Int’l Critics Line: Cambodia’s Oscar Entry ‘White Building’

K.J. Yossman Belgium’s Oscar entry “Playground” has an official trailer.The film, which documents the brutal reality of playground bullying, opened at Cannes Un Certain Regard before going on to screen at the San Sebastian and the BFI film festivals.

The CW has taken in for development Clubhouse (working title) a murder mystery drama from iZombie writer Christina de Leon, Lisa Berger and Sarah Penna’s Frolic Media, and CBS Studios, where Frolic is under a deal.

Buffalo 8 Distribution has acquired the North American rights to Jan P. Matuszyński’s Leave No Traces starring Tomasz Ziętek (Corpus Christi), Sandra Korzeniak (Influence) and Jacek Braciak (Edi).

Alissa Simon Film CriticWith last year’s surprise nominee “The Man Who Sold His Skin” hailing from Tunisia, Oscar handicappers should be sure to give West Asia and North Africa titles close scrutiny this time around. Among the 11 submissions are several titles likely to be highly competitive in the international feature category.

EXCLUSIVE: Elisabeth Moss and Lindsey McManus have boarded writer-director Blerta Basholli’s Hive as executive producers. The Love & Squalor Pictures partners will spearhead the awards push for the Kosovan Oscar entry.

2021 Miss Universe kicked off this past December 10th. The 70th edition of the popular show will be hosted in Israel at the Universe Arena, with an audience of about 5,000 people.

A version of this story about “Compartment No. 6” first appeared in the International issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.. Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen’s road film “Compartment No.

Flash, flicker, flash, cut to black. We’re watching grainy film of men walking in and out of the stalls in a West German public toilet, casting glances at each other, maybe a fumbling feel; a reverse angle shows us the camera behind the mirror. The men can’t see it, but some of them must surely guess it’s there and defy the odds anyway. Because without defiance, without desire, what are they? Without those things, they know they will only ever be half-alive.

There are moments in Drunken Birds, Serbian Canadian director Ivan Grbovic’s long-awaited second feature, that evoke strong sense memories of Days Of Heaven, Terrence Malick’s definitive film about the beauty and hardship of the rural laboring life. Days Of Heaven was set in 1916; Drunken Birds takes place today on a successful vegetable farm in Québec, where the workers are bussed in seasonally from Mexico.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentKino Lorber has acquired U.S. and Canadian  distribution rights to Aly Muritiba’s “Private Desert” (“Deserto Particular”) Brazil’s International Feature Oscar submission and a love story hailed for its large sensibility as well as political point.The deal was negotiated with the film’s world sale agent, Rome-based Intramovies.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Spencer” director Pablo Larraín has thrown his weight behind Chilean Oscar entry “White on White” (“Blanco en Blanco”), hailing it as a “really interesting, strange and highly violent film.”“White on White” also addresses issues that are “highly unsettling and complex and which haven’t been resolved or at least discussed at sufficient length,” Larraín adds.His words come from a conversation, which he moderates, with “White on White’s” director

In 1999, 240 people disappeared when Serbian forces descended on the village of Krusha e Madhe in Kosovo, shot or captured the men and burned the residents out. According to the end-titles in Blerta Basholli’s triple Sundance-award winning Hive, there are still 64 missing.

Few stock scenes in the cinema stir a surge of emotion as reliably as the sight of an underdog winning a race. There is the victor’s ribcage breaking through the ribbon at the finishing line, the runner’s exhausted smile, the arms raised in victory, the quiver rising to a swell of violins and finally, in the viewer, the lump in the throat. That was where Chariots Of Fire struck gold: it actually did eat your heart out.

The Icelandic mountains loom, the mists swirl between the peaks to where horses suddenly skitter in the snow. The only sound is stertorous breathing as the camera, clearly asserting something’s point of view, approaches the herd. Away they run.

Pregnant prisoners are the subject of 107 Mothers, Slovakia’s striking but somewhat sluggish International Feature Oscar entry directed by Peter Kerekes who co-wrote with Ivan Ostrochovský, winning Best Screenplay in the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons section earlier this year.

EXCLUSIVE: Colman Domingo is executive producing Scott Aharoni and Dennis Latos’ short Leylak.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentStarring Pablo Larraín regular Alfredo Castro, Chilean-Spanish writer-director Theo Court’s “White on White” (“Blanco en Blanco”) has been acquired for distribution in North America by Outsider Pictures.The deal follows on the film’s world premiere this September at the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons sidebar, where Court won a Silver Lion for the section’s best director and a film writers’ Fipresci Prize.

It looks like Casey Affleck has quietly split from longtime love Floriana Lima as it appears he has a new girlfriend.

A woman makes a dramatic life change in Tereza37, the official International Feature Film Oscar entry from Croatia. Screenwriter Lana Barić plays married Tereza (37), who has been going the traditional route to try for a baby for years without success. She considers other options when her gynecologist jokes she should try to conceive with a different partner.