The 30th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) will open with All is True directed by Kenneth Branagh on Friday, January 4, and close with Ladies in Black, directed by Bruce Beresford on Sunday, January 13. The Festival will screen 223 films from 78 countries, with a focus on cinema from France, India and Mexico, Premieres, Talking Pictures, Book to Screen, Special Presentations, FLOS: Foreign Language Oscar Submissions, Gay!La, Local Spotlight, Modern Masters, True Stories, World Cinema Now, a 30-film retrospective of selections from past festivals and more.
In All is True, Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench and Ian McKellen star in Branagh’s intimate, revelatory portrait of William Shakespeare in the last act of his life. His career over, he returns to his home in Stratford-upon-Avon to encounter old ghosts, old loves, and his resentful family. Branagh is expected to attend.
Ladies in Black, set in Sydney in 1959, Oscar®-nominated writer/director Bruce Beresford takes us back to the heyday of glamorous upscale department stores, when a concierge met you at the door and clerks wore gloves. The film from Lumila Films stars Julia Ormond, Angourie Rice, Rachael Taylor, Ryan Corr, Shane Jacobson and Alison McGirr. Beresford, Ormond, Taylor and McGirr are expected to attend.
Girl by Lukas Dhont[/caption]
The Zurich Film Festival awarded their 2018 Golden Eye for International Feature Film to 
Elisabeth Moss in HER SMELL[/caption]
Highlighting rising feature film directors and the best of independent filmmaking, the American Film Institute announced today the films that will be featured in the New Auteurs and American Independents sections at AFI FEST 2018 presented by Audi.
New Auteurs is the festival’s platform for upcoming filmmakers from all over the world to showcase their new films. This year, the section is comprised of 18 films, with 12 helmed by female filmmakers.
The American Independents section represents the best of independent filmmaking this year. Pushing boundaries of form and content across narrative and documentary cinema, this section includes 10 films — half of which are directed by women — from both new voices and filmmakers returning to AFI FEST.
“The New Auteurs and American Independents sections are where you will find some of the boldest and most experimental work in the festival,” said Lane Kneedler, Director of Programming, AFI Festivals. “We encourage audiences to explore these unique films, and become acquainted with the emerging and provocative voices of their directors.”
AFI FEST takes place November 8–15, 2018, in the heart of Hollywood. Screenings, Galas and other events will be held at the TCL Chinese Theatre, the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres, the Egyptian Theatre and The Hollywood Roosevelt. The Opening Night Gala will be the World Premiere of 
Science Fair directed by Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster[/caption]
The Calgary International Film Festival has revealed the first six youth focused films coming to the 19th annual festival from September 19 to 30, 2018.
The films were selected by a group of Calgary high school students recruited by the Calgary International Film Festival for its new Generation Next program. With the help of the festival’s experienced film programming team, the students picked six youth-focused films from a roster of new films from around the world.
The six films will have special screenings for high school classes participating in the Generation Next program. These same films will also screen as part of the regular festival lineup. Schedule information and individual ticket sales will be announced August 28.
The six Generation Next films are as follows:
FILM SCHOOL AFRICA: Nathan Pfaff’s powerful and heartwarming feature directorial debut follows Katie Taylor, a Los Angeles casting director, as she teaches filmmaking to youth in an impoverished South African community.
Winner documentary “The Silence of Others” by Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar with presenter Ana David[/caption]
The votes are in and the 20th Panorama Audience Awards of the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival go to 
Panorama Audience Award. Winner movie: Profiles by Timur Bekmambetov
Styx[/caption]
The 2018 Berlin International Film Festival has revealed the full lineup of the Panorama program, which will feature a total of 47 films from 40 countries, with 37 world premieres and 16 directorial debuts. 20 films will be screened in the scope of Panorama Dokumente , while 27 fiction features are shown in Panorama Special as well as the main program.
The section takes a look at Wolfgang Fischer’s Styx , which will open Panorama Special on February 16 at Zoo Palace. Nearly dialogue-free, the film tells the story of a female doctor on a sailing vacation.
A Czech production opens Panorama Dokumente. Jan Gebert’s Až přijde válka ( When the War Comes ) is the global trend of a socially acceptable form of nationalism using the example of the Slovak Slovenski Branci Slovak paramilitary organization. Árpád Bogdán’s feature film Genezis ( Genesis ) takes place on the series of attacks on Roma in Hungary in 2008/2009, exposing their effects on the victimized families and the community as well as casting light on the failures of the Hungarian judicial system pursuit of those guilty of crimes perpetrated under the dictatorial Franco regime is depicted in The Silence of Others, produced by Pedro Almodóvar. Former Brazilian president Dilma Roussef’s impeachment can be witnessed firsthand in O processo ( The Trial ).
In Generation Wealth , Lauren Greenfield raises awareness for the self-indulgent quest for luxury and the total surrender to vanity leading to a sort of “ultra-decadence,” while in Lemonade , produced by Cristian Mungiu, the American Dream remains tauntingly out of reach for those who can not afford to buy a piece of it. In the French-German production Game Girls , two women try to escape life on Skid Row, the USA’s “Capital City of the Homeless”. Shakedown immerses the viewer in the Afro-American queer strip club scene of Los Angeles 1990s, relating its protagonists’ search for freedom and self-determination to great immediacy. In the Italian production country, Iranian director Babak Jalali who is defending their cultural identity with dignity.
Family dynamics under the microscope: In Al Gami’ya ( What Comes Around ), the residents of one of Cairo’s poorest districts have developed a bank-free financing system for themselves. Two intimate portraits of rural conflict, set in Central China’s Henan province and the German state of Saxony-Anhalt respectively, are drawn in Jordan Schiele’s The Silk and the Flame and Rosa Hannah Ziegler’s family life ( Family Life ). Yang Mingming’s debut film Rou Qing Shi ( Girls Always Happy ) showcases the verbal duels of an odd mother-daughter duo looking for happiness in style or daydreams of getting rich quick. In La enfermedad del domingo ( Sunday’s Illness ), a mother and her daughter return to one another following years of estrangement. In Jibril , her final work for the Babelsberg University of Applied Sciences KONRAD WOLF, Henrika Kull depicts the isolation and love in the interaction between a single mom and a prison inmate.
The Argentinian production Marilyn and the Brazilian film Tinta Bruta ( Hard Paint ) both show the isolation and the inherent in their protagonists’ search for their place in the world. In the mafia tale La terra dell ‘abbastanza ( Boys Cry ), two young men discover an ostensibly simple way out of a sticky situation. A complex web of responsibilities is included in the two instalments of the miniseries Ondes de choc ( Shock Waves ), directed by Lionel Baier and Ursula Meier.
Three further films serve as reflections on cinema itself: Mes provinciales ( A Paris Education ), which is set in a Parisian millennial student milieu; Depending vois rouge ( I See Red People ), In Which Bojina Payanotova Confronts her parents With Their possible connections to the Bulgarian secret police; and Hotel Jugoslavija , in which director Nicolas Wagnières elevates at abandoned Grand Hotel to the status of contemporary witness to history, acting on his principle of “filming to retain and regain”.
Fluid boundaries between reality and fiction are especially present in four productions. Xiao Mei investigates the enigma surrounding the disappearance of a young woman while the dark fairy tale Koly padayut pereva ( When the Trees Fall ) includes the frightening and enchanting experiences of three generations of women. In a hybrid form between fiction and documentary film, Trinta Lumes ( Thirty Souls ) reimagines the Galician backcountry as a mythical place populated by both the living and the dead. Finally, in the deceptively calm flow of horizon ‘s ( Horizon ) images, a man is at risk of losing his footing in life after a separation.
The hard reality reflected in two productions from India and the Democratic Republic of the Congo was in stark contrast in this context. In Garbage , a young woman’s endures a nightmare of male violence. Kinshasa Makambo on the other hand provides insight into the brutal everyday existence of Congolese resistance fighters.
In addition to their appearance in Yocho , cinematic dystopias and allegories of reality are featured in Kim Ki-duk’s Inkan, gongkan, sikan grigo inkan ( Human, Space, Time and Human ) , in which of the widely differing backgrounds assembled on a warship develop a bestial need for patriarchal domination. From Iran comes the film Hojoom (Invasion ), which adeptly establishes an oppressive mood with its post-apocalyptic science-fiction world devoid of sunlight.
Partisan takes a look back at Frank Castorf’s twenty-five year legacy at Berlin’s Volksbühne theater. Chilly Gonzales, self-proclaimed president of the Berlin Underground, is the subject of Shut Up and Play the Piano . MATANGI / MAYA / MIA The Sri Lankan Resistance artist portrays the controversial star between the labels attached to the music and media industries. In Idris Elba’s directorial debut, Yardie , the score by Dickon Hinchcliffe (“Tindersticks”) accentuates the journey of a young man from Kingston to London .
Al Gami’ya ( What Comes Around ) – Lebanon / Egypt / Greece / Qatar / Slovenia
By Reem Saleh
Documentary
World Premiere
Až přijde válka ( When the War Comes ) – Czech Republic / Croatia
By Jan Gebert
Documentary
World Premiere
La enfermedad del domingo ( Sunday’s Illness ) – Spain
By Ramón Salazar
With Bárbara Lennie, Susi Sánchez, Greta Fernández, Miguel Ángel Solá, Richard Bohringer
World premiere
Familienleben ( Family Life ) – Germany
By Rosa Hannah Ziegler
Documentary
World Premiere
Game Girls – France / Germany
By Alina Skrzeszewska
Documentary
World Premiere
Garbage – India
By Q
With Tanmay Dhanania, Trimala Adhikari, Satarupa The
World Premiere
Bixa Travesty (Tranny Fag)[/caption]
The first eleven films have been confirmed for the Panorama program of the upcoming 2018 Berlin International Film Festival.
In the German documentary Zentralflughafen THF (Central Airport THF), Brazilian-Algerian director Karim Aïnouz films the everyday lives of refugees in the hangars of the defunct Berlin airport Tempelhof. While they dream of having finally reached their destination, Berliners flee from their everyday lives to the public park on Tempelhofer Feld.
In Timur Bekmambetov’s US fiction film Profile, a British journalist goes undercover and infiltrates the digital propaganda channels of the so-called Islamic State, which has been mobilising ever greater numbers of young women from Europe. Her daily internet contacts with ISIS recruiters gradually pull her in and push the limits of her investigation.
In Yocho (Yocho (Foreboding)), the latest science fiction film by Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, aliens take over human emotions. Their uncanny system of subjugation kindles a paranoia that turns individual initiative into obedience. Inspired by a manga of the same name is River’s Edge by Isao Yukisada. In the 1990s, shortly after the collapse of the economic boom in Japan, a group of young people struggle to reconnect with their feelings. Anger and frustration unleash a frenzy of sex and turmoil.
Four productions from Latin America have already been confirmed. La omisión (The Omission), Argentinian filmmaker Sebastián Schjaer’s first full-length fiction film, intimately depicts a transient worker. Wrapped in thick winter clothing, she defies the cold of Tierra del Fuego and the expectations put on her as a young mother. Also from Argentina is Malambo, el hombre bueno (Malambo, the Good Man) by Santiago Loza. Mesmerizing black-and-white images tell the story of a malambo dancer whose body becomes his adversary. The “malambistas” train a lifetime for competitions – and when a dancer finally wins he has to retire. A struggle for freedom in which torment and fulfilment are remarkably one. In dense images, the Brazilian documentary Ex-Pajé (Ex Shaman) by Luiz Bolognesi shows the imminent ethnocide of the indigenous Paiter Suruí who live in the Amazon basin. A former Christianized shaman turns to the spirits he had abandoned in order to preserve their cultural identity.
Another film from Brazil is dealing with “body politics”: Bixa Travesty (Tranny Fag). The female trans*body becomes a political means of expression in both public and private space. The black, transgender singer Linn da Quebrada deconstructs how alpha males conceive of themselves. Kiko Goifman and Claudia Priscilla portray a charismatic artist who reflects on gender and has an extraordinary stage presence.
The dreamlike cinematographic poem Obscuro Barroco by Greek director Evangelia Kranioti focuses on a transgender Brazilian personality: Luana Muniz (1961-2017), icon of queer subculture, drifts through the world of Rio de Janeiro, a city of extremes, with its political conflicts, carnival masquerades, and novel bodies whose transformations no longer acknowledge clear gender lines.
Two works deal with another important topic of the Panorama 2018 – “resistance to machismo”: La omisión and the Austrian fiction film L’Animale by Katharina Mückstein, where an 18-year-old high school graduate and her motocross clique are the source of unease in the neighbourhood. Her need to belong, her experience of male dominance and the ardent devotion to her clique arouse conflicting emotions in her.
After the success of The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 and Concerning Violence in the Panorama, Swedish filmmaker Göran Hugo Olsson will return to present his new documentary That Summer. In it he brings back the eccentric universe of the symbiotic mother-daughter duo from the documentary classic Grey Gardens. That Summer presents what was believed to have been lost: footage from the summer of 1972, filmed by Peter Beard and Lee Radziwill, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s sister. Additional material – shot by Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas, Albert Maysles, and Vincent Fremont – provides insight into the dynamics of the former artist community in the Hamptons.
L’Animale – Austria
By Katharina Mückstein
With Sophie Stockinger, Kathrin Resetarits, Dominik Warta, Julia Franz Richter, Jack Hofer, Dominic Marcus Singer, Simon Morzé
World premiere
Bixa Travesty (Tranny Fag) – Brazil
By Claudia Priscilla, Kiko Goifman
With Linn da Quebrada, Jup do Bairro, Liniker
Documentary
World premiere
Ex Pajé (Ex Shaman) – Brazil
By Luiz Bolognesi
Documentary
World premiere
Malambo, el hombre bueno (Malambo, the Good Man) – Argentina
By Santiago Loza
With Gaspar Jofre, Fernando Muñoz, Pablo Lugones, Nubecita Vargas, Gabriela Pastor, Carlos Defeo
World premiere
Obscuro Barroco – France / Greece
By Evangelia Kranioti
Documentary
World premiere
La omisión (The Omission) – Argentina / The Netherlands / Switzerland
By Sebastián Schjaer
With Sofía Brito, Lisandro Rodriguez, Malena Hernández Díaz, Victoria Raposo, Pablo Sigal
World premiere
Profile – USA / UK / Cyprus
By Timur Bekmambetov
With Valene Kane, Shazad Latif, Christine Adams, Morgan Watkins, Amir Rahimzadeh
World premiere
River’s Edge – Japan
By Isao Yukisada
With Fumi Nikaidou, Ryo Yoshizawa, SUMIRE , Shiori Doi, Aoi Morikawa
International premiere