Pebbles directed by P.S. Vinothraj is India’s official Oscar submission for Best International Feature Film at the 94th Academy Awards. In the film starring Chellapandi, Karuththadaiyaan, an alcoholic father embarks on a journey, dragging his young son along to fetch back his wife who had left him after his constant abuse.
The 2021 Asian World Film Festival (AWFF) unveiled its Competition, Centerpiece, and Special Screenings slate. The closing night film will be South Korea’s official submission to the 2022 Academy Awards, Escape from Mogadishu. The AWFF, now in its seventh year, will take place November 1 – 11, 2021 at the Landmark Theater, West Pico Blvd., Los Angeles.
The Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center announced the 50th anniversary edition of New Directors/New Films (ND/NF), available April 28 – May 8 via virtual cinema, with in-person screenings extending through May 13 at FLC. This year’s festival will introduce 27 features and 11 shorts to audiences nationwide in the MoMA and FLC virtual cinemas, and to New Yorkers at Film at Lincoln Center.
Southern India-set Pebbles by Vinothraj P.S won the Tiger Award, while I Comete – A Corsican Summer by French filmmaker Pascal Tagnati and Looking for Venera by Norika Sefa from Kosovo both won Special Jury Awards at the expanded 50th anniversary edition of International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). The VPRO Big Screen Award went to El perro que no calla by Ana Katz from Argentina and Quo Vadis, Aida? by Bosnian filmmaker Jasmila Žbanić won the BankGiro Loterij Audience Award.
International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2021 will open with the international premiere of absurdist tragicomedy Riders of Justice by Danish filmmaker Anders Thomas Jensen, starring Mads Mikkelsen. Riders of Justice with Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas centers on the deployed military man Markus who has to go home to his teenage daughter, Mathilde, when his wife dies in a tragic train accident. It seems to be plain bad luck – until the mathematics geek Otto shows up with his two eccentric colleagues, Lennart and Emmenthaler. Otto was also a passenger on the wrecked train. He is convinced someone must have been behind it. As the clues pile up, it becomes clear to Markus that his wife became a random casualty of what looks like a carefully orchestrated assassination.
