Int’l Critics Line: Anna Smith On Serbia’s Oscar Entry ‘Dara Of Jasenovac’

Horror is woven into political drama in La Llorona, the riveting Golden Globe Foreign Language Film nominee and shortlisted International Feature Oscar contender from Guatemala’s Jayro Bustamante. An elderly wealthy man hears ghostly noises in the night.

Norwegian director Maria Sodhal made her first feature, Limbo, a decade ago and her second makes the reason for the long time gap dramatically clear: She developed lung cancer, which then metastasized and spread to her brain, a virtual death sentence. But she fought back and lived to make a film about it, the closely observed Hope, which is all she had going for her as she faced almost certain oblivion.

Majid Majidi has been making sensitive and trenchant films about kids in Iran for three decades and he’s still doing it in Sun Children (Khorshid), a shrewdly observed humanistic drama about some young teens scrambling to make their way in a difficult world.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorRouhollah Zamani, the lead actor of Majid Majidi’s Oscar shortlisted child labor drama “Sun Children” and winner of the Marcello Mastroianni Award for best young actor or actress at the Venice Film Festival, has been cast in a TV drama series, “Mehdi Bakeri,” about soldiers in the Iran-Iraq War.

A prisoner becomes a storyteller in Night Of The Kings, Ivory Coast’s vivid International Feature Oscar shortlist selection written and directed by Philippe Lacôte (Run). Newcomer Bakary Koné stars as a pickpocket who arrives at La MACA, a notorious prison in the Ivorian forest.

Final exams have rarely taken a heavier toll than they do in Better Days, an arresting teen-oriented story that cranks Chinese scholastic competitiveness into the realm of murderous melodrama.

When documentary maker Alexander Nanau started filming a team of investigative journalists in the aftermath of a tragic fire, no one knew the staggering level of corruption they would uncover. The blaze at Bucharest’s Colectiv club in 2015 left 27 dead and 180 injured. When more burn victims began dying in hospitals from wounds that were not life-threatening, the Romanian newspaper Sports Gazette started probing into the health service.

Next time someone asks what’s good on Netflix, you might want to point them to this winner that’s been lurking there since January 2020. A victor at the Golden Horse Awards and now shortlisted for the International Feature Film Oscar, A Sun is a bold, involving tale of crime, punishment, tragedy and healing — all within a seemingly ordinary family of four in Taiwan.

straight to your inbox every day for freeManchester United midfielder Dylan Levitt has joined Croatian side NK Istra on loan for the remainder of the season.The Wales international is desperate to kick-start his career following a disappointing loan spell with Charlton and has jumped at the chance to play in Croatia.The deal does not include an option for Istra to make the move permanent at the end of the campaign.Prior to the deal being officially announced, Levitt's agent Ivan Omrcen said last

straight to your inbox every day for freeManchester United midfielder Dylan Levitt is in talks to join Croatian side NK Istra on loan for the rest of the season, with a deal expected to go through.The Wales international is desperate to kick-start his career following a disappointing loan spell with Charlton and has jumped at the chance to play in Croatia.Levitt's agent Ivan Omrcen said: "He immediately agreed to come [to Istra] when we explained how much he will have to give in Istria.

A mother abducts her own children in Charter, a riveting watch from writer-director Amanda Kernell (Sami Blood). Norwegian actress Ane Dahl Torp puts in a powerhouse turn as Alice, the desperate, impetuous divorcée who decides to take her daughter and son to Tenerife amid a bitter custody battle.

In 1962, a group of striking factory workers was massacred in the industrial Russian town of Novocherkassk. The shocking event, and the ensuing cover-up, is explored in intimate and meticulous detail by veteran filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky in Dear Comrades!, this year’s submission from Russia to the International Feature Oscar race.

This year’s International Feature Oscar entry from Armenia, Songs Of Solomon, boasts Green Book Academy Award-winning co-writer/producer Nick Vallelonga as producer for the film debut of theater director Arman Nshanian. Songs Of Solomon is a relatively low-budget but emotive watch, contrasting the power of music and friendship with the horrors of genocide.


Having scored an Oscar for Spain with Belle Epoque in 1994, director Fernando Trueba returns to the International Feature Film race with a Colombian entry. Memories Of My Father (aka El Olvido Que Seremos) strikes a similarly nostalgic note to Belle Epoque, but focuses on familial love. Based on Héctor Abad Faciolince’s memoirs, it’s adapted by the director’s own brother, David Trueba: an apt familial collaboration.

Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired North American rights to Tarzan and Arab Nasser’s Gaza Mon Amour, Palestine’s official submission for Best International Feature at the 93rd Academy Awards. The film will be released later this year.

Tragedy is punctured by comedy from the start of The Father. At a funeral in rural Bulgaria, mourners prepare to say goodbye to Valentina as the priest delivers an elegy over her grave.

Emiliano De Pablos Spain’s Bendita Film Sales has picked up worldwide sales rights to coming-of-age drama “The Saint of the Impossible,” the feature debut of Swiss director Marc Wilkins.

Ed Meza @edmezavarMandy Patinkin and Lena Dunham have joined German filmmaker Julia von Heinz’s next film, “Iron Box,” about a New York businesswoman who decides to take her aging father back to his native Poland, where she hopes to explore her Jewish roots.In an interview with Variety during last year’s Venice Film Festival following the premiere of her latest pic, “And Tomorrow the Entire World,” von Heinz said she planned to send Patinkin and Dunham the script and expressed hope that they

After an impressive start at India’s box office, the Tamil-language film Master has hit Amazon Prime Video across the globe, and looks set to maintain the star power of leading actor Vijay. Two years after playing a charismatic soccer coach in Bigil, Vijay dances into the role of a charismatic professor in Master.

Also Read: Zack Snyder 'Has No Plan' to Make More DC Movies After 'Justice League'For our international readers, “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” will premiere March 18 on HBO services in Europe across the Nordics (Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland), Central Europe (Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, Poland, Montenegro and Croatia), Spain, and Portugal as well as on the HBO Go service in Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines,