Ioncinema

The first batch of titles were announced in August, and now with Locarno and Venice firming up the selection process, we now have our second wave of films. Sixteen feature films (nominations of the European Film Awards will be revealed on 5 November) have been added and we find the likes of Venice competition winners in Pedro Almodóvar, Maura Delpero and Dea Kulumbegashvili, Orizzonti section winner Bogdan Mureşanu, Locarno Golden Leopard winner by Saulė Bliuvaitė and Toronto preemed Hard Truths by master filmmaker Mike Leigh.

APRIL directed by Dea Kulumbegashvili (Georgia, France, Italy)
CONCLAVE directed by Edward Berger (UK, USA)
HARD TRUTHS directed by Mike Leigh (UK, Spain)
HARVEST directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari (UK, Germany, Greece, France, USA)
MISERICORDIA directed by Emma Dante (Italy)
MOON directed by Kurdwin Ayub (Austria)
MR.… Read the rest

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Confirming what we had reported back in April, Variety confirms that Lisandro Alonso‘s next project will indeed be him revisiting the film character we first visited back in 2001’s La libertad. La libertad doble is being mounted by Alonso’s 4L, Fortuna Films’ Ilse Hughan, Planta’s Fernando Bascuñán and Deptford Film’s Augusto Matte. Co-producers include The Match Factory and Les Films. Production is planned for early 2025 – so we are looking at a probable 2026 drop.

This follows Misael (Misael Saavedra) who, some 25 years later, continues to live alone, wielding his axe to fell trees deep in the forest, far from the presence of others.… Read the rest

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After sliding back into the docu realm, French Canadian filmmaker Geneviève Dulude-De Celles has returned to fiction with Petite rose (formerly titled Fleur bleue) – a co-production between Canada, Belgium and Bugaria. Filming began this week in Montreal. This was selected as part of the Venice Gap-Financing Market in 2023 and received some coin via Eurimages earlier this year. Dulude-De Celles had her fiction feature debut Une Colonie (2018) premiere at the Berlinale. Colonelle films’ Sarah Mannering and Fanny Drew will produce. We’re guessing this works with themes of themes of displacement, immigration, nostalgia, and what is ultimately gained and lost when uprooting.… Read the rest

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Recent submissions for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards are quickly piling up. Jordan has entered My Sweet Land (Sheffield DocFest), Switzerland has chosen Klaudia Reynicke’s Reinas (Sundance premiere), the United Kingdom selected Sandhya Suri’s Santosh (Un Certain Regard), and India made the expected-unexpected choice of Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies. Iran submitted Babak Lotfi Khajepasha’s In the Arms of the Tree, Argentina opted for Luis Ortega’s Kill The Jockey (Venice competition), and Mexico is backing Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez’s Sujo (a big Sundance winner). However, it’s the entries from Italy, Brazil, and France that are truly stealing the spotlight.… Read the rest

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Multiverse of Sadness: Kroger Captivates with Cryptic Cold War Sci-Fi Exploit

Although it will invariably be confused with the 2014 Stephen Hawking biopic, Timm Kröger’s fascinating sophomore feature The Universal Theory (Die Theorie Von Allem) blends modern cinema’s excessive obsession with the notion of the multiverse into a gloomy, sci-fi neo noir. It’s also a fatalistic, overcast love story, reminiscent of everything from Solaris (1972) to Alain Resnais’ Je t’aime Je T’aime (1968), utilizing contemporary fascinations folded into vintage aesthetics. In the wake of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023), Kröger’s film arrives as if from some fortuitous concentric time loop to revel in the ripple effects of the atomic bomb.… Read the rest

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Atlas Farted: Coppola’s Labor of Love a Lackluster Saga

While he’s one of the greatest film directors of all time, mostly thanks to a handful of films he delivered during the 1970s New American Cinema movement, Francis Ford Coppola’s long-gestating, wholly self-financed Megalopolis is an unfortunate dud rife with archaic tendencies and stillborn ideas. Out of touch in almost every conceivable way, it’s the riskiest endeavor of his career, which is saying something considering the innovative risks taken with some of his greatest achievements (Apocalypse Now, 1979) and formidable financial misfires (One From the Heart, 1981).… Read the rest

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Woman of Substance: Fargeat Rejuvenates Body Horror with Pulpy Parable

To borrow a succinct phrase from Beyonce, ‘pretty hurts,’ a sentiment quivering through Coraline Fargeat’s morbidly entertaining sophomore feature, The Substance. Its simplistic title eventually reveals itself to be a vicious bit of irony, considering it refers to a magical titular potion which seems fashioned for those who are actually lacking substance, their worth defined solely by the superficiality of youth and beauty. Los Angeles turns out to be ground zero for this unique riff on Death Becomes Her (1992), plus a formidable array of other cult titles in what is essentially a ‘be careful what you wish for’ moral fable.… Read the rest

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One of the projects at the Sundance Institute’s 2017 Screenwriters Lab was a film called ‘Omni Loop Blues.’ Flash forward into 2024 and Bernardo Britto‘s Omni Loop premiered at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival and is about to launch theatrically via the Magnolia Pictures folks. Britto was born in Rio de Janeiro, grew up in the U.S. and gave us some award-winning shorts prior to his 2016 directorial debut Jacqueline (Argentine) (a Sundance NEXT Section selection – see our trading card for him). Here is our interview with the filmmaker at the Sundance directly after the labs:

A quantum physicist (Mary-Louise Parker) finds herself stuck in a time loop, with a black hole growing in her chest and only a week to live.… Read the rest

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Keeping up with her pattern of releasing a film roughly every three years, Kelly Reichardt’s next project, The Mastermind, is one extra America indie auteur item to watch out for and if I were Venice Film Festival’s Alberto Barbera, I’d be keeping a close eye on its development. According to The World of Reel, Josh O’Connor is set to star in the film, which would be set somewhere between the mid to late 1960s until the mid-1970s. Filming is scheduled to take place from October to November in Cincinnati, Ohio. While there’s no word yet on the production company behind it, more casting details are expected in the coming weeks.… Read the rest

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Whiplash receives a 10th Anniversary re-release – reissued with a new 4K DCP via Sony Pictures Classics and coming directly from a showcase at the 2024 Toronto Intl. Film Festival. We interviewed Damien Chazelle at Sundance back in 2014. Here is that encounter:

What Chazelle’s sophomore film has managed to do is no small feat. Won big at Sundance with the Jury and Audience awards. Crossed over into Cannes. Premiered at Telluride, TIFF and NYFF. Since opening last October 10th via the Sony Pictures Classics folks, Whiplash has steadily found its audience and is awkwardly landing noms for during awards season with Gotham and the Indie Spirits showing some love to Chazelle and the folk in the tech categories, but also the film’s star pairing of Miles Teller and J.K… Read the rest

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