Ioncinema

Earlier last month we reported that actresses Léa Drucker and Noémie Merlant were going to topline Laura Wandel’s highly anticipated sophomore feature, L’Intérêt d’Adam. We now learn via the Cineuropa folks that Anamaria Vartolomei will instead take the role that was originally assigned to Merlant. Vartolomei recently gave a masterful performance in Jessica Palud’s Being Maria (read review) and has Ana Teodora Mihai’s highly anticipated Heysel 85 in the pipeline. Production begins tomorrow until the first week of September and we’ll likely be looking at a possible Cannes premiere – a competition slot is not out of the cards.… Read the rest

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It was considered a “risky” film selection by Thierry Frémaux that divided critics but found a large swath of defenders (including our chief film critic Nicholas Bell) and now Coralie Fargeat will have its North American premiere at the fest that showcased her feature debut — Revenge (read review) back in 2017. Mubi landed the rights to The Substance prior to the film’s world premiere. In our review, Nicholas points to how it “starts out in slow, familiar territory before slamming into fever pitch for a Grand Guignol bloodbath which might just be the best bit of straight faced body horror since Cronenberg’s clutch of 1980s titles solidified its merits as a veritable sub-genre.”… Read the rest

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After showcasing three of the five Small Axe films, Steve McQueen is set to have the international premiere of Blitz at the New York Film Festival. After world premiering at the London BFI Film Festival on October 9th, he’ll be jetting down to the big apple to close out the 62nd edition. Many were scratching their heads when it was announced that the film favored a London premiere – many had the film on their Venice, Telluride and Toronto bingo cards. Apple Original Film will put this in theaters on November 1st ahead of its global premiere on Apple TV+ on November 22.… Read the rest

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Reserved for debut and sophomore films from emerging filmmakers, this year’s Toronto International Film Festival’s Discovery programme consists of two dozen feature films and it’ll include some noteworthy items beginning with the film that opens the section in Canadian writer-turned filmmaker Durga Chew-Bose‘s directorial debut Bonjour Tristesse – the book to film adaptation that follows Cécile (Lily McInerny), a young woman spending the summer in a villa in the south of France with her widowed father Raymond (Claes Bang) and his latest love interest, Elsa (Naïlia Harzoune). The spicy addition here might be in the character of the late mother’s friend Anne – played by Chloë Sevigny.… Read the rest

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Last year the likes of Nara Normande and Tião (Venice 2023 selected Sem Coração) and Mo Harawe’s (Cannes 2024 selected The Village next to Paradise) received coin for their feature film projects. Coming from countries such as Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Cameroon, Egypt, Iran, Lesotho, Nepal and Sudan, this year’s batch of ten Berlinale World Cinema Fund seelected projects include the latest from Lisandro Alonso – a new “sequel” project that we reported on last April. La Libertad doble will see Alonso revisit the protagonist (as well as the filmmaking methods) he employed for his 2001 Un Certain Regard selected La Libertad.… Read the rest

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Named after the influential film Platform (2000) by the great “Sixth Generation” master filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke, it’ll soon be a decade since TIFF introduced the Platform section – the fest’s only competition section meant to promote innovative and bold type cinema and comes with a cash award but unfortunately no trophy. Previous winners include Pablo Larraín, Pietro Marcello, Anthony Shim and last year it was Tarsem who won for Dear Jassi (we were there). This year’s batch of ten has a handful of familiar names in Mexico’s Rodrigo Prieto and Spain’s Nacho Vigalondo and Carlos Marqués-Marcet.

Prieto’s Pedro Paramo is the cinematographer directorial debut.… Read the rest

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21 films were selected for the 2024 Venice Film Festival competition and in the pack we find some surprises and several shoe-ins for the 81st edition (August 28th until September 7th). We will of course be there for wall-to-wall coverage. The big surprise title among the pack of the seven English language film has to be Dutch filmmaker Halina Reijn‘s third feature film Babygirl — an A24 project starring Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Antonio Banderas, Sophie Wilde and Jean Reno and was shot this past December. The Bodies Bodies Bodies helmer looks at power dynamics and sexuality in the workplace.… Read the rest

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21 films were selected for the 2024 Venice Film Festival competition and in the pack we find some surprises and several shoe-ins for the 81st edition (August 28th until September 7th). We will of course be there for wall-to-wall coverage. The big surprise title among the pack of the seven English language film has to be Dutch filmmaker Halina Reijn‘s third feature film Babygirl — an A24 project starring Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Antonio Banderas, Sophie Wilde and Jean Reno and was shot this past December. The Bodies Bodies Bodies helmer looks at power dynamics and sexuality in the workplace.… Read the rest

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While we might still be on the fence about what is being described as a first-person shooter-type experience in Harmony Korine‘s Baby Invasion, but the Venice Film Festival’s Out of Competition section lineup could be just as daring as the films selected for the competition. We have established filmmakers giving another go at it from Pupi Avati‘s gothic-friendly L’Orto Americano to Claude Lelouch‘s latest feature which caps off a trilogy in Finalement, and then we have a burst of Asian cinema auteurs from Kurosawa Kiyoshi in Cloud to a just over one hour narrative from Takeshi Kitano in Broken Rage to Lav Diaz once again testing our patience with the over four hour journey in Phantosmia.… Read the rest

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The Un Certain Regard section in Venice, recent winners of the Horizons (Orizzonti) section include Gábor Reisz’s Explanation for Everything, Houman Seyyedi’s World War III and Valentyn Vasyanovych’s Atlantis. Some of the standouts in the selection of nineteen films include Alexandros Avranas‘ Quiet Life – a fascinating portrait about asylum-seekers who fled to Sweden and some crazy syndrome that see their children fall into a coma-type called Resignation Syndrome or Apathy, explained as a self-protection against a feeling of fear. Avranas won the Silver Lion for Best Director for Miss Violence in 2013 and this latest oeuvre is produced by Films du Worso’s Sylvie Pialat.… Read the rest

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