Ioncinema

It’s awards season in France as well with today belonging to the Prix Louis Delluc awards. It’s only a two category event, but it nonetheless puts the focus on some of the best titles in French cinema with the majority of the films coming from the various sections of the past Cannes Film Festival. Among the favorites in the field of nine noms we find with the likes of Miséricorde, L’histoire de Souleymane and Le roman de Jim measuring up against Golden Bear winner by Mati Diop, while the first films category is completely dominated by Cannes offerings from the Critic’s Week, Directors’ Fortnight and Un Certain Regard sections.… Read the rest

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We sat with director Tia Kouvo to talk about her directorial debut, Family Time, which premiered in the Encounters program of the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival and selected as Finland’s official submission for consideration in the category of Best International Feature at the 97th Academy Awards. Touching on the short film project which provided the initial impetus to expand it into a feature, Kouvo talks about shooting in her grandparents’ home alongside her returning DP Jesse Jalonen to craft the film’s intimate mise en scene. Kouvo also explains specific soundtrack selections and cinematic influences for her first film, which she describes as a more realistic film about familial Christmas traditions, but overall, a hopeful one.… Read the rest

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The Big City: Kapadia Designs Lovely Portrait of Friendship and Free Will

Mumbai is a city of illusions, a character remarks in Payal Kapadia’s debut narrative feature, All We Imagine as Light. To survive, one has to buy into the illusion. Opening upon a bus moving through the city, a variety of offscreen characters share their thoughts on the difficulties of living there, a place of impermanence, a city which robs one’s time. We focus on a quiet, withdrawn woman who works as a senior nurse at a specialty hospital, and slowly begin to learn about her life, which includes a new roommate, a much younger nurse who’s just embarked on a clandestine romance.… Read the rest

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Eternity and a Day: Scott Rehashes the Dying Embers of an Empire

“The movie doesn’t have to be great; it can be stupid and empty and you can still have the joy of a good performance, or the joy in just a good line,” wrote Pauline Kale in her 1969 essay “Trash, Art, and the Movies.” The endlessly quotable, controversial prose of Kael might as well be an underwhelming way to describe Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II, the long-awaited sequel to his celebrated Best Picture winner Gladiator (2000), a film which resuscitated the auteur’s lengthy slump through the 1990s and set him on a perennial course of (mostly) highly anticipated projects for the past twenty-four years.… Read the rest

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Agnes of God: Franz & Fiala’s Bleak Portrait of Women & Madness

“A Witch is born out of the true hungers of her time,” wrote Ray Bradbury in one of his stories from Long After Midnight (1976), as succinct a phrase as any to convey the cultural facets which historically plagued troubled or troubling women, almost always to forge their doom. The Devil’s Bath, the third feature from Austrian directing duo Veronica Franz and Severin Fiala, is not a film about witches, per se. However, their first period piece, set in 1750 Upper Austria, is most assuredly a horror story, taken from historical court records.… Read the rest

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Just ahead of the annual Black List (can you believe the list has been with us for two decades now) to be unveiled in mid-December, the Black List has named the projects and writers for its inaugural Projects Lab (with the important distinction is that they plan to direct the project). And among the six writers are developing feature projects we find Alexandra Qin – her amazing 2024 Sundance short Thirstygirl is being worked into a feature film. This year’s other writers include Dylan James Amick (The Estranged), Steve Anthopoulos (My Summer in the Human Existence), Meghan Lennox (Gay For Amy), Alex Murawski (Walking In Iowa) and Gabriella Mykal (Fuzzy).… Read the rest

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A total of seventeen awards were handed out at this year’s American Film Festival’s U.S. in Progress industry showcase, an event focused on connecting American independent film projects with Polish post-production resources. The two standout winners were first-time feature filmmakers Miles Levin and Katarina Zhu. Their debut films, Under the Lights and Bunnylovr, respectively, took home the top honors – Levin’s tale about a late teen with epilepsy wanting to hit the prom despite the likelihood of having a seizure stars Pearce Joza, Tanzyn Crawford, Lake Bell, Randall Park and Nick Offerman is produced by Vanishing Angle’s Natalie Metzger. Bunnylovr – a NYC set drama about online personas, strained relationships dealing with both isolation and connection stars Zhu in the lead with an ensemble that includes Austin Amelio, Perry Yung, Jack Kilmer, Clara Wong and Rachel Sennott (who also produces).… Read the rest

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At the American Film Festival in Wrocław, teams behind the projects selected for the U.S. in Progress—a festival industry event—pitched their films to potential buyers, film festival programmers, and Poland-based post-production companies. Under the guidance of Artistic Director Ula Śniegowska, the event acts as a matchmaking platform — think tinder-like linking between Polish post-production talent with American indie producers. Last year’s edition proved highly fruitful: several selections went on to make waves in the 2024 film festival circuit. We began the year with India Donaldson’s critical darling Good One preeming at Sundance and Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, where Tyler Taormina also screened Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.… Read the rest

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One of the more important recently new development labs on the film circuit have just unveiled their 2024 line-up. Les Arcs Film Festival’s Co-Production Village have eighteen European projects and in contention we find the likes of Sofia Alaoui, Claire Fowler and Anastasiia Solonevych. Alaoui is currently developing her sophomore feature film in Tarfaya – it finds her re-teaming with Margaux Lorier for a third time out after netting world premieres at Sundance. And speaking of Sundance, Claire Flower will be presenting her Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab workshopped Toad in France as well. Ukrainainen filmmaker Anastasiia Solonevych who worked with Under the Volcano filmmaker Damian Kocur on the Palme d’Or comp short “As it Was” is mounting what will be her feature debut film.… Read the rest

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Despite having gone into production in the summer of 2023 (in Mexico City and San Francisco), Dreams was not a film that Michel Franco wanted to rush for a 2024 drop. Today, The Match Factory officially launches sales on the project (easily be among our most anticipated features for 2025) and provides us with a better breakdown on what to expect. As we already knew, Jessica Chastain, newbie Isaac Hernández and Rupert Friend were part of the cast, but learn that Hernández plays a more significant role in the film and as was the case with Memory, Chastain will more or less be equal footing with – here we go with the synopsis:

Fernando (Hernández), a young ballet dancer from Mexico, dreams of being internationally recognized and living in the US.… Read the rest

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