Int’l Critics Line: Slovakia’s Oscar Submission ‘107 Mothers’

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentPeter Kerekes’s “107 Mothers,” a Slovak drama about women living and working in a Ukrainian prison, won the Crystal Arrow Award at the 13th edition of Les Arcs European Film Festival.The festival, which wrapped on Dec. 18, took place as an in-person event with “The Artist” director Michel Hazanavicius presiding over the jury which also included actors Laetitia Dosch and Sidse Babett Knudsen, author Tania de Montaigne and actor-director Éric Judor.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentPeter Kerekes’s “107 Mothers,” a Slovak drama about women living and working in a Ukrainian prison, won the Crystal Arrow Award at the 13th edition of Les Arcs European Film Festival. The festival, which wrapped on Dec.

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.

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.

Guy Lodge Film CriticNew parents are always advised to treasure every moment of their child’s infancy, even through the sleepless nights and bawling meltdowns for it all passes in the blink of an eye. Most parents, of course, have other stages of child-rearing to look forward to.

Offering an explanation. Kim Kardashian has been called out for appropriating Black hairstyles over the years. Now, the 41-year-old fashion designer is setting the record straight about the claims. 

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.

On May 27, 2020, with Europe still in the grip of a pandemic and travel fraught with danger and difficulty, James Weir climbed into his car in Preston and set the sat nav for Ziar nad Hronom, Slovakia.

The eponymous edifice of Cambodia’s International Feature Oscar entry, White Building, is barely white at all by the time we encounter it. A low-rise apartment block in Phnom Penh — the sort of teeming anthill of humanity familiar to anyone who has spent time in a South East Asian city — it is stained with tropical rain, its cement falling off in chunks, its cat’s cradles of improvised electrical wiring truly shocking, in every sense of the word. Director Kavich Neang grew up here.

Richard Kuipers Female rage is powerfully distilled and expertly distributed in “Rehana Maryam Noor,” a riveting social drama about a female doctor who demands justice in a case of sexual assault at a Dhaka medical school. The second feature by Abdullah Mohammad Saad (“Live From Dhaka”) features a superb lead performance by Azmeri Haque Badhon as the medico whose relentless determination drives her toward reckless obsession.

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.

“107 Mothers,” Slovakia’s submission into the Best International Feature Oscars race, is a fictionalized story about a Ukrainian women’s prison but features real prisoners with real stories. And to drill that point home, the film even opens with footage from a real childbirth.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentCAA has signed Khadar Ayderus Ahmed, the up-and-coming director of “The Gravedigger’s Wife,” Somalia’s first ever official submission for the Oscars international feature film race.“The Gravedigger’s Wife,” Ahmed’s feature debut,” world premiered at Cannes’ Critics’ Week and went on to win the Amplify Voices Award at Toronto.

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.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorSlovak filmmaker Peter Kerekes’ “107 Mothers,” which premiered in Venice Film Festival’s Horizons section and was selected as the Slovak entry for the Best International Feature Film category of the 94th Academy Awards, has won the Arab Critics’ Award for European Films.