Jaden Thompson The Newport Beach Film Festival, which will run from Oct. 12-19 this year, has announced their opening and closing night films. Marco Perego’s “The Absence of Eden,” which stars Zoë Saldana, will open the festival on Oct.
08.09.2023 - 12:19 / variety.com
Gregg Goldstein When Hayao Miyazaki’s semi-autobiographical fantasy “The Boy and the Heron” has its international premiere Sept. 7, it won’t just be the first animated film to open TIFF, or the master director’s first in a decade. It will be part of an unexpected resurgence of animated work for cineastes at major international festivals.
“When we started doing [2017’s] ‘Loving Vincent,’ only one adult animated film every five years got any kind of recognition,” says Hugh Welchman, who directed ”Vincent” and his Sept. 8 world premiere “The Peasants” with wife D.K. Welchman.
“Now it seems that every year one kind of breaks out.” Their Oscar-nominated Vincent van Gogh biopic helped inspire this trend, earning $42.2 million worldwide on a $5.5 million budget. “Heron” is already continuing arthouse animation’s successful run, taking in $50.6 million since July in Japan alone. And prominent fests are increasing their support: in 2019, Cannes launched an Animation Day in partnership with the Annecy International Animation Film Festival.
This awards season is bringing out even more colorful contenders. On Sept. 7, TIFF presents the Canadian premiere of Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal’s musical mystery “They Shot the Piano Player” following its Telluride bow, and the North American premiere of Pablo Berger’s dialogue-free friendship tale “Robot Dreams.” Bankside Films will host a Sept 8.
market screening of Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry’s shipwreck drama “Kensuke’s Kingdom.” Animation is also springing up in live-action films. Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss’ Telluride premiere, the National Geographic doc “The Mission,” uses animated sequences to illustrate the childhood of its subject. And director/co-writer/actor Kristin Scott
.Jaden Thompson The Newport Beach Film Festival, which will run from Oct. 12-19 this year, has announced their opening and closing night films. Marco Perego’s “The Absence of Eden,” which stars Zoë Saldana, will open the festival on Oct.
Maja Hoffmann has been officially confirmed as President of the Locarno Film Festival following a vote at an Extraordinary General Assembly on Wednesday.
EastEnders newcomer Jazzy Phoenix has made her debut playing the mysterious role of Nadine, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the late Lola Pearce-Brown (Danielle Harold). Jazzy who has been a professional actress for the past five years, made her first appearance on the hit BBC soap on Monday, 18 September when Jay Brown (Jamie Borthwick) returned to Albert Square after a night of insomnia and believed he saw his late wife Lola from across the square.
Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Bosnian director and screenwriter Danis Tanović, whose “No Man’s Land” won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, has been selected as the president of the Official Competition Jury at the 45th edition of the Cairo Film Festival. As well as the Oscar, “No Man’s Land” won best screenplay at Cannes in 2001.
A frantic search has been launched in an effort to locate a Scots man who vanished two days ago.
Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer Actor Noah Centineo touched down at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend to rally support for Saeed Roustaee, an Iranian filmmaker sentenced to prison by his government over the latter’s film “Leila’s Brothers.” Over Friday cocktails at festival headquarters, the TIFF Bell Lightbox, the “Black Adam” star appealed to top representatives from film festivals around the world on behalf of Roustaee, who was sentenced to six months in prison after screening his feature at the Cannes Film Festival without authorization from Iran’s culture ministry. Furthermore, he would not amend the film after the ministry requested corrections.
In the realm of road movies, family ties, and the complexities of sisterhood, the Hulu/20th Century Studio offers up Quiz Lady a film that charts a familiar course. Directed by Jessica Yu and penned by Jen D’Angelo, the film boasts an ensemble cast led by the undeniable talent of Sandra Oh and Awkwafina, supported by the comedic prowess of Will Ferrell, Holland Taylor, and Jason Schwartzman.
Christopher Vourlias Six years after “Loving Vincent,” their groundbreaking biopic of the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh earned an Oscar nomination and raked in more than $50 million at the global box office, the filmmaking team behind that hit is back with a bigger, more ambitious animated feature that utilizes the same stunning hand-painted animation technique to tell an operatic story of life and love in a 19th century Polish village. “The Peasants” world premiered Sept.
Clean, green Switzerland, land of chocolate, cuckoo clocks and direct democracy, is revealed to have a history of racial abuse as ugly as any other in Giorgio Diritti’s rolling epic Lubo, showing in competition at the Venice Film Festival. German actor Franz Rogowski plays the title character, a street performer and paterfamilias who is part of Switzerland’s community of Jenisch, a nomadic people originating in Germany. Lubo’s story is a dramatically terrible one – his wife is killed in a spat with heavy-handed police and his children are taken away, all while he is being marched off to serve time in the army – but it speaks to the truth.
There’s been a lot of jealous talk about nepotism in the film world lately, but who would really want to come into the movie world as a, what, fourth-generation Huston? There are likely swords already being sharpened for Jack Huston, the handsome, charming, 40-year-old nephew of Anjelica, grandson of Jack and great-grandson of Walter. But his directing debut, Day of the Fight, which premiered this week in the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons Extra section, is certainly worthy of the family name. It’s a little earnest, sometimes a bit too style-conscious, and Huston is inclined to put performance before story every time. But the emotional input really earns its payoff in a confident, imaginatively mounted calling card.
As if to come to the aid of her national cinema after the debacle that was Roman Polanski’s The Palace, Poland’s Agnieska Holland, soon to turn 75, restores some of her homeland’s cultural dignity with a devastating exposé that angrily, and quite brilliantly, questions its humanity and political integrity. At 144 minutes, and in black and white, it is not exactly a Trojan horse, and its moral rigor does not come with a spoonful of sugar. But Green Border earns every second of that running time, and with a focus and energy that belies its directors age. Awards-wise, this may prove to be the international feature to beat.
Roman Polanski’s Venice Film Festival feature The Palace received a 3 minute ovation tonight at its world premiere screening.
Jacob Elordi is getting ready for the premiere of his new movie.
Tony Leung Chiu-wai has starred in three movies that have scooped the top prize Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and today he is receiving his very own Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.
Caleb Landry Jones hits the red carpet with longtime girlfriend Katya Zvereva for the premiere of Dogman during the 2023 Venice Film Festival on Thursday (August 31) in Italy.
A Scots gran who stole more than £1.5 million from her employer's business enjoyed expensive family holidays, bought new cars and set up savings accounts for her grandchildren, a court heard.
Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The main competition section of the Busan International Film Festival is set to showcase two new features from Bangladeshi directors, the feature debut of Japanese documentary maker Mori Tatsuya and ruminations on Hong Kong by mainland Chinese director Choi Ji. The festival on Wednesday unveiled its New Currents competition section, reserved for films by directors making their first or second works of fiction, as well as its Jiseok section, a showcase for somewhat more established Asian auteurs. In addition to the Bangladesh duo, New Currents includes two films from Japan, two from Korea and one each from China, Thailand, Malaysia and India. From Bangladesh, Iqbal H. Chowdhury’s “The Wrestler” sees an old fisherman challenge a wrestling champion to combat, and in “The Stranger” Biplob Sarkar tells a coming-of-age, gender-identity tale. From Japan, Mori recounts the events of the Great Kanto earthquake in “September 1923,” while Yamamoto Akira delves into profound and shocking love in “After the Fever.” New Currents’ Korean contributions come from Lee Jong-su, whose “Heritage” tracks a man who opts out of military service and his supervisor, and Sohn Hyun-lok, whose “That Summer’s Lie” blurs truth and fiction in memories of a past romance. India’s Rajesh S.
Naman Ramachandran The 67th BFI London Film Festival has unveiled the titles that will compete in its official, first feature, documentary and short film competitions. Festival director Kristy Matheson said: “The films represented in each of these competitive strands offer audiences an exciting array of U.K. and global filmmaking voices and cinematic forms.
Several Scottish flights have been cancelled again this morning after yesterday's technical issues.
Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Anastasia Radzinskaya, the 9-year-old better known to millions of YouTube fans as “Like Nastya,” is swimming to the big screen. Nastya has boarded animated feature film “Weird Waters,” set to voice Jam, a precocious neon tetra who embarks on an undersea adventure with two best fish friends forever (BFFFs) — and must discover the hero within. It marks her first big-screen project.