE AWARD NOMINEE; THE HEIRESSES (LAS HEREDERAS) – Paraguay/Uruguay/Germany/Brazil/Norway/France. Winner of numerous international prizes, including the Alfred Bauer Prize and Best Actress for Ana Brun at the 2018 Berlin Film Festival, Marcelo Martinessi’s film is Paraguay’s 2019 Oscar submission. JORDAN RESSLER FIRST FILM AWARD NOMINEE. HOPELESSLY DEVOUT (MI QUERIDA COFRADÍA) – Spain. Winner of the Audience Award at 2018 Malaga Film Festival, this uproarious comedy in the spirit of early Almodovar films is directed by Marta Díaz de Lope Díaz. JORDAN RESSLER FIRST FILM AWARD NOMINEE. SOUFRA – U.S.A. Documentary directed by Thomas Morgan about the world’s most unlikely entrepreneur, Miriam Shaar, a third-generation refugee living in an encampment outside of Beirut looking to fulfill her dream of opening a catering company despite facing severe political and social barriers. Before the screening, a lunch with a local Miami “chefugee.” WILDLIFE – U.S.A. Acclaimed actor Paul Dano’s directorial debut, co-written with his partner Zoe Kazan, starring Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal. Cinematography by Diego García, recipient of Miami Film Festival GEMS’ Art of Light Award. WOMAN AT WAR – Iceland/France/Ukraine. A feminist epic comedy about an environmentalist crusader, directed by Benedikt Erlingsson and winner of the Best Screenplay Prize at 2018 Critics Week in Cannes. A candidate for Iceland’s 2019 Oscar submission.

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  • Mill Valley Film Festival Announces Full Lineup, Opens with U.S. Premieres of A PRIVATE WAR and GREEN BOOK

    [caption id="attachment_31408" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]Green Book Green Book[/caption] The Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) will showcase a diverse lineup of 204 films with 45% of all film directed by women, for the 41st edition of the festival, from October 4 to 14, 2018. The Festival will open with a double header –  the U.S. Premiere of  A Private War, starring Rosamund Pike, and Green Book starring Mahershala Ali.

    Opening Night – U.S. Premieres of A PRIVATE WAR and GREEN BOOK

    Opening night kicks off Thursday, October 4 with the U.S. Premiere of Aviron Pictures’ A Private War, starring Rosamund Pike as Marie Colvin, one of the most celebrated war correspondents of our era, and Universal Pictures’ Green Book, a sharply observed drama, inspired by real-life events, featuring Mahershala Ali as a classically trained Black jazz piano prodigy Dr. Don Shirley on a 1962 concert tour of the American South. Director Matthew Heineman and Rosamund Pike will be in attendance for A Private War and Oscar® winner Mahershala Ali and director Peter Farrelly for Green Book. Centerpiece Presentation – ROMA MVFFs 2018 Centerpiece presentation, ROMA, is the most personal project to date from Academy Award®-winning director and writer Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men, Gravity). ROMA follows Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a young domestic worker for a family in the middle-class neighborhood of Roma in Mexico City. Delivering an artful love letter to the women who raised him, Cuarón draws on his own childhood to create a vivid and emotional portrait of domestic strife and social hierarchy amidst political turmoil of the 1970s. Attending will be director/writer Alfonso Cuarón.

    Closing Night – IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

    MVFF41 will close with the Bay Area premiere of IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK, Barry Jenkins’ much anticipated follow up to his Oscar winning MOONLIGHT (MVFF39). Jenkins will be present for the screening. The film, based on James Baldwin’s novel of the same name, was adapted by Jenkins’, and follows a pregnant African-American who sets out to clear her fiance’s name after he is falsely imprisoned. The Closing Night Party following the film will be held at Elks Lodge in San Rafael.

    Spotlights

    MVFF41 will bestow a number of Spotlights throughout the Festival including: honoring rising star Amandla Stenberg for her work in The Hate U Give; Joel Edgerton for his work directing and co-starring in Boy Erased; Karyn Kusama for her directorial effort Destroyer; esteemed actor Richard E. Grant for his performance in Can You Ever Forgive Me?; acclaimed actress Maggie Gyllenhaal for The Kindergarten Teacher; and acknowledge Paul Dano and Carey Mulligan for their creative collaboration on Wildlife.

    Tribute – Pawel Pawlikowski

    Academy Award winning Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski (Ida) will receive a special Tribute from the Festival to celebrate his latest film Cold War, a star-crossed romance set during 1950s Cold War in Poland. Pawlikowski will be present for the awards presentation and an onstage conversation following the film.

    Special Presentation – BEAUTIFUL BOY

    The Festival will present a Special Presentation screening of Beautiful Boy with Academy Award nominated actor Timothée Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name), Academy Award Nominated actress Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone), and Academy Award nominated Belgian director Felix van Groeningen (The Broken Circle Breakdown).

    Behind the Screens – Panels | Master Classes | Workshops

    The Festival will present another strong slate of Panels, Master Classes, and Workshops to supplement the outstanding film programming and to continue the discussion for Festival attendees. They include: back for a second year, the Mind The Gap Summit will again feature an extraordinary lineup of thought leaders and creatives in film and tech for a full day intensive to help work and share ideas as the Festival advocates gender equity in film; the annual State of the Industry panel will feature leaders of the independent film world to talk about the current pulse of the independent film community; the From Scene to Screen For Teens workshop, facilitated by Tom Franco and Iris Torres, will allow teenage participants the chance to workshop scenes from Gerrard Conley’s memoir Boy Erased; the Crowdfunding to Build Independence workshop teaches filmmakers the essentials for engaging their audience at every stage of their project; Tom Schlesinger will facilitate the workshop The Heroine’s Journey Onscreen Dramedy, a dive into utilizing the Heroine’s Journey for storytelling; the Medical Marijuana panel, following a screening of Weed the People will focus on the medical uses of marijuana and the many benefits to utilizing cannabis to treat a host of ailments; 420: Welcome The Waldos will illuminate the story behind the origins of the term 420; and finally, Graphic Novel Writing for Teens, is a hands-on workshop following the screening of the film Virus Tropical, and will introduce students to the work of several cartoonists and guide them through the process.

    MVFF Music

    MVFF Music returns for a fourth year with a diverse series of concerts at the Sweetwater Music Hall. Nine nights of live music include performances by artists featured in MVFF films, as well as local, national, and international musicians. Musicians include: Freddy Jones Band, Jarvis Cocker introducing Jarv is…, Holly Near with Tammy Hall and Jan Martinelli, Michael Franti, Black Zeppelin, the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, Half Pint, and Honus Honus.

    ¡VIVA EL CINE!

    MVFF’s ¡Viva El Cine! Initiative showcases prize-winning Spanish Language and Latin American films that seek to engage and embrace our Spanish speaking and loving audiences. Highlights in this section include: Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma from Mexico, Birds of Passage from Columbia, El Ángel from Argentina, Richard Levien’s Collisions featuring Mexican American characters, Ernesto from Cuba, Too Late to Die Young from Chile, and The Silence of Others from Spain.

    Active Cinema

    Once again the MVFF’s Active Cinema initiative will showcase film’s power to inspire people to take action to create positive change. Screenings throughout the Festival support the grassroots activism of the filmmakers and engage with the work of the special guests, co-presenters and partners. Highlights include: Charm City in association with Ritter Center; From Baghdad to the Bay in association with the international Rescue Committee, Horizons Foundation, LGBT Asylum Project and Human Rights Watch; Harvest Season in association with La Luz Center; Stay Human in association with Do It For The Love; Time For Ilhan in association with Marin County Young Democrats; Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn? In association with Investigative Reporting Program at the Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley and the Center for Investigative Reporting; Wild DaZe in association with Wildlife Works; and the Active Cinema Hike, a free networking in nature event.

    Mind The Gap Award – Stacy L. Smith

    Mind The Gap, MVFF’s gender equity initiative, amplifies and champions work by women filmmakers, who are changing the narrative that shapes the culture. The Festival is committed to programming 50/50 by 2020 – 50% women directors across all Festival sections by 2020. As part of Mind The Gap this year, the Festival will give Stacy L. Smith the Mind the Gap Award for Visionary Leadership. Smith is a visionary leader in the movement towards gender equity in the film industry. She is an associate professor at USC Annenberg and Founder and Director of the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, the leading think tank globally studying issues of inequality in entertainment. Smith will receive the Mind the Gap Award during the Mind the Gap Summit on Saturday, October 6 where she will also present some of her most recent work.

    Focus | Black Is

    MVFF’s Focus Black Is will showcase emotionally and socially resonant films that explore what it means to be Black in the contemporary world. Films in this Focus include: the co-opening night film Green Book; The Hate U Give; the Closing Night film If Beale Street Could Talk; Little Woods; Long Time Coming: A 1955 Baseball Story; and Obey.

    Focus | Teens & 20’s

    The Festival’s Focus Teens & 20’s, is a focus on young adult films about that defining – and sometimes challenging – post-adolescent/pre-adult time of life. Films in this Focus include: the short program 5@5 The Way It Is; Angst; the Special Presentation Beautiful Boy; Ben is Back; The Hate U Give; Rafiki; The Silent Revolution; Too Late to Die Young; and Virus Tropical.

    Focus | Queer-ish

    Diverse stories of queer representation found in a wide, genre-twisting array of films will be showcased in the Festival’s Focus Queer-ish. Films in this Focus include: Alifu The Prince/ss; El Ángel; Border; Joel Edgerton’s Spotlight presentation film Boy Erased; Richard E. Grant’s Spotlight presentation film Can You Ever Forgive Me?; The Favorite; From Baghdad to the Bay; Holly Near: Singing For Our Lives; The Parting Glass; and Rafiki.

    Focus | Animation Nation

    An assemblage of gorgeous, entertaining, and occasionally kooky animation fiction and non-fiction films from around the globe highlight the Focus Animation Nation. Films in this Focus include: the short program 5@5 Circle Game; The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales; Chris The Swiss; Coco; Seder-Masochism; A Ton O’Toons; Virus Tropical; and Zootopia.

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  • 49 Feature Films Eligible for European Film Awards 2018

    Borg/McEnroe
    BORG/McENROE

    49 films have been named by the European Film Academy for this year’s EFA Feature Film Selection,

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  • 2018 Chicago International Film Festival Announces First Films – Boy Erased, Mr. Soul!, Shoplifters

    [caption id="attachment_31533" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]Boy Erased Boy Erased[/caption] The Chicago International Film Festival announced the first 25 films that will be shown at the 54th edition running October 10 to 21, 2018. The Festival will feature more than 150 films from across the globe and bring legendary actors, master filmmakers, and exciting, emerging talents from around the world to Chicago. Initial lineup includes highly anticipated titles including Joel Edgerton’s Boy Erased starring Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe; Elizabeth Chomko’s Chicago set feature debut What They Had starring Michael Shannon and Hilary Swank; Mike Leigh’s epic drama Peterloo and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters. “We are very excited to be showcasing new films from some of the most impressive directors in the world, whether returning veterans, such as past Gold Hugo-winners Mike Leigh and Hirokazu Kore-eda, or up-and-coming filmmakers with distinctive visions,” said Plauché. “For the last several years, the Festival has been proud to present Best Picture winners The Shape of Water (2017), Moonlight (2016), and Spotlight (2015), and we look forward to sharing this year’s incredible slate of movies with our audiences.” Birds of Passage Pájaros de verano Directors: Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra Colombia, Mexico, Denmark A Colombian Mean Streets, this gripping drama chronicles the rise of the drug trade and its cataclysmic impact on the local indigenous community. The Wayuu people had long held tight onto their traditions, living in close-knit tribes. When two friends begin selling marijuana to visiting Americans, however, their actions set in motion a series of events that pit factions against each other, inciting a cycle of avarice-inspired vengeance. Wayuunaiki, Spanish, and English with subtitles. Border Gräns Director: Ali Abbasi Sweden Fantastic in every sense of the word, this idiosyncratic thriller centers on a Swedish customs officer with a special talent for detecting contraband who must ultimately choose between good and evil. This exciting, intelligent mix of romance, Nordic noir, social realism, and supernatural horror defies and subverts genre conventions and is destined to be a cult classic. Winner, Un Certain Regard, Cannes Film Festival. Swedish with subtitles. Boy Erased Director: Joel Edgerton U.S. Boy Erased tells the story of Jared (Lucas Hedges), the son of a Baptist pastor in a small American town, who is outed to his parents (Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe) at age 19. Jared is faced with an ultimatum: attend a conversion therapy program—or be permanently exiled and shunned by his family, friends, and faith. Boy Erased is the true story of one young man’s struggle to find himself while being forced to question every aspect of his identity. Cold War Zimna wojna Director: Pawel Pawlikowski Poland A passionate love story between two people of different backgrounds and temperaments, who are fatefully mismatched and yet condemned to each other. Set against the background of the Cold War in the 1950s in Poland, Berlin, Yugoslavia and Paris, the film depicts an impossible love story in impossible times. Polish with subtitles. Dogman Director: Matteo Garrone Italy In a run-down Italian coastal town, Marcello, a gentle dog groomer, sees his life turned upside down when Simone, a brutish former boxer and ex-con, bullies him into becoming his criminal accomplice. But for how long can the “dogman” be subservient to his master before he bites back? From the acclaimed director of Gomorrah comes another unflinching urban western treading the fine line between civility and savagery. Italian with subtitles. Friedkin Uncut Director: Francesco Zippel Italy Oscar®-winning, Chicago-born director William Friedkin achieved fame with his 1973 horror blockbuster The Exorcist. But this illuminating documentary shows the director’s unwavering commitment to rawness and realism across his entire career, from The French Connection (1972) to Killer Joe (2011). Featuring interviews with Ellen Burstyn, Willem Dafoe, and Quentin Tarantino, among others, Friedkin Uncut reveals a savvy craftsman who is unapologetic about his no-nonsense approach to moviemaking. Jumpman Podbrosy Director: Ivan I. Tverdovskiy Russia, Ireland, Lithuania, France An abandoned infant grows into a likeable lad with a rare disorder—he can feel no physical pain. When he becomes a teen, his feckless mother returns to his life to exploit his condition by enlisting him in an insurance fraud scam. A taut thriller, Jumpman puts an outsider at the center of a harsh indictment of corruption and hypocrisy in contemporary Russia. Russian with subtitles. Mr. Soul! Director: Melissa Haizlip U.S. The brainchild of pioneering producer Ellis Haizlip, SOUL! was the first ever national TV series made by and for African-Americans. The groundbreaking program aired from 1968 to 1973 and featured a dazzling array of guests from Stevie Wonder to Maya Angelou. Mr. Soul! takes viewers behind the scenes of the show, chronicling its inception and its struggles to stay on the air. It turns out the revolution really was televised. Olympia Director: Gregory Dixon U.S. Chicago writer-actor McKenzie Chinn stars as a struggling artist, navigating work and romance in the Windy City. When her boyfriend asks her to drop everything and move cross-country, she soon discovers that she might be the biggest obstacle to her own happiness. Featuring quirky animation and a revelatory central performance, Olympia is a sensitive and humorous look at the challenges of embracing adulthood. The Other Story Director: Avi Nesher Israel Family disputes and conspiracies take center stage in this lively drama, which even-handedly explores the divide between Israel’s secular Jews and the ultra-Orthodox from director Avi Nesher (The Matchmaker). Sasson Gabai (The Band’s Visit) plays a renowned psychologist and rationalist who falls out with his strong-willed granddaughter when she enters a Haredi community and plans to marry a musician previously known for his wild ways. Hebrew with subtitles. Peterloo Director: Mike Leigh U.K. An epic portrayal of the events surrounding the infamous 1819 Peterloo Massacre, which saw British forces charge into a crowd of over 60,000 that had gathered to protest rising levels of poverty and demand reform. Many were killed and hundreds more injured, sparking a nationwide outcry but also further government suppression. A defining moment in British democracy, the massacre also played a significant role in the founding of The Guardian newspaper. Piercing Director: Nicolas Pesce U.S. Pesce’s gleefully wicked S&M black comedy centers on Reed (Christopher Abbot), a new fatherlooking to channel his homicidal impulses away from his infant daughter. He heads to a hotel, hires an escort (Mia Wasikowska), then begins to rehearse her murder. But once she arrives, the balance of power shifts. Based on the novel by Ryu Murukami, Piercing’s incredibly dark premise constantly surprises—it might just be taken for a wildly subversive love story. A Private War Director: Matthew Heineman U.S. In a world where journalism is under attack, Marie Colvin (Academy Award®-nominee Rosamund Pike) is one of the most celebrated war correspondents of our time. Her mission to show the true cost of conflict leads her—along with renowned photographer Paul Conroy (Jamie Dornan)—to embark on the most dangerous assignment of their lives in the besieged Syrian city of Homs. Rafiki Director: Wanuri Kahiu Kenya A tender tale of forbidden first love told in an electric, colorful Afropop style, Rafiki tells the story of the tender but illegal and taboo romance between Kena, a skateboarding tomboy blessed with great grades and soccer skills, and Ziki, the charismatic daughter of a conservative local politician. When rumors begin to swirl about the nature of their relationship, the young lovers find themselves in great jeopardy. Swahili, English with subtitles. Ruben Brandt, Collector Ruben Brandt, a gyüjtö Director: Milorad Krstic Hungary “Possess your problems to conquer them,” is the credo that psychotherapist Ruben Brandt preaches to his criminally-inclined clients in this stylish, animated thriller for adults. But when Brandt’s patients help him to apply his own advice, he becomes “Ruben Brandt, Collector,” ringleader of a gang responsible for the theft of 13 of the world’s most famous paintings. This entertaining romp literally puts the “art” into “arthouse.” Shoplifters Manbiki kazoku Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda Japan The winner of Cannes’ top prize, the Palme d’Or, centers on an eccentric troupe of miscreants who take in a neglected five-year-old. Despite their strained circumstances, the tight-knit unit of petty thieves and social outcasts comes together to raise the girl. But how long can this unconventional family survive against the normalizing forces around them? From the Japanese master of humanism comes another affecting and astute film about people living on the margins. Japanese with subtitles. Sorry Angel Plaire, aimer et courir vite Director: Christophe Honoré France It’s 1993. Jacques is a successful, novelist from Paris living with what was still a terminal diagnosis of HIV positive. Arthur is an open-minded student ready to embrace life. They meet in Rennes and fall in love, but navigating an intergenerational romance has its challenges. Honoré (Love Songs) chronicles their lives, together and apart, with nuance and subtlety, allowing their love story to unfold in patient, novelistic fashion. French with subtitles. Transit Director: Christian Petzold Germany In this Kafkaesque cinematic puzzle, a man is trapped in limbo as he tries to flee fascistoccupied France. Hoping to escape to Mexico, Georg poses as a dead author but becomes stuck in Marseilles. There, he encounters a woman searching for her missing husband—the man whose identity he has assumed. Petzold’s surreal film merges past, present and future in its trenchant exploration of the plight of refugees. German with subtitles. United Skates Directors: Dyana Winkler and Tina Brown U.S. A rousing chronicle of roller-skating’s pivotal role in African-American communities, United Skates careens around the country, offering an intimate look at a lively subculture that’s under threat. Facing discriminatory policies and building closures, committed skaters from around the country—including Chicago’s own Buddy Love—fight to preserve a space for people to come together and express themselves in sliding, bouncing, snapping glory. What They Had Director: Elizabeth Chomko U.S. From first-time writer/director Elizabeth Chomko, What They Had centers on a family in crisis. Bridget (Hilary Swank) returns home to Chicago at her brother’s (Michael Shannon) urging to deal with her ailing mother (Blythe Danner) and her father’s (Robert Forster) reluctance to let go of their life together.

    SHORTS

    Accidence Directors: Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson Canada A grisly murder on an apartment balcony becomes a small piece in a frenzied puzzle of strange occurrences. Accident, MD Director: Dan Rybicky U.S. A survey of attitudes about America’s healthcare crisis filmed in the small town of Accident, Maryland. Optimism Director: Deborah Stratman U.S. A portrait of Dawson City Canada’s far North that reveals a rich history of a town looking for gold while enveloped in shadow. Solar Walk Director: Réka Bucsi Denmark A sumptuously animated cosmic journey through space, time, and creation. Tourneur Director: Yalda Afsah Germany A foam-filled ring in the south of France becomes the site of an absurd spectacle as young men face off against a bull.

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  • BLACKKKLANSMAN, FIRST MAN, A STAR IS BORN to Compete for Audience Award at San Sebastian International Film Festival

    [caption id="attachment_29297" align="aligncenter" width="926"]BlacKkKlansman BlacKkKlansman[/caption] Ten new films including the latest by Damien Chazelle, Alfonso Cuarón, and Spike Lee will compete for the City of Donostia / San Sebastian Audience Award at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. A Star Is Born, the directorial debut of Bradley Cooper will bring the section to a close. Jacques Audiard (Paris, 1962), the author of Un prophète / A Prophet (2009), Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, will present The Sisters Brothers, to have its premiere at the Venice Festival. This western based on the novel of the same name by Patrick deWitt stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly, who is also involved in its production. The latest film from the winner of last year’s Academy Award for Best Director, Damien Chazelle (Providence, USA, 1985), once again directs Ryan Gosling in First Man as Neil Armstrong, the first astronaut to walk on the Moon. The film by the creator of La La Land, in which Claire Foy (The Crown) also has a part, will open the Venice Festival. Alfonso Cuarón (Mexico City, 1968) competed in the Official Selection at San Sebastian with his second film, A Little Princess (1995). Since then, he has won a Best Director Academy Award for Gravity, while his films Y tu mamá también (And Your Mother Too) and Children of Men have enjoyed widespread international success. With Roma, to have its premiere in Venice, he portrays the life of a maid working in a middle-class district of Mexico City in the early 70s. In this new take on the iconic love story, A Star Is Born, Bradley Cooper (Philadelphia, USA, 1975) makes his directorial debut and portrays seasoned musician Jackson Maine, who discovers and falls in love with struggling artist Ally, played by Lady Gaga. Ally has given up on her dream to become a successful singer until she meets Jack, who immediately sees her raw talent. This intimate story takes us on a journey through the beauty and challenges of a relationship struggling to survive. After its premiere in Venice, A Star Is Born will bring Perak to a close in San Sebastian. Lukas Dhont (Belgium, 1991) will also present his first feature in San Sebastian, Girl, winner of the Caméra d’Or for Best First Film in Cannes and Fipresci Prize in Un Certain Regard. Dhont tells the story of a young girl born as a boy and who dreamt of becoming a ballerina. Ciro Guerra (Río de Oro, Colombia, 1981) shares the helm of Pájaros de verano (Birds of Passage) with Cristina Gallego (Bogotá, 1978), producer of his earlier films. Guerra started his career in Films in Progress, where he won a prize in 2003 for his first work, La sombra del caminante. His third film, El abrazo de la serpiente (Embrace of the Serpent) screened in Horizontes Latinos, was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award. In Pájaros de verano, which premiered at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, he uses a true story to explain the origins of drug trafficking in Colombia. The first animated film to compete in San Sebastian’s Official Selection was Bakemono no ko / The Boy and the Beast (2015), by Mamoru Hosoda (Nakaniikawa, Japan, 1967). The author of Toki wo kakeru shojo (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, 2006) and Okami Kodomo no Ame to Yuki (Wolf Children, 2012) now presents in San Sebastian Mirai, which premiered at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. The participations of Nadine Labaki (Beirut, 1974) in San Sebastian are counted in awards. In 2007, with her directorial debut Sukkar banat / Caramel, she landed the Audience and Youth Awards, and in 2011, with her second film, Et maintenant on va où? / Where Do We Go Now?, she earned the spectators’ vote as Best European Film. With Capharnaüm, winner of the Jury Prize in Cannes, she once again competes for the City of Donostia / San Sebastian Audience Award. Although his films have been programmed in different retrospectives –When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts in .doc – New paths of non-fiction and Summer of Sam in American Way of Death: American Film Noir 1990-2010– and the collective film Ten Minutes Older – The Trumpet screened as part of the Zabaltegi-Specials selection, this is the first time that Spike Lee (Atlanta, USA, 1957) will have competed for an award in San Sebastian. The author of Malcolm X, winner of honorary Academy and César awards, will compete for the Audience Award with BlacKkKlansman, a dramatic comedy about an Afro-American policeman who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan, winner of the Jury Grand Prix at Cannes and the Audience Award at Locarno. Jia Zhangke (Fenyang, China, 1970), however, has enjoyed wide presence at the Festival in recent years. In 2013 he won the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes for Tian zhu ding / A Touch of Sin (2013), screened as part of Perlak, the same section which saw the selection in 2015 of Shan he gu ren (Mountains May Depart), winner of the Audience Award for Best European Production. His short film The Hedonists was screened in Zabaltegi-Tabakalera in 2016, the same year as he sat on the official jury presided by Bille August, which gave the Golden Shell to Wo bu shi pan jinlian / I Am Not Madame Bovary by Xiaogang Feng. Now he will endeavour to win the spectators’ award for a second time with Ash is Purest White, a film selected for the Cannes official competition, in which he describes the changes transforming his country through a violent love story. These films join those already announced in Perlak: El ángel (Luis Ortega), Petra (Jaime Rosales), Leto / Summer (Kirill Serebrennikov), Zimna wojna / Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski), Un día más con vida / Another Day of Life (Raúl de la Fuente and Damian Nenow), Netemo Sametemo / Asako I & II (Ryusuke Hamaguchi) and 3 Rokh / Three Faces (Jafar Panahi). A STAR IS BORN BRADLEY COOPER (USA) Cast: Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga, Andrew Dice Clay, Dave Chappelle, Sam Elliott CLOSING NIGHT FILM Not in competition In this new take on the tragic love story, a seasoned musician discovers—and falls in love with— a struggling artist. She has just about given up on her dream to make it big as a singer… until Jack coaxes her into the spotlight. But even as Ally’s career takes off, the personal side of their relationship is breaking down, as Jack fights an ongoing battle with his own internal demons. ASH IS PUREST WHITE JIA ZHANGKE (CHINA – FRANCE – JAPAN) Cast: Zhao Tao, Liao Fan Qiao is in love with Bin, a local mobster. During a fight between rival gangs, she fires a gun to protect him. Qiao gets five years in prison for this act of loyalty. Upon her release, she goes looking for Bin to pick up where they left off. A story of love, betrayal and loyalty set in China’s underworld. BLACKKKLANSMAN SPIKE LEE (USA) Cast: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Topher Grace, Laura Harrier Spike Lee helms the true story of the first Afro-American cop to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan at its highest levels in the ‘60s, with the help of a colleague who passed himself off as a radical racist. CAPHARNAÜM NADINE LABAKI (LEBANON) Cast: Zain Al Rafeea, Yordanos Shiferaw, Boluwatife Treasure Bankole, Kawthar Al Haddad, Fadi Kamel Youssef, Cedra Izam, Alaa Chouchnieh, Nadine Labaki International Courtroom Zain, a 12 year-old boy, faces the judge. Judge: Why are you suing your own parents? Zain: For giving me life. FIRST MAN DAMIEN CHAZELLE (USA) Cast: Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Jason Clarke The film tells the story of the most dangerous mission in the history of Humanity to date. A tale of how NASA sent Neil Armstrong to the Moon and the sacrifices and the cost it represented for many. GIRL LUKAS DHONT (BELGIUM – NETHERLANDS) Cast: Victor Polster, Arieh Worthalter, Katelijne Damen, Valentijn Dhaenens Lara, aged 15, dreams of becoming a ballerina. With her father’s help, she pushes herself to the limit in the interminable endeavour. But her body doesn’t lend itself easily to the discipline imposed upon it, because in fact she was born a boy. MIRAI MAMORU HOSODA (JAPAN) A spoiled and pampered little 4 year-old who finds himself being ignored on the birth of his little sister Mirai. Kun struggles to cope with the new situations thrown at him in his home. But suddenly the teenage version of his sister travels back in time from the future to share with Kun an extraordinary adventure of unimaginable proportions. PÁJAROS DE VERANO CIRO GUERRA, CRISTINA GALLEGO (COLOMBIA) Cast: Carmiña Martínez, Jose Acosta, Natalia Reyes, Jhon Narváez, José Vicente Cote, Juan Bautista Martínez, Greider Meza Based on a true story explaining the origin of drug trafficking in Colombia, the film takes place in the ‘70s when North American youths are embracing the hippie culture and, with it, marijuana. The upshot is that the local farmers almost instantly morph into “entrepreneurs”. In the Guajira desert, a Wayuu Native American family finds itself forced to assume a role of leadership in this new enterprise. Wealth and power combine with a war between brothers which will seriously endanger their family, their lives and their ancestral traditions. ROMA ALFONSO CUARÓN (MEXICO) Cast: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira The most personal project to date from Academy Award®-winning director and writer Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Children of Men, Y Tu Mamá Tambien), Roma follows Cleo, a young domestic worker for a family in the middle-class neighborhood of Roma in Mexico City. Delivering an artful love letter to the women who raised him, Cuarón draws on his own childhood to create a vivid and emotional portrait of domestic strife and social hierarchy amidst political turmoil of the 1970s. THE SISTERS BROTHERS JACQUES AUDIARD (FRANCE – BELGIUM – ROMANIA – SPAIN) Cast: John C. Reily, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed Charlie and Eli Sisters live in a wild and hostile world. They have blood on their hands: the blood of criminals and innocent people alike… They have no scruples about killing. It’s their job. Charlie, the younger brother, was born to kill. Eli, however, dreams of living a normal life. They are hired by the Commodore to find and kill a man. From Oregon to California, a ruthless hunt begins, an initiatory journey that will test this insane bond between the two brothers. A path that leads to their humanity?

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  • Films From Barry Jenkins, Alex Ross Perry, Claire Denis among Main Slate of 56th NY Film Festival

    [caption id="attachment_31277" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]If Beale Street Could Talk If Beale Street Could Talk[/caption] The Film Society of Lincoln Center today announced the 30 films for the Main Slate of the 56th New York Film Festival taking place September 28 to October 14, 2018. This year’s Main Slate showcases films from 22 different countries, including new titles from celebrated auteurs, extraordinary work from directors making their first NYFF bows, and captivating features that wowed audiences at international festivals. Five films in the festival were honored at Cannes, including Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Palme d’Or–winner Shoplifters; Jean-Luc Godard’s The Image Book, awarded a Special Palme d’Or; Cold War, which took home the Best Director prize for Paweł Pawlikowski; and Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy as Lazzaro and Jafar Panahi’s 3 Faces, which shared the Best Screenplay award. Returning to the festival for the third consecutive year is Hong Sangsoo with two new films, joined by his fellow NYFF54 filmmakers Olivier Assayas and Barry Jenkins. Frederick Wiseman makes his 10th appearance at the festival, while other returning filmmakers include Joel & Ethan Coen, Alex Ross Perry, Claire Denis, Ulrich Köhler, Lee Chang-dong, Jia Zhangke, and Christian Petzold. Making both their directorial and NYFF debuts are Paul Dano and Richard Billingham, and Louis Garrel makes his first NYFF showing as a director. Other filmmakers new to the festival include Dominga Sotomayor, Christophe Honoré, Tamara Jenkins, Mariano Llinás, and Ying Liang, as well as Bi Gan and Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, both alumni of New Directors/New Films 2016. The NYFF56 Opening Night is Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite, Alfonso Cuarón’s ROMA is Centerpiece, and Julian Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate will close the festival. NYFF Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones said, “Francis Ford Coppola said that the cinema would become a real art form only when the tools of moviemaking became as inexpensive as paints, brushes, and canvases. That has come to pass, but at the same time it’s become increasingly tough to do serious work that is beholden to nothing but the filmmaker’s need to express these emotions in this form in moving images and sound. So if I were pressed to choose one word to describe the films in this year’s Main Slate, it would be: bravery. These films were made all over the globe, by young filmmakers like Dominga Sotomayor and masters like Fred Wiseman, by artists of vastly different sensibilities from Claire Denis to the Coen Brothers, Jafar Panahi to Jean-Luc Godard. And the unifying thread is their bravery, the bravery needed to fight past the urge to commercialized smoothness and mediocrity that is always assuming new forms. That’s what makes every single title in this year’s Main Slate so precious, and so vital.” The 56th New York Film Festival Main Slate Opening Night The Favourite Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos, Ireland/UK/USA, 2018, 121m In Yorgos Lanthimos’s wildly intricate and very darkly funny new film, Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz), and her servant Abigail Hill (Emma Stone) engage in a sexually charged fight to the death for the body and soul of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) at the height of the War of the Spanish Succession. This trio of truly brilliant performances is the dynamo that powers Lanthimos’s top-to-bottom reimagining of the costume epic, in which the visual pageantry of court life in 18th-century England becomes not just a lushly appointed backdrop but an ironically heightened counterpoint to the primal conflict unreeling behind closed doors. A Fox Searchlight Pictures release. Centerpiece ROMA Dir. Alfonso Cuarón, Mexico/USA, 2018, 135m In Alfonso Cuarón’s autobiographically inspired film, set in Mexico City in the early ’70s, we are placed within the physical and emotional terrain of a middle-class family whose center is quietly and unassumingly held by its beloved live-in nanny and housekeeper (Yalitza Aparicio). The cast is uniformly magnificent, but the real star of ROMA is the world itself, fully present and vibrantly alive, from sudden life-changing events to the slightest shifts in mood and atmosphere. Cuarón tells us an epic story of everyday life while also gently sweeping us into a vast cinematic experience, in which time and space breathe and majestically unfold. Shot in breathtaking black and white and featuring a sound design that represents something new in the medium, ROMA is a truly visionary work. A Netflix release. Closing Night At Eternity’s Gate Dir. Julian Schnabel, USA/France, 2018, 106m North American Premiere Julian Schnabel’s ravishingly tactile and luminous new film takes a fresh look at the last days of Vincent van Gogh, and in the process revivifies our sense of the artist as a living, feeling human being. Schnabel; his co-writers Jean-Claude Carrière and Louise Kugelberg, also the film’s editor; and cinematographer Benoît Delhomme strip everything down to essentials, fusing the sensual, the emotional, and the spiritual. And the pulsing heart of At Eternity’s Gate is Willem Dafoe’s shattering performance: his Vincent is at once lucid, mad, brilliant, helpless, defeated, and, finally, triumphant. With Oscar Isaac as Gauguin, Rupert Friend as Theo, Mathieu Amalric as Dr. Gachet, Emmanuelle Seigner as Madame Ginoux, and Mads Mikkelsen as The Priest. A CBS Films release. 3 Faces Dir. Jafar Panahi, Iran, 2018, 100m U.S. Premiere Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s fourth completed feature since he was officially banned from filmmaking is one of his very best. Panahi begins with a smartphone video shot by a young woman (Marziyeh Rezaei) who announces to the camera that her parents have forbidden her from realizing her dream of acting and then, by all appearances, takes her own life. The recipient of the video, Behnaz Jafari, as herself, asks Panahi, as himself, to drive her to the woman’s tiny home village near the Turkish border to investigate. From there, 3 Faces builds in narrative, thematic, and visual intricacy to put forth a grand expression of community and solidarity under the eye of oppression. Asako I & II Dir. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Japan/France, 2018, 119m U.S. Premiere A truly original Vertigo riff, based on a novel by Tomoka Shibasaki, Asako I & II is an enchanting, unnerving paean to the notion of love as a trance state. Asako (Erika Karata) and Baku (Masahiro Higashide) share an intense, all-consuming romance—but one day the moody Baku ups and vanishes. Two years later, having moved from Osaka to Tokyo, Asako meets Baku’s exact double. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, who gained plenty of attention for 2015’s five-hour-plus Happy Hour, has returned with a beguiling and mysterious film that traces the trajectory of a love—or, to be accurate, two loves—found, lost, displaced, and regained. A Grasshopper Film release. Ash Is Purest White Dir. Jia Zhangke, China, 2018, 142m U.S. Premiere Jia Zhangke’s extraordinary body of work has doubled as a record of 21st-century China and its warp-speed transformations. A tragicomedy in the fullest sense, Ash Is Purest White is at once his funniest and saddest film, portraying the passage of time through narrative ellipses and, like his Mountains May Depart (NYFF53), a three-part structure. Despite its jianghu—criminal underworld—setting, Ash is less a gangster movie than a melodrama, beginning by following Qiao and her mobster boyfriend Bin as they stake out their turf against rivals and upstarts in 2001 postindustrial Datong before expanding out into an epic narrative of how abstract forces shape individual lives. As the formidable, quick-witted Qiao, a never better Zhao Tao has fashioned a heroine for the ages. A Cohen Media Group release. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Dir. Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, USA, 2018, 128m North American Premiere Here’s something new from the Coen Brothers—an anthology of short films based on a fictional book of “western tales,” featuring Tim Blake Nelson as a murderous, white-hatted singing cowboy; James Franco as a bad luck bank-robber; Liam Neeson as the impresario of a traveling medicine show with increasingly diminishing returns; Tom Waits as a die-hard gold prospector; Zoe Kazan and Bill Heck as two shy people who almost come together on the wagon trail; and Tyne Daly, Saul Rubinek, Brendan Gleeson, Chelcie Ross, and Jonjo O’Neill as a motley crew on a stagecoach to nowhere. Each story is distinct, but unified by the thematic thread of mortality. As a whole movie experience, Buster Scruggs is wildly entertaining, and, like all Coen films, endlessly surprising. An Annapurna Production and Netflix release. Burning Dir. Lee Chang-dong, South Korea, 2018, 148m Expanded from Haruki Murakami’s short story “Barn Burning,” the sixth feature from Korean master Lee Chang-dong, known best in the U.S. for such searing, emotional dramas as Secret Sunshine (NYFF45) and Poetry (NYFF48), begins by tracing a romantic triangle of sorts: Jongsu (Yoo Ah-in), an aspiring writer, becomes involved with a woman he knew from childhood, Haemi (Jun Jong-seo), who is about to embark on a trip to Africa. She returns some weeks later with a fellow Korean, the Gatsby-esque Ben (Steven Yeun), who has a mysterious source of income and a very unusual hobby. A tense, haunting multiple-character study, the film accumulates a series of unanswered questions and unspoken motivations to conjure a totalizing mood of uncertainty and quietly bends the contours of the thriller genre to brilliant effect. A Well Go USA release. Cold War Dir. Paweł Pawlikowski, Poland, 2018, 90m Academy Award–winner Paweł Pawlikowski follows up his box-office sensation Ida with this bittersweet, exquisitely crafted tale of an impossible love. Set between the late 1940s and early 1960s, Cold War is, as the title implies, a Soviet-era drama, but it stringently and inventively avoids the clichés of many a classical-minded World War II art film, tracking the tempestuous love between pianist (Tomasz Kot) and singer (Joanna Kulig) as they navigate the realities of living in both Poland and Paris, in and outside of the Iron Curtain. Shot in crisp black-and-white and set to a bewitching jazzy score, Pawlikowski’s evocative film consummately depicts an uncompromising passion caught up in the gears of history. An Amazon Studios release. A Faithful Man / L’Homme fidèle Dir. Louis Garrel, France, 2018, 75m U.S. Premiere Nine years after she left him for his best friend, journalist Abel (Louis Garrel) gets back together with his recently widowed old flame Marianne (Laetitia Casta). It seems to be a beautiful new beginning, but soon the hapless Abel finds himself embroiled in all sorts of dramas: the come-ons of a wily jeune femme (Lily-Rose Depp), the machinations of Marianne’s morbid young son, and some unsavory questions about what exactly happened to his girlfriend’s first husband. Shifting points of view as nimbly as its players switch partners, the sophomore feature from actor/director Louis Garrel—co-written with the legendary Jean-Claude Carrière—is at once a beguiling bedroom farce and a slippery inquiry into truth, subjectivity, and the elusive nature of romantic attraction. A Family Tour Dir. Ying Liang, Taiwan/Hong Kong/Singapore/Malaysia, 2018, 107m U.S. Premiere Since his 2012 feature When Night Falls, a stinging critique of state power that the Chinese authorities attempted to suppress, the director Ying Liang has been forced to live in exile in Hong Kong. His return to feature filmmaking is a characteristically precise and powerful work, and, as inspired by his own precarious situation and based on a reunion with his in-laws, an autobiographical one. The film follows a Hong Kong–exiled director (Gong Zhe) as she travels to a film festival in Taiwan with her husband and toddler, while her ailing mother (Nai An) vacations there separately with a tour group. To avoid attracting attention, the family shadows the tour’s sightseeing itinerary, visiting each other during photo stops and mealtimes. An empathetic snapshot of a mother-daughter relationship, this brave, poised film is also a deeply moving testament to the inseparability of the personal and the political. La Flor Dir. Mariano Llinás, Argentina, 2018, 807m North American Premiere A decade in the making, Mariano Llinás’s follow-up to his 2008 cult classic Extraordinary Stories is an unrepeatable labor of love and madness that redefines the concept of binge viewing. The director himself appears at the start to preview the six disparate episodes that await, each starring the same four remarkable actresses: Elisa Carricajo, Valeria Correa, Pilar Gamboa, and Laura Paredes. Overflowing with nested subplots and whiplash digressions, La Flor shape-shifts from a B-movie to a musical to a spy thriller to a category-defying metafiction—all of them without endings—to a remake of a very well-known French classic and, finally, to an enigmatic period piece that lacks a beginning (granted, all notions of beginnings and endings become fuzzy after 14 hours). An adventure in scale and duration, La Flor is a marvelously entertaining exploration of the possibilities of fiction that lands somewhere close to its outer limits. Grass Dir. Hong Sangsoo, South Korea, 2018, 66m U.S. Premiere Sitting in a café, typing on a laptop, Areum (Kim Min-hee) eavesdrops on three dramatic situations unfolding in her general vicinity: a young woman bound for Europe and a male friend who erupt in vitriolic accusations, a washed-up actor trying to sweet-talk his way into staying with an old friend, and a narcissistic actor-director (Jung Jin-young) trying to rope a young writer into his next project. Playing out largely in long-take two-shots, these conversations create a kind of never-ending theatrical performance, with Areum as the anchor. With its raw emotions and seeming formal simplicity masking a complex episodic approach, Grass finds Korean master Hong Sangsoo setting up a fascinating narrative problem for himself and solving it as only he can. A Cinema Guild release. Happy as Lazzaro / Lazzaro felice Dir. Alice Rohrwacher, Italy, 2018, 128m North American Premiere In the transfiguring and transfixing third feature from Alice Rohrwacher (The Wonders, NYFF52), we find ourselves amid a throng of tobacco farmers living in a state of extreme deprivation on an estate known as Inviolata, with wide-eyed teenager Lazzaro (nonprofessional discovery Adriano Tardiolo) emerging as a focal point. Although this all seems to be taking place in the past (as implied by the warm grain of Hélène Louvart’s 16mm cinematography), a stunning mid-movie leap vaults the narrative squarely into the present day and into the realm of parable. In a fable touching on perennial class struggle with Christian overtones, Rohrwacher summons the spirit of Pasolini, while also nodding to Ermanno Olmi and Visconti. A Netflix release. Her Smell Dir. Alex Ross Perry, USA, 2018, 134m U.S. Premiere The latest from Alex Ross Perry (Listen Up Philip, NYFF52) traces the psychology of an unforgettable woman under the influence. Becky Something (Elisabeth Moss, in a powerhouse performance), the influential lead singer of a popular ’90s alt-rock outfit, struggles with her demons as friends, family, and bandmates alike behold her unraveling through a prism of horror, empathy, and resentment. Perry tracks Becky’s self-destruction—and potential creative redemption—through snaking long takes (arguably some of DP Sean Price Williams’s finest work) in claustrophobic backstage hallways, garishly lit dressing rooms, and recording studios, and the film’s ensemble cast (including Cara Delevingne, Ashley Benson, Amber Heard, Virginia Madsen, Dan Stevens, and Eric Stoltz) is impeccable in support of Moss’s rattling trip to the brink. High Life Dir. Claire Denis, Germany/France/USA/UK/Poland, 2018, 110m U.S. Premiere Claire Denis’s latest film is set aboard a spacecraft piloted by death row prisoners on a decades-long suicide mission to enter and harness the power of a black hole. But as is always the case with this filmmaker, the actual structure seems to evolve organically through moods and uncanny spells, and the closest juxtapositions of violence and intimacy. High Life features some of the most unsettling passages Denis has ever filmed, as well as moments of the greatest delicacy and tenderness. With Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, André Benjamin, and Mia Goth. Hotel by the River Dir. Hong Sangsoo, South Korea, 2018, 96m U.S. Premiere Two tales intersect at a riverside hotel: an elderly poet (Ki Joo-bong), invited to stay there for free by the owner, summons his two estranged sons, sensing his life drawing to a close; and a young woman (Kim Min-hee) nursing a recently broken heart is visited by a friend who tries to console her. At times these threads overlap, at others they run tantalizingly close to each other. Using a stark black-and-white palette and handheld cinematography (with frequent DP Kim Hyung-ku), Hong crafts an affecting examination of family, mortality, and the ways in which we attempt to heal wounds old and fresh. If Beale Street Could Talk Dir. Barry Jenkins, USA, 2018 U.S. Premiere Barry Jenkins’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning Moonlight is a carefully wrought adaptation of James Baldwin’s penultimate novel, set in Harlem in the early 1970s. Fonny (Stephan James) and Tish (KiKi Layne) are childhood friends who fall in love as young adults. Tish becomes pregnant, and Fonny suffers a fate tragically common to young African-American men: he is arrested and convicted for a crime he didn’t commit. Jenkins’s deeply soulful film stays focused on the emotional currents between parents and children, couples and friends, all of whom spend their lives repairing and reinforcing the precious but fraying bonds of family and community in an unforgiving racist world. With Regina King, Colman Domingo, Teyonah Parris, Aunjanue Ellis, and Michael Beach. An Annapurna Pictures release. The Image Book / Le Livre d’image Dir. Jean-Luc Godard, Switzerland, 2018, 90m U.S. Premiere Jean-Luc Godard’s “late period” probably began with 2001’s In Praise of Love, and since then he has been formulating and enacting a path toward an ending: the ending of individual films, the ending of engagement with cinema, and, now that he’s 87, the possible ending of his own existence. With The Image Book all barriers between the artist, his art, and his audience have dissolved. The film is structured in chapters and predominantly comprised of pre-existing images, many of which will be familiar from Godard’s previous work. The relationship between image and sound is, as always, intensely physical and sometimes jaw-dropping. And…isn’t it enough to say, simply, that this is the work of a master? And that you have to see it? A Kino Lorber release. In My Room Dir. Ulrich Köhler, Germany, 2018, 119m U.S. Premiere The fourth feature from German director Ulrich Köhler (Sleeping Sickness, NYFF49) takes a disarmingly realistic and restrained approach to a fantastical premise: the eternally popular fantasy of the last man on earth. Sad-sack, 40ish TV cameraman Armin (Hans Löw) has been summoned home by his father to help tend to his terminally ill grandmother, but awakens one morning to find the world around him entirely depopulated. Eventually, the film introduces a fellow survivor, an Eve (Elena Radonicich) to complicate the apparent contentment of its Adam. In My Room is a film of meticulous details and sly, subtle ironies, crafted by the skills, temperament, and philosophical inquiry of an emerging master. A Grasshopper Film release. Long Day’s Journey Into Night Dir. Bi Gan, China/France, 2018, 133m U.S. Premiere As proven by his knockout debut, Kaili Blues, Bi Gan is preoccupied with film’s potential to both materialize mental space and convey physical sensation. His cinematic ambitions are further crystallized, to say the least, in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, a noir-tinged film about a solitary man (Huang Jue) haunted by loss and regret, told in two parts: the first an achronological mosaic, the second a nocturnal dream. Again centering around his native province of Guizhou in southwest China, the director has created a film like nothing you’ve seen before, especially in the second half’s hour-long, gravity-defying 3D sequence shot, which plunges its protagonist—and us—through a labyrinthine cityscape. Monrovia, Indiana Dir. Frederick Wiseman, USA, 2018, 143m U.S. Premiere Every new film from Frederick Wiseman, now 88 years old, seems more vigorous and acute than the last. His subject here is Monrovia, Indiana; population 1063, as of 2017; located deep in the American heartland. Wiseman alights on key activities: talk among friends over coffee at the diner, packaging meat at the supermarket, trucks loading with corn, expansion debates at town planning commission meetings, and, most intriguingly, a funeral. Monrovia, Indiana is a tough, piercing look at the rhythm and texture of life as it is lived in a wide swathe of this country. A Zipporah Films release. Non-Fiction / Doubles vies Dir. Olivier Assayas, France, 2018, 106m Set within the world of publishing, Olivier Assayas’s new film finds two hopelessly intertwined couples—Guillaume Canet’s troubled book executive and Juliette Binoche’s weary actress; Vincent Macaigne’s boorish novelist and Nora Hamzawi’s straight-and-balanced political operative—obsessed with the state of things, and how (or when) it will (or might) change. Is print dying? Has blogging replaced writing? Is fiction over? But the divide between what these characters—and their friends, and their enemies, and everyone in between—talk about and what is actually happening between them, moment by moment, is what gives Non-Fiction its very particular charm, humor, and lifelike stabs of emotion. A Sundance Selects release. Private Life Dir. Tamara Jenkins, USA, 2017, 123m In Tamara Jenkins’s first film in ten years, Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti are achingly real as Rachel and Richard, a middle-aged New York couple caught in the desperation, frustration, and exhaustion of trying to have a child, whether by fertility treatments or adoption or surrogate motherhood. They find a willing partner in Sadie (the formidable Kayli Carter), Richard’s niece by marriage, who happily agrees to donate her eggs, and the three of them build their own little outcast family in the process. Private Life is a wonder, by turns hilarious and harrowing (sometimes at once), and a very carefully observed portrait of middle-class Bohemian Manhattanites. With John Carroll Lynch and Molly Shannon. A Netflix release. RAY & LIZ Dir. Richard Billingham, UK, 2018, 107m U.S. Premiere English photographer and visual artist Richard Billingham’s first feature is grounded in the visual and emotional textures of his family portraits, particularly those of his deeply dysfunctional parents, whose names give the film its title. Billingham builds astonishing and unflinching scenes with his principal actors—Ella Smith as Liz, Justin Salinger as Ray, Patrick Romer as the older Ray, Tony Way and Sam Gittins as neighbors, and Joshua Millard-Lloyd as the youngest child—that play out second by second as if by some new form of direct transmission from the artist’s memory bank. There is not a single second of this electrifying debut that doesn’t feel 100% rooted in personal experience. Shoplifters Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2018, 121m Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner is a heartrending glimpse into an often invisible segment of Japanese society: those struggling to stay afloat in the face of crushing poverty. On the the margins of Tokyo, a most unusual “family”—a collection of societal castoffs united by their shared outsiderhood and fierce loyalty to one another—survives by petty stealing and grifting. When they welcome into their fold a young girl who’s been abused by her parents, they risk exposing themselves to the authorities and upending their tenuous, below-the-radar existence. The director’s latest masterful, richly observed human drama makes the quietly radical case that it is love—not blood—that defines a family. A Magnolia Pictures release. Sorry Angel Dir. Christophe Honoré, France, 2018, 132m North American Premiere The ever-unpredictable Christophe Honoré (Love Songs) returns with perhaps his most personal, emotionally rich work yet. At once an intimate chronicle of a romance and a sprawling portrait of gay life in early 1990s France, Sorry Angel follows the intertwining journeys of Jacques (Pierre Deladonchamps), a worldly, HIV-positive Parisian writer confronting his own mortality, and Arthur (Vincent Lacoste), a curious, carefree university student just beginning to live. Brought together by chance, the men find themselves navigating a casual fling that gradually deepens into a tender, transformative bond. Graced with vivid, complex characters and inspired flights of cinematic imagination, this is a vibrant, life-affirming celebration of love, friendship, and human connection. Released by Strand Releasing. Too Late to Die Young Dir. Dominga Sotomayor, Chile/Brazil/Argentina/Netherlands/Qatar, 2018, 110m U.S. Premiere The year 1990 was when Chile transitioned to democracy, but all of that seems a world away for 16-year-old Sofia, who lives far off the grid in a mountain enclave of artists and bohemians. Too Late to Die Young takes place during the hot, languorous days between Christmas and New Year’s Day, when the troubling realities of the adult world—and the elemental forces of nature—begin to intrude on her teenage idyll. Shot in dreamily diaphanous, sun-splashed images and set to period-perfect pop, the second feature from one of Latin American cinema’s most artful and distinctive voices is at once nostalgic and piercing, a portrait of a young woman—and a country—on the cusp of exhilarating and terrifying change. Transit Dir. Christian Petzold, Germany/France, 2018, 101m U.S. Premiere In Christian Petzold’s brilliant and haunting adaptation of German novelist Anna Seghers’s 1942 book Transit Visa, a hollowed-out European refugee (Franz Rogowski), who has escaped from two concentration camps, arrives in Marseille assuming the identity of a dead novelist whose papers he is carrying. There he enters the arid, threadbare world of the refugee community, and becomes enmeshed in the lives of a desperate young mother and son, and a mysterious woman named Marie (Paula Beer). Transit is a film told in two tenses: 1940 and right now, historic past and immediate present, like two translucent panes held up to the light and mysteriously contrasting and blending. Wildlife Dir. Paul Dano, USA, 2018, 104m In the impressive directorial debut from actor Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood), a carefully wrought adaptation of Richard Ford’s 1990 novel, a family comes apart one loosely stitched seam at a time. We are in the lonely expanses of the American west in the mid-’60s. An affable man (Jake Gyllenhaal), down on his luck, runs off to fight the wildfires raging in the mountains. His wife (Carey Mulligan) strikes out blindly in search of security and finds herself running amok. It is left to their young adolescent son Joe (Ed Oxenbould) to hold the center. Co-written by Zoe Kazan, Wildlife is made with a sensitivity and at a level of craft that are increasingly rare in movies. An IFC Films release.

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  • 2018 Toronto International Film Festival Reveals First Wave of Films

    [caption id="attachment_31044" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]Ben is Back Ben is Back[/caption] The Toronto International Film Festival today unveiled the first round of films premiering in the Gala and Special Presentation programs of the upcoming 43rd edition. Of the 17 Galas and 30 Special Presentations, today’s announcement includes 13 features directed by women. “We have an exceptional selection of films this year that will excite Festival audiences from all walks of life,” said Handling. “Today’s lineup showcases beloved auteurs alongside fresh voices in filmmaking, including numerous female powerhouses. The sweeping range in cinematic storytelling from around the world is a testament to the uniqueness of the films that are being made.” “Every September we invite the whole film world to Toronto, one of the most diverse, movie-mad cities in the world. I’m thrilled that we’ve been able to put together a lineup of Galas and Special Presentations that reflects Toronto’s spirit of inclusive, passionate engagement with film. We can’t wait to unveil these films for our audience.” The 43rd Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 6 to 16, 2018.

    GALAS 2018

    Beautiful Boy Felix van Groeningen, USA World Premiere Everybody Knows Asghar Farhadi, Spain/France/Italy North American Premiere First Man Damien Chazelle, USA Canadian Premiere Galveston Mélanie Laurent, USA Canadian Premiere The Hate U Give George Tillman, Jr., USA World Premiere Hidden Man Jiang Wen, China International Premiere High Life Claire Denis, Germany/France/Poland/United Kingdom World Premiere Husband Material Anurag Kashyap, India World Premiere The Kindergarten Teacher Sara Colangelo, USA Canadian Premiere The Land of Steady Habits Nicole Holofcener, USA World Premiere Life Itself Dan Fogelman, USA World Premiere The Public Emilio Estevez, USA World Premiere Red Joan Sir Trevor Nunn, United Kingdom World Premiere Shadow Zhang Yimou, China North American Premiere A Star is Born Bradley Cooper, USA North American Premiere What They Had Elizabeth Chomko, USA International Premiere Widows Steve McQueen, United Kingdom/USA World Premiere

    SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS 2018

    Ben is Back Peter Hedges, USA World Premiere Burning Lee Chang-dong, South Korea North American Premiere Can You Ever Forgive Me? Marielle Heller, USA International Premiere Capernaum Nadine Labaki, Lebanon North American Premiere Cold War Paweł Pawlikowski, Poland/United Kingdom/France Canadian Premiere Colette Wash Westmoreland, United Kingdom Canadian Premiere Dogman Matteo Garrone, Italy/France Canadian Premiere The Front Runner Jason Reitman, USA International Premiere Giant Little Ones Keith Behrman, Canada World Premiere Giant Little Ones (Les filles du soleil) Eva Husson, France International Premiere Hotel Mumbai Anthony Maras, Australia World Premiere The Hummingbird Project Kim Nguyen, Canada World Premiere If Beale Street Could Talk Barry Jenkins, USA World Premiere Manto Nandita Das, India North American Premiere Maya Mia Hansen-Løve, France World Premiere Monsters and Men Reinaldo Marcus Green, USA Canadian Premiere Special Presentations Opening Film MOUTHPIECE Patricia Rozema, Canada World Premiere Non-Fiction Olivier Assayas, France Canadian Premiere The Old Man & The Gun David Lowery, USA International Premiere Papi Chulo John Butler, Ireland World Premiere Roma Alfonso Cuarón, Mexico/USA Canadian Premiere Special Presentations Closing Film Shoplifters Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan Canadian Premiere The Sisters Brothers Jacques Audiard, USA/France/Romania/Spain North American Premiere Sunset László Nemes, Hungary/France North American Premiere Through Black Spruce Don McKellar, Canada World Premiere The Wedding Guest Michael Winterbottom, United Kingdom World Premiere The Weekend Stella Meghie, USA World Premiere Where Hands Touch Amma Asante, United Kingdom World Premiere White Boy Rick Yann Demange, USA International Premiere Wildlife Paul Dano, USA Canadian Premiere

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  • Melbourne International Film Festival Unveils 2018 Program Lineup of 374 Films

    [caption id="attachment_30671" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]The Merger The Merger[/caption] The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) today unveiled its 2018 program featuring 254 feature films, 120 shorts and 19 virtual reality experiences over 18 action-packed days of cinema. In addition to Paul Dano’s highly anticipated Wildlife, as the Opening Night Gala film, for its middle weekend Centrepiece Gala, the festival revealed that uproarious Australian comedy The Merger would have its world premiere. Based on comedian Damian Callinan’s acclaimed stage show of the same name, The Merger is the tale of a struggling small town footy team that recruits refugees to survive. Starring John Howard, Josh McConville, Fayzaal Bazzi, Kate Mulvany and Callinan himself, The Merger is a film with big laughs, a big heart and lashings of sweet and sour chicken kiev. MIFF will screen The Coming Back Out Ball Movie to bring the festival to a close. Directed by Sue Thomson and supported through the MIFF Premiere Fund, The Coming Back Out Ball Movie is a triumphant and life-affirming love letter to Australia’s original fighters for queer equality – a film that will have audiences laughing, crying and ready to dance, darling. Reflecting an extraordinary year of filmmaking, this year’s 15 Headliners represent the most buzzed about international cinema: After receiving a 15-minute standing ovation, Nadine Labaki – one of 90 female directors in this year’s program – offers Capharnaüm, winner of this year’s Jury Prize at Cannes. Centred on a 12-year-old child attempting to divorce himself from his parents, Labaki’s neorealist fable is notable for the astonishing performances she draws out from her cast of non-professional actors. In Burning, South Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong adapts author Haruki Murakami’s short story of romantic longing into a riveting and dramatic thriller. Wildly praised at Cannes, Burning set a new record for the highest-ever score in Screen International’s poll of critics at the festival. Doubling down on the sensory experience of their past works, Colombian-born filmmakers Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego bring a distinct perspective to the time-honoured rags-to-riches drug saga. Mythical in its storytelling, Birds of Passage combines eye-popping traditional costumes and culture, an immersive atmosphere of surreal imagery and glorious widescreen cinematography. Equally intense in its visceral qualities, Climax is an ecstatic and nightmarish orgy of sex, drugs and 90s club music from legendary provocateur Gaspar Noé. Winner of the Art Cinema Award at Cannes, Climax reaffirms Noé as modern cinema’s most incisive and inventive observer of humanity’s animal darkness. Oscar nominated Debra Granik – a guest of this year’s festival – returns to feature filmmaking with Leave No Trace, a humane depiction of the bond between father and daughter and the universal desire to live by your own rules. Recipient of the Cannes Best Director prize, Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War is a love story that wends its way through a partitioned Europe. Inspired by Pawlikowski’s own parents’ story, Cold War offers audiences a lyrical and emotional work replete with virtuosic black-and-white visuals and a keen sense of music. Decades in the making, director Terry Gilliam’s near-mythical riff on Cervantes’ fantastic tale, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, finally makes its way to Melbourne. Starring Adam Driver alongside Gilliam stalwart Jonathan Pryce, it’s the story of a cynical ad man trapped in the delusions of an old shoemaker who believes himself to be Don Quixote. The 2018 festival program highlights the rise of Australia’s next generation of filmmakers.  Alena Lodkina’s visually stunning feature debut Strange Colours is a story of family and estrangement set amid the alien landscape of Australia’s opal miners. With most of the characters played by actual opal miners, it’s a hypnotic dusky reverie, filled with quiet grace and power. Fellow Lab alumnus Ted Wilson however, delivers a feel-good film of family, cricket and one man’s hunt for David Boon, in his delicately poised Under the Cover of Cloud. The MIFF Premiere Fund-supported Acute Misfortune is the debut feature from renowned independent theatre director, Thomas M. Wright. A lyrical adaptation of journalist Erik Jensen’s acclaimed biography of infamous Archibald Prize-winning artist Adam Cullen played by Daniel Henshall, who will return from New York for the film’s world premiere. Also supported through the Fund, director Miranda Nation’s Undertow is a psychological thriller of grief, abuse and obsession set against the backdrop of local footy culture. From rising filmmaker Ben Hackworth comes Celeste, a literally operatic character study of loss and power and the things that tear us apart. A sumptuously shot psychological thriller starring Radha Mitchell and Nadine Garner, Celeste is a riveting statement of intent from one of Australia’s boldest cinematic voices. The stories of Australia’s Indigenous population will be brought to life in one of the most dynamic showcases of Indigenous content in the festival’s history. An exhilarating and immersive film that will be shown at Melbourne’s Planetarium, Carriberrie tells the expansive story of Indigenous Australian song and dance. Featuring Aboriginal dance theatre group Bangarra and actors Jack Charles and David Gulpilil, Carriberrie is an intimate and breathtaking showcase of Aboriginal performance and Australian landscape. A starkly different documentary and a powerful call to action, the MIFF Premiere Fund-supported Undermined: Tales from the Kimberley, from award-winning director Nicholas Wrathall (Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia), unearths the true cost of doing business in Australia’s world-famous Kimberley region; a place where mega-mining and pastoral developments threaten not just the environment but more than 200 Indigenous communities and their peoples’ sacred links to Country. In a ground-breaking work of interactive filmmaking, Thalu: Dreamtime is Now takes audiences on a journey into the modern Dreamtime stories of the western Pilbara-based Ngarluma. Directed by award-winning Ngarluma man Tyson Morwarin, this is a rare opportunity for audiences to hear these stories and to experience them through the medium of virtual reality. A tribute to an outcast musical genius; the astonishing story of three identical triplets separated at birth; the tale of a motorcycling legend; an unrestrained insight into one of music’s most provocative stars; and the story of Australia’s original working class man, all mark out this year’s documentary selection. In a coup for Melbourne audiences, MIFF will screen the world premiere of Jimmy Barnes: Working Class Boy – Mark Joffe’s captivating and compassionate portrait of one of Australia’s most well-known musical figures. Based on the best-selling memoir of the same name, the film joins Jimmy as he retraces his earliest steps through the hard streets of Glasgow and revisits childhood ghosts in South Australia. It’s a raw, yet darkly funny story set against a backdrop of never-seen-before archival footage and interviews along with captivating musical moments. Equally unflinching and honest, MATANGI/MAYA/M.I.A. presents outspoken musician M.I.A at her most candid. Winner of the Special Jury Award (World Cinema Documentary) at Sundance, this film is as dynamic, eclectic and electrifying as the artist herself. In his feature documentary debut, director Jeremy Sims turns his lens on Australia’s greatest ever professional motorcyclist – Wayne “The Wollongong Whiz” Gardner. In a film that’s as free-spirited, introspective, honest and cheeky as the man himself, Wayne offers a revealing portrait of a man who, during his career, was certainly hard to miss. Like something out of The Twilight Zone, Three Identical Strangers tells the incredible true story of triplets separated at birth…but that’s just the beginning of an even more astonishing saga. Having taken Sundance by storm, Three Identical Strangers is both a remarkable real-life tale and bona fide thriller, which will leave audiences gobsmacked. Inspired by former Prime Minister Paul Keating’s searing eulogy for Geoffrey Tozer, the Premiere Fund-supported The Eulogy explores the remarkable and tragic story of Australia’s greatest-ever, and perhaps most overlooked, pianist. Directed by Janine Hosking, the film includes Keating re-staging his famous funeral oration, as celebrated conductor Richard Gill AO embarks on a journey to restore Tozer’s legacy. From Givenchy to Gaultier, Armani to Alpha60, fashion design and style have long been influenced by cinema. In 2018, MIFF brings some of the most iconic style films to the big screen; films that launched style icons and influenced style for decades to come. In a program specially curated by Artistic Director Michelle Carey, Fashion x Cinema covers multiple genres, with each film unified by a sense of timelessness and jaw-dropping beauty. [caption id="attachment_28266" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]Alexander McQueen in MCQUEEN. McQueen[/caption] This programming strand features: McQueen, director Ian Bonhôte’s ode to one of fashion’s most storied designers; Yellow is Forbidden, where veteran documentarian Pietra Brettkelly tells the haute couture Cinderella story of China’s Guo Pei – the designer behind the famed yellow dress worn by Rihanna at the 2015 Met Gala; and Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist – an observational look at the orange-haired punk icon who rewrote the rules for the generation of designers who followed in her footsteps. Retrospective titles include: Funny Face, the film that saw Audrey Hepburn join forces with Givenchy; Berry Gordy’s rarely screened Mahogany, where Diana Ross plays an aspiring fashion designer torn between activism and a career of luxury; and Peter Weir’s inimitable Australian classic, Picnic at Hanging Rock. African Film Rediscovered is a retrospective program of recently restored and newly recovered classic African films, showcasing films from three decades and ten countries to celebrate the diversity and unique perspective of African cinema. Featuring Chronicle of the Years of Embers, the stirring, 1975 Palme d’Or winner by Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina (Algeria); Selma Baccar’s pioneering feminist essay-film, Fatma 75 (Tunisia); and Shadi Abdel Salam’s haunting classic The Night of Counting the Years (Egypt). African Film Rediscovered is an in-depth look at the continent’s most seminal filmmaking. The Italo-Crime retrospective takes a focused look at Eurocrime and poliziotteschi – a genre of Italian crime thrillers from the 60s and 70s. Considered a defining moment in the poliziotteschi genre, the retrospective kicks off with The Violent Four, a down and dirty cinema vérité-inspired thriller set in the seedy Milan underworld. Other films include: Confessions of a Police Captain, an anti-buddy cop classic that quite literally cuts the red tape and leaves it full of bullet holes; Milan Caliber 9, one of Quentin Tarantino’s greatest inspirations; and the Oscar-winning Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion – a Kafkaesque collision of fascist noir and absurdist satire that trails the powerful police chief hunting down a vicious killer: himself. Spearheaded by this year’s Palme d’Or winning Australian film, All These Creatures, MIFF Shorts will feature 90 films, as well as a specially curated (by the Harvard Film Archive) program of the intimate diary films of Bostonian artist, Anne Charlotte Robertson. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance, director Álvaro Gago delivers Matria; Israel’s Miki Polonski offers Shmama, the story of a mother and her daughter trapped in their own relationship; Australian Kerinne Jenkins brings the festival Cattle, a narrative of unspoken fears and inexplicable occurrences; and Iranian director Mojtaba Mousavi presents Mr. Deer – the tale of a deer attempting to rekindle the humanity of his fellow train passengers. In its largest iteration to date, the 2018 program has left no stone unturned. Presenting its core international and local selections alongside their regular programming strands – Experimentations, Music on Film, Night Shift, Retrospectives, Special Events and Talks – MIFF 2018 will beckon audiences everywhere to come and see another side of film.

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  • Pawel Pawlikowski’s COLD WAR to Open 2018 Sarajevo Film Festival [Trailer]

    COLD WAR by Pawel Pawlikowski Cold War by Oscar-winning director Pawel Pawlikowski, winner of the Best Director Award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival will open the 24th edition of Sarajevo Film Festival on August 10th. Cold War is a passionate love story between two people of different backgrounds and temperaments, who are fatally mismatched and yet fatefully condemned to each other. Set against the background of the Cold War in the 1950s in Poland, Berlin, Yugoslavia and Paris – the film depicts an impossible love story in impossible times. Staring in the film are Tomasz Kot, Joanna Kulig, Agata Kulesza, Jeanne Balibar and Cédric Kahn. A day after the screenings, the festival-goers will have a chance to talk with Pawlikowski within the Festival’s Coffee with… program. Pawel Pawlikowski was born in Warsaw and left Poland at the age of fourteen first for the UK, Germany and Italy, before finally settling in the UK in 1977. He studied literature and philosophy in London and Oxford. Pawlikowski started making documentary films for the BBC in the late 1980s. His documentaries, which include FROM MOSCOW TO PIETUSHKI, DOSTOEVSKY’S TRAVELS, SERBIAN EPICS, and TRIPPING WITH ZHIRINOVSKY, have won numerous international awards including an Emmy and the Prix Italia. In 1998, Pawlikowski moved into fiction with a low budget TV film, Twockers, which was followed by two full-length features, Last Resort and My Summer of Love, both of which he wrote and directed. Both films won British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards, as well as many others at festivals around the world. He made The Woman in the Fifth in 2011, and his most recent film, IDA, won the 2015 Foreign Language Academy Award, five European Film Awards, a Bafta and a Goya, among many other prizes. Pawlikowski returned to Poland in 2013 while completing Ida. He currently lives in Warsaw and teaches film direction and writing at the Wajda School. Pawlikowski visited Sarajevo in 2014 to present his film IDA at the 20th Sarajevo Film Festival, film that won the Oscar for best foreign language film. https://vimeo.com/271271263

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  • Cannes Film Festival 2018 Awards – SHOPLIFTER Wins Palme d’or, Spike Lee’s BLACKKKLANSMAN Wins Grand Prix

    [caption id="attachment_29297" align="aligncenter" width="926"]BlacKkKlansman BlacKkKlansman[/caption] The 71st Cannes Film Festival came to a close today, with the announcement of the 2018 winners, decided by the Feature Film Jury presided over by Cate Blanchett.  Shoplifters (Manbiki Kazoku directed by Kore-Eda Hirokazu was awarded the Palme d’or and BlacKkKlansman by Spike Lee won the Grand Prix.

    FEATURE FILMS

    [caption id="attachment_29298" align="aligncenter" width="926"]MANBIKI KAZOKU(Shoplifters) by KORE-EDA Hirokazu MANBIKI KAZOKU(Shoplifters) by KORE-EDA Hirokazu[/caption]

    PALME D’OR

    MANBIKI KAZOKU (Shoplifters) by KORE-EDA Hirokazu After one of their shoplifting sessions, Osamu and his son come across a little girl in the freezing cold. At first reluctant to shelter the girl, Osamu’s wife agrees to take care of her after learning of the hardships she faces. Although the family is poor, barely making enough money to survive through petty crime, they seem to live happily together until an unforeseen incident reveals hidden secrets, testing the bonds that unite them…

    GRAND PRIX

    BLACKKKLANSMAN (BlacKkKlansman) by Spike LEE Ron Stallworth, an African-American police officer from Colorado, successfully managed to infiltrate the local Ku Klux Klan and almost became the head of the local chapter.

    JURY PRIZE

    CAPHARNAÜM (Capernaum) by Nadine LABAKI INT. COURTROOM ZAIN, a 12-year-old boy, faces THE JUDGE. THE JUDGE: Why are you suing your own parents? ZAIN: For giving me life.

    BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR

    Marcello FONTE in DOGMAN by Matteo GARRONE

    BEST DIRECTOR

    ZIMNA WOJNA (Cold War) by Pawel PAWLIKOWSKI

    BEST SCREENPLAY (tie)

    Alice ROHRWACHER for LAZZARO FELICE (Happy as Lazzaro) Jafar PANAHI for SE ROKH (3 Faces)

    BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS

    Samal YESLYAMOVA in AYKA by Sergey DVORTSEVOY

    SPECIAL PALME D’OR

    LE LIVRE D’IMAGE (The Image book) by Jean-Luc GODARD

    SHORT FILMS

    PALME D’OR

    ALL THESE CREATURES by Charles WILLIAMS

    MENTION DISTINCTION BY THE JURY

    YAN BIAN SHAO NIAN (On the order) by WEI Shujun

    CAMÉRA D’OR

    GIRL by Lukas DHONT presented at UN CERTAIN REGARD The CST Jury decided to award the VULCAIN PRIZE FOR ARTIST-TECHNICIAN to: SHIN Joom-Hee artistic director, of BURNING for his exceptional contribution to the portrayal of his characters.

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  • Films by Spike Lee, Jean-Luc Godard, Nandita Das Among 2018 Cannes Film Festival Official Selection Lineup | Complete List [ VIDEO ]

    2018 Cannes Film Festival Official Selection Lineup The Cannes Film Festival yesterday announced the Official Selections of the 71st edition of the festival.  The titles include the feature films in Competition, at Un Certain Regard, Out of Competition, in Midnight Screenings and in Special Screenings. The 71st Cannes Film Festival will take place May 8 to 19, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0swRBkl11rI

    In Competition

    Opening Film Asghar FARHADI TODOS LO SABEN (EVERYBODY KNOWS)
    Stéphane BRIZÉ AT WAR Matteo GARRONE DOGMAN Jean-Luc GODARD THE IMAGE BOOK (LE LIVRE D’IMAGE) Ryusuke HAMAGUCHI NETEMO SAMETEMO (ASAKO I & II) (ASAKO I & II) Christophe HONORÉ SORRY ANGEL Eva HUSSON GIRLS OF THE SUN JIA Zhang-Ke ASH IS PUREST WHITE KORE-EDA Hirokazu SHOPLIFTERS Nadine LABAKI CAPERNAUM LEE Chang-Dong BUH-NING (BURNING) Spike LEE BLACKKKLANSMAN David Robert MITCHELL UNDER THE SILVER LAKE Jafar PANAHI THREE FACES Pawel PAWLIKOWSKI ZIMNA WOJNA (COLD WAR) Alice ROHRWACHER LAZZARO FELICE Kirill SEREBRENNIKOV LETO A.B SHAWKY YOMEDDINE

    Un Certain Regard

    Ali ABBASI GRÄNS (BORDER) Meryem BENM’BAREK SOFIA Andréa BESCOND, Eric METAYER LITTLE TICKLES BI Gan LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT Nandita DAS MANTO Antoine DESROSIÈRES SEXTAPE Lukas DHONT GIRL Vanessa FILHO ANGEL FACE Valeria GOLINO EUPHORIA Gaya JIJI MY FAVORITE FABRIC Wanuri KAHIU RAFIKI (FRIEND) Etienne KALLOS DIE STROPERS (THE HARVESTERS) Ulrich KÖHLER IN MY ROOM Luis ORTEGA EL ANGEL Adilkhan YERZHANOV THE GENTLE INDIFFERENCE OF THE WORLD

    Out of Competition

    Ron HOWARD SOLO A STAR WARS STORY Gilles LELLOUCHE LE GRAND BAIN

    Midnight Screenings

    Joe PENNA ARCTIC YOON Jong-Bin GONGJAK (THE SPY GONE NORTH)

    Special Screenings

    Aditya ASSARAT, Wisit SASANATIENG, Chulayarnon SRIPHOL, Apichatpong WEERASETHAKUL 10 YEARS IN THAILAND Nicolas CHAMPEAUX, Gilles PORTE THE STATE AGAINST MANDELA AND THE OTHERS Carlos DIEGUES O GRANDE CIRCO MÍSTICO (THE GREAT MYSTICAL CIRCUS) Romain GOUPIL LA TRAVERSÉE Michel TOESCA TO THE FOUR WINDS WANG Bing DEAD SOULS Wim WENDERS POPE FRANCIS – A MAN OF HIS WORD

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