Berlinale alumni in Park Chan-wook, Justine Triet and the Eat The Night tandem of Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel have been selected to present their latest works in the Berlinale Shorts 2025 – To Be in This World. As we await Park Chan-wook’s next feature film (currently in production) No Other Choice, he re-teamed with Park Chan-kyong for Paranmanjang (aka Night Fishing). It’s coined as a fairy tale about death and reincarnation, transmigration and the sounds of music. From Palme d’Or winning director for Anatomy of a Fall, we find Triet re-teaming with actress Laetitia Dosch (2013’s Age of Panic) for Vilaine fille mauvais garçon (Two Ships).… Read the rest
Last year’s top two documentary titles from the Berlinale continue there winning ways landing the top prizes at last night’s Cinema Eye Honors. Docus that premiered at Sundance dominated the other major categories, with Soundtrack to a Coup d’État, Union, Sugarcane, and The Remarkable Life of Ibelin all taking home awards. As we creep up towards the Oscar noms date, No Other Land (they also took the Best Debut doc) and Dahomey are probable locks for the top five. Here are all the winners
Nonfiction Feature
“No Other Land,” Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor, Fabien Greenberg, Bård Kjøge Rønning, Julius Pollux Rothlaender, and Bård Harazi Farbu
Direction
Mati Diop for “Dahomey”
Editing
Rik Chaubet for “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat”
Production
Brett Story, Stephen Maing, Mars Verrone, Samantha Curley, and Martin DiCicco for “Union”
Cinematography
Christopher LaMarca and Emily Kassie for “Sugarcane”
Original Music Score
Uno Helmersson for “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin”
Sound Design
Ranko Pauković and Alek Goosse for “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat”
Visual Design
Brendan Dawes for “Eno”
Audience Choice Prize
“Porcelain War,” Directed by Brendan Bellomo, and Slava Leontyev
Debut Feature
“No Other Land,” Directed by Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, and Rachel Szor
Unforgettables
Shiori Ito for “Black Box Diaries”
Brian Eno for “Eno”
Lhakpa Sherpa for “Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa”
Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra for “No Other Land”
Patrice Jetter for “Patrice: The Movie”
Genna Marvin for “Queendom”
Chris Smalls for “Union”
Harper Steele for “Will and Harper”
Nonfiction Short
“Incident,” Directed by Bill Morrison
Broadcast Film
“Slave Play.… Read the rest
We got a quick blurb update from the folks at Variety: After campaigning since Cannes, Payal Kapadia has offered a glimpse into the near future and it seems she’s planning to continue exploring Mumbai as the setting for a cityscape trilogy. The Cannes Grand Prix-winning filmmaker is currently in the writing phase of her third feature, so it’s likely we won’t see the film until 2026 at the earliest. It’s way too early to tell what thematic or story or backdrop elements will carry over from one film to the next but she’ll likely find a lot of financing partners seeing that this lit up the film festival and year-end awards circuits.… Read the rest
The New York Film Critics Circle Awards gave Brady Corbet‘s Venice and Golden Globe winning The Brutalist the top honors in the Best Film and Best Actor categories, while RaMell Ross‘ Nickel Boys is still very much in the race landing Best Director and Cinematography mentions here. Kieran Culkin is confirming his status as the frontrunner for the Best Supporting perf category with his take in A Real Pain while Marianne Jean-Baptiste is still very much in fight mode winning Best Actress for her take in Hard Truths. Flow grabbed Best Animation win, No Other Land landed the Best Non-Fic, and All We Imagine as Light was victor over the likes of Emilia Pérez for Best International.… Read the rest
Selected for this year’s Telluride, Toronto and New York Film Festivals, winner of the Panorama Audience Award for Best Documentary Film at the 2024 Berlinale (and just last week it landed the grand public prize of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam), Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor’s No Other Land has been selected as the Indie Film Site Network’s Network Advocate Award. Established in 2022 to highlight independent films each year that illuminate a humanitarian or environmental issue with a singular artistic vision. The top prize is awarded one million (1M) media impressions across the Indie Film Site Network, which represents The Film Stage, Hammer to Nail, RogerEbert.com,… Read the rest
The Traveler Has Come: Huppert Shines in Latest Collaboration with Sang-soo
There are few directors who seem to rightly channel the comic side of Isabelle Huppert’s unique strangeness than the perennial Hong Sang-soo. Having worked together on the lovely In Another Country (2012), in which she stars as a quartet of different foreign women in South Korea, and the slight lark Claire’s Camera (2017), they’ve united once again for an equally delicate venture, A Traveler’s Needs. Once again, Huppert is a stranger in a strange land as a woman who has her own unique way of teaching French to a growing clientele of Korean women and enjoys having a few drinks (this time around for Sang-soo, the drink of choice is makgeolli, not soju).… Read the rest
In conjunction with her new narrative feature No Address, which will be released in 2025, director Julia Verdin and co-director Stephen Wollwerth embarked on a simultaneous documentary project about homelessness across the country with Americans with No Address. Her crew took a bus to twenty cities over three weeks, conducting over one-hundred and seventy-five interviews as a means to research common issues and various solutions utilized to combat a complex crisis. We sat with director Julia Verdin plus actors Xander Berkley and William Baldwin, who appeared in both the narrative and documentary feature, as they relay their thoughts and experiences.… Read the rest
Production is officially underway on Alice Winocour‘s fifth feature film, Coutures aka Stitches, and the casting announcements keep getting bigger. Joining yesterday’s reveal of Angelina Jolie are Louis Garrel and Ella Rumpf who reteams with her Raw co-star Garance Marillier, model Anyier Anei and Finnegan Oldfield who round out the ensemble. Variety reports that filming is currently underway in Paris. Other behind the line players involved include cinematographer Andre Chemetoff (he just completed Shaden Safieddine Tazi’s Un jour tout va disparaitre), costume designer Pascaline Chavanne, and production designer Florian Sanson. Producers include CG Cinéma’s Charles Gillibert and Closer Media’s Zhang Xin and William Horberg.… Read the rest
We sat with director Soi Cheang to talk about his latest film, Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, which premiered in the Midnight section of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and selected as Hong Kong’s official submission for consideration in the category of Best International Feature at the 97th Academy Awards. Cheang clarifies some misconceptions on the project’s origins previously reported in the Western media while also touching on the significant set design of the film in reconstructing a specific portion of 1980s Hong Kong, Kowloon City. Cheang talks about working with the legendary Sammo Hung, as well as how the film’s significant box office success has generated plans for a franchise.… Read the rest
Back in September we reported that French filmmaker Alice Winocour had begun pre-production on her fifth feature film and a major casting announcement has just landed. Variety reports that Angelina Jolie has been cast (one of three central women characters in the film) in Coutures aka “Stitches.”
Following in the fashion walkways portraits of fellow French filmmakers Olivier Assayas (Personal Shopper) and Bertrand Bonello (Saint Laurent), this French and English language film is set in the world of high fashion and unfolds in Paris. Jolie stars in the movie as a filmmaker and is one of three women whose lives will collide during Fashion Week.… Read the rest