China’s Lin Jianjie Debuts Genre-Fluid ‘Brief History of a Family’ at Sundance: ‘Chinese Middle Classes Are Still New to This Identity’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Liberation which is coming to screens later this year through Signature Entertainment in the UK.Starring Pilou Asbæk (Game of Thrones), Katrine Greis-Rosenthal (A Fortunate Man), Morten Hee Andersen (Herrens veje), Peter Kurth (Babylon Berlin), Ulrich Thomsen (The Celebration), Liberation is directed by Anders Walter (I Kill Giants) from a script he co-wrote with Miriam Nørgaard (The War Show). Here’s the official synopsis.This historical drama will make you question how far you’d go to help someone in need. When a folk high school is turned into an internment camp for German refugees, the headmaster couple Jakob and Lis and their children are thrust into an impossible situation. Should the family help the refugees – or stand firm in the Danish resistance against the Germans? Signature Entertainment presents Liberation on Digital Platforms 29th January.

PARK CITY – Movies that stick with you long after you watch them are nothing new. There are literally thousands of examples in the history of cinema.

The inaugural Hong Kong International Film Festival Industry – CAA China Genre Initiative (HCG) has set its first projects which will be showcased during the 28th Hong Kong International Film & TV Market alongside the 22nd Hong Kong Asia Film Financing Forum running from March 11-13.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Six projects have been announced as participating in the inaugural edition of the HKIFF Industry – CAA China Genre Initiative, a project incubator in Hong Kong for Chinese-language genre films. The HCG platform will run March 11-13, 2024, alongside the 22nd Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) and the Hong Kong International Film & TV Market (FilMart), Asia’s largest film and TV rights market. From the six, two winning projects will each receive a cash prize of $20,000 for development funding.

China began loosening its one-child policy in 2015 until finally, in 2021, it abolished all restrictions on the number of children a family could have. Young Chinese filmmakers are beginning to grapple with the fallout of those prior decades in new fiction films that demonstrate how the Chinese family unit has been irreversibly transformed.

Sterling K. Brown received his first Oscar nomination and his This Is Us family is sending love to the actor.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Chinese filmmaker Lin Jianjie‘s debut feature “Brief History of a Family,” which is being sold by Films Boutique, has debuted its trailer (below), following its world premiere in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section of the Sundance Film Festival. The film, which will make its European premiere in the Panorama program of the Berlin Film Festival, was received warmly by Variety critic Carlos Aguilar. In the review, Aguilar says the suspenseful drama was “elevated by its consistent visual inventiveness.” He adds that although at first it seems to be the story of a “cunning infiltrator wreaking havoc in an unsuspecting household,” it then “reveals itself as a tale of wish fulfillment for everyone involved.” Aguilar says that it is this approach which “turns Lin’s debut into an engrossing brain-tickler.” The drama is put in motion by an incident at the high school attended by Wei, an outgoing only son from a middle-class family, and Shuo, his quiet, perceptive classmate.

Kate Middleton is currently recovering from the abdominal surgery that she underwent last week but she can definitely count on her devoted husband Prince William to be by her side.

Carlos Aguilar Elevated by its consistent visual inventiveness, Chinese writer-director Jianjie Lin’s suspenseful drama “Brief History of a Family” could appear, at first glance, as a clear-cut case of a cunning infiltrator wreaking havoc in an unsuspecting household. Yet the closer we observe, the more it reveals itself as a tale of wish fulfillment for everyone involved.No doubt comparisons to “Saltburn,” “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” or “The Talented Mr. Ripley” will abound, but what Lin conceived is far more subcutaneous, with a sobering tone and disinterested in building up to a grand plot twist — though the resolution is unexpected.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Gaumont has unveiled a first still and trailer for “Black Tea,” Abderrahmane Sissako‘s highly anticipated follow-up to his 2015 Oscar-nominated film “Timbuktu.” The movie will world premiere in competition at the Berlin Film Festival. A lushly-lensed romance drama, “Black Tea” (previously titled “The Perfumed Hill“) tells the story of Joice, who leaves the Ivory Coast after walking out on her wedding day and sets off to start a new life in Guangzhou, China.

So, here we are in mid-January, and though we’re staring down the barrel of a tough year ahead, it’s not all wintry doom and gloom on an international box office (and combined global) level. 

Richard Kuipers Taiwan’s transformation from an authoritarian state to a flourishing democracy determined to decide its own future is charted in the engrossing and highly informative documentary “Invisible Nation.” Centered on President Tsai Ing-wen as she promotes her country’s case for ongoing autonomy in the face of mounting political isolation, as well as China’s claim that Taiwan is part of its territory and must unite with the mainland, Vanessa Hope’s skilfully assembled film delivers a compelling picture of Taiwan’s increasingly precarious position in the region and on the world stage. Currently enjoying a substantial festival run, “Invisible Nation” has gained an extra note of urgency and its visibility should only increase in the wake of Taiwan’s elections on January 13, 2024.

Gregg Goldstein When you’ve spent the most memorable years of your career battling gods and single-handedly defeating an army, what’s left for a warrior to do? For “Xena: Warrior Princess” star Lucy Lawless, the answer was making her directorial debut with a doc about a fellow New Zealand icon, daredevil CNN war camerawoman Margaret Moth. Her spellbinding feature, “Never Look Away,” which premieres Jan. 18 at Sundance, was selected for the fest’s World Cinema Documentary Competition.

Angelique Jackson Award-winning nonfiction filmmaker and writer Brett Story has signed with CAA ahead of the world premiere of her latest documentary, “Union.” Story co-directed the feature with Stephen Maing about the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), a group of current and former Amazon workers in New York City’s Staten Island, as they take on one of the world’s largest and most powerful companies in a fight to unionize. “Union” will make its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan.

Marta Balaga “Beware of Children” director Dag Johan Haugerud is ready to talk about “Sex” as the first part of his anticipated “Sex Dreams Love” trilogy is heading to Berlinale’s Panorama in February. “Making a film called ‘Sex’ calls for all sorts of jokes and misunderstandings during production, everything from being summoned to a ‘sex-meeting’ to emails being censored because someone had written ‘sex-props’ in the subject field,” he tells Variety ahead of the trailer premiere. “As for the screenplay, there aren’t that many jokes about sex in it.

Mumford & Sons have returned to music after five years with their new track ‘Good People’ featuring Pharrell.Produced by Pharrell, the song features a thumping beat with chanting and choir-like backing vocals. Frontman Marcus Mumford sings: “Good people / been down / for so long / and now / it’s like / the sun is rising” describing the joy, hope and energy within room.Pharrell also provides backing vocals on the track alongside the Native Vocalists, a 6-piece dynamic vocal choir from the USA and Canada, hailing from their respective Native American Tribes within the Northern Great Plains.Mumford & Sons and Pharrell’s friendship spans over a decade and have always discussed the possibility of teaming up to work on music.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Berlin’s Studio Babelsberg, one of Europe’s largest studio complexes, has revealed that its senior management has been rejigged. Recent movies to shoot at the studios include “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” “John Wick: Chapter 4” and “The Matrix Resurrections.” Founded in 1912, Babelsberg is one of the oldest studios in the world.

Porij have today (January 16) shared a new single, ‘My Only Love’, and announced details of their debut album, ‘Teething’.The four piece, made up of vocalist and keyboardist Scout Moore (Egg), bassist James Middleton, guitarist Jacob Maguire and drummer Nathan Carroll, revealed that their new album will arrive on April 26 via Play It Again Sam Records and can be pre-ordered here.‘My Only Love’ is described in a statement as being about “the safety and comfort of a settled relationship, for better or worse”.Speaking about the new single, the band said: “I went to see ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ at the National Theatre and was completely struck by a moment in the closing monologue which has the line ‘Dancing with eyes half-closed because to open them would break the spell.’ This felt so fitting to how I was immediately dealing with the conflict I was experiencing.“The power of succumbing to denial felt particularly inviting. Over time the lyrics settled and this song anchors on the thoughts in the bridge saying ‘I don’t know if this will be my forever love but it’s my only love for now’.

Gladiators was one of the biggest sports entertainment programmes of the 1990s, and this weekend it returns to screens in its brand-new home on the BBC. Hosted by father and son duo Bradley and Barney Walsh, the show will see a new generation of superhuman Gladiators competing against a brave set of contenders.

Suki Waterhouse has shared her first single of 2024 titled ‘OMG’.The singer, model and actress – known for her role as Karen Sirko in the Emmy Nominated series Daisy Jones & The Six – has spent the past week teasing the track on her social media.Written by Waterhouse alongside Natalie Findlay and produced by Jules Apollinaire, the song is a synthy sleazy track with a funky bass line and prominent drums while Waterhouse sings: “Oh my God / Take me back the way that I was / Oh my God / You know I only tried to play your games / So you cannot forget my name / You and I, are not the same / You always had it easy” referring to a past romance.“We started half the song and then put it to the side,” Waterhouse told Rolling Stone. “We were like, ‘It’s not working.’ And then two months went by and we were back in the studio, and suddenly this chorus came out with this energy around it.”She continued: “It’s such an anxious state when I’m trying to put together a song, because you always feel like you are on the edge of something.